The emergence of radio as we know it–programming that emanates from a reasonably priced box placed in the living room–was in its infant stages when the above one-hour broadcast was made, from a station in Newark, New Jersey. As you’ll see from this rare and invaluable Edison experimental recording from
Decca records may have passed on signing ‘The Beatles’, but they more than made up for that goof by producing the above record which may be my favorite long-playing record ever (next to that Monty Python record on which one side contains two completely different sets of material and you
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s our ginormous Magnavox console living room stereo was the center of my after school universe. In addition to my ever-growing collection of jazz LPs, a great deal of my time was spent listening to comedy records my parents had bought
Here’s a fascinating little ten minute audio reel of Frank Sinatra doing multiple takes (six in all) of ‘Pick Yourself Up’ from the ‘Sinatra and Swinging Brass’ album. Neil Hefti’s arrangements are neat and inventive and the band kicks hard. Frank, though, needs a few tries to get things straight–and
Yesterday we saw fragments of the lost 1918 version of ‘Salome’ starring Theda Bara. Today we jump ahead thirty-five years (it feels like thirty-five centuries) to the 1953 version starring Rita Hayworth. Above I’ve posted the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ scene which was choreographed by Valerie Bettis, a well
I missed my Labor Day Jerry Lewis posting yesterday but it’s never too late. Or, maybe it never is late enough. That might be a wisecrack, but I doubt it. (Apologies to Groucho). We can’t miss the tradition so above I’m giving you one of Jerry’s wonderfully dreadful telethon sign-offs.Yes,
Yesterday we listenend to excerpts of Max Steiner’s score for ‘The Big Sleep’. I’m rather enjoying divorcing these rich orchestral works from the pictures they were designed to play under so today I’m presenting Miklos Rozsa’s score for ‘Double Indemnity’ (1944). It’s impossible not to visualize the opening shot of
There are literally thousands of shows streaming on hundreds of subscription services. So last night we chose to watch ‘The Big Sleep’ (1946) starring…well, if you read this blog you know who’s in ‘The Big Sleep’. This tells you both how culturally relevant I am (not at all) and what
We move from the previous two posts featuring Marilyn’s delightfully polished and alluring musical numbers in ‘Some Like It Hot’ and ‘Let’s Make Love’, to her nadir. It too is from ‘Lets Make Love’, but there are multiple issues with it that frankly make it something of an embarrassment to
Last Friday I posted the terrific ‘Running Wild’ sequence from ‘Some Like It Hot’, featuring a wildly sensuous vocal/dance performance by Marilyn and way too many cutaways to Jack Lemmon. In spite of the great praise she received in that incredibly successful film, there appear to have been those who