Movies 'Til Dawn Blog

JOAN CRAWFORD DANCES

Let’s close this autumnal week with some madcap 1920s dancing featuring Joan Crawford. Above and below I’ve posted a few minutes from ‘Our Dancing Daughters’, the 1928 silent vehicle that officially launched Crawford’s career and world wide fame. Actually, calling the film ‘silent’ isn’t quite accurate as it was released

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GEORGE RAFT–THE DANCING GANGSTER (PT.1)

George Raft was a perfectly good actor but a great dancer as witness in the above clip from ‘Bolero’ (1934) where he dances with Carole Lombard. Raft began his career in New York in the so-called roaring twenties, first as the driver of prohibition kingpin gangster Owney Madden, then as

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FOSSE DANCES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIiZuAVZH4whttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SkYdsvgOpw Here are two videos demonstrating Bob Fosse’s stratospheric performance talent, which was largely ignored or forgotten once his stratospheric choreographing and directing talent erupted for all to see. Though he began as a performer, Fosse, always super show-biz savvy, must have seen that he was never going to be

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FOSSE DIRECTING ‘ALL THAT JAZZ’

This is pure YouTube at its best. Apparently knowing of my admiration for the opening sequence of ‘All That Jazz’ which I posted yesterday, YT dredged up this extraordinary seven minute reel of raw footage of Fosse directing that very sequence and greeted me with it this morning. It must

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‘ALL THAT JAZZ’: THE OPENING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2e9acreKmQ Behold the first six minutes of Bob Fosse’s 1979 ‘All That Jazz’, a paean to musical theater, dance, creativity, life and death. To my eyes, the film looks better and better over time but nothing beats the above sequence. Edited within an inch of its life, it tells in

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‘THE ALOOF’–A BOB FOSSE JOINT

Dig this crazy/cool Fosse dance sequence from ‘Sweet Charity’. Set to the go-go-ized strains of ‘Big Spender, the dance known as ‘The Aloof’ is a masterful creation, Fosse at his most crypto-sexual and controlled, with a centerpiece dancer who is nothing short of phenomenal. (Who is she? Is she out

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TONIGHT SHOW BAND PT. 2–THE ERNIE TACK DANCE PARTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SOpqyg5fpUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkOpHJ_PgDk In yesterday’s post I mentioned how the members of the ‘Tonight Show’ band (aka ‘Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra’) lent their own comedic talents to the show. One of the strangest examples is that of trombone player Ernie Tack. The show would occasionally do a ‘Stump The Band’

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THE BOBBY BANAS SHOW

On Friday I posted a clip from the musical variety show ‘Shivaree’ featuring the extraordinary dancer Bobby Banas in a performance he choreographed himself set to ‘A Taste Of Honey’. I mentioned also that Banas became an unlikely YouTube star a few years back when a clip of him dancing

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‘SHIVAREE’–A BOBBY BANAS JOINT

‘Shivaree’ was a Los Angeles-based music variety show that ran in syndication from 1965 to 1966. It was created and hosted by KFWB-AM personality Gene Weed, LA’s top nighttime DJ at the time. Although it had only a brief run it attracted an enviable roster of talent, featuring performers such as James Brown, The

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JOAN McCRACKEN: ‘PASS THAT PEACE PIPE’

Here’s a knockout dance number from the MGM 1947 version of ‘Good News’, featuring the great and mostly now-forgotten dancer/performer/personality/actress Joan McCracken. The original Broadway show, a big hit in the late 1920s, had long been on producer Arthur Freed’s list to adapt as a movie musical at MGM and

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