CLICK HERE TO WATCH the three-and-a-half minute screen test that Marlene Dietrich made for ‘The Blue Angel’ in 1929. This is presumably the first time a camera fully captured the multi-faceted genius of this ground-breaking performer. The film’s director, Josef Von Sternberg, also directed the test and used two angles;
See that top video of New York City in 1956? See the video below it of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier Book 2? Roll them both simultaneously (the NYC footage has no sound) and spend a few minutes of your Friday taking a poignant time travel trip to a New York
Yesterday I posted legendary AM pop DJ Dan Ingram’s broadcast during the Great East Coast Blackout of 1965. Today we’re digging excerpts of Ingram on his 77 WABC afternoon music show from February 26th, 1975. This is classic Ingram stuff–a lesson in pure DJ word jamming, a lost art (I
On November 9, 1965, shortly after 5PM, New York City began experiencing the ominous signs of an impending blackout due to a gradual loss of available electricity. The cause of the failure was the setting of a protective relay on one of the transmission lines near Niagara Falls. The safety
I don’t know what the hell this little clip is but I think it’s fabulous. It appears to simply be footage of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin dancing in a smoky nightclub to their recording of Gainsbourg’s song ‘La Decadance’, intercut with footage of people speaking French with no subtitles.
Although the ultimate Serge/Jane recording is generally considered the wildly scandalous ‘J’ Taime…Moi Non Plus’, with Birkin’s climactic orgasm managing to get the song banned almost world-wide, my favorite S&J duet is ’69–Annee Erotique’. Above is an unconvincing (but entertaining) mock-performance of the song in a faux concert setting. The
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqfd5xZZ30Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Dyxq2kw-c In 1969 Serge Gainsbourg starred in a French film called ‘Slogan’. It was the story of a film director played by Gainsbourg named Serge Fabergé who leaves his pregnant wife Françoise to attend an advertising award festival in Venice. There, he meets Evelyne, a young British woman played by Jane
Here is a remarkably cool musical short from 1964 featuring Serge Gainsbourg in his first iteration as suave, well-dressed, cool and disaffected young Parisian. (As the week continues we’ll get to the later loutish, unshaven, drunken and darkly funny Serge). This appears to have been made as a television featurette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6gjzNm6dA0 Yesterday I read an article about Serge Gainsbourg’s long shuttered house in Paris. Apparently the singer’s daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, has decided to let the public in and see the delightfully eclectic, memorabilia-filled digs, which have been preserved–Gitane cluttered ashtrays and all– just as the great French pop icon left
In September of 1965 the newly internationally famous David McCallum (who died earlier this week at age 90) made an appearance on singer Andy Williams network variety program. The above will show you A) that McCullum was low-key, charming and game for anything and B) that Williams, though popular in