Apparently my posts of the past few days haven’t been going out on their usual nightly basis due to wonky WordPress issues. But that’s all in the past now so instead of posting something new I’ll re-post a few that you may have missed. The theme was a terrific fifteen
In yesterday’s post, mention was made of the disastrous life and death of starlet Barbara Payton, a blonde bombshell who drank herself to death after plowing her way through a pile of men–some husbands, some producers, some tricks–consuming drugs and making a public nuisance of herself and in general alienating
Today’s offering is, I’m sorry to say, a major bummer. And yet, like a good train wreck, it’s perversely enjoyable to watch. Bluntly titled “Golden Age Actors and Singers Who Died In Poverty”, this mini-doc covers the sad endings of a number of stars of the…er…Golden Age. The familiar cases
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.