I’ve never made it through an entire Martin & Lewis movie but their nightclub-style routines are precious to me. They usually closed their ‘Colgate Comedy Hour’ shows with a free-wheeling, mostly unscripted rampage like the above which was performed on a local Los Angeles telethon in 1952. Their untethered energy
For my money, there is no better time machine than television commercials and station ID’s. Above is a terrific collection of 1970 KNBC (Los Angeles) ads that evoke the era perfectly and offer some interesting perspectives on issues of the day. A young Tom Brokaw, then a local newscaster, manages
Marilyn Monroe is quicksand. Once you step into the topic it soon controls and consumes you. Witness my mention of her house Monday–meant to be a one-off blog entry–and the weeds into which I wade as I focus on the last months of her life. While living at the Helena
This is a terrific four minute ‘blooper’ reel of Dean Martin and Frank What’s-his-name stumbling through a promo for the premiere of Dean’s soon-to-be smash TV variety show in 1965. Filmed prior to the taping–hence the live audience who are delighted with the hijinks–it shows the two at both their
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCf5VsRTp9U Here’s another clip from the mysterious Dean Martin Special I previously posted clips from at the top of the week. In this one he’s joined by the seventeen-year-old Fabian in a duet featuring four very of-the-moment chorines. I can’t say there’s much chemistry going on here between the two
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
Here’s a terrific sketch from a 1959 Dean Martin special featuring Dean and Don Knotts who plays the role of Frank Sinatra…sort of. The two are terrific together and one can only speculate what might have been if they’d teamed up for a couple of movies. By this point Dino’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwbMr8bK45M YouTube sure takes care of its regular users well. Indeed they resemble nothing so much as the neighborhood ‘pusher’, supplying me with the stuff they know I’ll shoot up hungrily upon first sight. Apropos of yesterday’s post in which I mentioned reading Nick Tosches superb bio of Dean Martin,
Here’s the fabulous opening credit sequence to Jerry Lewis’s first non-Dean Martin solo effort ‘The Delicate Delinquent’ (1957), written and directed by Don McGuire. The crisp black and white photography, the stylized pre-‘West Side Story’ fusion of violence presented as abstract dance, and Lewis’ peak pantomime performance combine to make