Movies Til Dawn

You won't believe what you're about to see--the above eighteen second clip. I still don't and I've watched it like twenty times already. It's a candid view of a rehearsal on the set of the Marx Brothers 1930 film 'Animal Crackers' and it's shot in color. In it, Groucho stares at the camera then paces away, clearly bored. Harpo comes out, sans costume, wearing a bathrobe--no wig, no hat, nothin'. Only his singular grin and mad eyes identify him as Harpo. Margaret Dumont crosses camera right and she and Harpo rehearse their introduction, where she reaches for his hand and gets his horn instead. And that's it. No information on why this exists, why it's in color, why they shot this rehearsal or what else they may have shot. Possibly it was a test of a color system and they rolled on whatever was happening at that moment (which was this rehearsal)? One of the sparse user comments says this scrap was found in an attic. If anyone has any other c...

While watching 'A Day At The Races' this past weekend on TCM, I noticed a snippet of a song in the big finale, when everyone is strutting around the racetrack, waving their hands in the air and in general making horses asses of themselves. Groucho turns to Margaret Dumont, sings a bar of a song called "I've Got A Message From The Man In The Moon", then delivers one of the films better Groucho-isms: "I've got a confession to make. I really am a horse doctor. But marry me and I'll never look at another horse again." What was this little tidbit of a tune doing in there? Rechecking the opening credits, I heard the melody in the overture, thus making Groucho's quoting of it a reprise. But a reprise of what? A song that isn't in the movie? Bravely deciding to nerd-our rather than get some real work done, I dug in and discovered that two songs were cut from "A Day At the Races"--two songs which would have been much better left in, ass...

Here's a nifty little twenty-five minute doc I found on Youtube about the making of "Some Like It Hot." Lemmon, Curtis and Wilder are in it, as well as the mysterious I.A.L Diamond, Wilder's writing partner and a man who eschewed any personal publicity, happily allowing Wilder to be the star attraction. There's home movie footage of the location shoot at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego, which doubled for the hotel that was supposed to be Florida, and a very nice and nonsensical evasion from Tony Curtis on the infamous story of what he said when he was asked what it was like kissing Monroe; "it's like kissing Hitler." Curtis actually attempts to spin it as something that was meant as a compliment. Uh, yeah.   Subscribe in a reader

Above is posted one of the most notorious celebrity meltdown audio clips known to man. In it, William Shatner, while recording a voice-over, is asked for a second-take from the engineer in the booth. The request is not based on the grounds of faulty audio but on the engineers belief that Shatner has a better performance in him. There's no describing the cruelty of Shatner's response, so just listen and cringe. By the way, the recording comes from a re-playing of the tape on the Howard Stern show, so the cackling you hear in the background is coming from the Stern show and not from the studio in which the unfortunate incident occurred. Enjoy...   Subscribe in a reader

The above clip, from the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards (say what?) begins with Karen Black (remember her?) introducing Bernie Taupin (Elton John's lyricist--and must he ever get tired of having that appended to his name) who talks briefly about 'Rocket Man' before introducing William Shatner, who sings the song. Or doesn't really sing it--recites it is probably the best description. Of course this wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Unlike other posts from the past few weeks, we aren't watching somebody trying to do something seriously (singing) and lousing it up (Jerry, Jack, et al). Instead, here we're watching Shatner trying to do something ridiculous and lousing it up. It takes four long boring minutes for him to get through the song, with interminable pauses and cigarette suckings using up half the time. No one in the audience laughs--was it an empty house? Or were they truly perplexed at the not-funny, not-good, not-even-very-interesting performanc...

Our next victim in our relentless search for 'Worst Record Made By An Actor Who Shouldn't Sing" is one of show-businesses most irritating personalities. I refer to the great William Shatner, who in 1967--while Star Trek was at its height--recorded an album called "The Transformed Man." (By the way, it was released by Decca Records, the people who brought you ' Jerry Lewis Just Sings '. Thanks, guys.) Shatner's 'signiture' style was heard for the first time on this abomination, that sort of spoken word thing he does with big pauses and dramatic flourishes and...and...well, listen to his 'take' on "Lucy In The Sky" and you'll feel the magic. As always with Shatner, though, he has that slightly shady way of perhaps putting you on--did he mean this as a straight-up attempt at a pop album? Or was he sending himself up, as he's taken to doing good-naturedly over the past decade or so? Sorry, but I think it's the former...

The above-posted 1967 recording of Robert Mitchum singing John D. Loudermilk's "You Deserve Each Other Baby" simply KICKS ASS. Little more be said. I'm growing into a Mitchum/Crooner supporter and am sorry I lumped him with Lumpy Lewis and Lemmon in this mini-series of actors-who-mistakenly-thought-they-could-sing-but-shoulda-stood-in-bed. Mitchum chews this up, spits it out and then no doubt finishes the bottle and moves on. Dig it!   Subscribe in a reader

In 1957, as a result of what was a no doubt rum-soaked journey to Trinidad (for filming of "Fire Down Below" perhaps?) Robert Mitchum recorded a full album of calypso music. Titled "Calypso Is Like So", the album confounds expectations, managing to be quite humorous and bouncy, despite Mitchum's mimicking of local accents making the whole thing a little iffy nowadays. Nonetheless, tracks like 'Mama Looka Boo Boo' (posted above), 'Cocoanut Water' and 'From A Logical Point Of View' make for fun 'easy listening', though I have to say that Mitchum's voice seems speeded up. Perhaps nitrous was a drug of choice in Trinidad in those years? Or in Hollywood?   Subscribe in a reader

Here's a weirdie. Robert Mitchum was known to sing title songs for his movies--'Thunder Road' most notably--and even did a Calypso album ("Calypso Is Like So..."). But at some point in the late '40s, early 50s, he seems to have made a handful of straight-up jazz vocals for an album that never materialized. The material wound up coming out in 1997 on a CD called "Robert Mitchum; Tall Dark Stranger." They're a curious batch of records as they clearly were not meant for release. Rather they seem to be tests, first drafts if you will, of how Mitchum might approach the tunes. They're all too short--running just over a minute or so--and except for 'Blue Skies', none of them have an ending. Mitchum kind of fades away, not confident in his ability to wrap up the song in a jazzy way that will sync with the pianist (whom I don't know the identity of). On a couple of them you hear him derisively pooh-pooh the effort at the tale end of th...

"The Oscar"  starring Stephen Boyd, Elke Sommer, Milton Berle and way too many other famous people to bother mentioning, is considered by many to be one of the worst movies ever made. (I would amend to that--"in color by a major studio" but many would disagree. And what the hell of it?) With every line a cliche, every performance pitched perfectly wrong, and a raging score to underline the various gaffes and missteps, the film is a disaster to behold and a joy to watch. But what has this to do with our obsessive pursuit of good actors needing to prove themselves good singers? Well, in this case we have a reverse example of the syndrome we've been studying vis a vis Jerry Lewis and Jack Lemmon (with Robert Mitchum on the horizon). For among the many embarrassments found in "The Oscar" is the only screen performance (other than cameos) of one of the greatest singers of our time, Tony Bennett. He plays Hymie Kelley, whose name is explained by his having...

It's no fun beating up on Jack Lemmon, don't you agree? He gave us so many wonderful performances and he was truly such a good guy (at least there hasn't been evidence to the contrary) that it seems churlish to chide him for his one serious lapse of artistic judgement. I refer of course to our topic of the week, the immortally bad "A Twist Of Lemmon" (see previous two posts). So if that's how I feel, why am I posting Lemmon's ridiculous rendition of Gershwin's "Bidin' My Time"? Is it because the space-age pop arrangement by Marion Evans truly deserves a closer listen? Is it because of Jack's occasional absurd forays into Dino-like accented phrasing? Is it because the whole stupid song belongs to the second or third ranks of Gershwin and the thought of bothering to do it when there are so many other great Gershwin songs to explore is just plain idiotic? No. The reason I posted the above is because it has thus far received EXACTLY ON...

Next up from Jack Lemmon's debut and farewell album all in one, "A Twist Of Lemmon," is a very peculiar take on "Fine And Dandy" (posted above). Lemmon begins the song in a slow-tempo, with Errol Garner-style background piano comping (is it Lemmon playing?) He seems to be channeling Dean Martin for awhile, then lets the imitation slip away as the arrangement picks up and turns into a string-backed affair for awhile. It's really several different styles of arranging jammed into one two-minute record, glued together (or not quite glued together as the case may be) by Lemmon's distinctly uncomfortable vocal. Things get especially silly in the last bridge-and-out chorus, where Lemmon--perhaps a little toasted at this point? (he was known to knock back the 'Tini's' pretty good)--tries on a variety of other singing styles, tiring of each of them almost immediately. In this sense, the performance might be considered the forerunner of Kevin Spacey...

Next up in the "actually I'm not just a movie star I'm also a singer" category comes Jack Lemmon, who actually did play piano pretty well. But why stop there? The world is chronically understocked with crooners so the decision was made to add another voice to the list American Songbook chroniclers. Lemmon's 1959 LP, "A Twist Of Lemmon" (har) is by no means the aesthetic wasteland that "Jerry Lewis Just Sings" is, but it's pretty lousy. Did Lemmon get the idea to do this from listening to the Lewis album, which predates this by a couple of years? It's much less fun to be hard on Jack as it is to be hard on Jerry--after all, Lemmon was a brilliant actor and a famously nice guy. But what's with the need to sing in public to begin with ? Is there nobody around these guys--some trusted old friend, senior agent, golf-playing buddy--with balls enough to say, " a singer you aint " ? I can understand Jerry being tone deaf to nega...