Movies Til Dawn

Tomorrow, August 21st, will mark the one-hundred and twelfth anniversary of the making of America's first sex comedy, the Edison Company's "What Happened on 23rd Street". On 8/21/01, Edwin S. Porter--the Edison's official "in-house" director--along with cameraman George S. Fleming set up their camera on 23rd sreet, facing west toward 6th Avenue. Without bothering to do a formal "lock-up" of the street traffic, they sent two actors (Alfred C. Abadie and Florence Georgie) down to the end of the block and rolled camera. For close to one full minute, the daily street life of New York City was documented--the horse and carriages, the women in bustles, the men in bowlers and straw hats (it was summertime, remember), the Sixth Avenue El (visible slightly in the background) and two streetcars, one at the very beginning, one toward the end. A true window onto a world now utterly vanished. Perhaps a pre-arranged signal was created in order to cue the a...

Breaking news. On August 10th (two days ago--or two days prior to my writing this entry), somebody posted on youtube what appears to be a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the controversial, never-seen, long-abandoned, always-a-subject-of-fascination Jerry Lewis film "The Day the Clown Cried", in French no less. Before we watch, however, lets do a little history lesson on this beleaguered project. Shamefully, I must admit to having have copied and pasted the below from Wikipedia--hence the wonky font sizes. I thought of rewriting the entry but it's so well done (and I'm busy editing my move) that I said the hell with it. Why didn't I provide a link instead of pasting it? Because that's just the kind of mood I'm in. Take it away, Wiki: In 1971, while performing at the Olympia Theatre, Lewis met with producer Nathan Wachsberger, who offered him the chance to star in and direct the film with complete financial backing from his production company ...