Movies Til Dawn

Below I've posted something that will make you smile for days: three clips from the Marx Brothers second feature film, "Animal Crackers", shot in 1930 and taken from their hit play of the 1928-29 season (which they were performing at night while shooting "The Cocoanuts", their first feature, by day at the Paramount Long Island Studios). When Marx Brothers movies are discussed, they are generally broken into two main categories--Paramount (the first five features up through "Duck Soup") and MGM ("A Night At the Opera" and the next--and increasingly less impressive--four movies). (The two worthless coda items, "A Night In Casablanca" and "Love Happy" rarely rate their own discussion group. Consider them post-Marxist.) The Paramount's and the MGM's are as different as night and day and tend to divide people up along the same lines that sepearate those who grew up watching Disney and those of us (me, for instance) th...

Of all forms of fame, theatrical fame is the most fleeting. The stars of yesteryear in film are still available for us to see and--in most cases--admirer. But the theater--which, through the twenties and much of the thirties, was considered several rungs above movies in terms of sophistication and seriousness--left little behind aside from the texts of the plays and some productions stills. One must trust the opinions of those who were there as to who were, in fact, the geniuses of the medium. Broadway's most famous and beloved personality of the 1920's wasn't Al Jolson or Eddie Cantor or the Marx Brothers. It was a woman named Marilyn Miller and while it's possible to view her today--she made precisely three movies during the tumultuous transition from silents to sound--what's not possible is to comprehend the enormity of her popularity, her daunting and much beloved persona. For Miller, like Gertrude Lawrence a bit later, personified Broadway--she defined diva...

anom·a·ly Pronunciation: \ə-ˈnä-mə-lē\ Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural anom·a·lies Date: 1603 1 : the angular distance of a planet from its perihelion as seen from the sun 2 : deviation from the common rule : irregularity 3 : something anomalous : something different, abnormal, peculiar, or not easily classified "Hollywood Party" , a 1934 MGM "all-star" anomaly, features a large number of MGM's comedic roster of the period--most prominently Lupe Velez, Laurel and Hardy, Jack Pearl (radio's "Baron Munchausen"--and if that doesn't ring any bells for you sorry, you'll have to look into it on your own as Pearl and his at one time insanely famous creation are as dead as Greek and I can't begin to explain their one time popularity to myself much less to you) and even the Three Stooges--still yoked to Ted Healy.. Mickey Mouse somehow gets involved as well--though I don't understand what Walt Disney had to do with MGM--in this pas...

Before perversely re-entering the dark world of the prohibition era nightclubs on this sunny Saturday (at least in Hollywood, California) practically a century away, a couple of pressing tidbits. First a long overdue thank you to reader Vance Durgin for supplying me with the photo of the Movies 'Til Dawn logo (from the original KTLA airing) which you see at your right. Second, if you're interested in acquiring one or more of my two CD's of original music either click here or go to the right column and look for the new heading "Buy Raymond De Felitta's Music...Please". FYI--the first, titled "Movies 'Til Dawn" is all-original, all-swinging "new saloon" vocal/big band stuff that I composed and recorded in the mid 1990's. The second more recent CD, "Fatha Land", is a solo piano tribute by me honoring the great Earl "Fatha" Hines. Next: if you're interested in credit sequences to films as I am (I wrote a...

Returning to the obsessive and never to be quenched pursuit of what life was truly like in the twenties, let's begin with a quote from Ben Hecht, novelist, playwright, obscenely fast screenwriter and bon vivant. This is from his mammoth and quite interesting memoir "A Child Of The Century" published in 1953. "New York in the twenties was a bold town with much the same attitude toward political reformers that the Far West once had toward cattle rustlers. It was devoted to pleasure, particularly to the pleasure of not giving a damn. Seriousness was an un-New Yorkish quality. it stamped the hinterland do-gooder, the rogue with a political ax to grind, the social wallflower and the aged. New York insisted that all its idols wear a grin. It regarded all foreign events, including the first World War, as entertainment. It believed that any war could be won by writing the right songs for it, and not losing your sense of humor. Its patriotism consisted of admiring itself arde...

Here's a fascinating three minute clip from Mervyn LeRoy's 1930 talkie "Showgirl In Hollywood" starring the always strange Alice White. (Shamefully, I've yet to see this film--though it's happily extant and reputed to be quite good). It shows the making of an early musical number--complete with views of the cameras in booths, reverse shots of the crew, overhead angles that include glimpses of the on-set orchestra (playback had not yet been developed and musical numbers were recorded live, on camera, with the accompanying musicians standing off to the side and playing out of camera range). There are even shots taken from inside the booths that were then required to hold the cameramen and their cameras--the whirring sound of the cameras, which you will hear, necessitated the airless, sound-proof booths which commonly caused the cameramen to pass out from lack of oxygen. All in all, this is an invaluble, not to be missed piece of film history lore...one th...

A specific line in one of Stephen Sondheim's greatest songs, "I'm Still Here" (from "Follies"-or did you already know that?) could only have been written while the author was pondering Joan Crawford (then still alive): "First you're another sloe-eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then you're camp..." For that matter, Sondheim's anthem--to a show-biz vet who is simply too shrewd, canny and tough to disappear--might well have been largely inspired by Crawford's life and career. At the time the song was written, Crawford was then into her "she married Pepsi-Cola" phase and not yet finished with personal appearences. So why did Yvonne DeCarlo introduce the song on Broadway instead of Crawford? Probably for the same reason that Mary Pickford turned down Billy Wilder's offer of the role of Norma Desmond in "Sunset Blvd." It was too damn close to the truth. And neither Mary Pickford nor Joan Crawford had much of ...