Movies Til Dawn

Today's "whatever happened to the real New York" video comes in the form a gussied-up tourist public relations 'video' (ten years before their were 'videos') shot in the early 70s. Lightning fast cutting and annoying music take us through a whiz-bang tour of the city during the John Lindsey era. There appears not to have been a World Trade Center yet and, somewhat astoundingly, the Beni Hana restaurant (which I've never remotely thought of as a New York specific chain) was then a new enough phenomenon to warrant a whole minute of footage. We also get a look inside the venerable French restaurant La Grenouille (still in business by the way), as well as seeing marquees of the shows of the day ('Plaza Suite', 'Man of La Mancha' etc) and--bonus--some models in white flare-pants posing at the fountain across from the Plaza hotel. As these things go, I give this one a C+/B- but its worth a watch and helped me delay the working day. Perhaps ...

Above is Peter Falk's 1972 Emmy acceptance speech for--what else?--'Columbo'. It's quite funny, comedically well timed, charming and sweet. I worked with Falk in 2003--I think it was his last movie--and I'm sorry to say that the only one of those above listed attributes that he was (at that point in his life) was 'comedically well-timed'. Enjoy, nonetheless.   Subscribe in a reader

More Abbott and Costello f-ups, these from their first film "Buck Privates". As opposed to the previous posts bloops (see below), these are interesting in a different way. Lou is not yet a movie star and lacks the prerogative of instructing the script girl to save the blown takes that he finds amusing. He does, however, already use the 'slicing' gesture when he knows a take has gone down the drain. Yet a lot of the time his screw-ups don't really seem all the bad. I wonder if the directors he worked with (Arthur Lubin in this case) ever told him to just keep going and not to self-cut. We learn from this reel that "Oh, Jesus Christ" was Bud's go-to phrase for his frustration with his own meltdowns. I like hearing the director (Lubin) give them his version of a little pep-talk before certain takes: "Okay boys, a lot of tempo!" We do what we can...   Subscribe in a reader

Here's a reel of blooper/outtakes from Abbott and Costello's 1949 offering "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (actually one of several of their 1949 offerings). Like most outtake reels, the mistakes themselves are less funny to us then they seem to have been to the performers but there are hidden items of interest in these reels that always keep me watching. Thanks to the existence of these snippets, we can actually get a sense of what being on a movie set seventy (or sometimes more) years ago was like. Certain customs have changed. The word 'action', used now to tell the actors to begin, seems not have been in use then. Instead the director calls "Camera!" Why is this? It's not to tell the cameraman to begin rolling as the camera is clearly already rolling. Why would the word for the machine that's capturing the scene itself be used for telling the actors to get to work? Sadly I have no answer for this. We also see (at 9:25) the way...

Here's a couple of minutes of film shot by somebody who was fixated on the then-prevalent neon signs in Times Square one night in 1961. My first inclination while watching this was to be impatient with the lack of street life on view but gradually I got sucked into the neon-ness of the whole thing. There are signs advertising the movies of the day ('Spartacus' and--more importantly--'Pepe' starring Cantinflas), ads for Johnnie Walker Scotch, a view of the soon-to-be-extinct Hotel Astor and a mesmerizing neon 'live-action' sketch from an airline called BOAC, which stood for 'British Overseas Airway Corporation' and which, by an act of parliament, was merged with another airline in 1971 to become the current day British Airways. Aren't you glad you asked?   Subscribe in a reader

The Stardust. Betty Hutton. The Silver Slipper. Tony Martin. Wilbur Clarke's Desert Inn. Joe E. Lewis. Bugsy Siegel. Neon signs. A huge revolving neon slipper. Hot desert sidewalks. Thirst-inducing views. Bad swimming pools. Are we in hell? No. We're in Las Vegas in 1956, courtesy of the home movies of a nice chap named Ray Windstorm who at age 15 took a trip to then child-unfriendly resort with his parents, taking care to bring his 8mm camera and document the event. Nobody will ever convince me that the desert is anything but a horrific wasteland but at least its nice to see Vegas prior to the abominable 'family friendly' resort it's now become. And I'd never seen the 'Desert Inn' in live-action footage. I'd only known of it from the Noel Coward LP which I played until it was worn down to a nub, circa age ten/eleven/twelve. See below...   Subscribe in a reader

I post old footage compilations of New York and LA quite a bit and after awhile the sources begin to dry up. So I was surprised and delighted when I stumbled upon the above three-minute reel of various New York sites, streets and stuff shot in the 1920s. I'd never seen it before and from the measly three-digit page views apparently only a few others have. We see great views of the El Train in action--shot at eye level from the tracks. We pass the Hippodrome, linger in Riverside Park, spend a nice afternoon in Central Park (the Bow Bridge is featured in a very romantic shot) and, finally, we wind up at Coney Island, with its oversized funhouse slides, beaches and attractions. I'm not crazy about the Sidney Bechet accompanying soundtrack--too 'dixie' and aggressive. I suggest turning down the sound and rolling the below instead. It's Gene Austen's 1927 recording of 'My Blue Heaven'. I prefer the wistful counterpoint to the images--so much more haunting a...

Here's the trailer for Robert Altman's first film, the independently produced 1955 teen hoodlum flick 'The Delinquents' (released in 1957). It was shot in Kansas City where Altman was then based, making industrial films and directing semi-amateur theatrical productions. The film apparently starred Tom 'Billy Jack' Laughlin (he's not credited in the trailer), who Altman later called 'an incredible pain in the ass'. This hoodlum/teen stuff seems to have loomed large in the decade following the war and the savvy youngish director wasn't shy about capitalizing on it. A larger chunk of the movie is posted below. It features crisp black and white photography (much better quality than the above trailer), loose Altman-esque performances, a bold opening pre-credit sequence and the only footage known of the legendary Kansas blues singer Julia Lee, singing 'A Porter's Love Song To A Chambermaid'--which I've only ever heard performed by Fat...

Next on our tour this week of strange customs of the mid-century comes a commercial for cold cream. The model in this 1950s ad needed the gig so badly that she agreed to have radioactive material rubbed in her face. Hell, it was the 50s. Why not?   Subscribe in a reader

Meet the hoodlums and sluts of 1950s America in the above 'educational' film concerning the proper dress code of the Hicksville High School student body. (Ha. 'Body'. Ha.) For what purpose was this film made? Who was the intended audience? Who was the biddy who's doing the lecturing? Most importantly, who were the students who submitted to the humiliating task of being the models of inappropriate youth? (Though it must be said that they appear to relish their roles). This appears to be shot in the mid 1950s, so those kids would now be just over seventy years of age--assuming they didn't wind up becoming junkies, whores or gangsters. Or perhaps they were teen actors who were hired to portray the 'bad kids' and were grateful for the gig. Personally I think they're all dressed quite upscale for a town called 'Hicksville'. Research shows that there are Hicksville's in both New York (in Long Island) and Ohio (in Defiance County). The populat...

'The Turtles' did a Pepsi-Cola jingle? And shot a pre-MTV music video? Was this the actual ad or just a 'video' of the session? It's shaggily well-shot stuff and, to my eyes, fifteen years ahead of its time.   Subscribe in a reader