Movies Til Dawn

As Go-Go dancing gave way earlier in the week to Ann-Margrock, thus does Ann-Margrock give way at the end of the week to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, though the relationship between the two is perhaps a bit murkier. In fact, there is no relationship--I just got lost in my Youtubing while looking for a clip of Ann-M dancing and somehow wound up in the 'Red Shoes' department. In any event, above is a quite well-done 1981 BBC Arena program on the formidable filmmaking duo, featuring footage of Powell wandering around Hollywood, bravely stopping traffic on Vine Street and pacing a studio lot while waxing nostalgic with Francis Coppola, who had recently bought said studio (known for years as 'General Service Studios' and briefly and disastrously as 'Zoetrope Studios') and who employed Powell as "senior-director-in-residence". Powell is a sharp and debonair 76 years of age and is living in a somewhat squalid apartment in Hollywood, where he...

  Subscribe in a reader Above, meet Ann-Margret's not very talented sister, the singer. NOT. Unbelievably, it's actually Ann-Margrock herself, age 16, on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour (the mid-century 'America's Got Talent'). If anyone ever told me that the teenage Ann-M was sexless, uncharismatic and devoid of any  of the natural--er--assets that comprise the Ann-M we all know and love, I'd have scoffed (whatever that truly means) at their short-sightedness and insisted that stars are born stars and don't simply develop into them once given the opportunity. I'm wrong. Go fig.

Above is a screen test Ann-Margret made for 20th Century Fox in 1961--this is literally just after George Burns saw her in the group act (the "Suttletones" or some such) that brought her out west, provoking Burns now immortal "you gotta come to Vegas with me, kid", one of the great career-starter lines in the annals of show-biz history. As screen tests go, this is as hopeless as you can get--a non-set for a set, a badly framed medium shot with some other musicians sort of included sometimes, a clinical (at best) lighting job. (How did anyone ever get anywhere in Hollywood when this was the standard?) Yet Ann-Margrock dives in to "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" (even the material is questionable) with complete conviction, a lot of spunk, and those legs...those tights...that thing she does...   Subscribe in a reader

The Go-Go-Girlathon seems to have taken a detour (a turn for the better?) thanks to my current Ann-Margaret obsession. Above is the 'title sequence' (sans credits so what the hell are we talking about here?) to her immortal 1966 sex-com 'The Swinger', directed by George Sidney, who also directed her in her Elvis co-starrer 'Viva Las Vegas'. Sidney clearly has an affinity for his starlet--she's at her most relaxed and kittenish in those two movies--and the fact that he retired shortly after making 'The Swinger' suggests absolutely nothing of any importance. Who was George Sidney you ask? He was the son of an MGM executive named Louis Sidney and as such grew up 'on the lot', apprenticing on 'Crime Does Not Pay' and 'Our Gang shorts in his early twenties, directing his first feature at age 28--an Esther Williams technicolor vehicle called "Bathing Beauty." So many famous film musicals followed (along with four DGA nomina...

As my obsession with the dance moves at one-minute, eighteen seconds of our previous Go-Go-Chick clip increases, I've delved into the question of who exactly Ann-Margaret was in her heyday. An Elvis squeeze? George Burn's discovery? The dangerous Swedish-chick next door who does the postman when her parents are out of town? Or a Flinstones regular, a Bedrock visitor from mid-century America? Above is the first Ann Marg-Rock number from the aforementioned semi-venerable cartoon. And then there's the Ray Donovan of it all...   Subscribe in a reader

Above is a full episode of a syndicated show that aired in 1965-1966 called "Hollywood-A-Go-Go", featuring some amazing acts and a girl Go-Go line called 'the Gazzari Dancers' (named after the actor Ben Gazzara bus misspelled?). The Gazzari's still have a hold on their fans and you can find more info on a fansite th at is devoted to their collective memory. As far as Go-Go girls go, their moves are a lot hipper than most and they rock with the different music styles pretty efficiently. I dig them. The show was also a lot hipper than most of its ilk, featuring an eclectic mix of hot young acts ranging from James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Simon and Garfunkel, and most memorably The Rolling Stones, who appeared on a 1965 segment. The Wikipedia entry for the show claims 52 episodes aired before the show went in the dumpster, but this episode is labeled 58 so somebody's lying.   Subscribe in a reader

The Go-Go  is apparently named from the phrase "go-go-go" for a 'high energy person', according to the ridiculous Wikipedia entry I found on the topic. It was influenced by the French expression a gogo  meaning "in abundance, galore" which is in turn derived from the ancient French word la gouge for "joy, happiness." And that's what you'll witness in the above youtube video mash-up, set to 'Green Onions' and featuring some of the most fab 60s actresses throwing down hard-core as they channel the era's 'abundance'. Chief among them are, of course, Marilyn Monroe from 'The Misfits' (with Thelma Ritter chiming in!) and Anita Ekberg. The Natalie Wood stuff from 'Gypsy' should have been eliminated. But at 1:18 get an eyeful of Ann-Margaret putting the rest of the room of line dancers to shame. This is only the beginning. The Go-Go-Girlathon will consume much of the next week or two. If you don't like...

Did you know that Lizabeth Scott recorded a straight-up vocal album in the late 50s? Or that she was probably Hal Wallis's longtime mistress? Or that she was likely Mrs. Robinson to Elvis Presely's Benjamin in 1957 when they made the immortal "Loving You", which was produced by...Hal Wallis? (She was born in 1921, the Hound Dog man was born in 1935. Scandale.) Or that she was even alive until February of this year when she passed away at the age of 93? If you don't know who I'm talking about, read this quite elaborate Wikipedia bio of the smoky-voiced, gorgeously dangerous noir-chick. And while you do so, listen to (at least a little of) the above album, in gorgeously dangerous stereo which your computer won't help you with at all. But best of all, dig this fact: in the mid-fifties the notorious 'Confidential Magazine' began a non-stop assault on Scott's penchant for hanging around the 'sapphic sex' and the 'baritone babes...

Above is a longish trailer for Cukor's 1952 Hepburn/Tracy vehicle "Pat and Mike" (or to be more accurate Cukor/Kanin/Gordon/Hepburn/Tracy's "Pat And Mike." You will not find an auteur theorist at home in this particular blog). The beginning features the inexplicable Aldo Ray, so obviously reading off of cue cards that its shocking they didn't retake it--this was MGM, after all, home of the retake. Who was Aldo Ray? Why was Aldo Ray? He was an Italian-American non-actor who was Constable of the Judicial Court in a small California town called Crockett who one day drove his brother to an audition for a movie called "Saturday's Children" (directed by David "Love Happy/Lonely Are The Brave/Hail Hero" Miller--of whom Andrew Sarris asked, "Who is David Miller?"). Miller was more interested in Aldo then his brother Guido and cast him instead. In what appears to have been five minutes, he was signed by MGM and was on his wa...

In my meaningless, time-wasting, sycophantic pursuit of all things having to do with famous movie director's houses, I've never spent much time wondering about George Cukor's house. That's probably because it's the most famous and well-documented of all director's houses--there are dozens of magazine spreads featuring the house in different decades. Cukor's house sits on a private knoll just north of Sunset Blvd. up Doheny Road.  A white wall surrounds the property, curving upward as the street turns in a circle around the lot. The house itself isn't visible from the street. A doorway in a white brick wall has the address over it and a telephone next to it. Once inside, you're in a lavishly planted courtyard-garden, with the house fanning out in an L-shape surrounding it.  As I mentioned yesterday the exterior of the house was reproduced on a 20th Century Fox soundstage for 'Somethings Got To Give' and it remains the best way to e...

Before disappearing into the blog-hole last week, I was posting about George Cukor which lead us to the unfinished 'Somethings Got To Give', Marilyn Monroe's last film. It's tempting to say that the abandonment of the movie, which Cukor was directing and Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse were co-starring in, most likely lead to her final tailspin and ultimate demise. But in reality the drugs and depression are what killed her--and are also what lead to the film being cancelled. She was perpetually canceling shoot days citing various illnesses and the studio began to grow dubious about just what was really keeping her from coming to work. Her pill/alcohol issues were by now an open secret within the community and she was probably fooling nobody with the 'sinus infection' stuff. The dailies of the movie stayed locked in the Fox vaults gathering cinemascope-mold for thirty years before some enterprising Fox executive commissioned some enterprising editor to edit w...

Here's another piece of audio featuring George Cukor's distinctive voice only this time (unlike my UCLA audio posting of a couple of days ago) it's accompanied by a very nice visual. It's Marilyn Monroe swimming her ass off for a scene in her last, aborted film 'Somethings Got To Give', which Fox cancelled after three weeks due to Monroe's "illness" (translation: drug induced inability to get to work). I'll cover the unfinished film in more depth soon, but meanwhile listen carefully and see if you agree with the Youtuber who posted this that Cukor is swearing at Monroe. We hear him call out instructions to Monroe in his raspy way, one of which appears to be to look at the lens. Then he either refers to "Buck" (who may be the camera operator). "Look at Buck. Buck! The lens!" Or does he tell Marilyn to "fuck the lens!" Though I think its the former, I love "fuck the lens" as a direction for Monroe, th...