Movies Til Dawn

Here's a very early Vitaphone short --1927--of popular bandleader Gus Arnheim and his Ambassador Hotel Orchestra. As with the short I posted the other day, you again are simply in the environment of the 1920s, as all cinematic technique is eschewed and the band is captured, impassively, as it would be seen in a hotel ballroom. I find this stuff mesmerizing and I must not be the only one since a great organization called The Vitaphone Project has made it their mission to restore these one-of-a-kind short films, which are virtually a visual history of vaudeville and popular live entertainment of the period. Click here for a history of Vitaphone and how their early sound/film system worked. It's quite unbelievable as the sound existed on a disc separate from the film. The recording playback device was attached to the projector, which somehow synced up the mute film with the record. Oy. For many years the films, thought to be worthless, were scattered to the wind and it's ...

Having grown truly ill of seeing Arnold riding a chariot through Manhattan whenever my blog (which is my homepage) comes up...(well, it has to be somebody's homepage...) I've decided to end my self-imposed week long blogging and tweeting silence. I wish I could say that the silence was a self-enforced experiment in living off-line for awhile but it wouldn't be true. I was consumed with work--a rare enough event to be taken seriously. Also I was bored. I've always dug the Vitaphone shorts which were mostly shot in New York (Brooklyn to be exact) at the dawn of the sound era--1928 are the earliest I believe--and moving into the mid-thirties or so. They are nothing but recordings of popular stage acts of the time--shot primitively with two or three cameras which were enclosed in enormous, immovable sound-proof booths. (This leads to some hilarious early camerawork which you'll see in the short I posted below). But its this very rawness that makes the shorts so me...

Arnold Schwarzenegger's much reviled motion picture debut, "Hercules In New York", was filmed on location in 'Fun City' (as it was then being touted in an ill-fated civic-pride campaign) in 1969. Ludicrous and amateurish on all counts, the film was directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman who somehow managed to survive its wreckage (it was apparently his debut as well) to go onto a prolific career as a director in television. There are many articles out there detailing the absurdities of this cinematic treasure so I wont go into the gory detail. (To be honest, I've never made it through the whole thing.) But the part of the film that anyone who loves seeing New York City on film will truly savior is, without a doubt. the chariot chase that progresses from midtown, heading north on Sixth Avenue (past Radio City) and into Central Park. The park is decimated by the stunt car a work, which digs deep holes into what appears to be the Sheep's Meadow. I say 'a...

Directing is a painful existence. The making of a movie is a torturous marathon sprint. The creative arguments never cease. If everything works out in the end others claim all the credit. If it doesn't, you get all the blame. Years later all of the crap is forgotten and only the film remains. And let's face it, most films don't age well. You're lucky if you get one that outlasts you. Two and your a legend. Three and you're John Ford. So, Cookie. Let's talk about Gregory La Cava. First, however, c lick here to read a fine article by Gary Morris about this shamefully neglected filmmaker .  While "My Man Godfrey" remains his most famous film--the "one"--several others are equally interesting and still freshly entertaining. La Cava seemed to be an early exponent of improvisatory work with actors--though at this distance its hard to say how much his finished films deviated from their screenplays. Certainly the best of his work always came ...

Here are two versions of one of Fats Waller's weirdest songs, "Fat And Greasy". The first is my preferred version, as it's clear that Fats is drunk during the performance. In the second you can actually make out the very funny, somewhat appalling lyrics. Dig:   Subscribe in a reader

When I was growing up my first musical hero was the great Thomas 'Fats' Waller. I had all of the LP reissues of his Victor recordings of the 1930s as well as some other, odder no-name label LPs which were probably semi-legal compilations at best. One was a strangely packaged blank, cream-colored album cover which simply listed the songs in black bold-face type with no accompanying graphics. The record itself was transparent blue. Hm. Among other scraps of the Waller canon it contained a long-ish cut of Fats singing "I've Got My Fingers Crossed." Now, what was odd about this recording to my young ears was the sound of a thousand tap-dancing feet that accompanied Waller at one point. The album notes indicated that the cut was taken from the soundtrack of "King Of Burlesque" but gave no other information. Somehow, my brave and intrepid nine year old soul bothered to track down the year of the film--1936--and that it starred Warner Baxter, Jack Oakie an...

Below I've posted an eight minute video purporting to be about Errol Flynn's mysterious house on Mulholland Dr. in the Hollywood Hills that is, in fact, a plug for a book about the house . The first three minutes are taken up by a boring "who was Errol Flynn" montage complete with that dreadful, heroic 'Oscar' music that somebody must have actually sat down and written at some point but which nobody ever claims the credit for. Finally, though, we get to a quite interesting (albeit brief) look at "Mulholland Farm," as Flynn dubbed it. The property is reached by taking Torreyson Rd. (just off of Mulholland and east of Laurel Canyon) to the very end of the cul-de-sac, whereupon you reach a scary looking gate that makes you turn around and quickly head back to Mulholland. For many years a dear friend of mine lived on Torreyson, just a few doors down from the ex-Flynn spread and at that time the place was inhabited by squatters. A strange, overgrown...

Here's a nice little chunk (three and half minutes) of Don Siegel's 1957 "Baby Face Nelson", starring my dear friend Mickey Rooney (dig  this post if you're interested in my warm and fuzzy encounter with the Mick). I've not yet seen the whole film but this little antipasta has piqued my interest for the main course, as it were. Interestingly, though the movie is set in the 20s (and thus the booze requires a "prescription" in the robbery scene you're about to see), the music they chose is straight up 1950s crime-bop--the Elmer Bernstein "Man With The Golden Arm" genre that was quite popular at the time. It's especially interesting in light of the fact that, according to Siegel, the producer of the film initially insisted on using 1940s cars instead of 1920s cars in order to save money. Siegel told him that "a little anachronism goes a long way" adding: "I suppose you'll dress the cast in 1940s clothes. I've ...