If you’ve ever wondered where Martin Short got his inspiration for his great talk-show host character Jiminy Glick, look no further than Skip E. Lowe, a public-access legend for years in Los Angeles. Lowe was a cut-rate comic, impressionist and MC who loved Hollywood lore and entertainers. His interview show
Let’s close our reconstruction of the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon with the ever popular Jerry anthem, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Above are two videos–one of Jerry singing it on the 1987 telethon and one of Jerry rehearsing it two years later. Jerry in rehearsal is
Here’s a terrific sampling of the 1975 Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, featuring a good deal of Sinatra, some Totie Fields, a little Harry James and some of Jerry’s greasiest, most self-serving moments. This extended highlights reel is best played in the background while you do something better with your time,
To those of us of a certain age, Labor Day weekend will always belong to the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon. Jerry was at his most Buddy Love-ish when hosting the show, strutting around in a tux, his hair heavily pomaded, a cigarette clutched between his fingers. He often dressed down
Apropos of our focus on John Cassavetes this week, above is the trailer for his 1968 film ‘Faces’. I have no idea if he cut or approved this trailer but it does an excellent job of whetting the appetite for seeing the film. Removing the audio and playing the images
Here’s a ten minute excerpt reel of John Cassavetes speaking culled from half a dozen different interviews. When he’s younger he looks like Roy Scheider and when he speaks with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips he is the quintessence of New York-Actors Lab-Beatnik-Mingus-Jazz Clubs-New Wave-Greenwich Village-Paris sidewalk cafe-Sartre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU2wTGNBehs The magnificent Gena Rowlands passed away last week and in tribute to her I offer the above legendary video which features her husband John Cassavetes, Paul Stewart, Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassel (sort of–he’s barely seen and doesn’t speak) sitting around a table in a restaurant called ‘The Bull
Yesterday we took a drive down Sunset Blvd. in 1952. Let’s leap backwards twenty years and get some color glimpses of L.A. in 1931. This neat little newsreel is essentially an architectural tour–what else really is there to do in L.A. other than drive around looking at houses?–but at the
Dig this nifty video showing filmed driving footage of Sunset Blvd. in 1952 contrasted with a still image of the same street corner today whenever the car in the earlier footage stops at a light. We can date the old footage from early May, 1952–‘Singin’ in the Rain’ & ‘The
‘Hold That Lion’ (1947) is the 100th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Tuesday, January 28 through Friday, January 31 1947 and was released on Thursday, July 17th of that year (the 198th day on the Gregorian Calendar). The film is notable