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
All week we’ve been looking at some of the extraordinary all-female orchestras of the 20s/30/40s. Let’s finish thing off with a band that never existed, ‘Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopaters’, from Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamonds masterful comedy ‘Some Like It Hot’. Clearly Wilder and Diamond were inspired by
Without a doubt the most famous of the 1930s/40s all girl orchestras was ‘Phil Spitalni’s Hour Of Charm All-Girl Orchestra.’ Typically, though, the most famous is somehow the least interesting. It’s not that the players aren’t terrific. It’s the choice of material–much more conservative and a silly combination of mickey-mouse
This week we’ve been taking a look at all-girl jazz bands of the 1930s and 1940s. Today we’re going to back to the 1920s where we will meet ‘The Ingenues’, a most adventurous and impressive ‘girl group’ that toured the United States and other countries from 1925 to 1937. They
Yesterday I posted about the hard-kicking all-female big band Francis Carroll and Her Coquettes. Today we take a look at ‘The International Sweethearts of Rhythm’, who were believed to be the first racially-integrated all-female big band in the United States. Though they’ve been more or less lost to history–and that’s
The all-girl orchestra was generally regarded as something of a ‘gimmick’–an oddity that amused audiences due to the rarity of seeing women playing horns, saxes, basses and drums. Indeed, only singing, violin and piano playing seemed to be considered appropriate and not jarring for a woman to be seen playing.