tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54814490505301130322024-02-22T02:37:53.019-08:00Movies Til DawnThis blog has been archived. For the new blog site, go <a href="https://raymonddefelitta.org/blog">HERE</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-88695596311432900112019-01-25T13:54:00.002-08:002019-01-25T13:57:39.642-08:00LUCY AND RICKY: THE NEW YORK YEARS<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BXX2PPxpeh8" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Above is one of the strangest show-biz artifacts I've ever come across. Apparently there is a Lucy/Desi museum in Jamestown New York (birthplace of both Lucille Ball and Lucy Ricardo). Among the large collection of memorabilia is a full reconstruction of the set of the Ricardo's apartment. Above you'll see a short, shaky but quite delightful look at it. It's in color too, thus giving the much-viewed set a strikingly strange reality. The spinet piano is there, residing in the center of the room under the bay window, as is the fireplace, the couch, the kitchen--the whole sheer.<br />
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I always loved the way the address of the building changed from episode to episode (though it was always on East 68th Street). I also dug how loopy the floorplan was. The Mertz's building was a brownstone which would have been no more than 20 feet wide, but somehow the three rooms are stretched out over a space that would have to be at least 40 feet wide, with the kitchen incongruously on an angle with a back porch off the side (thus making it a side porch). There was also the nice backstory of the Mertz's having been in vaudeville and retiring to the life of do-nothing landlords. Presumably the building was bought with savings from years of tank-town touring.<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-54595219838507751662018-12-03T14:48:00.000-08:002018-12-03T14:48:29.251-08:00'BE BIG'--A LAUREL AND HARDY MISSING SCENE<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/323yxPTTg8k" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Having very much enjoyed 'Stan and Ollie', the Laurel and Hardy biopic, I've been immersed for the past few days in gathering up the shards of unseen L&H material that for some reason I've missed over the years. Mostly this consists of their silent films, which I never had any real interest in--what are L&H without their voices? Well, I was wrong. The silents are delightful and I'm plowing through them at a rapid rate. Then there are the lousy Fox films of the early-mid forties of which I've only seen two--'Jitterbugs' and 'The Bullfighters' and which, honestly, I feel it might be better off to avoid. L&H without Hal Roach simply were not themselves--I have a feeling that Stan would have resented hearing that, but Roach provided them with the freedom to work at their best and most comfortable level (and beside, he had that Marvin Hatley music). Then there are the multi language shorts which are interesting to behold, in a limited sort of way. Apparently, L&H shorts in the early 30s were often shot in several different languages simultaneously, with a translator on set to phoenetically teach the lines to Stan and Ollie. Thus there are German, Spanish and French versions of a number of the shorts, often featuring different actors of those nationalities replacing the supporting players in the American version.<br />
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But I'm not posting a foreign language version of an L&H film. The reason for all the above blather is to introduce a very cool piece of missing footage from the 1931 short 'Be Big'. The film is generally rated beneath their standards (by Everson, Barr et al) but I disagree. The virtually plotless situation comedy consists almost entirely of Ollie being unable to take off a boot that belongs to Stan which he's mistakenly put on. The relentless monotony of the predicament and lack of any plot beyond it is, for me, precisely what makes it so inanely (and truthfully) funny. Above I've posted the entire short, which is well worth twenty minutes of your day, as well as an excerpt of a very funny gag which was shot for the Spanish version of the film but not used in the American one. Since it contains no dialogue I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why it wouldn't have made it into the US release version unless it was simple sloppiness on the part of a tired editor who was ready to adjourn for the day to a Hal Roach Studios-adjacent watering hole...<br />
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In the interests of keeping this blog (such an early 21st century term) from becoming a Laurel and Hardy tribute site, I've posted the above 1979 commercial for Milk. Don't ask why. There doesn't have to be a reason for everything. But I've always admired the drum fill toward the end that takes us into the little coda...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-35412316367681124072018-11-26T14:05:00.002-08:002018-11-26T14:06:23.277-08:00L&H GO BOOM!<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VdvKwja2gOA" width="560"></iframe><br />
"They Go Boom" was one of almost a dozen Laurel & Hardy shorts released in the banner year of 1929. This was the year they transitioned to sound (several of the shorts released that year were silent--'Bacon Grabbers', they're greatest silent-in my opinion-was also their last) and the period of adjustment is interesting to watch. For one thing the Marvin Hatley music is missing which lends the film an eerie sort of voyeurism--because the dialogue consists mostly of grunts, threats and moans it's a bit like living next door to a dysfunctional couple whose argument you can't here but whose terrible vibe permeates the building. (Yes, that happened to me once...) The music-free ambience also makes the one-set film feel a little more like a live vaudeville sketch. The film could essentially have been silent--none of the talk is of any importance and in some ways it might have better--the music track would have covered some of the less inventive gags, the cutting would have been snappier etc. Hardy has yet to find the subtlety in his voice that would soon project dismay as well as outrage--here he is all threats and yells and anger. But there are pleasures to behold here as well. For one thing, the rooming house they live in is as sad and charmless as the Kramden apartment and is a little window on poverty living of the era. Likewise the various 'homeopathic remedies' that Stan uses in his attempts to help Ollie (who is very ill with a cold which he fears might turn to pneumonia and kill him--as indeed pneumonia might have in 1929) are fascinatingly primitive. Mustard powder mixed in hot water? A back plaster rub? And what is 'painting the throat? The bed gag at the end is wonderfully accomplished and Charlie Hall, once again playing their pissed off landlord, is very...Charlie Hall (short, English and filled with hatred). By the way, the title is a play on a popular Eddie Cantor song that was a hit earlier in that year called 'I Fall Down and Go Boom'. Dig it below...<br />
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Above is another one of those priceless documentary looks at New York life in the late 20s/early 30s courtesy of the Fox Movietone News camera, an early sound-on-film system that enabled recordings of everyday life and events without having to set up cumbersome equipment which in turn would usually freeze the on-camera participants--these glimpses feature entirely natural behavior of people who are only dimly aware at best that they're being filmed. Here we see a group of children, ages 5-7 roughly, playing in a park on West End Avenue and 106th Street in January of 1930. A teacher leads them in a couple of songs while their mothers sit by on the benches, wearing those funny 1920s Cloche women's hats that so symbolize 20s fashion that to wear one now would be a clear indication that you were on your way to a 1920s themed party.<br />
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What has this to do with Veterans Day you may ask? As I estimated the children's ages as I did, that would mean they were born somewhere between the early to mid 20s. Which means those boys you see surely saw action in the war that was a decade away. How many of them lived to tell about it? We'll never know. But they were members of the 'greatest generation' and it's heartbreaking to see them at that age, happily singing nursery rhymes on a winter's day in the park.<br />
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If you were sitting around your house in Los Angeles on the night of April 1st 1974 and had the TV tuned (as it once was said) to KTLA Channel 5, you would have seen the above two minutes of ads. It's the night before the 46th Academy Awards which is pro-moed (I believe the first 20 or so seconds provide a glimpse of it--an accidental tape-over I assume) which is how we know the date. Channel 5 had recently acquired the syndicated rights to Groucho Marx's 'You Bet Your Life' and was to begin airing them that summer. (I remember this because, as a 9 year old Marx Brothers fanatic, I made it a point to pretend to go to sleep at my usual bedtime only to sneak out to the den to watch the show on our black and white Zenith). A promo for this upcoming programming event is part of the clip, along with a a very sexy dance buy a woman advertising skin cream. There's also a promo for the Oscars (did they air on 5? Strange--thought it would be an exclusive network event...) as well as a trailer for 'Papillion' which was to open a week later. As I recall, the 'You Bet Your Life' nightly 11PM airing was followed by 'The Honeymooners' which I also stayed up to watch. I love these little time machine glimpses into the TV past--the uncut, unexplained nature of the clip and why it exists at all is part of the ghostly charm. But what were people taping off of in '74? One-inch? Standard home VCR units were still a couple of years away, weren't they?<br />
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Above I've posted two minutes of excerpts of an interview Orson Welles gave in 1958 after ostensibly seeing "Touch Of Evil" for the first time (at the Belgian World Film Festival no less) since the studio took the film away from him. This is Welles in his pre ''Oja Kodar/swinging 70s/move back to Hollywood to sit at the lunch table at Ma Maison and appear on the Muppets and Merv Griffin' phase, a period which I always preferred to his middle-period 'outcast/Euro-based/hotel-hopping/Don Quixote-making/Countess-marrying/'I don't have the vocation for martyrdom but look at how I'm acting like a martyr anyway' period (above). The later Welles, in spite of all of the same old problems he always suffered (weight, disrespect, lack of completion funds) is somehow lighter in spirit with a twinkle in his eye that is entirely missing in the middle period. Indeed, in the 50s and early 60s Welles was remorseful, proud, touchy and filled with a tiresome mixture of contempt for the world and contempt for being held accountable for his own actions (or inactions) within it. (The newly minted term 'Kavenaughish' ' might best describe middle period Welles, with Kavanaugh's beer obsession being replaced by Welles grotesque gourmandizing of the period). In the above interview, Welles dismisses the film as 'not his own', scolds the Hollywood system for not allowing directors complete freedom and final cut as they do in Europe (did they really though?), 'regrets' (with condescension) that the studio took the film from him and in a moment of 'panic or great excitement' forgot to invite him to see the finished product. But before he completely closes the door on his career in Hollywood, he allows that the film as it stands is not so different really than the one he intended.<br />
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And indeed is isn't. I awaited the restored 'Touch Of Evil' as eagerly as anyone else but I might as well be blunt about it: for my money the restoration only enhanced the films flaws and increased its running time for no real payout. Dennis Weaver, who is memorably weird and eccentrically cast, simply becomes silly and overbearing with his additional footage. And I'm sorry but I miss the Mancini music and the cool font of the credits playing over the opening shot. While it's certainly interesting to see the shot shorn of credits in all its clinical one-take glory, it somehow feels less seductive and more show-offy than when played with the credits over it. While we're at it, let me go on record (for those of you who haven't already quit reading this blog in disgust) and say that 'Mr. Arkadin' remains my favorite Welles film, 'Spartacus' my favorite Kubrick film and 'Countdown' my favorite Altman film. Had Ingmar Bergman accepted Paramounts offer to direct 'The Great Gatsby' (apparently it was on the table), that most likely would have been my favorite Bergman. Don't like it? KMA.<br />
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When I was a young'un growing up in LA in the mid-seventies I was a serious radio-head. I loved all forms of audio entertainment--live radio talk shows, old vintage comedy shows, KJOI (elevator music non-stop) and even the stray TV channel that you could accidentally find on an obscure frequency. (I listened to a San Diego TV station that played old TV sit-coms that for some quirk-of-technology reason you could pick up on the bottom of the FM dial). So it was with great interest that I learned one day in 4th grade from a long-forgotten friend that you could listen to comedy on the phone if you dialed 213-836-5566. The pre-recorded routines emanated from a 'station' called 'ZZZ-ZZZ, the last listing in your telephone directory!'<br />
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Once dialed, the line was invariably busy but I would persist for what seems in memory to have been hours at a time, occasionally getting through. Once I got a taste of the little radio phone-plays that Z put on, I began taping them. They were quite funny actually and seriously 'produced'--sound effects, background music, the whole bit.<br />
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Naturally my tapes are long gone and after the fad of Z wore off I forgot about the whole thing. Until the other day, that is, when for some ungodly reason I remembered my devotion to the phone joke line and decided to look it up. It goes without saying that the internet not only is filled with information about the 'long lost phone-line of Z' but about other phone lines that sprung up in the 70s as well. Even weirder is the fact that there's a thriving sub-culture of audio freaks out there who collect this stuff, preserve and remaster the tapes and even delve into such obscurities as vintage ring tones, old 411 information sounds, various different styles of old busy signals. Strange though this is, I've been losing a lot of time over the past few days on this <a href="https://www.dialajoke.us/" target="_blank">particularly thorough website</a>. And you can cl<a href="http://www.evan-doorbell.com/production/Zp1.mp3" target="_blank">ick here to listen</a> to twenty minutes of vintage ZZZ-ZZZ. I invite you to waste a little time flashing back to the 70s (for the most part), an age when you could listen to jokes on phones that sat on counters in your house. You could also, most shockingly, have conversations in which you could clearly hear the voice on the other end. If you wanted to find a phone number, you dialed 411 and a nice lady looked it up for you. If you called somebody and they weren't home, the phone just rang and rang and rang. You could hold the receiver tightly against your ear without fearing a brain tumor and when you answered the phone you had no idea who was going to be on the other end. Also, the calls almost never simply dropped. I'm so glad we've made such progress...<br />
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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?<br />
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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).<br />
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Perhaps the most interesting part of seeing Bogie breakdown is studying his own reactions. Unlike many actors who laugh at their own screw-ups, Bogie gets very angry and frustrated with himself. His common reaction is a harshly delivered 'Goddamn it!' and several times you can hear the director in the background quickly offering an 'it's okay Bogie', as if they were accustomed to his temper getting the better of him which no doubt led to further breakdowns, a downward spiral that could only have made for an unpleasant workday. As I don't hear any accented off-camera voices, I have to assume that the directors offering their encouragement were not Michael Curtiz or Anatole Litvak, but perhaps Raoul Walsh, William Keighley or Edmund Goulding (definitely the latter as there's one from 'Dark Victory'). And there's also a goof from 'To Have and Have Not', so we know that Howard Hawks was there to calm his apparently hard-on-himself star.<br />
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My love for Howard Stern dates back to an afternoon in the early 80s, when I was driving upstate to my college and turned the radio dial accidentally to WNBC. I heard a man discussing the differences between Jewish men's penises and Chinese men's penises and, when the shock wore off, found myself parking on the shoulder of the highway as laughter overwhelmed me. There is no longer anything shocking about the subject matter and I can't remember exactly what was said that I found so exhilaratingly funny. It must of been the whooshing of a long-closed door being opened--the complete subjugation of normal entertainment to wildly inappropriate and heedless hilarity. (Or, as a billboard put it when Stern was first syndicated to Los Angeles, 'Four Hours Of Sixth Grade Every Morning!')<br />
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Early Stern (or 'old-school Howard') remains, for me, the best Stern--anywhere from the NBC years through around 2000 (the departure of Jackie Martling being the significant factor in the cut off period). The show, as it has since evolved, is barely interesting to me anymore, with the dull cast of supporting characters and their no-longer-shocking-but-now-just-gross personas. The vaunted celebrity interviews are only as interesting as the guests and Stern's righteous embracement of the Second Amendment and refusal to comment in any meaningful way on his one-time friend (and still is I guess?) Donald Trump renders him toothless as well as weirdly in step with our current, shameful Congress.<br />
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But I digress. There is, fortunately, much early Howard on Youtube and I listen to some of it pretty much every morning. And this morning's discovery was a real find. Above is George Takei's first appearance on the show in 1990. It's before he was famous as anything but a 'Star Trek' co-star--his activism and such was still in the future as he had yet to 'come out'. And this is what is particularly fascinating about this episode. Stern is completely in the dark as to Takei's sexual preference and blindly keeps pursuing a path that Takei deftly keeps stepping away from. Stern is eager to know how many female Trekkies he's had sex with ('banged'--such an 80s word, right?) and can't figure out why he's not being more forthcoming about the plethora of willing females that his celebrity must allow him to sexually indulge in. It's a kind of fascinating train-wreck-in-reverse and something of a shocking reminder that the 1990s seems so far away, given that Takei seems to have gone public about his personal life in 2005, fifteen years after this appearance. (Did you know that he and his husband were the first couple to register to get a marriage license in West Hollywood? I didn't either but given his ten zillion Facebook followers I must be one of the last to have found this out). Takei's urbane fencing around the subject and Stern's inability to even remotely consider his possible homosexuality leave one a little stunned at how blind young Howard was; Takei, in retrospect, sounds something like Clifton Webb in 'Laura', a tastefully amused old-school queen who you'd love to sit around and sip Manhattan's with while deploring the state of the world. This isn't, of course, who the real Takei is, with his admirable optimism, leadership and outspoken activism. But I'd still love to sit around and have a Manhattan with him. As for Howard, I have a feeling he doesn't give you much in person, though he's apparently a very nice, low-keyish fellow. I have that on good authority as it came from my late friend John Avildsen, who was supposed to direct him in the movie version of 'Private Parts'...before 'ankling the project due to creative differences' as the trades would put it.<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-71364775218541337922018-07-17T11:05:00.001-07:002018-07-17T11:05:30.610-07:00WALDORF ASTORIA: FEBRUARY, 1934<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SEl4mqnA_L0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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In February 1934, something called the 'Motion Picture Ball' was held at New York's then rather newish Waldorf Astoria Hotel and the Fox Movietone sound cameras were there to capture the event. I don't know what the hell the purpose of the ball was but it brought out a heavy duty crowd of 'swells' who, from appearances, seem wildly untouched by the great depression that was then raging just outside the doors. It feels rather like a scene you'd find in 'My Man Godfrey'--fat balding men in evening clothes, fat stuffy wives on their arms. The announcer appears to be the person that inspired Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden voice. For seven minutes we watch as a cascade of long-dead people enter an unseen room as the announcer names names, cracks wise etc. The boredom of the shot becomes mesmerizing (for me anyway). At seven minutes or so in, we cut to the actual ball itself. The band is playing 'Wonder Bar' (the movie had just been released) and a cascade of balloons is released upon the dining/dancing area. They don't come apart easily and for a long, uneasy moment we realize that people are trapped underneath them. Finally the seas part, the dance continues, the Motion Picture Ball goes on, the humanity continuing it's relentless march toward ultimate extinction only to be preserved by this film time capsule...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-17996915032744118602018-07-12T12:07:00.000-07:002018-07-12T12:12:13.473-07:00HARRY ROSENTHAL, MUSICAL POPPINJAY<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hh3qBWlcXEg" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Meet Harry Rosenthal. He was a silent film piano accompaniest who later became a movie-score conductor due to the fact that his first career was phased out of existence when talking films phased out silents. In 1930 he made the above Fox Movietone short film demonstrating the quite fascinating technique of adding music 'on the fly' to a movie being projected. The end of this specialty act came two years or so before this demo film was made. Synchronized music scores, however, first came about in 1926 with Warner Brothers 'Don Juan' starring John Barrymore, though that film was still mute as far as dialogue goes. Imagine the advent of a symphonic score against picture being a sufficient enough novelty to be cause for a billboard like the one pictured below? Yes, in fact, I can. The reason that I'm posting this at this particular moment is that I'm sitting in a sound mix and marveling how much a great score can elevate a movie. Many thanks to the mysterious YouTube artist Guy Jones for restoring and posting another invaluable Fox Movietone artifact.<br />
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<img src="http://www.classicmoviehub.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/warner-bros-vitaphone-don-juan-1926-marquee.jpg" style="-webkit-user-select: none; display: block; margin: auto;" /><br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-16349309738185828782018-07-03T14:08:00.002-07:002018-07-03T14:08:26.086-07:00ADDITIONAL DIALOGUE RECORDING BY...<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-In-EDj88tY" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Last week we recorded ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) for my movie 'Stano'. I am no fan of this process as I can almost always tell, while watching a movie, when it's been done. Even well performed and well-mixed ADR never quite sits realistically for me and actor's performances are rarely improved by asking them to stand in a recording studio, stare at themselves on the screen and attempt to fit dialogue into their on-screen mouths in precisely the right rhythm so as to achieve 'perfect' lip sync (and somehow act at the same time). Some actors don't mind doing it, some hate it. The only actor I've ever heard of who demands to ADR his whole performance is Al Pacino. He claims it gives him a second chance at improving his performance. I can't imagine his first pass is in need of this tune-up but who knows? Perhaps his performance actually is better, though I think it might be safer to say that its a bit different.<br />
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I generally only re-record lines that are clearly damaged by severe background noise and am usually pleasantly surprised at how well most actors do with it, even the ones who don't like doing it. But I still can tell when I'm seeing it in a movie, even if it's well done. And when it's not well done, as in the above clip from 'The Great Gatsby', it's an atrocity. As seasoned an actor as DiCaprio is, he either didn't give a crap about doing a better job or didn't have time...or just isn't that good at it...or protested the need to do it by intentionally funking the job. Was Baz Lurhman not there on the day? Perhaps the two weren't speaking. Or perhaps they were just no longer creatively in sync. Har. Get it?<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-60207483970218507662018-06-25T14:04:00.001-07:002018-06-25T14:04:42.081-07:00'ED WOOD' AND ED WOOD...SIDE BY SIDE<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a-bgPKjasdA" width="560"></iframe><br />
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After a private screening last night of 'Ed Wood' (which is, for my money, the best film ever made about the life of an artist), my son and I spent some time on Youtube finding the original film clips and trying to compare them with the fastidious recreations. What was I thinking? There was already a perfectly accomplished split-screen version of exactly what I was taking way too much time trying to do on my own. So I posted it above. Enjoy nine or so minutes of 'Ed Wood' and...Ed Wood.<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-19529420993828127262018-06-20T16:57:00.001-07:002018-06-20T16:57:27.922-07:00KORVETTES SUCKED: ANOTHER 70s COMMERCIAL UNEARTHED<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u7i5KdtfJM8" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Here's another stupid Korvette's commercial (see yesterday's post for the cheapo Julie Newmar spot) which, if nothing else, provides some nice glimpses of period 1970s stereo receivers and turntables. This commercial is thirty seconds longer than the previously posted commercial and the faux-musical number contained within its structure seems to have actually been prepared, rehearsed and planned. Did they simply spend too much money on this ad and decide to cheese-out when doing the Newmar ad? Or did Julie's presence bust the budget and thus require a serious pullback on production values? I hope it was the later, for Julie's sake. And I hope they provided her with a private car to and from the set to ease the disgrace of having to do the ad at all. Though somehow I think they tried to palm off a bus pass on her...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-14804037921999221982018-06-19T11:57:00.000-07:002018-06-19T12:13:39.978-07:00JULIE NEWMAR DOES KORVETTES<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/edn7eI4PEbA" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Without the long-defunct east coast department store chain Korvettes, it's safe to say we wouldn't have a Walmarts or a Costco. E. J. Korvette (nee Kerfauf), the founder of this junky suburban bin of trash, brought a number of new ideas to the shopping world, including discounting (then illegal), subscription shopping (a la Costco) and expanding to distant suburbs instead of sticking around the business center of towns. This last innovation proved to be his greatest non-contribution to our country's culture. Every time you find yourself driving in a somewhat isolated and undeveloped area and then suddenly see a huge, ugly windowless/charm-free building looming on the horizon off the highway, you have Korvette to thank. The business went bankrupt in 1980 after thirty-plus years. Why? I don't know. But the above commercial might offer some clue to the clueless management of the chain. They managed to hire the fiery, leggy and impossible-not-to-be-sexy Julie Newmar to do an ad for their stores and then failed to actually use more than five seconds of her on screen. The ad is as cheap and pointless as the store itself; Julie comes out, giving up a brief glimpse of her luscious gams, then sits in a chair and begins rattling off product names. Do we stay on her? Of course not. We cut to <i>shots of the products themselves because they were so frigging beautiful.</i><br />
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I hope Julie got a decent payday for her half-an-hour of work though somehow I doubt the check cleared. They probably paid her in discounted products. Even as I write this I can picture the sight of a behemoth Korvettes off a dismal highway somewhere in outer Long Island. Blecchhh.<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-43557537096456007642018-06-15T12:33:00.001-07:002018-06-15T12:33:07.341-07:00MAKE LOTS OF ROOM FOR DANNY<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0_rx4sazhjQ" width="560"></iframe><br />
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What on earth possessed warm and fuzzy comedian Danny Thomas to build the monstrously large Trousdale Mega-Moorish-Monstrosity in which he and wifey RoseMarie spent their declining years? Usually when the kids move out, a couple downsizes. But not the Thomas's. Above is a tour of their steroidal manse as pictured last year when it was on the market for a ludicrous 135 million dollars. (It wound up selling for a mere 60 million). The sellers were not the Thomas family, who unloaded it in 2000 for a fast 15 million.<br />
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There's a lot of hating for this place in the Youtube comments section but I have to say that its wildly over-the-topness is somehow refreshing, given that it was built by a warm-hearted (at least his persona was) TV family comedian and not some oil-pushing, arms-dealing, money-laundering scumbag. As retirement villas go, it's wonderfully silly. Groucho Marx, who lived further below in Trousdale (same street though--Hillcrest Rd.) used to complain that Thomas was spying on him and trying to get a look at his girlfriend Erin Fleming. He was probably right.<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-62106826779383058992018-06-14T11:53:00.000-07:002018-06-14T11:55:03.576-07:00REAL 1960s HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS PT. 2--THE RUTH BERLE SHOW<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D3KQh2CrWxk" width="560"></iframe><br />
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If you type pretty much anything into the Youtube search bar, someone will have posted a video of some sort related to your search. Hence the above five minute clip of a 1967 'Lucy Show' featuring Milton Berle, an actress named Ruta Lee (about whom I know nothing) and a quick and charming cameo by Milton's wife Ruth. What were my keywords? 'Milton Berle Wife'. And why? <a href="https://moviestildawn.blogspot.com/2018/06/jack-benny-meets-real-housewives-of.html" target="_blank">Click here </a>for my post a couple of days ago featuring a Jack Benny show co-starring a bevy of Beverly Hills show-biz wives, among them the fetching Mrs. Berle. I suppose Gracie Allen qualifies as one of them, but video and information on her are too easy to find. Next up, Mrs. Danny Thomas...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-46471566599043769922018-06-13T10:40:00.000-07:002018-06-13T10:40:00.923-07:00PHIL, JACK AND DICK<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/obzGYIiWw90" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Here's a bite-size clip of an old Dick Cavett show with Jack Benny and Phil Silvers as guests. The two are obviously fond of each other and, as always when Benny is a guest, you don't get that electric 'who's going to top who?' thing that often happens when multiple comics are on stage. Benny was famous among other comics for being an uncommonly generous audience. Indeed, Silvers does most of the talking as Jack sits by, languidly listening. But look out. When Benny does intrude, it's perfectly timed, unexpected, and winds up getting the big laugh. This stuff was an art for these guys and Benny's true genius was in his 'artlessness'...you didn't see it coming and often there didn't even seem to be anything there <i>until he found it,</i> which often had to do with his sense of timing. Speaking of which, Mel Brooks referred to Benny's timing as 'dangerous'. A perfect way to put it--now when you watch him you'll see how truly, scarily long he was willing to draw things out and how accurate he was when finally he would let the other shoe drop...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-9656264512224000382018-06-11T14:10:00.002-07:002018-06-11T14:16:38.014-07:00JACK BENNY MEETS REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS, 1962-STYLE<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GfrvZ_kbvPk" width="560"></iframe><br />
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In the above episode of Jack Benny's TV show--which for some reason has become my highly valued 'it's-four-AM-and-I'm-depressed' antidote--Jack insists on being part of a Beverly Hills charity event to which he's not been invited. The event is being hosted by the wives of Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Kirk Douglas and Phil Silvers. They all play themselves and they're all real dishes, in a very proper, late-fifties kind of housewife-ish way. Below I've posted thumbnail sketches and ghoulishly included links to their obits. The dead ones, anyway.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Hartford" target="_blank">Eden Marx</a> was forty years younger than Groucho and has the sleek and mysterious vibe of a foreign-film star of the period--though she was born in Utah which, I guess, actually is pretty foreign. She was Groucho's third wife (and his third divorce) and lived only into her early fifties, sucumbing to cancer in Palm Springs in the early 1980s. <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1989-04-19/news/mn-1991_1_milton-berle-rko-mentally-handicapped-children" target="_blank">Ruth Berle </a>was a mere thirteen years younger than Uncle Miltie and had been a successful public relations person when that male-dominated field was...er, male dominated. Next is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Buydens" target="_blank">Anne Douglas </a>(nee Buydens), a former actress who was a mere three years younger than her husband. Shockingly she is still alive at 99 which makes the combined ages of her and husband 201 years of age. Jesus! (By the way, her real name was Hannalore Marx which means that if Groucho had married her instead of Eden--and if she'd retained her real name--we'd have Hanalore Marx-Marx as a guest star on this show. If that's your idea of a good time.) Last and certainly not least is the come-hither-you-bad-boy-and-let-me-rub-your-bald-head-bonbshell Evelyn Silvers (nee Patrick). How on earth did Sgt. Bilko 'get' her? The answer, I suspect, has something to do with <i>having been the star of Sgt. Bilko.</i> Alas the marriage didn't last--they have five daughters but Silvers chronic gambling addiction and depression undid the union at some point in the late 60s. Evelyn appears to still be with us and below I've posted a chunk of a Bilko episode in which she's the spokesperson doing the Revlon Ad (it's one minute in) for a shade of Lipstick called Snow Peach. Is this how they met? And if so, was there anything truly so inappropriate about the powerful male star chasing the young, inexperienced model? I wonder if Evelyn Silvers and Anne Douglas have seen each other lately...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-67565806509669399892018-06-07T14:03:00.000-07:002018-06-07T14:03:16.158-07:00CRAPPY BEHAVIOR AT THE BALLPARK<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O6DAdFSXEPQ" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Having just directed a baseball movie (okay, it was a year ago but in a director's life a year is just moments ago) I've had my fill of the religiosity that adherents of the game carry around when discussing the sport. The 'poetry' of it all, the history of it, the integrity of it etc. The truth--as you probably don't need me to tell you--is that baseball is played by athletes and athletes, by the very definition of their skills, tend to be mildly demented, overly competitive, under-eduacted and stunted-at-youth-when-daddy-forced-them-to-play-competitively-or-else-pusnishment-would-ensue, assholes.<br />
(Major exception: the very cool pro and semi-pro minor league players who acted in my film...most of them anyway).<br />
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Watch the above video for some of the most delightful examples of lousy sportsmanship in the major leagues. Whether it's a pitcher throwing a broken bat at Mike Piazza or a guy literally stealing candy from a kid (it's at 2:23) you'll see baseball's true colors and, in the bargain, watch something far more entertaining (and a lot shorter) than a four hour stand-off between a guy who holds a ball and a guy who holds a bat.<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-62559942682722476772018-06-06T15:04:00.002-07:002018-06-06T15:04:40.214-07:00YANKEES V. RED SOX--4/14/31 (OPENING DAY)<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNe9OM43EZs" width="560"></iframe><br />
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On April 14, 1931, Wakatsuki Reijiro became the new Prime Minister of Japan and Berlin Police Vice-President Bernhard Weib won a defamation lawsuit against Joseph Goebbels, who was ordered to pay 1500 Reichmarks. Meanwhile, in New York City, Baseball season opened with the New York Yankees playing the Boston Red Sox in a game that began at 3PM and lasted a brisk two hours. (What the hell happened to baseball that added a third of the time to this already tedious game's length?) Ultimately the Yankees beat the Sox 6-3, with Babe Ruth hitting a homer in the seventh (see below video). The above is sound-on-film footage of pre-game and game activities, captured by the invaluable Fox Movietone sound cameras. You'll see Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Yankees manager Joe McCarthy (who stayed with the team until 1946). More importantly, you'll see that on that early spring day pretty much everyone wore a hat and tie to the ball game.<br />
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If you're interested in the box score and all the stats on this long-forgotten game played on a long-forgotten Tuesday afternoon, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA193104140.shtml" target="_blank">click here</a> you big geek. Thanks goes to my new favorite Youtuber, Guy Jones, who's been restoring and posting these extraordinary Fox Movietone clips. Their rawness and lack of narration make them true time-travel devices, with nothing to interfere with the Verite nature of what they capture. Below dig Ruth's homer as well as a short opening speech by Mayor James J. Walker who then tosses out the first ball...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-61365510782909623792018-05-15T07:47:00.001-07:002018-05-15T07:47:36.272-07:00THE STRANGE GUESTS OF JACK BENNY; WAYNE NEWTON???<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-_rpmhRi-eE" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Here's a 1962 Jack Benny Program with guest star Wayne Newton, then a newly popular heart throb boy singer who had just charted big with 'Danke Shoen'. Benny, apparently, was a mentor of Newton's and used him as his opening act in Las Vegas for several years. The Newton seen here is far from the mustachioed Vegas operator of the 70s/80s and is much more like the overly-humble, careful-to-be-respectful, God-loving, show-biz-has-been-good-to-me fellow he's turned back into in recent years (mega-lawsuits aside). Newton is in his early twenties here, tall and fat, with a much higher and stranger voice than the one we're used to--assuming you ever get used to Wayne Newton. According to Wikipedia, the young Newton found great support in the aging, Hillcrest Country Club show-biz klotch consisting of Benny, George Burns, Danny Thomas etc. What on earth did this gang of old vaudevillians see in the country-based, rosy-cheeked 'good boy'? Probably a little of the old vaudeville spirit--Newton's early gimmick was to play a half-dozen instruments during his act to take a break from his singing as a way of controlling his early asthmatic condition. These old bastards weren't so dumb, were they? They smelled the billion-dollar Vegas act of the future and had the good sense to back it--an insurance blanket, if you will, for their old-age in show-biz. Below is a surprisingly pleasant and articulate sit-down with Newton from about ten years ago. I tend to think that his sincere bit is less a bit then perhaps a genuine poor-boy-hit-it-big vibe. Then again, there's the Wayne Newton museum in Las Vegas and those aforementioned lawsuits--literally dozens of them. And the Johnny Carson jokes of course...<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5481449050530113032.post-90695879056093171842018-05-14T12:52:00.001-07:002018-05-14T12:56:04.141-07:00DIMITRI TIOMKIN (OF ALL PEOPLE) MEETS JACK BENNY<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wISSPjyIvzI" width="560"></iframe><br />
Why did Dimitri Tiomkin, the great Russian film composer who inexplicably made his name (and fortune) writing themes for westerns, appear as a guest on The Jack Benny Show in 1961? My guess is that they played Golf or Bridge or Gin Rummy at the Hillcrest Country Club together and the idea came up after Tiomken mentioned that one of his favorite Benny routines was the awful song that Jack wrote that he could never sell. Titled "If You Say I Beg Your Pardon Then I'll Come Back To You", the song first appeared in the Benny radio show years, circa 1945. In the above TV episode, Jack wishes to revive the song and Tiomkin becomes as inexplicably embroiled in the song as he was in the writing of scores for movies like 'Red River', 'High Noon', 'Gunfight at the OK Corral' etc. By the way, Tiomken received twenty-two Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars, one of which was for Best Original Song for 'High Noon' . Titled 'The Ballad of High Noon', the theme was informally known as 'Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling', a title almost as embarrassingly absurd as 'If You Say I Beg Your Pardon...' etc.<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img alt="" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" style="border: 0; vertical-align: middle;" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MoviestilDawn" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com