The saga of Howard Hughes epic World War 1 film ‘Hells Angels’ (1930) has been well documented–if you don’t know it then this Wikipedia entry does a good enough job of giving you the basics. Essentially, the young Texas millionaire/aviator was infatuated with the movies from a young age and
Here are two clips from a Mae West film I’ve never seen called ‘Goin To Town’ (1936). The film is a ‘Post Code’ West and, as you know, she’s really more of a ‘Pre-Code’ kinda gal. All you really need to understand the story of the film are these two
Yesterday I posted Busby Berkeley’s wonderfully choreographed ‘Hopping Dance’, performed by Bobby Van. The dance’s spiritual cousin–or perhaps it’s parent really–was a Berkeley production number from fifteen or so years earlier, ‘Horray For Hollywood’ from ‘Hollywood Hotel’ (1937). It features Benny Goodman and his then wildly successful swing era big
On Tuesday I reminisced a bit about my chance encounter with performer Bobby Van just months before his untimely death at age 51. I was perhaps a bit dismissive of Van’s talents and intend to rectify that today by offering up what is probably his career highlight, the ‘hopping song’
Before ‘The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis’ was a silly TV show, ‘The Affairs Of Dobie GIllis’ was a silly musical movie. (Before that it was a series of silly stories by Max Shulman who was responsible for all the silliness. He must have a made mega-ton of money from
Here’s an extraordinary piece of musical filmmaking that really should be more celebrated than it is. It’s the big, fat, ultimate dance number from ‘The Gay Divorcee’ (1934), the second film to pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the first to be properly considered a starring vehicle for them.
‘Monkey Business’ (1931) is the Marx Brothers third movie and the first not to be an adaptation of a stage play. The movie is a non-stop delight–75 or so minutes of one laugh after another., And yet the last line of the film is famously (amongst Marxists anyway) disappointing. After
I was listening to a Gilbert Gottfiried podcast while driving today in which he and his guests began extolling the remarkably varied talents of Jerry Lewis. Not only was he a comic, a director, a writer, a philanthropist but he was also…an excellent dancer? Well, sort of. It’s true that
Early talking films are invaluable relics of a dead civilization–namely the 1920s. The acting, pacing, diction, style and behavior are as incomprehensible and different from anything we now consider normal as sitting around a cave might be with its cro-magnin inhabitants. The movies aren’t really useful anymore to us in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fn7PKzf5tk Last week I posted various examples of TV episodic comedy show themes. I missed posting something Friday because…well, because I just missed posting something. Things happen, you know. So we’ll wrap up this theme song stuff with a little bit of ‘I Love Lucy’ history which you might or