Behold an early 1980s commercial for a local Los Angeles business ‘Gary’s Mattress’, located in Van Nuys, California. Gary, spokesman for his own store, manages to squeeze more offensive stereotypes into less than a minute than…well, I wish had a slick and amusing comparison to make but I just don’t.
I have an idea. From now on (and perhaps forever after) let’s make Friday ‘Mambo’ day. What hipper, cooler dance was ever invented (except for the ‘Black Bottom’ of course)? Here’s the glorious Silvana Mangano giving the dance a run for its money in the appropriately named ‘Mambo’ (1954). The
In the late 1920s, urban nightclubs began to feature openly gay performers known as ‘pansy’s’, usually doing a song/dance/patter act, offering up wry, witty and sometimes self-deprecating humor;. The songs were suggestive and explored the double-nature of the pansy, a man who feels more feminine than masculine and prefers dressing
Yesterday I posted the astonishing ‘The Continental’ dance sequence from ‘The Gay Divorcee’. It turns out it was the work of a man named Dave Gould, not Hermes Pan as I’d always assumed. Now, I don’t mean to sound like a jerk but there’s very little about movies of the
The oddly beloved comedy series ‘Green Acres’, starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, ran an impressive six seasons on CBS, from 1965-1971. There are many fans of the show who point to its occasional forays into surrealist humor as evidence that a deeper vein of television comedy was being explored
On Monday we began a discussion of the hosts of late night horror movie shows on local television that proliferated in the 1950s-70s (and maybe beyond?). Perhaps the true legend of the genre is Vampira, a local L.A. hostess whose mid-to-late 1950s show was on KABC, the ABC affililiate. Her
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfzpay0lqGwhttp://large,%20burled%20maple%20Capeheart%20radio-phonograph%20unit–similar%20to%20the%20one%20in%20Owney’s%20penthouse%20suite—stood%20in%20the%20corner,%20playing%20a%20record–Roger%20Woolf%20Kahn’s%20orchestra’s%20rendition%20of%20‘You’ve%20Got%20Me%20Crying%20Again.’ I’m closing up this week’s look at period Football stuff with a second rendition of the DeSylva/Brown&Henderson’s infectious hit 20s tune ‘Varsity Drag’. It’s performed by Abe Lyman and his orchestra and if you don’t dig 1920s music (and lets face it, few people do–you have to be a
On this Xmas/Hanukah/Kwanza/whatever day, please enjoy “Should Married Men Go Home” (1928), a lovely old L&H silent with some fascinating views of a very different Los Angeles than the one that I am currently in as I write this. More silent L&H comedies as the final week of 2024 grinds
On Friday I posted a colorized look at footage shot in Paris in the 1920s. The same person who restored that footage–their YouTube handle is NASS–also did this look at New York City in 1911 and it is equally evocative and fascinating. We see a city in transition–it still feels
Now, you must understand that i didn’t set out looking for today’s video. Nor did it turn up in my YouTube morning menu based on any recent searches. Still it’s such a curiosity that I had to listen to it and share it with you. This is a recording of