Movies Til Dawn

I'm in New York City, my proper home when I'm not pretending to live in Los Angeles. And it's impossible to wander around this incredible place without imagining whatever you're looking at as it might have looked one hundred or more years ago. I find this phenomenon to be specific to certain places (London, San Francisco, certainly all of Italy) but never a more enticing pastime than it is in Manhattan. Walking down Fifth Avenue, near the Metropolitan Museam, I can envision the same scene in, say 1920, or 1940, or 1890. The below clip is a wonderful piece of found footage. It's two camera angles--mostly the first is featured--of daily life in New York City at the turn of the century (the date is estimated at 1903). The automobile is not yet a fact of life. No matter how windy it is--and it was quite windy on this particular day--everyone must wear a bowler hat. The more you watch this clip, the more you'll see and learn: a good many passing pedestrians stare su...

For years, Tuesday Weld was a major pain in the ass pussycat of the Sunset Strip, pissing off directors, gossip columnists, movie executives, turning down Warren Beatty's offer to star in "Bonnie and Clyde", having nervous breakdowns, drinking heavily, and claiming that she finally felt free because her mother died--when her mother was, in fact, alive and making an iffy living as a baby sitter to newlyweds John Astin and Patty Duke. (Mom was pissed when she heard that her famous daughter had declared her dead. At least she could have stood her the cost of the burial). By then, though, nobody thought it odd that Tuesday Weld had made up such a thing. By the early seventies, nutty Tuesday was already an old story. Back in 1959, Danny Kaye, with whom she appeared in "The Five Pennies" said, "Tuesday Weld is fifteen going on twenty-seven". This was after she had shot to nationwide stardom on TV's "Affairs of Dobie Gillis" which came about as...

The more I think about it, the more I want to see "Pete Kelly's Blues" again. This may be Jack Webb's real masterwork--or at least his bid at being taken seriously as an auteur. Written by Richard L. Breen and produced and directed by Webb who also starred in it, the film is tough, funny and filled with good music. It doesn't appear to be on DVD--anyone know about it's availability?--nor does it turn up, at least not with any regularity, on the usual channels. Is there something about Jack Webb and his estate that's gumming up the works? I haven't seen "Dragnet" or "30" or "The D.I." turn up either. And I wonder what the critical reception for "PKB" was at the time--was it negative and did this put Webb off from trying ever more ambitious works? Certainly the snoot factor against television and its new stars was riding high in the mid-fifties and Webb was television glory incarnate. So perhaps his film was poo-...

Thoughts of Julie London the other day naturally stirred the ghost of her first husband, the deeply misanthropic maverick television auteur, Jack Webb. In fact, his ghost practically kicked me in the ass this morning and told me the pussycats could wait another day--as he still hasn't gotten his due, twenty-five years after his death. Alas, he's correct. Most people know him either from the many "Dragnet" parodies (including the atrocious Dan Ackroyd "comedy" remake) or from Webb's own worst endeavor, the bland and stupid "Adam-12", which he produced but didn't act in--and which bares little resemblance to the Webb-i-tude of the fifties and early sixties. And what was that Webb-i-tude, exactly? Well, in my opinion, Jack Webb was the man James Ellroy dearly wishes to be and whose personality he adopts in his non-fiction writing. The crew-cut, tough-ass be-bopper who loves jazz, hates hippies, is one with Los Angeles cops, and takes no b.s...

Above is the new poster art for my film, "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris". The film will open in New York at the Cinema Village on December 7th of this year. After that, who knows? Hopefully runs in other major cities--keep checking the Myspace page or the Hangover Lounge website for information. (Both are accessible via this blog--just go directly to the right of these words and click.) The concept for this artwork was to emulate the old Blue Note record label covers--very good job, I think. Unfortunately the first copy of this sent to me via the internet was too massive to fit on this blog (and I'm too lame to know how to resize it.) That led to this version, which is to small to properly read the credits. For this, I fault my producer for not trying harder, for being sloppy with the details and overall for allowing this project to go on when it long should have been aborted. More pussycats on their way...

The ridiculously sultry and talented Julie London didn't even begin her singing career proper until after a short career in b-movies and a marriage to Jack Webb which produced two daughters. After their divorce, she began recording albums and was groomed (I suppose you'd say) and managed by the singer/songwriter Bobby Troup. Then they got married. And they had kids. And then Jack Webb hired them both to be in his TV show "Emergency", which doesn't sound so weird now but forty years ago was about as tois as a menage could get and not be in violation of a morals clause. . Does that sound extreme? Well dig this. When I was a kid growing up in LA, there was a restaurant on the Sunset Strip called the "Cock and Bull"--an English pub sort of place where they served really good, rare, roast beef. (When the nice, aging black guy in the big white hat cut your slice for you, he'd ask, "Old Jews?" Eventually we realized he was offering au jus...) Of...

Apparently a writer named Joseph Dougherty (lots of TV credits--"thirtysomething", "Judging Amy") has written a book called "Comfort and Joi"--and guess who the title refers to? It appears to be much more of a personal rumination on show-biz, mid-life and other unsolvable dilemmas, using Ms. Lansing as a focal point--apparently Dougherty long was fascinated with her. A little Lansinana as we wrap out our visit to this departed pussycat of the Sunset Strip: she appears in a corner of the screen in "Singing In The Rain" (not sure which scene though); when she turned up for the audition of her other most famous film, "Touch OF Evil", Orson Welles supposedly said: "Where have you been? Tell all the other girls to go!"; and at the time of her final illness, she was supposedly cast in "Follies" which was about to begin previews. Sondheim's "Follies"? Can this be true? Can't quite imagine what role she wa...

Nobody who has seen Joi Lansing in any of the number of execrable movies she was consigned by fate to have appeared in can quite forget her. The va-voom factor, of course, is inescapable. But there was something a little unearthly--a little "why are they all looking at me like that, I'm just a little girl from Salt Lake City" about her that seeps through even in the most atrocious of settings--"Hillbilly's In A Haunted House" anyone? Here's more information than you might have ever expected to learn about Joi Lansing. Joi was a sort of Rat Pack mascot--she supposedly had a long affair with Sinatra (why not?) and turns up "Marriage On the Rocks" (and that's one of her A-list credits!) She was always, for some reason, struggling with second-hand goods, hand-me-down roles in B and C and worse flicks which she dressed up with her mere presence--if you can call anything about her "mere". I have to assume that more than once she aske...

My blatherings about the 1920's, silent and early sound film, old performers etc. are temporarily being put on hold due to a wonderful piece of film from the 1960's that I found on youtube which has led to a very enjoyable waste of an afternoon looking at other, related items from the same time period. So, much as I love the twenties--let's leave them in the trunk for awhile. Instead, welcome to Hollywood, 1966. This is a short film called "The Party" that Robert Altman made at his house in Mandeville Canyon. Commissioned by a company making films for viewing in jukeboxes called ColorSonics, it is literally a "home movie"--Altman was famous for throwing parties on the weekend and on this particular weekend he shot a short. Set to "Whipped Cream" by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, the film might well be considered a pre-MTV music video--by nature it's plotless, surreal, driven by the music and leeringly misogynistic in all the right ways....

The movie "Broadway" was based on a hit play of the same name which opened in the fall of 1926. Written by George Abbott and Phillip Dunning, and presented by Jed Harris, it is difficult to now to comprehend the enormous cultural impact of this rather modest little play. (I saw a production of it ten or so years ago--fun, once, but certainly not something that can be viewed as anything but a window onto the time period in which it was created). The only thing I can liken it to in modern-day terms is, probably, "Pulp Fiction"--it was a piece of entertainment that became a must-see part of the cultural to-do list, leading to its becoming a catchword in the zetigeist. For years after it opened, people as varied as Winston Churchill, Alexander Woolcott and James J. Walker still referred to it as the greatest and most exciting evening they'd ever spent in the theater. It "made" the careers of everyone involved--Abbott, of course, continued on past the age ...

Question: Name the movie director who began his career as a bacteriologist, became a set designer for Murnau and Fritz Lang, and directed two groundbreaking end of the silent era/beginning of the sound era works before abandoning his film career to take up anthropology, becoming one of the world's most respected figures in that fascinating field? If you guessed "Paul Fejos" (and I assume you did--not least because he's the subject of this post) you're right. This fascinating figure's life is worth more than a cursory glance--and a lot more than this sorry little post. There are several sites devoted to him and I urge you to click on this one. (Oh, he also married a journalist who appeared with Hitler at the Summer Olympics in 1936, then slept with John F. Kennedy in 1941--leading the FBI to begin their file on him--and later married the actor Tim McCoy. Her name was Inga Arvad and her life is well worth a second looks as well.) This Friday evening, the Aca...

Below is a fascinating find, freshly posted by the nicely named SergioOliver (from Spain no less). It's a ten minute--documentary, I guess you'd call it--about the Hollywood Premiere of the 1932 MGM version of "Grand Hotel" featuring most of the stars on the lot at the time. Yesterday, in speaking about Robert Wise's career, I made reference to the fact that Hollywood in the thirties was a factory town--and that atmostphere is very nicely captured in this filmed record of a night out during that time period. Yes, movies still have premiere's (often in the same place as this one--Hollywood Blvd.) and yes, fans still crowd the event and stars still blather a few platitudes for the camera's on the way in...but there's something different about the way things are handled here. For one thing, the company--MGM--really is the star here. (Note how many mentions of how wonderful MGM is come tumbling forth from every conceivable mouth.) But there is also a cal...

The great director, Robert Wise, was born this day in 1914 and passed from this world two years ago, age ninety-one. I was privleged to know him for much of my life--when I was barely a teenager he directed the film "Audrey Rose" which was based on a novel by my father, Frank De Felitta. I was on the set for much of the shoot at the old MGM (now Sony) studios and learned how to make a film by watching Bob shoot that movie. Almost thirty years later, my wife and I introduced our one year old son to him just weeks before his death. There can never be a career like his again, because the world that he came up in and personified is, alas, gone forever. That is the studio world--the Hollywood of the twenties, thirties, forties and fifties--which was, in essence, a factory town where an ambitious outsider could climb the ladder and, if talented, industrious and focused could--courtesy of a couple of breaks--make it big in show-biz. Yet there was nothing 'show biz' about Bob...

Check out the above site. If that's you're idea of a good time. I could get hung up with Jerry for days--weeks, months?--but why alienate the few devoted readers I have? Instead, lets close with this modest clip from Jerry's first film as a director (and co-writer, and producer, and star...) "The Bellboy." Made for a pittance (according to Jerry) to prove to Paramount that he was capable of being an autuer--and shot mostly on location at the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami, "The Bellboy" is certainly one of Lewis's best outings as a performer, filmmaker and entrepenuer. The whole film still has a largely experimental feel to it-it's not burdened by any sort of real plot or, from Lewis, a contrived star performance. It's modesty is, in fact, it's greatest asset. Yet when you watch the below clip (and I don't wish to oversell it--it's only modestly amusing) you'll see that as a director Lewis was more than a Chaplin who pointed the...

And now, after a decade of keeping it locked in a dark vault as if it were the mutant child of a royal family, Showtime is bringing back my first feature, "Cafe Society". It will air this Sunday evening at ten pm. Is that time Eastern or Pacific? I don't know. And which of the many Showtime channels will it air on? I'm not sure. If a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody around, does it make a noise? No. It doesn't. "Cafe Society" is the nifty true story of Mickey Jelke, heir to an oleomargerine fortune, who was arrested and convicted in 1952 on charges of heading Manhattan's biggest call-girl ring--just for kicks, of course, since he had plenty of dough. The great Frank Whaley plays Jelke, the marvelous Peter Gallagher plays the undercover cop who stings him and the mysterious Lara Flynn Boyle plays Jelkes consort, Patricia Ward--a girl from the lower east side (back then the wrong side of the tracks--nowadays studio apartments are two million...

I thought that Jerry Lewis would be a temporary stop on Monday--his telethon having drawn my attention etc. But there is much more to say (and see) than I properly would have imagined. And, upon reflection, I've been seriously fascinated by this gifted, paradoxical creature for many many years. The paradox in Lewis is, you might say, the classic comic's paradox: how can sombody so funny be such a repugnant shit? Lewis can be outwardly warm and expressive when he chooses to be--and can also be famously rude and cold. Years ago, a friend of mine--who was also a big Jerry fan-- worked as a P.A. on the "Today Show" and excitedly told me that Lewis was appearing as a guest. When the day came, my friend waited for Jerry's interview to be over and approached him. "Mr. Lewis, I just wanted to tell you what a big fan--" And this was as far as he got. Lewis spun on him and said, "How dare you bother me? Can't you see I'm busy?" Awful though the s...

As I mentioned the other day, the charm of Martin and Lewis completely eluded me for years, having only seen their relentlessly trashy movies and therefore not having grasped their real appeal. With the release of their Colgate Comedy TV shows on DVD, however, one gets a glimpse (at the end of every show) of the nightclub act that wowed the audience at the Copacabana in the late 1940's and put them on the map as America's biggest, newest (and scareiest) entertainers. That act is, essentially, what they did to close every Colgate TV show--a free-form , improvisatory, free-association, no-rules melange of jokes, impressions, dancing, and insults hurled at the band, the audience members and each other. In the vaudeville years, comedians were either about "polish" (the ones who wore tuxes and prided themselves on their monologue skills) or scruff (the one's who did bum/clown/drunk acts). Martin and Lewis's singular innovation was in combing the roughhouse, often t...

Labor Day Monday, in my childhood at least, meant only one thing: staying up with Jerry and watching the "stars come out." Even as the years progressed and the biggest names on the show were Buddy Greco and Constance Towers, I hung in with my Labor Day ritual for a simple reason; my undying love and admiration for one of our greatest comics and filmmakers, Jerry Lewis. So why I am still ashamed and defensive about my fondness--idolatry, really--for this great American institution? Perhaps because he is still, as far as I can tell, generally loathed and disliked in a way that absolutely stumps me. Was he crazy? Certainly. A big ego? The biggest. Insufferably self-centered and filled with self-love and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to convince us that he was somehow Christlike in his devotion to the muscular-dystrophy community? Yes, yes to all the above charges! Still, Jerry Lewis is a comedy genius and one of the last living BIG STAR links to the show-biz world of th...

Just found the below. Probably from a Warner Brothers studio party or somesuch. Anyway, it beats watching the telethon. And it's considerably shorter...