If you’ve never seen a restored Technicolor three-strip movie a real cinematic treat awaits you. The color is by no means realistic–it shimmers, glistens and looks like an especially scrumptious box of colored candies that probably costs a fortune (I’m thinking of a specific designer sweets shop on Madison Avenue).
What more appropriate metaphoric way to end 2023 than by watching a movie about two idiots trying not to fall off a high floor of a building under construction to their certain deaths? Laurel & Hardy’s ‘Liberty’ (1928) is one of the greatest of their silent shorts and is their
The great character actor/painter/writer Burt Young (a.k.a. too many alternate names to list here) passed away ten days ago, though his death was only publicly announced yesterday. Burt was my good friend and collaborator–I directed him in two movies and spent a great deal of time with him making a
Behold a rare few moments in two-strip technicolor of Mae Murray singing/dancing/impersonating a bullfighter in the 1930 movie ‘Peacock Alley’. Murray was a former Ziegfield Follies star who achieved major movie stardom in the 1920s, known as ‘the girl with the bee-stung lips’. Her career climaxed in 1925 when she
Though director Edward Buzzell was never a household name, it is nonetheless a name that is known to send shudders down the spines of Marx Brothers aficionados. Buzzell was the director of the Marx’s two worst films, ‘At The Circus’ (1939) and ‘Go West’ (1940). Far from being a workman/hack
Above is a reel containing all the various iterations of the RKO Studios logo over the years, including not only the opening logo but the different styles of the words ‘The End’ which naturally appeared at the finish of the films. Of all the studios in the heyday of Hollywood,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2J4YHuJ9Ahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujZP6UfkFe0 In 1928, composer Louis Alter created ‘Manhattan Serenade’, an art-deco orchestral piece designed to be recorded on what was then a long-playing Victor 78rpm disc (four minutes and forty-five seconds–almost two minutes longer than standard 78 RPM records). The piece is very much of its era–a 20s ode to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X9UEu1qJRo To my intense frustration, some self-important copyright upholder has removed all traces of the musical numbers from The Marx Brothers maiden cinematic effort ‘The Cocoanuts’ (1929) from the wilds of YouTube. Why? Why why why? Is it an Irving Berlin estate kind of thing? (Possibly). A DVD reissue kind
Yesterday I posted a wonderful and somewhat mysterious clip of Dean Martin and Don Knotts from a Dino TV special that aired on November 1, 1960. Today I’m sharing another clip from this rather obscure show featuring Frank Sinatra. It’s a parody of ‘This Is Your Life’ with Dino in
To those of us who remember the Johnny Carson incarnation of ‘The Tonight Show’, the band (or the ‘NBC Orchestra’ as they were formally known) looms as an important piece of the magical synthesis of talents that produced the greatest talk show in TV history. (If you haven’t delved into