Movies Til Dawn

Here's a real weirdie. It's Diana Ross and the Supremes performing a tribute medley to Fats Waller on Ed Sullivan (of course). I'm not sure I've ever seen them in this kind of performance style--they're like a really good, nicely dressed upscale cruise act. Four minutes into this five minute clip they briefly become the Supremes that we know (for a whole ten seconds) before snapping back into Tin Pan Alley/Andrew Sisters/Opening-Act-for-a-Comic-In-Vegas mode. Strangeness aside, it's really quite lovely and interestingly square, especially given the hipness of the act that we know lays underneath. And each one of the ladies was more gorgeous than the next. Indeed, my favorite Supreme is always the last my eyes have fallen upon. Wait, can I say that? Is that allowed? Did I just end my career?   Subscribe in a reader

Here's five minutes of Humphrey Bogart forgetting his lines (or 'going up' as the English say). Like all blooper reels, the fun is not the mistakes themselves but the opportunity to be, as viewers, part of the movie set experience of the long, dead past. We hear the offstage voices of directors assuring the actor that it's okay, that they can 'pick it up' (i.e. not have to begin the scene from the top but instead resume from shortly before the line was dropped) and, in some cases, we hear a bell go off when an actor screws up. This suggests to me an on-set running gag--somebody (probably the prop man) rang a bell when an actor forgot his lines, causing a brief burst of hilarity from all which was probably thought to lesson the tension on the set. (They sure as hell wouldn't be welcome with their funny little bell on my set, that's for damn sure). Perhaps the most interesting part of seeing Bogie breakdown is studying his own reactions. Unlike many ac...