Movies Til Dawn

Dig a live radio remote from the premiere of Judy Garland's 1954 "A Star Is Born", featuring the voices of Judy Garland, Moss Hart (who wrote the script) and Kitty Carlisle (Hart's wife). Moss Hart sounds like a man playing the role of a playwright named Moss Hart and compares Judy with Gertrude Lawrence (who starred in Hart's "Lady In The Dark"--and who was the subject of Monday's post--sort of--which somehow led to Alexander Woolcott which then led to George S. Kaufman who was Hart's writing partner for years...stop me!!) Jinx Faulkenberg (who sounds like an actress playing the role of a hostess named Jinx Faulkenberg) is the hostess and she asks Judy (who sounds like Judy Garland) if her daughter Liza (then an unknown so we don't know what she sounded like) has seen the film yet. Turns out she hadn't.   Subscribe in a reader

This weekend I watched "Star", the 1968 musical biopic of Gertrude Lawrence starring Julie Andrews and Daniel Massey (he plays Noel Coward and steals the movie). At three hours in length the film is hopelessly bloated. There isn't really much of a story and the musical numbers--mostly recreations of music hall routines and early Coward numbers--are strangely flat, given the fact that they're all performed onstage and not woven into the story. So what has this to do with Neshobe Island, on Lake Bomoseen in Vermont? Well, one of the characters pictured (but barely heard) in "Star" is Alexander Woolcott, the critic/broadcaster/racounteur man-about-New York of the 20s and 30s. (Today he's largely remembered for being the model for the main character in 'The Man Who Came To Dinner'). As the movie droned on, I found myself spending increasingly more time surfing my I-Pad and, after searching on Woolcott's name, I came across an article about hi...

Apropos of the last few days of Von Sternberg-Dietrich musings, above I've posted a very nice 'tour' of Berlin in 1929. Some of the footage appears to be from Billy Wilder/Fred Zinnemann/Edgar G. Ulmer collaboration 'People On Sunday' and other stuff must just be random...stuff. Though I'm always curious, with these urban raw footage reels, as to exactly why these things were being shot--camera buffs with their own equipment weren't really a going thing yet. The other thing I'm always struck by is how dead everyone we're watching are. Is. Was. Everyone but a six/seven year old boy who appears for a brief moment. He would have been born around 1923 which means that he may well be alive at ninety-five years of age...or perhaps he perished during the second world war, fighting  for the side that was responsible for the destruction of most of the beautiful city you see in this footage.   Subscribe in a reader

Continuing our recent riff on the great (and greatly obnoxious) Josef Von Sternberg, above I've posted a ten or so minute mini-doc of Marlene Dietrich and Von Sternberg each discussing 'The Blue Angel' and how she got the part of Lola-Lola (amongst other things). The doc incorporates footage of Dietrich's nightclub act as well as an interview done with her at a slightly later date. The Von Sternberg interview is riveting as you've simply never run into anyone quite as insufferable as he is. Or is it something of a deadpan joke? His pronouncements are astonishing ("Miss Dietrich was a very good assistant"..."actors are nothing..." etc.), insensitive and extraordinary. For a much better and deeper look at Von Sternberg, click here and here for a two part documentary made in the mid-sixties when Sternberg was promoting his autobiography "Fun In A Chinese Laundry".  I'd have embedded them but the fellow who put them up has denied me...

Recently I've been re-reading Kevin Brownlow's majestic oral-history of the silent film era 'The Parade's Gone By'. In it, a chapter is devoted to Josef Von Sternberg and contains an account of a lighting masterclass he conducted in the late 1960s that was filmed by a documentary crew for television broadcast in the UK. I think I found it--it's posted above. (The only reason I say that I 'think I found it' is that the model in the above footage is dressed differently than the one seen in the stills in Brownlow's book, so either this is just a portion of the doc or one of a series of masterclasses that Von Sternberg was filmed doing). This is absolutely fascinating viewing, not just because we see Von Sternberg in action lighting a set with the particularity and precision which he lavished on Dietrich, but also because we get a sense of how Von Sternberg directed. At the end of the clip, he instructs the model (who is now being filmed in close-up)...

I'm really getting into this 'taste test' between famous rock cover songs and Paul Anka's swing treatments of them. When this exercise started last Friday (the initial guinea pig was Van Halen's 'Jump') I was amused but dismissive of the Anka album. I believe I even called it 'absurd'. I take it back. It's a bold and noble experiment and perfectly proves the point I was making when I started this thread--that strong Hard Rock songs are much more accessible and classically structured then they sounded like at the time. 'Eye Of The Tiger' was never terribly difficult to decipher but, to my mind, the Survivor version feels dated--a little too fruity, too suburban kids being urban, a bit of its time (the early eighties are a hard era to revisit--especially if you're watching the videos). Whereas the Anka reinvention is so thoroughly out of the time the song was written in that it feels fresh--perversely modern in a way that the Surviv...

Of the three songs I've posted thus far from Paul Anka's otherworldly "Rock Swings" album,  Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' (posted above) works the best. The arrangement kicks ass for one thing. And Anka, as in the other cuts, is vocally in fine form--this particular tune allows his to stretch and do his 'big boy vocal' bit. But what kills in this one is the clarity with which we hear the unexpectedly charming lyrics--they really do feel part of the 'searching for the good life/rat packish/desert resort/cold vodka/early Playboy/mid-century/late night' era somehow. And it's considerably shorter than the original. What can't be questioned, however, are the numbers. Anka's video has attracted a more-than-healthy upper six-digits views. Nirvana, however...well, take a look at their viewing stats for yourself.   Subscribe in a reader

Yesterday I learned (via Twitter, of course) that my 2000 Sundance Audience Award winning film "Two Family House" has now been made available streaming on Amazon Prime and Hulu. Click here for the link which includes a very nice write-up about the film by Sean Axmaker (interesting surname for a movie critic--think he's heard that one before?) The film stars half the cast of the Sopranos and if you want to know why click here for a lengthy blogpost I wrote about the making of the film back in 2010. You can also buy a magnificent book I put together called "City Island' and 'Two Family House': Two Screenplays and Too Much Information About the Making of Two Indie Films". The book contains the screenplays of both movies and...well, the title kind of tells the whole story. Click here for the book . That's enough self-promotion for one day...   Subscribe in a reader

No words are necessary. If you need an explanation scroll down.   Subscribe in a reader

I'm a jazzhead--I was born listening to jazz, grew up obsessed with it, learned to play it as a kid and continue to listen to it every day of my life. Jazz is my religion. I have limited taste at best in classical music and an affection (though not a deep or obsessive one) for the rock and roll of the 50s and 60 (with a smattering of early 70s thrown in). When I was going to high school in the late 70s/early 80s my schoolmates were listening to very different music than I. It was Hard Rock and the bands had names like 'Rush', 'Van Halen', 'Cheap Trick', 'ACDC' etc. I hated this stuff. It didn't sound at all like music to me, but rather a cacophonous mix of electricity and primal screams accompanied by a barbaric percussion bed. There was no melody I could here, no lyrics that could be understood and no point that I could grasp. I haughtily ignored the times I was living in and went home to listen to my Ella and Louis LP featuring Oscar Pete...

Apropos of yesterday's post about Jean Porter Dmytryk in which I included a 'soundie' (a musical short made for playing on a jukebox) I've posted above another soundie. This one features Thelma White and her All-Girl orchestra, though the sax player seen at 1:48 looks suspiciously like Tony Curtis or Jack Lemmon sitting in for the night. It's quite impressive that White and Phil Spitale (male leader of another all-girl orchestra) were able to find so much female talent to fill a big band and that's not meant to be a sexist remark. How many women in the 30s or 40s trained to play trumpet, trombone, sax, drums or bass? Who was Thelma White? She was an actress who is best known (and frankly only known) for being the co-star of 'Reefer Madness', the 1936 anti-marijuana tract. Originally titled 'Tell Your Children', the film was a complete flop in its day and led to White giving up acting and somehow cooking up the idea to organize and front an al...

Jean Porter Dmytryk, a 1940s Hollywood starlet and later the longtime wife of film director Eddie Dmytryk, passed away a few days ago. I knew the Dmytryks well over the years but I was always surprised to see Jean in movies from the 40s when they came on TV--'Abbot and Costello in Hollywood' was the one that turned up most often. It was weird yet strangely delightful to see the woman I knew as a mother to kids I grew up with playing a sexy foil to Lou and Bud. She was in plenty of other stuff too-- click here for her IMDB page. I remember her telling me and my father that Lou had a 'thing' for her. I had no idea at that time what kind of a 'thing' she meant. Eddie and Jean were a quintessential Hollywood couple, having met on the set of a movie Eddie was directing at RKO called 'Till The End Of Time', a kind of B-level 'Best Years Of Our Lives' which features a bemused Robert Mitchum as well. Jean apparently replaced Shirley Temple in the gi...

To honor the memory of the late Greta Thyssen, I've posted above one of the Three Stooges shorts that she appeared in, 'Quiz Whizz'. (Click here for Greta's Hollywood Reporter obit). Unfortunately for Greta (and for us) it's one of the Joe Besser shorts, the last gasp of the Columbia short-subject Stooges and certainly the worst. Still, I prefer Besser--who comes across like Moe and Larry's gay cousin that they're sheltering--to Curly Joe De Rita and even these flimsy, low-quality late Stooges have interestingly strange things to offer: Moe's slicked-back hair, the singing 'Hello, Hello, Hello' opening, the presence of Greta Thyssen...and Moe's slicked back hair I guess. 'Quiz Whizz' is a loose remake of a far superior Curly short, 'Healthy Wealthy and Dumb'. I won't post that since it would demean the presence of the very beautiful Greta Thyssen, who apparently didn't really have much of an ambition to be an actres...

Yesterday I posted a reel of commercials from the 1960s (scroll down, sucker) and I urged interested viewers (both of you) to skip ahead to 3 minutes and 25 seconds and watch a very funny, completely inexplicable/bordering on surreal commercial for Pizza Rolls. The premise is that several very weird people invade a very sixties cocktail party and annoy the hell out of the hostess, who dispenses with them after they rudely ask out of place questions (i.e.: 'do you have bad breath?' 'Your husband doesn't like your coffee...' etc.) The ad made no sense to me until my friend, journalist extraordinaire Marc Myers cracked the code for me and helpfully pointed out that the commercial was satirizing other commercials of the era, bringing the characters and pitch lines into the party in inappropriate places. Below are the original references, also courtesy of Marc. It's astonishing and embarrassing for me to have not realized this nice, simple pop-culture joke. All I can...

Every one of the above ten minutes of 1960s-ish commercials is a delight, but I'd urge you to begin by skipping forward to 3min, 25 seconds (approximately) and watch one of the strangest ads I've ever seen. It's for some sort of Pizza Roll appetizer and I know (but can't think of the name) of the actress featured--does anybody out there know? It's not exactly funny the first time through as it's simply way too strange. But on second and third viewings...you'll get the idea...   Subscribe in a reader

Welcome to 1973, as seen through the prism of the American commercial TV advertising industry. In the above 12 minute collection, you'll see Joey Heatherton (then famous, now forgotten), Marsha Mason (not yet famous, once famous, now forgotten), a promo for a desperately unfunny looking soon-to-be-cancelled TV comedy series called 'Temperature's Rising' starring James Whitmore (sort of famous, sort of remembered, great as Harry S. Truman in a one-man show called 'Give 'Em Hell Harry'), a trailer for the TV movie 'Duel', directed by Steven Spielberg (not yet known, now a billionaire) and many other wonderful products, actors, songs, hairstyles, pants and shirts and don't forget 'Shake And Bake'. June Lockhart shills for the Fried Chicken product and makes me wonder if it's still being made...and if so nationally? Or only in certain sections of Trump's America?   Subscribe in a reader

Click on the above (or perhaps you'd be better off clicking here f or mysterious reasons) and you will be treated (I guess that's the correct word) to a whole pile of New York/New Jersey regional television commercials from the early to mid 1980s. Why do these things mesmerize me? Partly I'm astonished at how well I remember a lot of them--I was able to call the cutting continuity on the 'Lullaby Of Broadway' Milford Plaza commercial literally frame by frame. And there's a certain wistful nature to how things that were once worth trumpeting with expensive advertisements ultimately fade away into literally nothing. Here you will find commercials for 'Crazy Eddie', the 'Ritz Thrift Shop', the Broadway play 'Gemini' (can you imagine paying for a commercial for a non-musical play these days? The authors parents must have had money...), Bertrand Island Park, Action Park in New Jersey, the original 'Evita' commercial...there's eve...

Click here to discover the charming and informative blog of veteran television director Ralph Senensky (pictured above...duh.) He may not be a name that pure cineastes bandy about, but if you've stared at filmed television shows of the past fifty plus years as relentlessly as I have, his is a name that you'll recognize as having flashed across your TV screen--in some cases multiple times a day depending on syndication schedules of old TV shows. 'Star Trek', 'Dr. Kildare', 'Twilight Zone', 'Partridge Family', 'Suspense Theater', 'Hart To Hart'--those shows account for roughly one one-hundredth of Senensky's filmography. Apparently he is alive and well and connected (in an internetish kind of way) and, at 94, continues to blog his vast life experience for us. Enjoy.   Subscribe in a reader

Closing out this first week of the already disastrous (on a national level) new year, let's listen to two bits from the classic Stern 90s era. A few days ago I posted the infamous Gilda Radner interview which left with her leaving the studio in tears. To prove that there is a modicum of thought that I put into this never-ending blog, I've culled (curated?) the above bit in which the Radner interview is brought up as the group attacks Jackie Martling for a monumentally clumsy interview he gave. Part two is an examination of Martling's ego which was so fragile that he demanded a 'head-writer' credit on the show, even though there was only one other writer. Fred Norris, that other writer, good-naturedly says that there are two Indians on the reservoir and 'one of them is chief.'   Subscribe in a reader

Not long before Howard Stern and Don Imus grew to openly loathe each other, they were fellow 'shock jocks' on WNBC and thus featured in TV advertisements together. The ads are pretty stupid and the best thing one can say about them is that they're short. Other than that, it's funny to see how gorky Stern is in his late twenties, strange to see that Imus already looked like he was seventy when he was forty-something, and nice to hear that the ridiculous emphasis placed on the 'N' in WNBC, which Stern constantly made fun of in later years, is conspicuously present. It's voiced by Imus of course.   Subscribe in a reader

Moving forward (or backward depending on your taste) with our new year of comedy--and this is being written on the day that Donald Trump said that Stephen K. Bannon had 'lost his mind'--here is a rare Stern Show clip of the notorious interview with Gilda Radner, which led to her leaving the studio in tears. It's hard, at this distance, to understand what went wrong--Stern isn't at all insulting, is only mildly salacious and plugs her book and appearances quite a bit. But this is from the early 80s--his 'Peacock Years' at NBC-- and not a lot of people were interviewing celebrities in quite this fashion. Radner was also, it turns out, suffering from the cancer that would kill her at this time and apparently had other health/mental/addictive issues...so maybe she just wasn't having the best day. But she does indeed walk out of the studio without a word, leaving a stunned and bemused Stern who, years later, said that he wished he could take this one back and h...

What more delightful way to kick off the year than revisiting a legendary Howard Stern spiel leveled at Steven Spielberg back in the mid-1990s. The usually savvy Spielberg decided, for some reason, to badmouth Stern during an interview, thus provoking a wildly tasteless and hysterically rude monologue in which Stern plays both a lisping Spielberg and a straight-up Uncle Tom version of one of Spielberg's adopted African-American kids. It's fascinating listening to 90s Stern and realizing how quickly his career would have been over, ratings notwithstanding, if this material had been presented anytime over the past two or so years. As always when confronted with criticism, Stern deploys the by-now Trumpian method of hitting back ten times as hard and without apology. The greatest thing about Stern at this time was his no-holds attack dog return punch when confronted by virtually anyone who dissed him. This was Stern with bite, pre-Sirius, and as Sarah Silverman pointed out dur...