On Friday I posted a clip from the musical variety show ‘Shivaree’ featuring the extraordinary dancer Bobby Banas in a performance he choreographed himself set to ‘A Taste Of Honey’. I mentioned also that Banas became an unlikely YouTube star a few years back when a clip of him dancing
‘Shivaree’ was a Los Angeles-based music variety show that ran in syndication from 1965 to 1966. It was created and hosted by KFWB-AM personality Gene Weed, LA’s top nighttime DJ at the time. Although it had only a brief run it attracted an enviable roster of talent, featuring performers such as James Brown, The
Yesterday I posted the opening credit sequence from ‘The Delicate Delinquent’. Today’s offering is the musical credit sequence from his next movie ‘Rock-A-Bye Baby’ (1958), featuring the witty title song by Harry Warren and Sammy Cahn. A reader posited that the ‘Delicate Delinquent’ sequence might have been directed by Jerry
It wasn’t easy to become a member of the premium-level all-girl 1920s orchestra ‘The Ingenues’. As you’ll see, you not only had to be a woman who’d mastered one of many instruments that, for various reasons, were not necessarily associated with female players (saxes, trombones, tubas etc.) but you had
Here’s an astoundingly lousy Vitaphone short from 1929 featuring ‘Harry Wayman and His Debutantes’. Yes, it’s an all girl orchestra much like the one in ‘Some Like It Hot’ (‘Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopaters’). The only differences are 1) The leader is a guy not a woman. 2) There
When I was a young’un I took great pleasure in watching ‘The Lawrence Welk Show’ on Sunday evenings. My parents and their contemporaries found this strange since Welk was way to square for them. (I can’t imagine what people my age thought of my devotion to the show). There were
Here’s an outstanding reel of home movie footage shot by Ira Gershwin featuring a veritable who’s who of 1930s cultural heroes. Much of it was filmed at the house that Ira and George shared at 1019 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. (It was later occupied by Rosemary Clooney and
Here’s an extraordinary piece of film. Apparently in December 1929, footage was captured of George Gershwin at rehearsals of his show ‘Strike Up The Band’, complete with chorus girls and a pre-rehearsed patter with star comedians Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough. We see George playing the piano as well as
Since last week I’ve been posting Fred Astaire dancing with non-Ginger Rogers partners. Eleanor Powell was probably most impressive. Rita Hayworth was slick and ineffably charming. And now we come to the wildly fetching Paulette Goddard, who was no dancer but who is somehow the most adorable to watch. This
The 1920s saw a rise in Jewish humor throughout the country, featuring comic strips like Milt Gross’s ‘Nize Baby’ and dialect comedians like Willie Howard and the team of ‘Smith And Dale’ (who were the models for Neil Simon’s vaudeville team in ‘The Sunshine Boys’). The superstar 1920s female Jewish