On Tuesday I reminisced a bit about my chance encounter with performer Bobby Van just months before his untimely death at age 51. I was perhaps a bit dismissive of Van’s talents and intend to rectify that today by offering up what is probably his career highlight, the ‘hopping song’
Before ‘The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis’ was a silly TV show, ‘The Affairs Of Dobie GIllis’ was a silly musical movie. (Before that it was a series of silly stories by Max Shulman who was responsible for all the silliness. He must have a made mega-ton of money from
This week I’ve posted two examples of the stunning work of forgotten movie musical director/choreographer/designer Dave Gould. Above is one of his best sequences, the ‘Hollywood Party’ number from the 1934 film –er–‘Hollywood Party’. For a brief stretch in the 1930s, Gould was given the resources of major Hollywood studios–RKO,
Here’s an extraordinary piece of musical filmmaking that really should be more celebrated than it is. It’s the big, fat, ultimate dance number from ‘The Gay Divorcee’ (1934), the second film to pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the first to be properly considered a starring vehicle for them.
‘Monkey Business’ (1931) is the Marx Brothers third movie and the first not to be an adaptation of a stage play. The movie is a non-stop delight–75 or so minutes of one laugh after another., And yet the last line of the film is famously (amongst Marxists anyway) disappointing. After
I was listening to a Gilbert Gottfiried podcast while driving today in which he and his guests began extolling the remarkably varied talents of Jerry Lewis. Not only was he a comic, a director, a writer, a philanthropist but he was also…an excellent dancer? Well, sort of. It’s true that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm_LmlFeNnMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md7DIQW01aM Royal Crown Cola was invented in the early 1900s as a result of a Georgia based general store owner having a dispute with Coca-Cola over…well, read the Wikipedia article if you’re really interested. My interest has to do with the storylines of RC Cola–as it had been renamed during
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fn7PKzf5tk Last week I posted various examples of TV episodic comedy show themes. I missed posting something Friday because…well, because I just missed posting something. Things happen, you know. So we’ll wrap up this theme song stuff with a little bit of ‘I Love Lucy’ history which you might or
This week I’m posting theme songs from old shows that provided the backstory to the viewer. As I mentioned yesterday, simply putting up the well known ones would be far too simple. So I’m providing a glimpse of both the flop shows and the hits. Today’s flop is ‘Occassional Wife’,
Our mission this week is to explore the theme songs of old TV comedies which contained lyrics that set-up the backstory of the show. Yesterday we wallowed in ‘The Partridge Family’ theme and frankly I thought the rest of this week would be a breeze. You know, ‘Brady Bunch’, Gilligans