The ‘Niagra Falls/Slowly I Turn’ bit–which we’ve been examining this week in excruciating detail–found a variation of sorts in this Abbott and Costello routine from ‘Keep ‘Em Flying’, a 1942 wartime vehicle co-starring Martha Raye as twins. (Click the above link–the person who posted the video declined to share it
My dogged pursuit of the increasingly obnoxious vaudeville routine known as ‘Niagra Falls’ or ‘Slowly I Turn’ continues with a Colgate Comedy Hour version starring Abbott and Costello featuring Errol Flynn. This is the worst version thus far of the routine–Flynn is miscast, unable to convincingly be broad and over
See yesterdays post (as well as the weekend Three Stooges offering) for more info than you could possibly ever need about the classic Vaudeville sketch commonly known as ‘Niagra Falls’ but accurately titled ‘Slowly I Turn’. We’ve seen the Stooges version, we’ve witnessed Lou Costello’s interpretation and now we come
This past weekend I posted the Three Stooges movie ‘Gents Without Cents’ which features a classic Vaudeville routine known (incorrectly) as ‘Niagra Falls’. (It’s correct name is ‘Slowly I Turn’). The Stooges were one of many comedians to do a version of the sketch and above we see Lou Costello
‘Gents Without Cents’ (1944) is the 81st short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Wednesday, June 14 through Friday, June 16, 1944 and was released on Friday, September 22nd of that year (the 266th day in the Gregorian calendar). The abbreviated shooting schedule
The Marx Brothers were of German Jewish orgin and thus grew up steeped in German culture and language. One of Groucho’s true delights in life (and I don’t think there were many of them) was performing a German novelty song called ‘Schnitzel Bank’ and above we see him do so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS7YIC8F2Ec Yes I know, Labor Day is over so let’s be done with Jerry Lewis. Not so fast–because I’ve found a clip that I never knew existed, a rare Jerry Telethon clip in which he’s the least offensive person on stage. It’s 1968 and Joan Crawford makes an appearance, reading
One of the great pleasures of watching the Labor Day weekend MDA telethon was waiting for the inevitable mistakes,. bloopers, screw-ups etc. that were par for the course during a forty-eight hour marathon broadcast. Indeed, as the years went on and the featured acts got worse (Joey Heatherton began to
From Liberace (see yesterday’s post) to Jerry Lewis, this blog continues to circle the drain of mid-century entertainment. But with good reason; not a Labor Day weekend of my youth passed without hours spent staring glassily at the MDA Telethon, starring Jerry Lewis. So we will eschew The Three Stooges
There’s nothing really to say about the 20th Century show-biz phenomenon known as Liberace (birth name: ‘Wladziu Valentina Liberace’). Perhaps best to quote the opening of ‘The Song Of Bernadette’: “To those who believe, no explanation is necessary; to those who don’t believe, no explanation is possible.” Below are three