Movies Til Dawn

My previous two posts (scroll down, toots) have reawakened my childhood obsession with 'I Love Lucy', without however managing to focus on that legendary show. This all began with my musings on 'The Lucy Show' and has now moved backward a few years to yet another Lucy-centric television hit. The hell with it. Enough's been written about 'I Love Lucy'. In between 'I Love Lucy' and 'The Lucy Show' came 'The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour', an expansion of 'I Love Lucy' featuring big-name guests--Red Skelton, Ernie Kovacs, Talullah Bankhead, Danny Thomas etc. The specials were infrequently aired--thirteen were made and shown over the 1957-1960 television seasons and the last one aired the year the Arnaz's divorced. As a kid I recall KTTV (Metromedia Channel 11 of blessed memory) occasionally airing them on Sunday evenings. I especially recall the credit sequence featuring an animated Lucy and Ricky standing on Conga drums--why the...

Last week I posted a clip from 'The Lucy Show' (scroll down, baby) which featured Lucy and Vivian Vance meeting Joan Crawford. It renewed my interest in the series, which was Ball's second and which came four years after 'I Love Lucy' had ended its run. As a child I remember watching 'The Lucy Show' with mixed feelings. It was funny, of course. Ball was always wildly watchable and beyond funny with both physical and verbal humor. But what happened to Ricky and Fred? And why did Ethel's name change to Viv? Why did Lucy work in a bank and why had she moved from New York to Los Angeles? The answers are: 1) Ricky and Lucy got divorced and Fred got a role in 'My Three Sons'. 2) With the disappearance of Fred, Ethel reverted to her stage name Vivian Vance. 3) Because the character she played, Lucy Carmichael, worked in a bank in the book on which the series was based (called "Life Without George") and moved to LA as a lifestyle change after...

"The Lucy Show" was the follow-up  color version of "I Love Lucy", sans Desi Arnaz and William Frawley (who, in my opinion, were sorely missed). Such was the greatness of the earlier show that this series has been largely ignored in the popular culture universe. Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance are still best friends only now they're 'Lucy and Viv', lending the whole enterprise an aura of laziness. They couldn't even think up new names? And somehow Ball's voice dropped an octave in the two years that intervened between the shows, making her sound like a female impersonator doing Lucille Ball (think Harvey Fierstein). Nonetheless, the above clip is nothing short of frigging hilarious. I can't find the entire show on Youtube so I've no idea of how the situation resolves itself, but Lucy and Viv inadvertently wander into Joan Crawford's house and meet the star herself, who--through a little contorted logic and circumstantial evidenc-- t...

Yesterday I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing filmmaker and photographer Jerry Schatzberg for my upcoming podcast series "Movies Til Dawn" (inventive title, right? But it is the age of 'branding' so...) Our conversation centered primarily on one of the great 70s counterculture films and certainly the starkest look at drug addiction ever made ,"Panic In Needle Park". Above I've posted a longish (three minute) trailer for the film which will give you a basic starting knowledge of what this extraordinary film is all about. If you've never seen it I urge you to find it on Netflix. (There's also a Youtube posting of the entire movie but the image is squeezed for some reason). In his first starring role, Al Pacino completely makes you forget that you're watching an actor play a drug addict. Much of this is directly attributable to Schatzberg's direction, which crosses the boundary from narrative film into verite documentary waters....

Here's the theme song that didn't really exist for the movie "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", sung by Bette Davis who wasn't a singer on a TV show that nobody remembers. As with my previous post--Bette singing the theme to "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte"--you can feel the disbelief in the room as Bette boogies down. Why she chose at this late stage in her career to take up singing remains a mystery--one that she took to the grave with her. But I do like her spirit and if nothing else it shows that Bette had nerves of steel and a certain sense of humor about herself.   Subscribe in a reader

Did you know Bette Davis could sing? She could. Sort of. Apropos of my previous posting featuring a behind-the-scenes look at the making of "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?", I am now veering into "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" territory. The film was a sort of follow-up to WHTBJ and began production with both Davis and Joan Crawford re-teamed. But Crawford walked after a few days of shooting, claiming illness--yeah, right. Production was shut down and the film was almost abandoned (in which case it would have been a prime candidate for my D.O.A. Film Festival ). Director Robert Aldrich apparently offered the role to, among others, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck and Vivian Leigh, all of whom passed. (The Leigh pass is curious--she might have been ill at the time as it seems like a great opportunity for her at that sad and late stage of her career). Finally Davis's old Warner Brothers friend Olivia De Havilland bailed things out and the show went on. This cli...

Yes, Ryan Murphy's much-anticipated "The Feud" promises to take us behind the scenes of the legendary "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane", showing us the no-doubt tense and downright nasty dynamic between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. But what was it really like on that fabled set? The answer is "I don't know". But I did find the above studio-sanctioned six-minute behind-the-scenes promo piece for the movie, showing us director Robert Aldrich, viewfinder slung around his neck, putting his all into shooting the picture. Aldrich was always a bold filmmaker and he seems to have reveled in the dark (and often tasteless) script by Lukas Heller. Clearly he had no fear of his two (to me) terrifying diva's and the film still holds up terrifically well. This all started because I interviewed his daughter Adell Aldrich for a doc I'm shooting on the actor Burt Young. Adell was her father's script supervisor on a number of films and this was the ...