https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2J4YHuJ9Ahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujZP6UfkFe0 In 1928, composer Louis Alter created ‘Manhattan Serenade’, an art-deco orchestral piece designed to be recorded on what was then a long-playing Victor 78rpm disc (four minutes and forty-five seconds–almost two minutes longer than standard 78 RPM records). The piece is very much of its era–a 20s ode to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X9UEu1qJRo To my intense frustration, some self-important copyright upholder has removed all traces of the musical numbers from The Marx Brothers maiden cinematic effort ‘The Cocoanuts’ (1929) from the wilds of YouTube. Why? Why why why? Is it an Irving Berlin estate kind of thing? (Possibly). A DVD reissue kind
Today lets have a restful few moments staring at an unchanging opening graphic for Merv Griffin’s long-ago TV talk show and listening to its famous theme song. A lovely big-band ballad apparently titled ‘Hello, Hello’ (according to the copyright held by Merv Griffin Enterprises), it was written by the protean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCf5VsRTp9U Here’s another clip from the mysterious Dean Martin Special I previously posted clips from at the top of the week. In this one he’s joined by the seventeen-year-old Fabian in a duet featuring four very of-the-moment chorines. I can’t say there’s much chemistry going on here between the two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0syJQgFSzI4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uUTWLNBl2k “The Sandpiper” (1965) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is best known today for its theme song, Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster’s immortal ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’. The film has generally been dismissed as weak-tea soap opera with pretentious thematic references to the bird the film is
Yesterday I posted a wonderful and somewhat mysterious clip of Dean Martin and Don Knotts from a Dino TV special that aired on November 1, 1960. Today I’m sharing another clip from this rather obscure show featuring Frank Sinatra. It’s a parody of ‘This Is Your Life’ with Dino in
Here’s a terrific sketch from a 1959 Dean Martin special featuring Dean and Don Knotts who plays the role of Frank Sinatra…sort of. The two are terrific together and one can only speculate what might have been if they’d teamed up for a couple of movies. By this point Dino’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzIhWg2R2chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2mvN9x_Egc The concept of a ‘lost film’–in other words a film that there is proof of having been made but no known print extant–is a terribly sad one. But the concept of a fragment of a lost film surviving is downright ghostly. Oftentimes these scraps of otherwise vanished films are
I can’t make a great case for the above credit sequence for the 1965 Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello beach romp ‘Beach Blanket Bingo’ being especially interesting. But it’s certainly a relief to see the adorable Annette acting her proper age as opposed to yesterday’s creepy view of her on The Mickey
Yes, I did it. For no good reason except that today is Wednesday, and thus ‘anything can happen day’, I buckled down and watched some Mickey Mouse Club videos. An underage Annette Funicello, this weeks omni-focus, appears in the roll call in–get this–a 1920s vamp outfit, make-up and all. It’s