What’s funnier than Don Rickles on a serious roll in front of a large audience? I would venture that Rickles on a serious roll on a local TV show with no live audience but with the crew and co-anchors becoming disabled by laughter is even better. Here he is on
Today marks the forty-sixth anniversary of the first time Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had seen each other in twenty years. It happened on Labor Day, 1976, and was facilitated by Frank Sinatra who, as you’ll see in the above history-making clip, took the opportunity to also throw in his
In the previous post I wrote about my warm and fuzzy feelings (mostly) for Jerry’s yearly labor day weekend bash. If you ever enjoyed watching the train wreck of a sleepless Jerry, or if you ever grooved to guests like Lola Falana and Joey Heatherton and Charlie Brill, then the
For years, Labor Day meant nothing to me except that it was the endless weekend that the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon was on. As a kid I stayed up later watching Jerry than I ever managed to do with Johnny Carson. It wasn’t the acts per se that made the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWJzqOTWjc&t=674s Here’s a very good 50 minute doc about Roberto Rossellini, featuring some marvelous color on-set footage of the ‘Stromboli’ shoot (the one he did with Ingrid Bergman after she fled America to take up with the Maestro). The video roll in the first few minutes eventually ceases so don’t
Here’s ‘Brideless Groom’, the Stooges 101st short for Columbia Pictures, released on September 11 1947. It’s one of my top five stooge shorts–nary a frame wasted–with a script that’s tight, Stooge performances that seem more crafted and specific than usual and career-defining supporting cast turns, including Christine McIntyre (‘You’re not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPLhQl9ZLrM The Culver studio was originally created by silent movie pioneer Thomas H. Ince and has operated under a multitude of names: Ince Studio (1918-1925), De Mille Studios (1925–1928), Pathé Studios (1928–1931), RKO-Pathé Studios (1931–1935), Selznick International Pictures (1935–1956), Desilu-Culver Studios (1956–1970), Culver City Studios (1970–1977), and Laird International Studios (1977–1986).Through all these
Here is an extraordinary find. It’s a forty minute silent doc (no music either–just ghostly silence) detailing the inner workings of the MGM studio lot in 1925. We see images of the lot in its silent heyday, with tours of the exterior, views of the interior stages, lots of groupings
In 1970 James Aubrey, the new and much hated head of MGM, ordered an auction to be held of all of Metro’s old props, costumes and souvenirs of former sets. The event was loudly objected to in Hollywood but in the end the objectors didn’t really make any difference; Debbie
Yesterday I posted a doc on the creation of Century City, which rose atop the rubble of the former 20th Century Fox ‘ranch’ portion of the lot, which was sold in the early 60s to developers to cover the cost overruns on the Fox epic ‘Cleopatra’. A few years later,