“Two Tars” (1928) is, for my money, the teams greatest silent film and requires two viewings. To that end, I’ve posted two different versions of ‘Two Tars’. The above is of lesser picture quality but uses the original synchronized score/effects track which is far superior to the re-do on the
“Hats Off”, a silent 1927 Laurel and Hardy comedy, is a lost film. It was last seen in Germany in 1930, where it presumably retired itself to the countryside and hopefully didn’t wind up a victim of the coming war. Why the film vanished is a mystery–there are no other
Let’s enjoy the last week of 2024 by spending twenty minutes a day with Laurel and Hardy in the late 1920s. If you love L&H (and lets face it, you have to be a bit of a hard case not too) you undoubtedly know their early-to-mid 1930s sound shorts. Since
Behold this nifty hour-long mini-doc called ‘Home Again; The Marx Brothers and New York City’. It’s a very well done and charming look at how the comedian-brothers grew up, what their heritage was and how New York City formed and shaped their personas. I realize that it’s not exactly breaking
Here is episode five of the wonderful ‘Orson Welles’ Sketchbook’ series, a group of 15 minute monologues he delivered for the BBC in 1955. Here he discusses his infamous ‘War Of The Worlds’ broadcast and even though you’ve probably heard the entire tale before–the accidentally induced mass-panic it caused ask
Here is episode four of the six-part 1955 BBC series ‘Orson Welles’ Sketchbook’. In this fifteen minute monologue OW takes us deftly through a series of unrelated subjects staring with cue cards for actors (‘idiot boards’ as he calls them), Harry Houdini, John Barrymore, more Voodoo. etc. His ‘weave’ is
Here’s episode three of Orson Welles marvelous six-part monologue series ‘Orson Welles’ Sketchbook’, which he made for the BBC in 1955. I posted the first entry in which he recalls his beginnings in the Irish theater on Monday. Yesterday I posted Orson discussing critics and Voodoo. Today the subject is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL3ZoUJ-Tek Yesterday I posted the first of six fifteen-minute TV monologues made by Orson Welles for the BBC in 1955. Today, in a fit of orderliness, I’m posting the second. The subjects at hand in this episode are critics and voodoo and I’ll leave it to OW to spin the
During most of the 1950s Orson Welles was a full-on expatriate, living in various different hotel rooms in various different European capitols, usually paid for by others who often believed they were investing in various Welles projects when in reality they were investing in various meals in various high-end restaurants.
It may seem odd that by far my favorite of Fred Astaire’s dance partners is, in fact, not a dancer at all. But the above clip of Paulette Goddard and Astaire performing “I Ain’t Hep To That Step But I’ll Dig It” from “Second Chorus” (1940) rocks me every time