Yesterday I posted a mini-documentary on the demolition of the Savoy-Plaza Hotel, created by a YouTube channel called ‘Old Money Mansions’. Here’s another of their demo docs, this one about the rise and fall of the once magnificent Pennsylvania Station, which met its end in 1963 (though it appears to
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo occupied two different apartments in the brownstone building owned by Fred and Ethel Mertz. The differences are subtle–aside, of course, from the window that the second one has overlooking the street. Above is a lovingly crafted video taking us on a
Behold this nifty behind-the-scenes look at the then-innovative technique used to shoot ‘I Love Lucy’. Desi Arnaz was visionary in his understanding that the shows would eventually have resale value and that simply keeping kinescopes–literally films of the live show as seen on a screen during its transmission–wasn’t going to
I hope you like Joan Rivers because I’m posting more of her today. On Friday we saw older Joan on a talk show circa 2005 (Joan 3.0). Yesterday we delved into Joan 1.0 with two appearances on TV in the late 60s. Today we witness Primo Joan in her ‘Tonight
I’ve been posting lousy musical numbers this week with the intention of connecting them to the lousy election but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the election, I’m tired of this week and I’m looking to end things on a high note. (‘End things’ meaning the week, not my
I began this week with the idea of posting a curated list of the worst movie musical numbers as a tribute (of sorts) to what I assumed was going to be a long week of election accusations, recriminations, lies, falsehoods, violence etc. And lo, the whole thing ran out of
A train wreck of a number for a train wreck of a day. Enough said.
In commemoration of this unbearably anxiety-inducing, nausea-producing week, we’re watching the lousiest musical numbers ever filmed. We began yesterday with the dreaded Ritz Brothers doing a ludicrous number in ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ and continue today with the climactic number from the catastrophic 1984 sort-of-comedy “Rhinestone”, starring Sylvester Stallone and Dolly
Yesterday we looked at one of the earliest sound films made in 1908 by Thomas Edison’s company. The next big step forward in sound film was made by Dr. Lee De Forest in 1923/24, one of radio’s (then called ‘wireless’) great pioneers. ( I can’t go into the details of
It’s hard for us to realize from this distance how miraculous color television must have been when it finally arrived in the early 1960s–though why they used the term ‘living’ color has always puzzled me. After all, it’s not actually living…it’s being broadcast from another remote location. And does the