Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

JERRY LEWIS TITLE SEQUENCE # 2; ‘ROCK-A-BYE BABY’

Yesterday I posted the opening credit sequence from ‘The Delicate Delinquent’. Today’s offering is the musical credit sequence from his next movie ‘Rock-A-Bye Baby’ (1958), featuring the witty title song by Harry Warren and Sammy Cahn. A reader posited that the ‘Delicate Delinquent’ sequence might have been directed by Jerry

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JERRY LEWIS DOES DELINQUENT

Here’s the fabulous opening credit sequence to Jerry Lewis’s first non-Dean Martin solo effort ‘The Delicate Delinquent’ (1957), written and directed by Don McGuire. The crisp black and white photography, the stylized pre-‘West Side Story’ fusion of violence presented as abstract dance, and Lewis’ peak pantomime performance combine to make

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SATURDAY STOOGE-FEST

‘Rusty Romeos’ (1957) is the 181st short film made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed on Tuesday, February 12 and Wednesday, February 13, 1957 and released on Thursday, October 17th of that year. The film is a scene by scene, joke by joke, practically line by

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AT HOME WITH THE GERSHWINS

Here’s an outstanding reel of home movie footage shot by Ira Gershwin featuring a veritable who’s who of 1930s cultural heroes. Much of it was filmed at the house that Ira and George shared at 1019 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. (It was later occupied by Rosemary Clooney and

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GERSHWIN & GODDARD IN PALM SPRINGS

Yesterday I posted a terrific clip of Fred Astaire dancing with the divine Paulette Goddard from the movie ‘Second Chorus’ (1941). The six-degrees of Paulette Goddard takes us now back four years to 1937 when Goddard met and began an affair with George Gershwin, who was in Hollywood writing the

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SATURDAY STOOGEFEST

‘Corny Casanovas’ (1952) is the 139th short subject made by The Three Stooges for Columbia pictures. It was photographed from Monday, December 3 through Wednesday, December 5 1951 and was released on Thursday, May 1, 1952. (Perhaps ‘knocked out’ is a more appropriate term than ‘photographed’). If you don’t like

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JAMES CAGNEY–YIDDISH ACTOR?

Apropos of yesterday’s post featuring the 1926 song hit ‘Yiddishe Charleston’, here’s a clip from a Warner Brothers/First National movie from 1932 called ‘Taxi’. In this famous scene, James Cagney speaks fluent Yiddish with a Jewish man who seems to be in some sort of trouble with an Irish cop.

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‘JUKEBOX DANCE’ with ASTAIRE AND POWELL

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post which featured a superb Eleanor Powell number from ‘Ship Ahoy’, here’s Eleanor dancing a nifty number with Fred Astaire in ‘Broadway Melody of 1940’. Apparently this was her favorite of her own on-screen dances. That’s all the sparkling dialogue I’ve got for today–I’m late

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ELEANOR POWELL MEETS…BUDDY RICH?

Eleanor Powell, Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s tap-dancing super-star of the 1930s and early 40s, is now an oddly marginalized figure in the world of dance history. Perhaps it’s because the movies she appeared in–featherweight musical vehicles–are now mostly unwatchable. (I hate it when that happens). One of them, ‘Ship Ahoy’ (1942),

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