Poor Annette. Rarely (if ever) has such a sweet, winsome and charming personality been saddled with so much drecky material. If yesterday’s ‘Rock-A-Cha’ wasn’t bad enough, try today’s ‘Rock-A-Charleston’ (AKA ‘Flapper Flip’), a beyond-embarrassing novelty number combining the worst of the 1920s with the worst of the late 50s/early 60s
My research project this week in all about Annette Funicello. Since I’m loathe to rewatch any of ‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ shows I’m beginning with post-MMC Annette, though pre-Frankie Avalon. This is right between the two Annette’s–1961 is a couple of years prior to ‘Beach Party’–and she’s still the wholesome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tTMQYdBIYQ Most of what we know about Lillian Roth we know from Susan Hayward’s robust but depressing portrait of her in ‘I’ll Cry Tomorrow’, the screen bio of Roth’s tragic life based on her memoir. One of the first searingly honest portraits of an alcoholic’s descent, Roth’s book completely overshadowed
This past week I’ve discovered a terrific podcast about the Marx Brothers called ‘The Marx Brothers Council Podcast’. Each episode is a witty, deep dive into one of their movies as well as other topics covered (such as the infamous ‘Marx Brothers Scrapbook’ as conceived and edited by the late Richard J. Anobile).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIiZuAVZH4whttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SkYdsvgOpw Here are two videos demonstrating Bob Fosse’s stratospheric performance talent, which was largely ignored or forgotten once his stratospheric choreographing and directing talent erupted for all to see. Though he began as a performer, Fosse, always super show-biz savvy, must have seen that he was never going to be
This is pure YouTube at its best. Apparently knowing of my admiration for the opening sequence of ‘All That Jazz’ which I posted yesterday, YT dredged up this extraordinary seven minute reel of raw footage of Fosse directing that very sequence and greeted me with it this morning. It must
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2e9acreKmQ Behold the first six minutes of Bob Fosse’s 1979 ‘All That Jazz’, a paean to musical theater, dance, creativity, life and death. To my eyes, the film looks better and better over time but nothing beats the above sequence. Edited within an inch of its life, it tells in
Dig this crazy/cool Fosse dance sequence from ‘Sweet Charity’. Set to the go-go-ized strains of ‘Big Spender, the dance known as ‘The Aloof’ is a masterful creation, Fosse at his most crypto-sexual and controlled, with a centerpiece dancer who is nothing short of phenomenal. (Who is she? Is she out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwbMr8bK45M YouTube sure takes care of its regular users well. Indeed they resemble nothing so much as the neighborhood ‘pusher’, supplying me with the stuff they know I’ll shoot up hungrily upon first sight. Apropos of yesterday’s post in which I mentioned reading Nick Tosches superb bio of Dean Martin,
I’ve been re-reading ‘Dino; Living High In The Dirty Business Of Dreams’, Nick Tosches’ majestic biography of Dean Martin. Calling it a bio of Dean, however, is reductive in the extreme; the book is a journey through the dark and relentless birth and progression of the American entertainment industry and