Here’s a production number from the 1930 version of ‘Good News’, adapted from the hit 1927 Broadway musical of the same name by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson. The lead singer/dancer is Penny Singelton who later played ‘Blondie’ in the Columbia Pictures series of that iconic comic strip. Here she does
The director behind the great dance show ‘Hullabaloo’ (see yesterday’s post) was Steve Binder. After the shows untimely (and unfathomable) cancellation, Binder went on to direct many high profile TV music specials, including Elvis Presley’s famous ‘comeback’ show. In 1968, NBC gave Petulia Clark her own special–she’d been a guest
The dance show ‘Hullabaloo’, which aired on NBC from January 12 1965 to April 11, 1966, was arguably the best show of it’s kind–better than ‘Shindig’ in my humble opinion. If you’ve never seen it watch the above complete twenty-five minute episode which features a mind boggling line-up of guests–Sammy
Here’s a clip from a variety show called ‘Fanfare’ of Allan Sherman and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits doing a little lyric-swapping routine using Sherman’s sequel to his ‘Hello Muddah Hello Faddah’ song. (There’s a fun clip somewhere that I can’t find of Sherman on another variety show introducing that
The beloved Allan Sherman actually was a thoroughly depressed screwed-up man and his biography, ‘Overweight Sensation’, is so depressing that I haven’t watched/seen/thought of Sherman since I read it a few years ago. Today I’m breaking that self-imposed sanction with this delightful clip of Sherman singing ‘Crazy Downtown’, his parody
There are plenty of Scopitone music videos (actually 16mm) on Youtube so it was hard finding the best one to present. Actually the reason it was hard was because there really isn’t a conventional ‘best’ one. All of them are lousy. The choreography is amateurish, the photography garish and the
The previous two posts of ColorSonics short jukebox ‘videos’ failed to mention the company’s predecessor Scopitone. Which brings us to today’s little look inside the Scopitone ST-36 jukebox. Somebody clearly put a lot of love and care into restoring this thing and putting it into working order, complete with the
I freely admit to never having had any specific interest in Elvis. He’s been part of the wallpaper of pop culture in my mind ever since I was a kid–always identifiable, sometimes fun, more often than not a subject of ridicule or pity. Now, in light of Baz Luhrmann’s towering
‘Shindig’, a weekly pop music and dance program which aired on ABC from 1964 to 1966, was the inspiration for the somewhat slicker and better remembered ‘Hullabaloo’ which aired on NBC. A number of syndicated dance shows–‘Hollywood A Go Go’ and ‘Shivaree’ most notably–also appeared on the scene, but ‘Shindig’
The inimitable Joey Heatherton dances ‘The Hullaballo’ on this undated mid-1960s episode of the dance show ‘Hullabaloo’. But is it, in fact, an original dance? Or something of a cross between The Jerk and The Monkey? You decide. I have to catch a train. By the way, dig how the