Classic Film Comedy's topics - tribe.net

JESUS CHRIST+JESU KRISTE+YESHUA HAMASHIACH+JESUS CHRISTUS+JESU KRISTU+ISOUS HRISTOS

2007-10-01T16:42:25Z

JESUS CHRIST+JESU KRISTE+YESHUA HAMASHIACH+JESUS CHRISTUS+JESU KRISTU+ISOUS HRISTOS

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophesy and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near. REVELATION 1:3

And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth." REVELATION 11:3

He who testifies to these things says, " Surely I am coming quickly." Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. REVELATION 22:20-21

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Everyone, has the responsibility to find the truth for themselves. What is stated below, must be researched and verified, so that every individual can then decide to accept, or discard it as myth. The only truth is God the Father, the Son our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Read the Bible, pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance and our Lord Jesus Christ will not abandon you, but will place the truth in your heart.

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We must not try to copy the world, but be different to it, as the example set by our Teacher, our Lord Jesus Christ. Being the same as the world, sharing its base values, being part of the fashion trends, is all part of Satan's system (Sex changes that are taking place ever more frequently and therefore not knowing anymore who is a man or a woman). The Pope of Rome is one of Satan's instruments (the Papists have immense power and wealth, our Lord Jesus Christ was humble and owned nothing). Talmudists/Zionists want to rebuild Solomon's Temple and proclaim their own false king of the world (there is only one King of the Jews and Orthodox Christians and that is our Lord Jesus Christ). Their power base is the U.S.A (Superpower of the world). They contol many governments, banks, newspapers, television stations (the media in general), etc. We must not forget the very elusive and cunning Masonic Lodges which form part of Satan's means to spread anti-Christian and heretic information. Television and video has been one of the most powerful tools of Satan, which has ruined the ethics which sustained our youth and the family unit. With pornography in all its forms, men have been misled and subsequently their women, a whole generation of our youth and their families have been devoured by Satan. We have forgotten about God, the Bible and prayer and have allowed ourselves to go down the road to hell and have fallen into Satan's trap (in other words we are slaves to flesh and our desires). Hedonism is the aim of humanity.

The group that is attempting to rule the world, consists of three member countries, U.S.A, Europe and Japan (3 presidents). Their central control, consists of 32 members (of the 29, 8 are Americans; 9 from Japan; 12 from the European Union (contolled from Belgium/Luxembourg). Head of the 3 member group is Rockefeller (his head quaters is in Rhodes, Greece; his specific influence is in the U.S.A and E.U). Whoever does not obey the orders of this group are murdered. Death is the penalty for disobedience. Another Satanic "club" is called, Bildeberg. They can destroy any government and put a new one together again. They can make a country vanish and create a new one too. 200 members, which include intelligence agencies (CIA; BIA; BND (Ger.); SIB (Ital.); SPELA (Fra.)). There are members who are involved with NATO and hold important positions in the US administration, etc. They hold an extremely harsh stance against the East, especially with Russia because of its Christian Orthodox heritage. They exterminate/demolish any opposition.

An enemy going back thousands of years is head quatered in China (the Himalayas/Tibet). The Seljuks come from that region, who are the ancestors of the Turks, who attacked and oppressed Christian Orthodoxy in Asia Minor and Greece. The Turks/Jews have tried many times to wipe out the Greeks and Christian Orthodoxy. They call the Greeks and Christian Orthodoxy, the people of the "Blue Trigramaton" (which is refering to the Holy Light that emenates from our Lord Jesus Christ's tomb). The roots of martial arts is that region spoken of above. Martial arts are Satanic and anti-Christian and yet has our youth spellbound under the innocent guise of sport/fitness. In the Himalayas there is a glass pyramid (Sambala), it has many entrances. This is where the White Brotherhood is based. It's aim is to destroy all the world's religions except its own. It has more power than the U.S.A. It has more resources at its disposal than all the governments in the world. It has infiltrated and controls many governments and religions (Roman Catholics, Protestants and Judaism). The First and Second World Wars were masterminded by them. They are going to start the Third World War too. The White Brotherhood works with the Bildeberg club and all the others. They are assisted by the Zionists. They created Hitler and introduced the Swastika (broken cross, that is what it means). Hirohito of Japan was responsible for a massive bloodbath, but he was not punished like the others, after the Second World War because he was a member of the world ruling 3 member group mentioned above. Grey Wolves (Turkish Muslims), are connected to the White Brotherhood. Only Grey Wolves members may rule Turkey. They must always mantain a harsh stance against Greece/Christian Orthodoxy (Turgut Ozal, was exterminated for his softer stance).

The White Brotherhood want to destroy the followers of Jesus Christ. They call His followers, bipods or two-legged ones. Their methods are many: thirst, hunger on a worldwide scale. All plants and forests must be destroyed. Wars, so as to ensure maximum slaughter. They refer to humanity as a chicken breeding farm. They destroy humanity with drugs; they have contaminated our drinking water (it has been doctored with medication); our food is also contaminated and our clothes too from the fancy washing powders that we use (that is why everyone is getting ill and they don't know why). Thirst on a worldwide scale, for eg.. Euphrates to be dried up because of Turkey, which will lead to a confrontation with Iran/Syria. Hunger, for eg., Russia was the world's wheat provider, even the U.S.A relied on her. The White Brotherhood ensured that Russia would starve. In Moscow young women give themselves for a plate of food. Homosexuality, the U.S.A being its banner. One can go on and on, but there will be no end then. It is devestating. But do not despair, if you are a follower of our Lord Jesus Christ because He has defeated Satan and the world.

(This is a summarized version and a translation of a tape recording in Greek, from a Greek Orthodox perspective ofcourse, given to me by a Monk at Calvary/Golgotha in Jerusalem, Christmas, 2001. I cannot divulge any names, nor my own because this is a very dangerous subject. You will have to verify the truthfullness of the matter yourself. Please excuse my errors of spelling or other. May God forgive me if I am wrong about any of this, but I do it with honest intentions. God bless you. From a humble follower of our Lord Jesus Christ.)

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"These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." JOHN 16:33

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"LORD JESUS CHRIST, HAVE MERCY ON ME."

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

Comedic pre-quel to "Citizen Kane" on stage in San Francisco...

2007-08-16T16:20:31Z

Yes, it’s true; there’s comedic pre-quel to Citizen Kane, since; “behind every great man there is an evil sled.”

Thunderbird Theatre Company of San Francisco is presenting:
"Aaah! Rosebud"
Written by Peter Finch of KFOG radio (SF).

Known for a cult-like following for their off-beat comedies such as the pirate spoof; "Lusty Booty", and the last year's "Release the Kraken" (a mash-up of “Clash of the titans meets “clerks”), the Thunderbird brings yet another original comedy to stage.

San Francisco performances are every Thursday through Monday nights
August 23rd until September 8th.
7:30pm doors, 8:00pm curtain
Performed at: New Langton Arts
1246 Folsom Street (between 8th & 9th, South of Market)

Details, about the show at the website:
http://www.thunderbirdtheatre.com/
Recorded Info: (415) 289-6766

To give you an even better idea, read the recent (Aug. 12th) Pink Section Datebook article from the SF Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/12/PKRPRB2RS.DTL

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Betty Hutton, Yvonne De Carlo, Alice Faye

2007-04-02T02:31:18Z

Not much to them but I made 3 little Tribute Tribes for Hutton, De Carlo and Faye. Three of my favorites. Two of which have passed away recently. I had a lot of pictures of all three and wanted to put them somewhere. So stop by and take a look. Join if you want, I wont mind.

Alice Faye Fanatics
http://tribes.tribe.net/alicefaye

Betty Hutton's Square Social Circle
http://tribes.tribe.net/bettyhutton

Yvonne De Carlo/The Munsters
http://tribes.tribe.net/munsters

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

RIP Betty Hutton "The Blonde Bombshell"

2007-03-19T22:48:00Z

Diehard fans still remember Betty Hutton
By Chris Hicks

In the Hollywood lexicon, "blonde bombshell" is as overworked a phrase as any.
Leading that pantheon would, of course, be Marilyn Monroe, along with Jean Harlow, Mae West and Jayne Mansfield, followed by such contenders as Lana Turner, Betty Grable, Kim Novak, Carroll Baker ... and many other Hollywood stars who have been similarly described.

But a unique example was Betty Hutton, who died this week at 86.
In Hutton's case, it wasn't beauty or steamy come-hither looks in sexy roles. She was attractive but no remarkable beauty. She wasn't cast as a sex symbol. And she was known more for farce than romantic drama, although she did both.
When applied to Hutton, "blonde bombshell" did not refer to sensuality but rather explosive comedy.

Love her or hate her, Hutton was an unforgettable personality on the screen ... although she is, in fact, largely forgotten today except by a core of fans. Of which I am one.
Aside from a quick, unbilled comic cameo in a Martin & Lewis flick and a musical appearance in "Duffy's Tavern," Hutton made 18 features over her 15-year film career. And aside from bootlegs, only seven of those are on DVD:

• "Annie Get Your Gun" (1950) is a wonderful showpiece for Hutton — funny, romantic and serious, with those great Irving Berlin songs. She's especially delightful with "Doin' What Comes Naturally" and her "Anything You Can Do" duet with Howard Keel.

• "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952) won the best-picture Oscar, though it is generally derided by critics today as a typically overblown Cecil B. De Mille effort. But it's fun, with a real inside look at circus life and a still-thrilling train-crash climax. Hutton co-stars with Charlton Heston.

• "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (1944) is by filmmaker Preston Sturges, and his sharp wit is all that kept the censors away from this hysterical wartime satire about Hutton getting pregnant and not knowing who the father is.

• "Here Come the Waves" (1944) has Hutton at her best playing two roles — one of them quite subdued — in this Bing Crosby naval comedy. (In the box set: "Bing Crosby: Screen Legend Collection.")

• "Star Spangled Rhythm" (1942) is a variety show with an array of musical and comedy talent, with Hutton in a lead role. (On a Bob Hope double-bill DVD with "My Favorite Blonde.")

• "The Perils of Pauline" (1947) is a very funny fictionalization of the silent-movie serial queen, and "The Stork Club" (1945), a lesser but enjoyable comedy, features one of Hutton's biggest hit songs, "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief." (Available as a DVD double-bill).

In addition to her films and live nightclub performances, Hutton also had a half-hour sitcom for one season (1959-60), the 1954 TV special "Satins & Spurs" (which bears a strong resemblance to "Annie Get Your Gun," though not nearly as good), and guested on a number of musical-variety shows and a handful of dramatic shows, including "Gunsmoke" (1965).
Most critics feel "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" is her best film, and it may be. But she is a lot of fun in a lot of other movies. And nowhere does she come across better than in her first picture.

Looking at "The Fleet's In" (1942) — a light comedy in which she plays fourth-fiddle to William Holden, Dorothy Lamour and Eddie Bracken — it's easy to see why Hutton became an overnight sensation.

Holden plays a shy sailor trying to woo patrician Lamour, and Bracken is his comical buddy. But Hutton, as Lamour's roommate, is a riot, and she handily runs away with the picture. She also gets to sing one of her biggest hits, the hilarious "Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry." And her great comic chemistry with Eddie Bracken lead to their being teamed in several more films.

Alas, "The Fleet's In" has never been released on home video. Nor have most of Hutton's movies.
She's way overdue for a box set.

Hit songs
Murder, He Says (1943) (performed in the film Happy Go Lucky)
Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief
I Wish I Didn't Love You So
It Had To Be You
Hit the Road to Dreamland
Orange Colored Sky
You Can't Get a Man with a Gun
Can't Stop Talking
Blow A Fuse (Covered by Björk as "It's Oh So Quiet")
A Bushel and a Peck (with Perry Como)
His Rocking Horse Ran Away
Bluebirds In My Belfry
The Fuddy Duddy Watchmaker
Ol' Man Mose
There's a Fellow Waiting in Poughkeepsie
Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry

He Says Murder He Says
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGNm89GZBE

Betty Hutton and Fred Astaire Cant Stop Talking About Him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv4YmL4CWmI

"I Wake Up In the Morning Feeling Fine"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ml2CkbiqLg

Betty Hutton - Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZYYqQInrDg

I'm Just a Square (In a Social Circle)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hccsA5wv_hE

Betty Hutton - Papa Don't Preach To Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t82S-wPbzQs

Rumble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1y7QgCmAPo

Last public performance part 1 1983
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVee_tNgeKY

Last public performance part 2 1983
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2fTOTW44y0

Wiki Bio

Betty Hutton (born Elizabeth June Thornburg, February 26, 1921 – March 11, 2007[1]) was an American film actress and singer.

Early life

She began life as Elizabeth June Thornburg, a daughter of railroad foreman Percy E. Thornburg (1896-1939) and his wife, the former Mabel Lum (1901-1967). Her father abandoned the family for another woman and they did not hear from or see him again until they received a telegram, in 1939, informing them of his death from suicide. Hutton was raised by her mother along with her sister, Marion, who later took the surname Hutton and was later billed as the actress Sissy Jones. They started singing in the family's speakeasy when Hutton was 3 years old. Related troubles with the police kept the family on the move, and eventually they moved to Detroit. When interviewed as an established star appearing at the premiere of Let's Dance (1950), her mother — arriving with her, and following a police escort — commented, "This time the police were in front of us." Hutton sang in several local bands as a teenager, and at one point visited New York City hoping to perform on Broadway, where she was rejected.

A few years later, she was scouted by orchestra leader Vincent Lopez, who gave Hutton her entry into entertainment. In 1939 she appeared in several musical shorts for Warner Bros., and appeared on Broadway in Panama Hattie and Two for the Show, both produced by Buddy DeSylva.

Career

When DeSylva became a producer at Paramount Pictures, Hutton was signed to a starring role in The Fleet's In in 1942. She made 14 films in 11 years during the 1940s and early 1950s, including Annie Get Your Gun for MGM, which hired Hutton to replace an exhausted Judy Garland in the role of Annie Oakley. The film and the leading role, retooled for Hutton, was a smash hit, with the biggest critical praise going to Betty (her obituary in The New York Times described her as "a brassy, energetic performer with a voice that could sound like a fire alarm") but Hutton, like Garland, was earning a reputation for being extremely difficult.

In 1942, she signed with Capitol Records, one of the first artists to do so, but was unhappy with their management, and then signed with RCA Victor. Among her many films was a curious, unbilled cameo in Sailor Beware (1952) with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, in which she portrayed Jerry's girlfriend, Hetty Button. Her time as a Hollywood star came to an end due to contract disagreements with Paramount following The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and Somebody Loves Me (1952), a biopic of singer Blossom Seeley. The New York Times indicated that her film career ended because of her insistence that her husband at the time, Charles O'Curran, direct her next film; when the studio declined, Hutton broke her contract.

Hutton worked in radio, appeared in Las Vegas and in nightclubs, then tried her luck on the new medium of television. An original musical TV "spectacular" written especially for Hutton, Satin 'n Spurs (1954), was an enormous flop with the public and critics, despite being one of the first television programs televised nationally by NBC in compatible color. Desilu Productions took a chance on Hutton and in 1959 gave her a sitcom The Betty Hutton Show, which quickly faded. Her last TV outing was a brief guest appearance in 1975 on Baretta.

In 1967, she was signed to star in two low-budget Westerns for Paramount, but was fired shortly after the projects began. Afterwards, Hutton had trouble with alcohol and substance abuse, eventually attempting suicide after losing her singing voice in 1970 and having a nervous breakdown. She divorced her fourth husband, jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli, and declared herself bankrupt. However, after regaining control of her life through a church, she converted to Roman Catholicism and went on to teach acting and to cook at a rectory in Rhode Island.

She replaced Dorothy Loudon as the evil Miss Hannigan in Annie on Broadway for a limited run in 1980. Her last known performance in any medium was on Jukebox Saturday Night, which aired on PBS in 1983. Robert Osborne interviewed her for TCM's "Private Screenings" in April 2000. (there is a link to the interview at the botton of the page)

Marriages

The actress's first marriage was to camera manufacturer Ted Briskin on September 3 1945; they divorced in 1950. Two daughters were born to the couple, Lindsay Diane Briskin (born 1946) and Candice Elizabeth Briskin (born 1948). Ted Briskin had a brief 21-day marriage to Joan Dixon after this divorce. He died in 1980 in Los Angeles.

Hutton's second marriage was in 1952 to choreographer Charles O'Curran, and they divorced in 1955; he died in 1984.

Her third marriage was in 1955 to Alan W. Livingston, the creator of Bozo the Clown; they divorced five years later, although some accounts refer to this as a nine-month marriage.

Her fourth and final marriage was in 1960 to jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli, who was born in 1923, a brother of Conte Candoli. Hutton and Candoli had one child, Carolyn Candoli (born 1962) and then divorced in 1967 (although some accounts place the year as 1964).

Hutton lived near Palm Springs, California until her death due to complications from colon cancer at 86 years of age. Carl Bruno, executor of her estate and a long-term friend, told the Associated Press that she died on the evening of Sunday, March 11, 2007.

Filmography

The Fleet's In (1942)
Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
Happy Go Lucky (1943)
Let's Face It (1943)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)
And the Angels Sing (1944)
Here Come the Waves (1944)
Incendiary Blonde (1945)
Duffy's Tavern (1945)
The Stork Club (1945)
Cross My Heart (1946)
The Perils of Pauline (1947)
Dream Girl (1948)
Red, Hot and Blue (1949)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Let's Dance (1950)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Sailor Beware (1952)
Somebody Loves Me (1952)
Spring Reunion (1957)

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002149/

Betty at Turner Classic Movies
http://tcmdb.com/participant/participant.jsp?participantId=91392

You cant listen to 15 songs by Betty here And watch clips From Annie Get Your Gun, Perils of Pauline, Miracles of Morgans Creek and well as the shorts Murders He Says, Old Man Moses Is Dead, One For the Book and the TCM interview with Robert Osbourne from 2000 at this link
http://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Star%20Pages/Hutton,%20Betty2.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

do you recognize this popeye pic ?

2007-01-11T17:53:07Z

posted to my profile / blog.
found it on the web, but can't quite read the logo bottom left.
want to know if it is public domain or not?
and which cartoon was it from?
thanks.

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

12/10 Una Merkel

2006-12-10T08:04:02Z

Una Merkel (December 10, 1903 – January 2, 1986) was an American film actress.

Born in Covington, Kentucky, Merkel resembled the popular actress Lillian Gish, and her resemblance allowed her to enter films in 1920 as Gish's double in the film Way Down East. She appeared in several films during the silent era but spent most of her time in New York working on Broadway. She returned to Hollywood and achieved her greatest success with the advent of "talkies". She played Ann Rutledge in the 1930 film Abraham Lincoln and during the 1930s became a popular second lead in a number of films, usually playing the wisecracking best friend of the heroine such as Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, and Dorothy Lamour. One of her most famous roles was in the Western Destry Rides Again (1939) where her character has a fistfight with the character played by star Marlene Dietrich. She played W.C. Fields elder daughter in "The Bank Dick" (1940).

Her career went into decline during the 1940s and although she continued working it was in less prestigious productions. She made a comeback as a middle aged woman playing mothers and maiden aunts, and in 1956 won a Tony Award for her role in The Ponder Heart. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Summer and Smoke (1961). Her final film role was in the 1966 Elvis Presley film Spinout.

She died in Los Angeles, California at age 82.

Una at The Classic Movie Years
http://www.thegoldenyears.org/merkel.html

Una at Reel Movie Classics
http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Merkel/merkel.htm

Una's Spotlight at ReelJewels
http://www.reeljewels.com/reeljewels/spotlight1.htm

Links to images of Una on Tribe
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/62cb5c19-b00e-4583-8dc8-f139fee0b180
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/fa40dbd5-ed7b-473a-b0df-8d0a82e71fe0
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/293cab61-9deb-4c1a-a226-1e3d8c2004eb
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/10407537-44a2-4cbb-84e7-cc3161907e88
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/d08cbbd0-8f28-427e-9765-28d1b31f003c
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/7f82a24a-30bc-4bfb-8795-9820bf3616d9
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/16151112-69eb-4c7a-a3ef-2103ec888971
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/0a643d62-17b2-4566-97e8-1853d4382bab
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/67ddc6a5-ddf1-4bb1-b128-163b865ccda1
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/527927d6-6586-4409-a380-f1a4910735c1
http://characteractors.tribe.net/photos/0e452633-b765-4920-83d8-eb2af0d88fe5

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Bugs Bunny

2006-12-01T06:40:09Z

I thought this might fit here. A Bugs Bunny Tribe has just started. Any interested parties can head on over to
http://tribes.tribe.net/looneybugs

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

The Thin Man: Nick Nora and Asta

2006-11-21T22:34:27Z

I stumbled upon a new Tribe for The Thin Man. Anyone interested?

http://tribes.tribe.net/thinman?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Bf5b82d49-312b-4794-911a-e375821bdbba%5D

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

any interest?wc feilds tribe?

2006-11-05T21:53:45Z

im thinking of starting o0ne -all welcome -or tell me if one exists

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 18 replies

combing the discount bins

2006-11-05T13:48:54Z

some time ago, i came accross a single dvd of Chaplin features... then, two days ago, came accross a set of four dvds released by the same company: Platinum Disc Corporation... sure, they are cheap releases, possibly just 'this' side of pirated, but where else are you going to come accross the following, collected, for a total of less than $14?

sunnyside
a woman
his favorite pastime
caught in a cabaret
the knockout
the tramp
the bank

tillie's punctured romance
making a living
kid auto races at venice
film johnny
the rounders
the new janitor
twenty minutes of love
the fatal mallet

the kid
cruel, cruel love
recreation
the masquerader
by the sea
mabel's strange predicament
between showers
a busy day

shoulder arms
triple trouble
laffing gas
the rival mashers
in the park
mabel's married life
face on the barroom floor

a night out
police
his new job
the immigrant
a night in the show
the cure
the floorwalker

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 8 replies

10/6 Carole Lombard

2006-10-06T10:05:09Z

Carole Lombard (October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American actress. She was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her parents were Frederick C. Peters and Elizabeth Knight. Lombard's paternal grandfather, John Claus Peters, was the son of German immigrants, Claus Peters and Caroline Catherine Eberlin. Lombard's mother's family originates in England; her ancestors John and Martha Cheney emigrated to the North America in 1634.

Career

Lombard made her film debut at the age of twelve after she was seen playing baseball in the street by director Allan Dwan, who cast her as a tom-boy in A Perfect Crime (1921). In the 1920s she worked in several low-budget productions credited as Jane Peters, and then later as Carol Lombard. In 1925 she was signed as a contract player with 20th Century Fox and she also worked for Mack Sennett and Pathé Pictures. She became a well known actress and made a smooth transition to sound films, starting with High Voltage (1929). In 1930 she began working for Paramount Pictures.

In October 1930 she met William Powell and the couple were married on June 26, 1931. Lombard commented to fan magazines that she did not believe their sixteen-year age difference would present a problem, but friends felt they were ill-suited as Lombard had an extroverted personality while Powell was more reserved. They divorced in 1933 but remained friends and worked together without acrimony.

Lombard became one of Hollywood's top comedy actresses in the 1930s. In comedies like Twentieth Century (1934) directed by Howard Hawks, My Man Godfrey (1936) directed by Gregory La Cava, for which she received an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination, and Nothing Sacred (1937) directed by William A. Wellman, she received praise from critics and was described as one of the key exponents of screwball comedy. Despite her glamorous looks Lombard was a natural comedienne, and was not afraid to look silly for the sake of being funny. Offscreen, she was much loved for her down-to-earth personality and sense of humor. She also loved playing pranks during filming. About her husband Clark Gable, she once joked, "If his pee-pee was one inch shorter, they'd be calling him the Queen of Hollywood."

In the mid-1930s Lombard started an affair with Clark Gable. Their relationship was kept quiet due to the fact that Gable was still married to his second wife, Ria. Gable was finally divorced from Ria on March 7, 1939, and on March 29, 1939, Gable and Lombard were married. They bought a ranch, previously owned by director Raoul Walsh in San Fernando Valley, California. They called each other "Ma" and "Pa," and lived a happy, unpretentious life. Although he remarried twice after Lombard's death, to all who knew Gable, she was the love of his life.

Death

When at the end of 1941 the US entered World War II, Lombard travelled to her home state of Indiana for a war bond rally. At four o'clock in the morning of Friday, January 16, 1942, Lombard and her mother boarded a DC-3 airplane to return to California. After refueling in Las Vegas, the plane took off on a clear night, and twenty-three minutes later crashed into Mount Potosi, 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas. All of the 22 passengers aboard were killed.

Just before boarding the plane in Indiana, Carole had addressed her fans, saying, "Before I say goodbye to you all, come on and join me in a big cheer! V for Victory!" President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who admired her patriotism, declared her the first woman killed in the line of duty during the war and posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Shortly after her death at the age of thirty-three, Gable (who was inconsolable and devastated by her loss) joined the United States Army Air Forces, serving as a gunner on a bomber on combat missions over Europe. The Liberty ship SS Lombard was named for her and Gable attended its launch on January 15, 1944.

Her final film, To Be or Not to Be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Jack Benny ― a satire about the Nazism and the World War II ― was in post-production at the time of her death. The film's producers decided to cut the part of the film in which her character asks, "What can happen in a plane?" as they felt it was in poor taste, given the circumstances of Lombard's death. A similar editing instance happened when the 1940 Warner Brother cartoon, A Wild Hare, was reissued. Lombard's name was originally mentioned in a game of "Guess Who," but all reissue prints have the name dubbed over with Barbara Stanwyck.

She is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. The name on her headstone is "Carole Lombard Gable". Although Gable remarried, he was buried next to her when he died in 1960.

Filmography
A Perfect Crime (1921)
Gold Heels (1924)
Dick Turpin (1925)
Marriage in Transit (1925)
Gold and the Girl (1925)
Hearts and Spurs (1925)
Durand of the Badlands (1925)
The Plastic Age (1925)
The Road to Glory (1926)
The Johnstown Flood (1926)
The Fighting Eagle (1927) (unconfirmed role)
Smith's Pony (1927) (short subject)
Gold Digger of Weepah (1927) (short subject)
My Best Girl (1927)
The Girl from Everywhere (1927) (short subject)
The Beach Club (1928) (short subject)
Run, Girl, Run (1928) (short subject)
Smith's Army Life (1928) (short subject)
The Best Man (1928) (short subject)
The Swim Princess (1928) (short subject)
The Bicycle Flirt (1928) (short subject)
Smith's Restaurant (1928) (short subject)
The Divine Sinner (1928)
The Girl from Nowhere (1928) (short subject)
His Unlucky Night (1928) (short subject)
Power (1928)
The Campus Vamp (1928) (short subject)
Motorboat Mamas (1928)(short subject)
Me, Gangster (1928)
Show Folks (1928)
Hubby's Weekend Trip (1928) (short subject)
The Campus Carmen (1928) (short subject)
Ned McCobb's Daughter (1928)
Matchmaking Mamas (1929) (short subject)
Don't Get Jealous (1929) (short subject)
High Voltage (1929)
Big News (1929)
The Racketeer (1929)
Dynamite (1929) (unconfirmed role)
The Arizona Kid (1930)
Safety in Numbers (1930)
Fast and Loose (1930)
It Pays to Advertise (1931)
Man of the World (1931)
Ladies' Man (1931)
Up Pops the Devil (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
No One Man (1932)
Sinners in the Sun (1932)
Virtue (1932)
No More Orchids (1932)
No Man of Her Own (1932)
Hollywood on Parade No. 11 (1933) (short subject)
From Hell to Heaven (1933)
Supernatural (1933)
The Eagle and the Hawk (1933)
Brief Moment (1933)
White Woman (1933]])
Bolero (1934)
We're Not Dressing (1934]])
Twentieth Century (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
Lady by Choice (1934)
The Gay Bride (1934)
The Fashion Side of Hollywood (1935) (short subject)
Rumba (1935)
Hands Across the Table (1935)
Love Before Breakfast (1936)
The Princess Comes Across (1936)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
Swing High, Swing Low (1937)
Nothing Sacred (1937)
True Confession (1937)
Fools for Scandal (1938)
Hollywood Goes to Town (1938) (short subject)
Screen Snapshots: Stars on Horseback (1939) (short subject)
Made for Each Other (1939)
In Name Only (1939)
Vigil in the Night (1940)
They Knew What They Wanted (1940)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
Picture People: Hollywood at Home (1942) (short subject)
To Be or Not to Be (1942)

The Carole Lombard Tribe
http://carolelombard.tribe.net/

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001479/

Lombard at Silent Movies .com
http://silent-movies.com/Ladies/PLombard.html

Lombard at Classic Movies
http://www.thegoldenyears.org/lombard.html

Lombards Lair
http://www.meredy.com/carolelombard/

Carole at Classic Movie Favorites
http://www.classicmoviefavorites.com/lombard/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

10/2 Bud Abbot - Abbot & Costello

2006-10-02T15:42:14Z

William Alexander “Bud” Abbott (October 2, 1897 – April 24, 1974) was an American actor, producer and comedian born in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He is best remembered as the straight man of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, with Lou Costello.

Abbott was born into a show business family. His parents worked for the Barnum and Bailey Circus: his mother, Rae Fisher, was a bareback rider and his father, Harry, was an advance man. Bud dropped out of school as a child and began working at Coney Island. When Bud was 16, his father, now an employee of the Columbia Burlesque Wheel, installed him in the box office of the Casino Theater in Brooklyn. Eventually Bud began putting together touring burlesque shows. In 1918 he married Betty Smith, a burlesque dancer and comedienne. Around 1924 Bud started performing as a straight man in an act with Betty. As his stature grew, Abbott began working with veteran comedians like Harry Steppe and Harry Evanson.

Abbott crossed paths with Lou Costello in burlesque in the early 1930s. Abbott was producing and performing in Minsky's Burlesque shows, while Costello was a rising comic. They formally teamed up in 1936 and performed together in burlesque, vaudeville, minstrel shows, and cinemas.

In burlesque tradition, their salaries were split 60/40, favoring Abbott, because the straight man was always viewed as the more valuable member of the team. (Later, after they became movie stars, Costello had the split reversed in his favor.)

In 1938 they received national exposure for the first time by performing on the Kate Smith Hour radio show, which led to the duo appearing in a Broadway musical, The Streets of Paris. In 1940, Universal signed Abbott and Costello for their first film, One Night in the Tropics. Although Abbott and Costello were only filling supporting roles, they stole the film with their classic routines, including "Who's On First?" (It is widely rumored that Abbott and Costello are the only two non-baseball players honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but this is actually not true.)[1]

During World War II, Abbott and Costello were among the most popular and highest-paid stars in the world. Between 1941 and 1956 they made more than 30 films, and earned a percentage of the profits on each. They were popular on radio throughout the 1940s, primarily on their own program which ran from 1942 until 1947 on NBC and from 1947 to 1949 on ABC. In the 1950s they brought their comedy to live television on the Colgate Comedy Hour, and launched their own half-hour series, The Abbott and Costello Show.

The team's popularity waned in the 1950s, and Abbott and Costello parted ways in 1957. Lou Costello died in 1959.

Abbott attempted to begin performing again in 1960, with a new partner, Candy Candido, and received good reviews. But Abbott called it quits, remarking that "No one could ever live up to Lou." On TV, he performed in a dramatic episode of General Electric Theater titled "The Joke's On Me" in 1961. A few years later Bud provided his own voice for the Hanna-Barbera animated series Abbott and Costello, with Stan Irwin providing the voice of Lou Costello.

Bud and Betty were married for 55 years. The couple adopted two children: Bud, Jr. in 1942, and Vickie in 1949. Bud Jr. died in 1997.

Bud Abbott has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: the radio star is located on 6333 Hollywood Blvd., the motion pictures star is located on 1611 Vine St., and the TV star is located on 6740 Hollywood Blvd.

Bud Abbott suffered from epilepsy and died of cancer at the age of 76 (reported as 78) on April 24, 1974 in Woodland Hills, California. He was cremated at his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean

Bud at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0007941/

Official Abbot and Costello Website
http://www.abbottandcostello.net/

Buds page at Clown-Ministry.com
http://www.clown-ministry.com/index_1.php?/site/articles/bud_abbott_biography_team_of_abbott_and_costello_straight_man/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

10/2 Groucho Marx

2006-10-02T15:24:11Z

Julius Henry Marx, known as Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian, working both with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and on his own.

Childhood & Pre-Hollywood Successes

The Marx family grew up on the Upper East Side of New York City, in a small Jewish neighborhood sandwiched between Irish-German and Italian neighborhoods.
Groucho had a showbusiness uncle: Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean, a noted vaudeville act of the early 20th century. According to Groucho, when Shean visited he would throw the local waifs a few coins so that when he knocked at the door he would be surrounded by children like adoring fans. Groucho and his brothers respected his opinions and asked him on several occasions to write some material for them.

Shean's sister, Minnie Schoenberg Marx, was Groucho's mother. She didn't have an entertainment industry career, but she had intense ambition for her sons to go on the stage like their uncle. While pushing her eldest son Leonard (Chico Marx) in piano lessons, she found that Julius had a pleasant soprano voice and the ability to remain on key. Even though Julius' early career goal was to become a doctor, the family's need for income forced Julius out of school at the age of twelve. By that time, Julius had become a voracious reader, particularly fond of Horatio Alger. Throughout the rest of his life, Groucho would augment his lack of formal education by becoming very well-read.

After a few comically unsuccessful stabs at entry-level office work and other jobs suitable for adolescents, Julius took to the stage as a boy singer in 1905. Though he reputedly claimed that in the world of vaudeville he enjoyed only "modest success" but was "hopelessly average," it was merely a wisecrack. By 1909, Minnie Marx successfully managed to assemble her sons into a low-quality vaudeville singing group. Billing themselves as 'The Four Nightingales', Julius, Milton (Gummo Marx), Adolph (Harpo Marx), and another boy singer, Lou Levy, traveled the U.S. vaudeville circuits to little fanfare. After exhausting their prospects in the East, the family moved to La Grange, Illinois to play the Midwest.

For a time in vaudeville, all the brothers performed in ethnic accents; Leonard Marx, the oldest Marx brother, developed the "Italian" accent he used as "Chico" to convince some roving bullies that he was Italian, not Jewish. Groucho's character from "Fun In Hi Skule" was an ethnic German, so Groucho played him with a German accent. However, after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915, public anti-German sentiment was widespread, and Groucho's "German" character was booed, so he quickly dropped the accent and developed the fast-talking wise guy character he would make famous.

The Marx Brothers became the biggest comedic stars of the Palace Theatre, which was to Vaudeville what Carnegie Hall is to classical music or St. Peter's is to Roman Catholicism. Then, when he thought they couldn't reach any higher, brother Chico's deal-making skills resulted in three hit plays on Broadway. No comedy routine had ever infected the hallowed Broadway circuit. But reports are unanimous that the Broadway audiences were just as convulsed with laughter as had been the vaudeville ones. The Marx Brothers were now more than a vaudeville sensation; they were a Broadway sensation.

It's important to note, therefore, that all this predated their being a Hollywood sensation. By the time the Marxes made their first movie, they had already been stars with sharply honed skills; and when Groucho was relaunched to stardom on "You Bet Your Life," he had already been performing successfully for a half century.

Career Highlights

Groucho developed a routine as a wise-cracking hustler with a distinctive chicken-walking lope and an exaggerated greasepaint mustache and eyebrows, improvising insults to stuffy dowagers (often played by Margaret Dumont) and anyone else who stood in his way. He and his brothers starred in a series of extraordinarily popular movies and stage shows, often ad libbing. (See: Marx Brothers)

The use of greasepaint originated spontaneously before a vaudeville performance when he did not have time to apply the pasted-on mustache he had been using. The absurdity of the greasepaint mustache was never discussed on-screen, but in a famous scene in Duck Soup, where both Chico and Harpo are disguising themselves as Groucho, they are briefly seen applying the greasepaint, implicitly answering any question a viewer might have had about where Groucho got his mustache and eyebrows.

In the 1930s and 1940s Groucho also worked as a radio comedian and show host. One of his earliest stints was a short lived series in 1932 entitled Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, co-starring Chico, who was the only one of his brothers willing to appear on the show. Most of the scripts and discs were subsequently destroyed (except the last shows) only turning up in 1988 in the Library of Congress. In 1947, Groucho was chosen to host a radio quiz program entitled You Bet Your Life, which moved over to television in 1950. The show consisted of Groucho interviewing the contestants and "ad libbing" jokes. Then they would play a brief quiz. The show was responsible for the phrases "Say the secret woid [word] and divide $100" (that is, each contestant would get $50); and "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?" or "What color is the White House?" (asked when Groucho felt sorry for a contestant who had not won anything). It would run 11 years on television.

One quip from Groucho concerned his response to Sam Wood, the director of the classic film A Night at the Opera. Wood was furious with the Marx brothers ad-libs and antics on the set and yelled to all in disgust that he "cannot make actors out of clay." Without missing a beat, Groucho responded, "Nor can you make a director out of Wood." A widely reported, but likely apocryphal, ad-lib is reportedly a response to a female contestant who had almost a dozen children. Groucho asked why the contestant had so many children, to which the contestant replied "I love my husband." Groucho responded, "Lady, I love my cigar, too, but I take it out once in a while."

Throughout his career he introduced a number of memorable songs in films, including "Hooray for Captain Spaulding", "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It", "Hello, I Must Be Going", "Everyone Says I Love You" and "Lydia the Tattooed Lady". Frank Sinatra, who once quipped that the only thing he could do better than Marx was sing, made a film with Marx and Jane Russell in 1951 entitled Double Dynamite.

Personal life

Groucho was married three times, and all of his marriages ended in divorce. His first wife was chorus girl Ruth Johnson, by whom he had two children, Arthur Marx and Miriam Marx. He had a daughter, Melinda Marx, by his second wife, Kay Gorcey, former wife of Leo Gorcey. His third wife was actress Eden Hartford (married 17 July 1954, divorced 4 December 1969)[2]. All three wives were alcoholics. Many of his detractors wondered if he was just attracted to future alcoholics or if he drove them to it. Unfortunately there is a shred of truth there; for if anyone was "always on," it was Groucho Marx. Other than the rarest of occasions, such as parts of his interview with Edward R. Murrow, Groucho played Groucho everywhere he went and in everything he did.

Often was the case, for instance, when the Marxes would arrive at a restaurant and be greeted by an interminable wait. "Just tell the Maitre d' who we are," his wife would nag. (In his pre-moustache days, he was rarely recognized in public.) Groucho would say, "OK, OK. Good evening, sir. My name is Jones. This is Mrs. Jones, and here are all the little Joneses." Now his wife would be furious and insist that he tell the Maitre d' the truth. "Oh, all right," said Groucho. "My name is Smith. This is Mrs. Smith, and here are all the little Smiths."

Similar anecdotes are corroborated by Groucho's friends, not one of which went without being publicly embarrassed by Groucho on at least one occasion. Once, at a restaurant (the most common location of Groucho's antics), a fan came up to him and said, "Excuse me, but aren't you Groucho Marx?" "Yes," Groucho answered annoyedly. "Oh, I'm your biggest fan! Could I ask you a favor?" the man asked. "Sure, what is it?" asked the even-more annoyed Groucho. "See my wife sitting over there? She's an even bigger fan of yours than I am! Would you be willing to insult her?" Groucho replied, "Sir, if my wife looked like that, I wouldn't need any help thinking of insults."

Off-stage Groucho was a voracious reader. He unceasingly lamented the fact that he had only a grammar school education, and to overcompensate he read everything he got his hands on. His knowledge of literature from all eras was by any standards extraordinary. Typical of his achievements, this one was discussed only demurely by Groucho himself. "I think TV is very educational," he once said. "Every time someone turns on a TV, I go in the other room and read."

Despite this lack of formal education, he wrote many extraordinarily funny books, including the autobiographical Groucho and Me (1959) (Da Capo Press, 1995, ISBN 0-306-80666-5) and Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1964) (Da Capo Press, 2002, ISBN 0-306-81104-9). And he was personal friends with such literary giants as T. S. Eliot and Carl Sandburg.

"You Bet Your Life"

In the mid 1940s, during a depressing lull in his career, Groucho was scheduled to appear on a radio show with Bob Hope. Annoyed that he was made to wait in the waiting room for 40 minutes, Groucho went on the air in a foul mood. Hope started by saying, "Why, it's Groucho Marx, ladies and gentlemen. (applause) Groucho, what brings you here from the hot desert?" Groucho retorted, "Hot desert my foot, I've been standing in the cold waiting room for 40 minutes." Groucho continued to ignore the script, and although Hope was a formidable ad-libber in his own right, he couldn't begin to keep up with Groucho, who lengthened the scene well beyond its allotted time slot with a veritable onslaught of improvized wisecracks.

Listening in on the show was producer John Guedel, who got a brainstorm. He approached Groucho about doing a quiz show. "A quiz show? Only actors who are completely washed up resort to a quiz show." Undeterred, Guedel explained that the quiz would be only a backdrop for Groucho's interviews of people, and the storm of ad-libbing that they would elicit. Groucho said, "Well, I've had no success in radio, and I can't hold on to a sponsor. At this point I'll try anything."

"You Bet Your Life" aired for four years on radio (1947-1951) and an additional eleven on television (1951-1962). The show was an utter sensation, one of the most popular in the history of radio and television. With one of the best announcers and, as it turns out, straight men in the business, George Fenneman, as his faithful foil, Groucho slayed his audiences with extraordinary improvised conversation, usually with the most ordinary of guests.

Ad-Libbing Controversy: Was it Scripted or Not?

Groucho's competitors became so livid by the comedian's unexpected and colossal success that they circulated rumors that "You Bet Your Life" was completely scripted and Groucho wasn't ad-libbing at all. They felt vindicated when a photo surfaced, taken from backstage, showing Groucho looking at a transparent screen.

The truth was the scripting was not only minimal, but it was more for the contestants' benefit. Groucho never once had a contestant (except for the famous ones) that he'd met previously. The staff fed Groucho the questions they thought he should ask, but Groucho himself never knew what the answer would be. Admittedly the staff did contain two writers, who would contribute a few jokes. None of this detracts one iota from the incontestable truth that the vast majority of Groucho's lines were ad-libbed and were far funnier than any tired quips dreamt up by the writers. Such as the time a woman said, "Groucho, I have eight children." "Well, that's some habit your husband has." "Well you have habits, too, Groucho. You have your cigar." "Yes, but I take it out once in a while!" Or another time when a pretty female contestant said, "My goal, Groucho, is to be able to stand on my own two feet, so that I can raise a family." Groucho replied, "You'll never be able to make a family if you're standing on your two feet." Both of these then-risqué wisecracks ended up on the cutting room floor, as Groucho knew they would. How, then, could Groucho have been scripted if some of his best lines were censored?

His best lines that did make it into the show are innumerable -- so countless that no attempt has ever been made to compile them all. Such as when a man said, "Groucho, I speak eight languages," and Groucho replied, "Eight languages, really? Which one are you speaking now?" Or when a single, unattached woman defended her solo status by explaining, "I'm waiting for Mr. Right." Groucho responded, "Wilbur or Orville?" In one segment, which is known to have been unscripted, Melinda Marx and Candice Bergen, both eleven-and-a-half at the time, were the two scheduled guests. Groucho of course knew they'd be there and that he would trade places with George Fenneman, to answer questions with the two girls and with Edgar Bergen. What he absolutely did not know was that the staff prepared questions in a category completely different from the one Groucho studied. From there, Groucho's one-liners, which could only have been ad-libbed, came in a drove. When Melinda answered a question correctly, her father said, "Why is it you take home such terrible report cards?" When Groucho answered a question wrong, he said, "I had no idea this show was so crooked." And so it went in one of the most famous television episodes of the era.

Groucho himself told Edward R. Murrow, "I've been ad-libbing my whole life. Why would I start needing a script now?" And what of the numberless anecdotes of Groucho, at a restaurant or in the grocery store, in ordinary, unscripted situations? Such as the day that Groucho was lunching with Alistair Cooke at Hillcrest Country Club. There were many others sitting at the same table (the famous "Round Table" of comedians), and when the waiter came to take the dessert orders, he couldn't keep track of who was having what. "Two éclairs and four coffees -- no, four éclairs and two coffees --- no, wait a minute --"

Groucho interrupted, "Four eclairs and seven coffees ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new na- ... oh, skip the rhetoric and bring the dessert!"

After lunch, Groucho lined up to pay his bill behind a fat, fussy lady fiddling around in her bag for change. The impatient comedian instructed the young cashier "Shoot her when you see the whites of her eyes!" The woman turned around and was thrilled that her abuser was none other than Groucho. "Oh!" she said. "Would you be Groucho Marx?" The quick-as-a-flash response: "What do you mean 'would I be Groucho Marx'? I am
Groucho Marx! Who would you be if you weren't yourself? Marilyn Monroe no doubt. Well pay your bill, lady, you'll never make it."

Later years

Groucho Marx appears on America Salutes Richard Rodgers

Around the time that "You Bet Your Life" transitioned to TV (1951), Groucho grew a real moustache, the lack of which had earlier been an effective means of hiding himself from fans.

In the early 1970s, Groucho made a comeback of sorts doing a live one-man show, including one recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1972 and released as a double album, An Evening with Groucho, on A&M Records. He also developed friendships with rock star Alice Cooper (the two were photographed together for Rolling Stone Magazine), and television host Dick Cavett, becoming a frequent guest on Cavett's late-night talk show. His previous works once again became popular and were accompanied by new books of interviews and other transcribed conversations by Richard J. Anobile and Charlotte Chandler. He had become quite frail by this time and his last few years were accompanied by descent into senility and a controversy over a companionship he had developed with Erin Fleming, which consequently raised disputes over his estate.

Groucho Marx died of pneumonia on August 19, 1977. However, during his last days he proved not only that he was a genuine ad-libber but that he was not, as rumor had it, senile. During his last visit with his dear colleague and friend, George Fenneman at one point had to lift Groucho from his wheelchair, his arms wrapped around the comedian's frail torso. Groucho said, "George, you always were a lousy dancer." Reportedly Groucho's last words were uttered in his hospital bed to one of his nurses. Shaking a thermometer, the orderly said, "I want to see if you have a temperature." Groucho replied, "Don't be silly. Everyone has a temperature."

He was cremated, and the ashes were interred in the Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, Los Angeles, California. (He had jokingly expressed desire to be buried above Marilyn Monroe.) Aged 86 at death, Groucho was the longest-lived of all the Marx brothers, though younger brother Zeppo survived him by two years. His death undoubtedly would have received more attention at the time had it not occurred three days after that of Elvis Presley. In an interview, he jokingly suggested his epitaph read "Excuse me, I can't stand up.", but his mausoleum marker bears only his stage name and years of birth and death.

Groucho's legacy

Various Groucho-like characters and Groucho references have appeared in popular culture, some long after Marx's death, a testament to the character's lasting appeal.
· Dave Sim, in his controversial comic book Cerebus the Aardvark, cast Groucho as the slippery, wisecracking but indomitable Lord Julius, Grandlord of the bureaucrat-ridden City-state of Palnu.
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· Bugs Bunny dresses as Groucho for the cartoon Slick Hare (1947), where he's trying to hide in plain sight in the Mocrumbo restaurant. (Meanwhile, Elmer Fudd dresses as Harpo Marx.)

· Bugs again befuddles Elmer Fudd memorably in "Wideo Wabbit" (1956) by imitating the mustachioed comedian in a You Bet Your Life parody called You Beat Your Wife. Later he imitates Art Carney and slaps comical glasses on Elmer, admonishing "Gee, what a Groucho!"

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· In The Way We Were (1973), Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford attend a party where everyone dresses as one of the Marx Brothers.
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· Alan Alda often vamped as Groucho on M*A*S*H and a minor semi-recurring character in the series (played by Loudon Wainwright III) was named Captain Calvin Spalding in a nod towards Groucho's character in Animal Crackers, Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding.
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· On Pokémon, Dr. Quackenpoker (a parody of Dr. Hackenbush from A Day at the Races) meets up with Ash & Company. He sounds and acts like Groucho (sans the cigar). A joke includes, "One day, I shot a Magikarp in my pajamas. How it got into my pajamas, I'll never know."
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· In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Grandpa Potts (Lionel Jeffries) tells a variation of the "elephant in my pajamas" joke.
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· Sir Isaiah Berlin also had a quatrain stating, "The world wouldn’t be /In such a snarl /If Marx had been Groucho /Instead of Karl".
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· In the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical Swing Time (1936), Astaire sings "Never Gonna Dance" by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, which includes the lines: "To Groucho Marx I give my cravat/To Harpo goes my shiny silk hat."
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· Gabe Kaplan portrayed Marx in the biographical Groucho (1982) which was originally produced on Broadway. Kaplan also impersonated Groucho, his hero, in his television series Welcome Back Kotter, and in WhatzUp Magazine recalled that he had even approached Groucho to make a cameo on the show but Groucho's care-giver, Erin Fleming, would not allow it. (According to Mark Evanier, Marx did visit the set with Fleming, but was not well enough to perform.)
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· In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "A Night in Kokomo", Groucho and his brothers have been re-assembled. This is noteworthy because most of the target audience of this show most likely never watched their movies.

· In Tiziano Sclavi's comic book series Dylan Dog, the hero's sidekick and assistant is called and looks like Groucho Marx. His moustache was removed in the US version of the series.

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· Rob Zombie uses five Groucho Marx character names (Captain Spaulding from Animal Crackers, Otis Driftwood from A Night at the Opera, Rufus Firefly from Duck Soup, S. Quentin Quale from Go West, and Wolf J. Flywheel from 'The Big Store) for his movies, House of 1000 Corpses & The Devil's Rejects.
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· At the end of the basketball episode of Clone High where Joan reveals that she dressed up as a man to play on the team, Principal Scudworth calls out for everyone else wearing a fake moustache to please leave. A man with a fake moustache walks by, followed by a goose wearing a similar moustache, followed by Groucho Marx (or the clone thereof).
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· In an episode of the Spanish sitcom Aquí no hay quien viva, Paco (Guillermo Ortega) does an impression of Marx in costume, sporting the fake moustache and eyebrows, glasses and a cigar, imitating Marx's high-pitched fast-talking voice while speaking in Spanish.
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· Two of Queen's albums, A Night at the Opera (1975) and A Day at the Races (1976) are named after two of the Marx Brothers' films. Queen were Marx Brothers fans and decided to use these titles for their fourth and fifth albums after watching the films. (From "The Making Of A Night At The Opera")
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· In character as Mike Stivic, Rob Reiner imitated Groucho Marx on a few occasions on the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, including a few scenes in a 1974 episode in which Mike Stivic and his wife Gloria (Sally Struthers) get ready to go to a Marx Brothers film festival; Mike, dressed as Groucho, does a number of imitations. Gloria is dressed as Harpo Marx.
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· Robin Williams's Genie in Aladdin briefly impersonates Groucho while enumerating the conditions of wishes at the beginning. He appears for a few seconds in black and white and is even followed by a duck dropping from the ceiling (a reference to You Bet Your Life). Doubtless, this in-joke was intended for the adult audience of the film. Also, in the second sequel of the film, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the genie briefly morphes into three of the Marx brothers at once when trying to cheer up Princess Jasmine.
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· The Vlasic Pickles stork mascot is clearly a homage to Groucho, holding the pickle like a cigar and having a very similar voice.

· In the animated series Animaniacs, the character Yakko acts similarly to Groucho quite often.

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· MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch included an episode in which a deathmatch pitted Groucho against John Wayne, in which Harpo and Chico also make appearances during the fight. Roger Jackson provided the voice of Groucho, and Jimmy St. Cleve voiced Chico.
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· In a tribute to Groucho, the BBC remade the radio sitcom Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, with contemporary actors playing the parts of the original cast. The series is currently being repeated on digital radio station BBC7.
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· In the Cartoon Network series Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, a character named Rubber Chicken wears Groucho glasses and talks like him and makes jokes like him. Also, in the episode "Imposter's Home for Make-em-ups", when Frankie dresses in a costume and calls herself "Goof-Goof", she talks to herself about her plan in a Groucho voice and does his eyebrow raising face.
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· In a Sesame Street movie promo for Lowe's Theaters, Elmo is seen dressed as Groucho, with Telly as Harpo and Herry Monster as Chico.
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· In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Scaredy Pants", Patrick Star disguises himself as Groucho when he goes trick-or-treating with SpongeBob.
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· Groucho is mentioned in the song "Fly on a Windshield" by progressive rock band Genesis featured in their album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
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· In Woody Allen's film Everyone Says I Love You there's a Groucho based musical number in French.
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· In the final Tintin album Tintin and the Picaros a giant mask representing Groucho is seen in the crowd celebrating carnival.
·
· A puppet representing his image features on the cover art of Have You Fed the Fish? by singer song writer Badly Drawn Boy.
·
· Cult TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 often featured Crow T. Robot doing an impersonation of Groucho when mocking a movie. One particularly memorable quip featured Crow saying "Say the secret woid and Bill Cosby rips off your series" (or words to that effect); this was a direct reference to the Cosby-hosted, short-lived revival of You Bet Your Life.
·
In a 2005 poll, The Comedian's Comedian, Groucho was voted the 5th greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. His glasses, nose, and moustache have become icons of comedy — to this day, glasses with fake noses and moustaches (referred to as both "nose-glasses" and "Groucho-glasses") resembling Groucho are still sold by novelty and costume shops, and worn by young people, some of whom may not understand their origin.

"Marx and Lennon"

The liberal political views of Groucho Marx and singer John Lennon were not lost on satirists, who capitalized on the coincidence of their surnames' similarity to Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin:
· A book called 'Marx & Lennon: The Parallel Sayings' was published in 2005. As the title implies, it recorded the parallel sayings between Groucho Marx and John Lennon.
·
· In 1994 the Republic of Abkhazia (an unrecognized state that is officially part of the Republic of Georgia) issued two postage stamps featuring John Lennon and Groucho Marx, spoofing Abkhazia's communist past.
·
· The cover art for Firesign Theater's 1969 album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All featured a Communist icon banner with pictures of the two enjoining "All Hail Marx Lennon" printed in pseudo-Russian lettering.
·
· In his book It All Started With Columbus, first printed in the mid-1950s, humorist Richard Armour discussed Karl Marx and referred to him as "the funniest of the Marx Brothers".
·
· In the comedy role-playing game Paranoia, the Communist faction carries pictures of Groucho Marx and sing John Lennon songs due to a lack of knowledge of communism itself.
·
· Fans of the Marx Brothers sometimes describe themselves as "Marxists of the Groucho kind".

Marx at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000050/

Groucho Marz.com
http://www.groucho-marx.com/

Groucho at the Quatation Page
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Groucho_Marx

Marx Brothers.com
http://www.marx-brothers.org/

The Groucho Marx Tribe
http://grouchomarx.tribe.net/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

9/21 Chuck Jones

2006-09-23T09:09:55Z

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio. He directed many of the classic short animated cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew and the other Warners characters, including the memorable What's Opera, Doc? (1957) and Duck Amuck (1952) (both later inducted into the National Film Registry), establishing himself as an important innovator and storyteller.

Early Life

Jones was born in Spokane, Washington, and later moved with his parents and three siblings to the Los Angeles, California area. In his autobiography, Chuck Amuck, Jones credits his artistic bent to circumstances surrounding his father, who was an unsuccessful businessman in California in the 1920s. His father, Jones recounts, would start every new business venture by purchasing new stationery and new pencils with the company name on them. When the business failed, his father would turn the useless stationery and pencils over to his children. Armed with an endless supply of high-quality paper and pencils, the children drew constantly. Jones and several of his siblings went on to artistic careers. After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute, Jones held a number of low-ranking jobs in the animation industry, including washing cels at the Ub Iwerks studio and assistant animating at the Walter Lantz studio. While at Iwerks, he met a cel painter named Dorothy Webster, who would later become his wife.

Warner Bros

Jones joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, the independent studio that produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros., in 1933 as an assistant animator. During the late 1930s, he worked under directors Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, becoming a director (or "supervisor", the original title for an animation director in the studio) himself in 1938 when Frank Tashlin left the studio. Jones' first cartoon was The Night Watchman, which featured a cute kitten who would later evolve into Sniffles the mouse.

Many of Jones' cartoons of the 1930s and early 1940s were lavishly animated, but audiences and fellow Termite Terrace staff members found them lacking in genuine humor. Often slow-moving and overbearing with "cuteness", Jones' early cartoons were an attempt to follow in the footsteps of Walt Disney's shorts (especially with such cartoons as Tom Thumb in Trouble and the Sniffles cartoons). Jones finally broke away from both his traditional cuteness, and traditional animation conventions as well, with the cartoon The Dover Boys in 1942. Jones credits this cartoon as the film where he "learned how to be funny." The Dover Boys is also one of the first uses of Stylized animation in American film, breaking away from the more realistic animation styles influenced by the Disney Studio. This was also the period where Jones created many of his lesser-known characters, including Charlie Dog, Hubie and Bertie, and The Three Bears. Despite their relative obscurity today, the shorts starring these characters represent some of Jones' earliest work that was strictly intended to be funny.
During the World War II years, Jones worked closely with Theodore Geisel (also known as Dr. Seuss) to create the Private Snafu series of Army educational cartoons. Private Snafu comically educated soldiers on topics like spies and laziness in a more risque way than general audiences would have been used to at the time. Jones would later collaborate with Seuss on a number of adaptations of Seuss' books to animated form, most importantly How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1966.

Jones hit his stride in the late 1940s, and continued to make his best-regarded works through the 1950s. Jones-created characters from this period includes Claude Cat, Marc Antony and Pussyfoot, Charlie Dog, Michigan J. Frog and his three most popular creations, Pepé LePew, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. The Road Runner cartoons, in addition to the cartoons that are considered his masterpieces (all written and conceived by Michael Maltese), Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening, and What's Opera, Doc? are today hailed by critics as some of the best cartoons ever made.

The staff of the Jones unit was as important to the success of these cartoons as Jones himself. Key members included writer Michael Maltese, layout artist/background designer/co-director Maurice Noble, animator and co-director Abe Levitow, and animator Ken Harris.

Jones remained at Warners throughout the 1950s, except for a brief period in 1953 when Warners closed the animation studio. During this interim, Jones found employment at the Walt Disney studio, where he did four months of uncredited work on Sleeping Beauty (1959).

In the early-1960s, Jones and his wife Dorothy wrote the screenplay for the animated feature Gay Purr-ee. The finished film would feature the voices of Judy Garland, Robert Goulet and Red Buttons as cats in Paris, France. The feature was produced by UPA, and Jones moonlit to work on the film, since he had an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. UPA completed the film and made it available for distribution in 1962; it was picked up by Warner Bros, who found out Jones had violated his contract and fired him from the company.

Jones on his own

With business partner Les Goldman, Jones started an independent animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, bringing on most of his unit from Warner Bros, including Maurice Noble and Michael Maltese. In 1963, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contracted with Sib Tower 12 to have Jones and his staff produce new Tom and Jerry cartoons. In 1964, Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM and was renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts. Jones' animated short film The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Higher Mathematics won the 1965 Oscar for Best Animated Short.

As the Tom and Jerry series wound down (it would be discontinued in 1967), Jones moved on to television. In 1966, he produced and directed the TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas, featuring the voice (and facial features) of Boris Karloff. Jones continued to work on TV specials such as Horton Hears A Who! (1970), but his main focus during this time was the feature film The Phantom Tollbooth, which did lukewarm business when MGM released it in 1970.

MGM closed the animation division in 1970, and Jones once again started his own studio, Chuck Jones Productions. His most notable work during this period was three animated TV adaptations of short stories from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Brothers, The White Seal and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. The 1979 movie The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie was a compilation of Jones' best theatrical shorts; Jones produced new Road Runner shorts for The Electric Company series and Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales (1979), and even newer shorts were made for Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over (1980).

Later years

Like many modern cartoon legends, Chuck Jones never retired: he was an active artist and cartoonist up until his last weeks. Through the 1980s and 1990s (and until his death in 2002), Jones was painting cartoon and parody art, sold through animation galleries by his daughter's company, Linda Jones Enterprises. He was also creating new cartoons for the Internet based on his new character, "Thomas Timberwolf". Jones also directed the animated sequence seen at the start of the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire. Jones was not a fan of much contemporary animation, terming most of it, especially television cartoons such as those of Hanna-Barbera, "illustrated radio."

Jones' intellectualism, writing ability, and capacity for self-analysis made him an historical authority as well as a major contributor to the development of animation throughout the 20th century.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Chuck Jones has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7011 Hollywood Blvd.

Chuck Jones died of congestive heart failure on February 22, 2002, at age 89. Jones' death brought down the final curtain on Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies family of creators. Mel Blanc, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson and Carl W. Stalling had all died before Jones.

Influence and critical perception

Jones is considered by many to be a master of characterization and timing. His best works are noted for depicting a refinement of character to the point that a single eyebrow wiggle could be a major gag as opposed to the wild, frenetic style usually associated with cartoons, and those of Warner Bros. in particular. Like Walt Disney, Jones wanted animation to gain respect from the film and art communities, and often undertook special animation projects reflecting such, including What's Opera Doc, The Dot and the Line, and the 1944 political film Hell-Bent for Re-Election, a campaign film for Franklin D. Roosevelt that he directed for UPA.

In his later years, Jones became the most vocal alumnus of the Termite Terrace studio, frequently giving lectures, seminars, and working to educate newcomers in the animation field. Many of his principles, therefore, found their way back into the mainstream animation consciousness, and can be seen in films such as Cats Don't Dance, The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch.

Jones had a penchant for cuteness in his earliest days as is visible in his cartoons featuring Sniffles the Mouse. Other Warners directors, particularly Tex Avery and Robert Clampett, considered "cute" to be a four letter word. By request of producer Leon Schlesinger, Jones changed his style, and began making zanier pictures such as Wackiki Wabbit and Hare Conditioned. After Avery, Clampett, and Schlesinger left the studio, Jones gradually reincorporated elements of the slow pace, sentimentality and cuteness of his previous work with characters like Marc Antony and Pussyfoot and the young Ralph Phillips. His versions of the characters he worked with often showcased a more infantile look than other interpretations, with larger eyes and eyelashes. This is especially apparent in his Tom and Jerry films, some of which are considered the weakest in the canon.

Jones, like the rest of his Termite Terrace associates after the departure of Schlesinger, has been criticized for using repetitive plots, most obvious in the Pepé Le Pew and Road Runner cartoons. It must be noted, however, that many of these films were originally issued to theatres years apart, and the repetitious factor was often done at the request of the producers, management, or theatre owners. Also, series like the Road Runner were set up as exercises in exploring the same situation in different ways. Jones had a set list of rules as to what could and could not occur in a Road Runner cartoon, and stated that it was not what happened that was important in the films, but how it happened.

Chuck Jones' reinvention of certain characters is also a controversial subject. He reimagined the wacky, Clampett-esque hero Daffy Duck as a greedy, sneaky antagonist with a slow-burning temper; and he relegated hapless star Porky Pig to being a sidekick or audience-aware observer of the action. Jones also created a series of films in which he used Friz Freleng's Sylvester in the context of a real cat. Like all the Warners directors, his Bugs Bunny characterization is unique to his films: Jones' Bugs never attacks unless attacked, unlike Avery's and Clampett's bombastic rabbits.

Notable animated films directed by Chuck Jones

· The Dover Boys (1942)
· Hell-Bent for Election (Franklin D. Roosevelt campaign film, 1944)
· For Scent-imental Reasons (1949)
· So Much for So Little (1949, made for Federal Security Agency Public Health Service)
· The Rabbit of Seville (1950)
· Duck Amuck (1952)
· Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953)
· One Froggy Evening (1955)
· What's Opera, Doc? (1957)
· The Dot and the Line (1965)
· The Bear that Wasn't (1967)
· How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV special, 1966)
· Horton Hears A Who! (TV special, 1970)
· The Phantom Tollbooth (feature film, 1970)

Official Webstie
http://www.chuckjones.com/

Animation of Chuck Jones at KeyFrame
http://keyframeonline.com/CastCrew/Chuck_Jones/751/

Jones at SenseofCinema.com
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/jones.html

At IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005062/

Tribute Page
http://www.coldbacon.com/jones.html

Cartoons

The Ducksters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdEfIqkwPqA

One Froggy Evening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GgvQ6mWOdg&mode=related&search=

The kill the Wabbit clip from “Whats Opera Doc”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2D99AndT1Y

The Rabbit of Seville
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTydGEYdVbE

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

9/18 Eddie "Rochester" Anderson

2006-09-18T23:50:57Z

Eddie Anderson (September 18, 1905 - February 28, 1977), often known as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, was a black American comic actor who became famous playing "Rochester van Jones" (usually known simply as "Rochester"), the valet to Jack Benny's eponymous title character on the long-running radio and television series The Jack Benny Program.

Born in Oakland, California into a family of performers, Anderson began his show business career at age 14 in a song-and-dance act with his brother Cornelius and another performer. They billed themselves as the Three Black Aces. At a young age, Anderson permanently damaged his vocal cords (he had to yell loudly for his job selling newspapers), leading to his trademark "raspy" voice.

Benny's call of "Oh, ROCH-ester!" and Anderson's answers (sometimes an enthusiastic, "Yes, Mr. Benny?", sometimes a resigned "Yes, Boss," but just as often a snappy joke at Benny's expense) were among the weekly highlights of the long-running show. "Rochester" became virtually as popular and well-known as Jack Benny himself: his popularity was so great that some newspapers reportedly listed the Benny program as The Eddie Anderson Show.

Anderson's role as a servant was common for Black leads in the popular media of that era, such as Ethel Waters in Beulah. The stereotyping of Blacks (or any ethnic group) had been standard practice in the entertainment business for generations. The relationship between Anderson and Benny became more complex and intimate as the years went by, with Rochester's role becoming both less stereotypical (in early episodes he carried a switchblade and shot craps) and less subservient (though he remained a valet), reflecting changing social attitudes toward Blacks. According to Jack Benny's posthumous autobiography, "Sunday Nights at Seven," the tone of racial humor surrounding Rochester declined as a conscious decision between Benny and the writing staff during World War II, once the enormity of the Holocaust was revealed. In short, Benny didn't find such humor funny anymore, and he made an effort to erase it from the character of Rochester. The high esteem in which the two actors held each other was evident upon Benny's death in 1974, in which a tearful Anderson, interviewed for television, spoke of Benny with admiration and respect.

Among the most highly paid Black performers of his time, Anderson invested wisely and became extremely wealthy. Despite this, he was so strongly identified with the "Rochester" role that many listeners of the radio program mistakenly persisted in the belief that he was Benny's actual valet. One such listener drove Benny to distraction when he sent a scolding letter to Benny concerning Rochester's alleged pay, and then sent another letter to Anderson, which urged him to sue Benny.

In addition to his famous role with Benny, Anderson appeared in over sixty motion pictures, including Uncle Peter in Gone With the Wind, the 1943 musical Cabin in the Sky and the comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Anderson was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2001.

Anderson at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0026655/

At The Radio Hall of Fame
http://www.radiohof.org/comedy/eddieanderson.html

At The African American Registery
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/360/Eddie_Anderson_was_Jack_Bennys_better_half___

At The American Vaudeville Museum
http://vaudeville.org/index_files/Page738.htm

6mn clip of Anderson and Lena Horne from Cabin In The Sky
http://www.doctormacro-m1.com/FilmClips/Horne,%20Lena%20(Cabin%20in%20the%20Sky)_01.wmv

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Harpo and a Bidder's Dilemma

2006-08-22T18:43:46Z

http://www.duckprods.com/weide/harp.html

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

8/17 Mae West

2006-08-17T14:11:17Z

Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol.

Famous for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the legitimate stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to conquer and make her unforgettable place among the great performers of the motion picture industry.

One of the most controversial stars of her day, West encountered many obstacles, including early censorship, but her indomitable spirit, coupled with an indefatigable drive, made her persevere.

When her movie career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas, in England, on radio and television, even recording a few Rock and Roll albums.

Even toward the end of her life, she was known for maintaining a surprisingly youthful appearance. She stated in her autobiography that she spent two hours every single day massaging cold cream into her breasts to keep them youthful. In her old age, she returned to the silver screen and starred in two final movies in the 1970s.

Early Life

She was born Mary Jane West in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of John Patrick West (1865-1935) and Matilda "Tillie" Delker-Doelger (1870-1930). Her sister and brother were Mildred Katherine "Beverly" West (1898-1982) and John Edwin West (1900-1964).

Her father was a prizefighter known as "Battlin' Jack West" who later worked as a policeman. He was later a detective who ran his own agency. Her mother was a former corset and fashion model.

The family was Protestant, despite the Jewish heritage of West's mother,[1] who was a Bavarian German immigrant, her Catholic paternal grandmother, who was Irish, as well as other relations who were Catholic, including the woman who helped deliver West (and whose disapproval of her career she was made well aware).

Career

West began performing in vaudeville at the age of five. By the time she was 12, she was peforming under the name "The Baby Vamp." Though she had not yet grown into her generous curves, the slinky, dark-haired Mae was already raising eyebrows with a lascivious "shimmy" dance. She was encouraged as a performer by her mother, who, according to West, always thought whatever her beloved daughter said or did was fantastic.

Her famous walk was said to have originated in her early years as a stage actress. West had special eight-inch platforms attached to her shoes to increase her height and enhance her stage presence.

Eventually, she began writing her own risqué plays using the pen name "Jane Mast." Her first starring role on Broadway was in a play she titled Sex, which was written, produced and directed by West. Though critics hated the show, ticket sales were good. The notorious production did not go over well with city officials, however. The theatre was raided and West was arrested along with everyone else in the cast.

She was prosecuted on morals charges and, on April 19, 1927, was sentenced to 10 days in jail for public obscenity. While incarcerated on Welfare Island, she was allowed to wear her silk panties instead of the scratchy prison issue and the warden reportedly took her to dinner every night. She served eight days, with two days off for good behavior.

Her next play, The Drag, was about homosexuality and alluded to the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. It was a box-office success, but audiences had to go to New Jersey to see it because it was banned from Broadway. West regarded talking about sex as a basic human rights issue, and was also an early advocate of gay rights.

She continued to write plays, including The Wicked Age, Pleasure Man and The Constant Sinner. Her productions were plagued by controversy and other problems, however. If they did not get shut down for indecency, they closed because of slow ticket sales.

For her next adventure into theatre she had a Broadway hit, Diamond Lil (1928), about a racy, easygoing lady of the 1890s. The show struck box-office gold and heralded the brazen, wisecracking blonde to new heights of fame. It enjoyed an enduring popularity and West would successfully revive it many times throughout the course of her career. Mae West was an actress ahead of her time.

Motion Pictures

In 1932, West was offered a motion picture contract by Paramount. She signed and went to Hollywood to appear in Night After Night starring George Raft. Upon her arrival, she moved into an apartment in the Ravenswood at 570 North Rossmore Avenue, not far from the studio on Melrose. She maintained a residence at the Ravenswood, her preferred abode, for the rest of her life, although she also owned a beach house and a ranch in the Valley.

At first, she did not like her small role in Night After Night, but was appeased when she was allowed to rewrite her lines. In West's first scene, a hat check girl exclaimed, "Goodness, what lovely diamonds." West became an instant sensation when she replied, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie."

She brought Diamond Lil, now Lady Lou, to the screen in She Done Him Wrong (1933), personally selecting Cary Grant for the male lead, a role that made him a star. The movie was a huge success and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

Her next release was I'm No Angel, which paired her with Grant again. It was another huge success and, along with She Done Him Wrong, saved Paramount from bankruptcy.

On July 1, 1934, the censorship of the Production Code began to be seriously and meticulously enforced and her scripts began to be heavily edited. Her answer was to increase the number of double entendres in her films.

West's next movie was Belle Of The Nineties (1934). It was originally titled It Ain't No Sin, but the title was changed due to the censor's objection. Other tentative working titles included That St. Louis Woman, Belle of St. Louis and Belle of New Orleans. The same could be said for her following vehicle, Goin' To Town (1935), which was originally titled How Am I Doin'? West starred in three other movies for Paramount before their association came to an end.

Two years later, she starred opposite W.C. Fields in My Little Chickadee (1940) at Universal. West and Fields, who were both accustomed to working with supporting players and not as co-stars, did not get along and she would not tolerate his drinking. My Little Chickadee was a big box-office success and outgrossed all other W.C. Fields movies. Universal was delighted with its success and offered West two more movies to star with Fields, but she would not hear of it. She told them that once was enough starring with Mr. Fields.

Radio

On December 12, 1937, West appeared in two separate sketches on ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's radio show that shocked both the listening audience and NBC executives. She appeared as herself, flirting very heavily with Charlie McCarthy, Bergen's dummy, utilizing her usual brand of sexy wit and risqué sexual references.

Even more outrageous was a sketch earlier in the show, written by Arch Oboler, that starred West and Don Ameche as Adam and Eve in the Garden Of Eden. The conversation between the two was considered so risqué, bordering on blasphemous, she was banned from being featured, or even mentioned, on the NBC network. She did not appear on radio for another 31 years.

Marriage and divorce

West was apparently married April 11, 1911, in Milwaukee, to Frank Wallace, a fellow vaudevillian who, in 1937, showed up in Hollywood with a marriage certificate seeking a share of "their" community property.
Although West denied ever marrying Wallace, and it was proven she never lived with him, she still found it necessary to obtain a legal divorce on July 21, 1942.

Middle years

West appeared in her last movie during the studio age with The Heat's On (1943) for Columbia. She remained active during the ensuing years, however. Among her stage performances was the title role in Catherine Was Great (1944) on Broadway, in which she spoofed the story of Catherine the Great of Russia, surrounding herself with an "imperial guard" of muscular young actors, all over 6 feet tall. The play was produced by Mike Todd and went on a long national tour in 1945.

She also starred in her own Las Vegas stage show surrounded by bodybuilders and singing to delighted crowds, which included a large number of gay men. Many celebrities attended West's show, including Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong, Liberace, and Jayne Mansfield (who met, and later married, one of West's muscle men, Mickey Hargitay, getting him fired).

When Billy Wilder offered West the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, she refused and pronounced herself offended at being asked to play a "has-been," similar to the responses he received from Mary Pickford and Pola Negri, so ultimately the more amenable and realistic Gloria Swanson was cast in the role, which became immortal on celluloid.

In 1958, West appeared at the Academy Awards and performed the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Rock Hudson.
Her autobiography, titled Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, was published by Prentice-Hall in 1959 and became an instant success.

Later Career

West also made some rare appearances on television, including The Red Skelton Show in 1960. She did a comedy sketch with Skelton regarding her recently published autobiography and her appearance was a big success. Viewers were astounded by her youthful appearance and incredible energy. In 1964, she guest starred as herself on the popular sitcom Mister Ed. The ratings were way above the usual for the series and much interest was generated in West by this appearance.

In order to keep her appeal fresh with younger generations, she recorded two Rock and Roll albums, Way Out West and Wild Christmas in the late 1960s. The single "Treat Him Right," from Way Out West, was a big success for her and the album itself was a very good seller. She also recorded a number of parody songs, including "Santa, Come Up and See Me Sometime," in her successful album Wild Christmas.

After an absence of 26 years from the silver screen, she appeared in the role as Leticia Van Allen in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970) with John Huston, Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, and Tom Selleck in a small part. The movie created a huge amount of interest in West.

Premiere audiences went wild over West's personal appearances and cheered her on. In New York, fans were held back by a large number of policemen, including those on horseback, who were there to maintain the crowd.

Her reappearance in Myra Breckinridge launched a mania that seemed to rival that of The Beatles and Elvis Presley, and reporters marveled at her incredible youthfulness and young-looking skin. Despite all this, the movie failed miserably at the box-office. It became a camp classic, however, due to its sex change theme.

West recorded another rock album in the 1970s on MGM Records titled Great Balls of Fire, which covered songs by Elvis Presley, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, among others, and her autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, was updated in a new version and republished.

In 1976, she appeared on the The Dick Cavett Show and gave an exclusive interview about her life and career, along with insights into her proclivity toward vulgar humor and her battle with censorship. This appearance caused renewed interest in West and led to another motion picture.

At age 85, she returned to the screen for a final time as Marlo Manners in Sextette (1978) with an all star cast, including a cameo by George Raft, which provided an odd symmetry to both their long careers.

Sextette was another box-office failure. It did not do well despite the fact that before its release large photographs of her reclining on a chaise longue went up on billboards all over Hollywood proclaiming, "Mae West Is Coming."

Although the movie was not received well by critics or the general public, After Dark magazine awarded West the "Star of the World" award for her performance in what became her final screen appearance. Sextette has become a cult classic and has done well on cable movie channels as well as VHS and DVD releases.

Final Years

West continued to surround herself with virile muscle men for the rest of her life, employing companions, bodyguards and chauffeurs. She would occasionally make appearances at Hollywood parties and have luminaries and friends in to visit at her apartment in the Ravenswood. At one such party West astonished guests when she got up and performed a belly dance. They were amazed at her youthful appearance and incredible charisma. It became very fashionable to have West attend a party.
After making Sextette, West did some radio commercials for Poland Springs Drinking Water saying she had been drinking Poland Springs water for 20 years, "Ever since I was six!"

In the late summer of 1980, she suffered a stroke at her apartment and fell out of bed. She was rushed to the hospital. She rallied, but suffered another stroke in November. The prognosis was not good and she was sent home. She died at her apartment on North Rossmore Avenue in Hollywood at age 87.

Mae West is entombed with her family in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street in Hollywood.

Name Applied

During WWII, Allied soldiers called their inflatable, vestlike life preserver jackets "Mae Wests" because of the resemblance to her curvaceous torso. West became one the first movie stars in history to have her name listed in Webster's Dictionary.

A "Mae West" is also a type of round parachute malfunction which contorts the shape of the canopy into the appearance of an extraordinarily large brassiere, presumably one suitable for a woman of Mae West's proportions.

West is also referenced in the title song of Cole Porter's Broadway musical Anything Goes.
"If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like
Or be undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose!"

Filmography
· Night After Night (1932) (Paramount) ... Maudie Triplett
· She Done Him Wrong (1933) (Paramount) ... Lady Lou
· I'm No Angel (1933) (Paramount) ... Tira
· Belle Of The Nineties (1934) (Paramount) ... Ruby Carter
· Goin' To Town (1935) (Paramount) ... Cleo Bordon
· Klondike Annie (1936) (Paramount) ... The Frisco Doll (Rose Carlton)
· Go West, Young Man (1936) (Paramount) ... Mavis Arden
· Every Day's A Holiday (1938) (Paramount) ... Peaches O'Day
· My Little Chickadee (1940) (Universal) ... Flower Belle Lee
· The Heat's On (1943) (Columbia) ... Fay Lawrence
· Myra Breckinridge (1970) (20th Century Fox) ... Leticia Van Allen
· Sextette (1978) (Crown International Pictures) ... Marlo Manners/Lady Barrington

Mae West Tribe
http://maewest.tribe.net/
Broadway Database
http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=7476
Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922213/
Mae at Bombshells.com
http://www.bombshells.com/gallery/west/index.php
Quotes
http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/quotes/maewest.html

611 Ravenswood Fansite
http://members.aol.com/char2go/611.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

8/6 Lucille Ball

2006-08-06T18:41:08Z

Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911–April 26, 1989) was an iconic American actor, comedian and star of I Love Lucy. A 'B-grade' movie star and "glamour girl" of the 1930s and 1940s, she later achieved tremendous success as a television actress, and became one of the most popular stars the medium has ever produced. She is known as the "Queen of Comedy".

Ball was born to Henry Durrell Ball (1887–1915) and Desiree "DeDe" Eve Hunt (1892–1977) in Jamestown, New York and grew up in the adjacent small town of Celoron, a suburb of Jamestown. Her family was Baptist; her father was of Scottish descent [1] and related to George Washington. Her mother was of French, Irish and English descent.[2] Lucille was proud of her family and heritage. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies. One direct ancestor, William Sprague (1609–1675), left England on the ship Lyon's Whelp for Plymouth/Salem, Massachusetts. They were from Upwey, Dorset, England. Along with his two brothers, William helped to found the city of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Other Sprague relatives became soldiers in the US Revolutionary War and two of them became governors of the state of Rhode Island.

Her father was a telephone lineman for the Bell Company, while her mother was often described as a lively and energetic young woman. Her father's job required frequent transfers, and within three years after her birth, Lucille had moved from Jamestown to Anaconda, Montana, and then to Wyandotte, Michigan. While DeDe Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1915.

After her father died, Ball and her brother Fred were raised by her working mother and grandparents. Her grandfather, Fred C. Hunt, was an eccentric socialist who enjoyed the theater. He frequently took the family to vaudeville shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays. In 1925 after a romance with a local bad boy (Johnny DeVito), Ball decided to enroll in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts with her mother's approval. There, the shy girl was outshone by another pupil, Bette Davis.

Ball went home a few weeks later when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer". Two years later, she witnessed the accidental shooting of a friend of her brother's, Warner Erikson, who found himself in the path of a .22 caliber rifle shot, severing his spinal cord. Her grandfather was sued and prosecuted, and lost the family home.

She moved back to New York City in 1932 to become an actress and had some success as a fashion model for designer Hattie Carnegie and as the Chesterfield girl. She began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name "Dianne Belmont" and was hired—but then quickly fired—by theatre impresario Earl Carroll from his Vanities and by Florenz Ziegfeld from a touring company of Rio Rita.

She was let go again from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones. After an uncredited stint as a Goldwyn Girl in Roman Scandals (1933) she moved to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO (including movies with the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges), where she met her lifelong friend, Ginger Rogers. Ball was signed to MGM in the 1940s, but she never achieved great success in films.

She was known in many Hollywood circles as "Queen of the Bs" (a title previously held by Fay Wray) starring in a number of B-movies, such as 1939's Five Came Back. Macdonald Carey was designated as her "King".

In 1940, Ball met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the film version of the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls. Ball and Arnaz connected immediately and eloped the same year, garnering much press attention. When Arnaz was drafted to the United States Army in 1942, he was unfaithful to Ball. Arnaz ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury. As a result, Arnaz stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs being brought back from the Pacific. Ball filed for a divorce in 1944. However, shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory decree, she got together with Arnaz again. A major obstacle in Ball's life was marrying a Cuban. They were the first mixed-nationality TV couple. They toured the US together to prove that the American public would accept them together.

In 1948, Ball was cast as Liz Cugat (later "Cooper"), a wacky wife, in My Favorite Husband, a radio program for CBS. The program was successful, and CBS asked her to develop it for television. She agreed, but insisted on working with Arnaz. This show eventually became I Love Lucy. CBS was initially not impressed with the pilot episode produced by the couple's Desilu Productions company, so the couple toured the road in a vaudeville act with Lucy as the zany housewife wanting to get in Arnaz's show. The tour was a smash, and CBS put the show on their lineup.

In 1953, she was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities because she had registered to vote in the Communist party in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence (per FBI FOIA-released documents in this declassified FBI file

In response to these accusations, Arnaz quipped: "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate." Ball survived this encounter with the HUAC, naming no names.

The I Love Lucy show was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, but a way for her to try to salvage her marriage to Desi Arnaz, which had become badly strained, in part by the fact that each had a hectic performing schedule which often kept them apart.

Along the way, she created a television dynasty and reached several "firsts". Ball was the first woman in television to be head of a production company: Desilu, the company that she and Arnaz formed. (After buying out her ex-husband's share of the studio, Ball functioned as a very active studio head.)

Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today. When the show premiered, most shows were captured by kinescope, and the picture was inferior to film. The decision was made to film the series, a decision driven by the performers' desire to stay in Los Angeles.

Sponsor Philip Morris did not want to show kinescopes to the major markets on the east coast, so Desilu agreed to take a pay cut to finance filming. In return, CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after broadcast, not realizing they were giving away a valuable and durable asset. Desilu made many millions of dollars on I Love Lucy rebroadcasts through syndication and became a textbook example of how a show can be profitable in second-run syndication.

Desilu also hired legendary Czech cameraman Karl Freund as their director of photography. Freund had worked for F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, shot part of Metropolis, had directed a number of Hollywood films himself, and knew his business. Freund used a three-camera setup, which became the standard way of filming situation comedies.

Shooting long shots, medium shots, and close-ups on a comedy in front of a live audience demanded discipline, technique, and close choreography. Among other non-standard techniques used in filming the show, cans of paint (in shades ranging from white to medium gray) were kept on set to "paint out" inappropriate shadows and disguise lighting flaws.

Desilu produced several other popular shows, most notably Make Room for Daddy, Our Miss Brooks, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Untouchables, I Spy, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible.

Ball's instincts with business were often astonishingly sharp, and her love for Arnaz was passionate, but her relationships with her children were sometimes strained. Lucie Arnaz, her daughter, spoke of her mother's "controlling" nature. She had a few very good friends in the business: Ginger Rogers, Mary Wickes and Vivian Vance. All were childless; Wickes never married. Vance said, following her first meeting with Ball, "I'm going to learn to love that bitch."

On July 17, 1951, just one month shy of her 40th birthday and after several miscarriages, Ball gave birth to her first child, Lucie Desiree Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to her second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. When he was born, I Love Lucy was a solid ratings hit, and Ball and Arnaz wrote the pregnancy into the show (indeed, Ball gave birth in real life at about the same time that her Lucy Ricardo character gave birth). There were several challenges from CBS, insisting that a pregnant woman could not be shown on television, nor could the word "pregnant" be spoken on-air.

After approval from several religious figures the network allowed the pregnancy storyline, but insisted that the word "expecting" be used instead of "pregnant". (Arnaz garnered laughs when he deliberately mispronounced it as "'spectin'.) The birth made the first cover of TV Guide in January 1953.

By the end of the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, and Arnaz's drinking further compounded matters. On May 4, 1960, a few weeks after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, the couple divorced, ending one of television's greatest marriages. However, until his death in 1986, Arnaz would remain friends with Ball. Indeed, both Arnaz and Ball spoke lovingly of each other after the breakup.

The following year, Ball married comedian Gary Morton, a Borscht Belt stand-up comic who was twelve years younger. Morton told interviewers at the time that he had never seen Ball on television, since he was always performing during primetime. Ball immediately installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the television business and eventually promoting him to producer. Morton also played occasional bit parts on Ball's various series.

Following I Love Lucy, Ball appeared in the Broadway musical Wildcat, which was a wildly successful sell-out that ended up losing money and closing early when Ball became too ill to continue in the show. She made a few more movies (including Yours, Mine and Ours, and the musical Mame), and two more successful sitcoms: The Lucy Show (1962–1968), which costarred Vance and Gale Gordon, and Here's Lucy (1968–1974), which also featured Gordon, as well as appearances by Lucy's real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr.

During the mid-1980s, she attempted to resurrect her television career. In 1982, Ball hosted a two-part Three's Company retrospective, showing clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show. The second part of the special ended with her receiving a kiss on the cheek from John Ritter. A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, was well received. However, her 1986 sitcom Life With Lucy (costarring Gale Gordon), was a critical and commercial flop which was canceled less than two months into its run by producer Aaron Spelling.

The failure of her series was said to have sent Ball into a serious depression, and other than a few miscellaneous awards show appearances, she was absent from the public eye for the last several years of her life. Her last appearance took place several weeks before her death at the Oscar telecast in which she was presented by Bob Hope to a cheering audience.

Lucille Ball died on April 26, 1989, of a ruptured aorta at the age of 77 and was cremated. Her remains were initially interred in the Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, but were later moved by her children to the Lake View Cemetery, in Jamestown, New York.

Lucille Ball.com
http://www.lucilleball.com/
Lucille at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000840/

Lucille at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/balllucille/balllucille.htm

The Lucy Lounge
http://lucylounge.suddenlaunch2.com/

Timeline of her Life
http://www.twoop.com/people/lucille_ball.html

Lucy at Classic Actresses
http://www.classicactresses.com/lucille.html

Lucille at Classic Films
http://www.thegoldenyears.org/ball.html

Lucille at Time Magazines 100 People
http://www.time.com/time/time100/artists/profile/lucy.html

Lucille at PBS’ American Masters
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ball_l.html

The Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz Center
http://www.lucy-desi.com/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

7/19 Max Fleischer

2006-07-21T16:56:59Z

Max Fleischer (July 19, 1883 – September 11, 1972) was an important Austrian-American pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon. He brought such characters as Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye, and Superman to the movie screen, and was responsible for a number of technological innovations.

Born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, Fleischer was the second oldest of six children. His family immigrated to the USA in 1887 and settled in New York City.

Fleischer had the idea of using frames of a live action film as the basis for drawing animation, his patent for the rotoscope was granted in 1917, although Max and Dave Fleischer made their first cartoon using the device in 1915. Extensive use of this technique was made in Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series, one of the highlights being a boxing match between the cartoon Koko the Clown and a live kitten.

Fleischer was also responsible for "follow the bouncing ball" sing-along cartoons.
In 1919 he established Fleischer Studios for producing animated cartoons and short subjects. At one point all of his siblings (as well as his son Richard Fleischer) worked there. Other studio employees included Lillian Friedman, first woman in America to become an animator; Frank Sherman; Jack Kirby, later of Marvel Comics

Fleischer produced the first sound animated cartoons in May 1924 using the Lee DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process (years before Steamboat Willie, which The Walt Disney Company says is the first Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound but makes no effort to imply as the first sound cartoon ever).

In 1925, he made a feature-length film about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution combining animation and live action.

Several of Fleischer's cartoons had soundtracks by (and often live or rotoscoped footage of) some of the leading jazz performers of the time, perhaps most notably Cab Calloway.

In the late 1930s, Fleischer Studios moved from New York to Miami, Florida. On May 24, 1941, Paramount Pictures, taking advantage of a significant debt owed to them by Fleischer Studios, took over the studio and renamed it Famous Studios. Fleischer and his brother ran the company for another year before resigning. He later tried unsuccessfully to sue Paramount and get money back from the company for selling his cartoons to television, often cutting them heavily to fit particular time-slot requirements.

He later took a job of producing and directing the Handy Corporation's rare cartoon shorts, one of which was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Fleischer left Handy in 1954 and went to Bray Studios (which he had worked for in 1916).

In his late years, Fleischer was poor and ended up living at the Motion Picture Country House, where he died from congestive heart failure in 1972. Ironically, he died eleven days after signing a contract with King Features to reintroduce Betty Boop to the world, a deal which would have made him millions.

Downloadable Max Fleischer Cartoons here
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=max%20fleischer%20AND%20mediatype%3Amovies

Max at Toonopedia
http://www.toonopedia.com/fleischr.htm

Max at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0281502/

History of Max’s Popeye series
http://www.fleischerpopeye.com/

Max and Popeye
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7323557

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 3 replies

7/12 "Curly-Joe" DeRita

2006-07-15T16:13:59Z

"Curly-Joe" DeRita (July 12, 1909 - July 3, 1993), born Joseph Wardell, was an American comedian who is best known as the "sixth" and last of the Three Stooges. DeRita was born into a show business family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Wardell's father was a stage technician, and his mother, a professional stage dancer; the three often acted on stage together from his early childhood. Taking his mother's maiden name, DeRita, the actor joined the Burlesque circuit during the 1920s, gaining fame as a comedian. During World War II, DeRita joined the USO, performing through Britain and France with such celebrities as Bing Crosby and Randolph Scott. He was married briefly sometime in the 40s to an unknown co-worker.

After Shemp Howard died in 1955, Moe Howard and Larry Fine tried to complete the "Three Stooges" act with Joe Besser. Creative differences and his wife's illness led him to quit the act after two years and 16 theatrical shorts. Familiar with DeRita's work, Howard asked him to join the act, and he readily accepted. Noticing his physical resemblance to predecessors Besser and especially Curly Howard, DeRita was renamed "Curly-Joe," and became the third Stooge in 1958.

DeRita's arrival coincided with changes to the Stooges' career. With the advent of longer theatrical films, Columbia Pictures' short films studio shut down, leaving the Stooges to seek their own full-length features. The team created a number of theatrical Three Stooges films, including Have Rocket, Will Travel and Snow White and the Three Stooges. Aimed primarily at children, these films rarely reached the same comedic heights as their shorts. (Moe and Larry's advanced ages plus pressure from the PTA and other children's advocates led to a severe toning-down of the trio's trademark violent slapstick.)

While DeRita's physical appearance was reminiscent of the original "Curly," his characterization was milder, and not as manic or surreal. Curly-Joe also showed a bit more backbone, even occasionally talking back to Moe.

DeRita recorded an uncensored "Burlesque" LP in the 50s. Had Moe not died in 1975, The Stooges (with Emil Sitka taking on the role as the middle stooge) would have done an R-rated movie called "The Jet Set".

Through the 1960s, DeRita remained a member of the team, participating in animated cartoons (with live-action introductions) and a failed television pilot titled Kook's Tour. However, Larry Fine suffered a stroke in 1970, permanently disbanding the Stooges. In later years, DeRita attempted to form a truly "new" Three Stooges, featuring other actors replacing Moe and Larry, but the act failed and DeRita retired.

Nearly blind from diabetes, Curly-Joe DeRita died in Los Angeles on July 3, 1993. Being the final living member of the original Three Stooges act, his epitaph reads, "The Last Stooge."

Curly Joe at Stoogeworld.com
http://www.stoogeworld.com/_Biographies/Curly-Joe.htm

Curly Joe at the Stooges Official Website
http://www.threestooges.com/bios/bios.asp?intStoogeID=6

Curly Joe at Three Stooges Online
http://www.threestoogesonline.com/CurlyJoe.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

7/12 Milton Berle

2006-07-15T16:07:10Z

Milton Berle, (July 12, 1908 - March 27, 2002), born Milton Berlinger, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater (1948 -1955), he became known as Uncle Miltie to millions.

Milton Berle was born in a five-story walkup at 68 West 118th Street in New York City, New York. His father was Moses Berlinger, a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger, was stagestruck and changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous. His onstage antics got underway in 1913 when he won a lookalike contest with his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin.

Berle appeared a child actor in silent films, beginning with The Perils of Pauline (1914), filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey with Pearl White.[1] The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography (1975), he explained, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that."

He continued to play child roles in other films: Bunny's Little Brother (1914) with John Bunny; Tess of the Storm Country (1914) with Mary Pickford; Birthright (1920) with Flora Finch; Love's Penalty (1921) with Hope Hampton; Divorce Coupons (1922) with Corinne Griffith and the serial Ruth of the Range (1923) with Ruth Roland. Berle recalled, "There were even trips out to Hollywood--the studios paid--where I got parts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, with Mary Pickford; The Mark of Zorro, with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Tillie's Punctured Romance, with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler." Berle's claim that he played the newsboy in the 1914 Tillie's Punctured Romance is disputed by some.

In 1916, Berle enrolled in the Professional Children's School, and at age 12 he made his stage debut in Florodora. After four weeks in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the show moved to Broadway. It catapulted him into a comedic career that spanned eight decades in nightclubs, Broadway shows, vaudeville, Las Vegas, films, television and radio.

In 1934-36, Berle was heard regularly on The Rudy Vallee Hour, and he got much publicity as a regular on The Gillette Original Community Sing, a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936 to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of Stop Me If You've Heard This One with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners. Three Ring Time, a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show Let Yourself Go (1944-45) could best be described as slapstick radio with studio audience members acting out long suppressed urges (often directed at host Berle). Kiss and Make Up, on CBS in 1946, featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the Judge. He also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.

Scripted by Hal Block and Martin Ragaway, The Milton Berle Show brought Berle together with Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley, vocalist Dick Forney and announcer Frank Gallop. The Ray Bloch Orchestra provided the music for the series. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947, until April 13, 1948.

His last radio series was The Texaco Star Theater, which began September 22, 1948 on ABC and continued until June 15, 1949, with Berle heading the cast of Stang, Kelton and Gallop, along with Charles Irving, Kay Armen and double-talk specialist Al Kelly. It employed top comedy writers (Nat Hiken, brothers Danny and Neil Simon, Aaron Ruben), and Berle later recalled this series as "the best radio show I ever did... a hell of a funny variety show." It served as a springboard for Berle's rise as television's first major star.

In 1948, NBC decided to bring Texaco Star Theater from radio to television, with Berle as one of the show's four rotating hosts. For the fall season, NBC named Berle the permanent host. His highly visual, sometimes outrageous vaudeville style proved ideal for the burgeoning new medium. Berle and Texaco owned Tuesday nights for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings and keeping it, with as much as an 80% share of the recorded viewing audience. Berle and the show each won Emmy Awards after the first season. Fewer movie tickets were sold on Tuesdays. Some theaters, restaurants and other businesses shut down for the hour or closed for the evening so their customers wouldn't miss Berle's antics [2]. Berle's autobiography notes that in Detroit, "an investigation took place when the water levels took a drastic drop in the reservoirs on Tuesday nights between 9 and 9:05. It turned out that everyone waited until the end of the Texaco Star Theater before going to the bathroom. "

Berle is credited for the huge spike in the sale of TV sets during the medium's early years. After Berle's show began, set sales more than doubled, reaching two million in 1949. His stature as the medium's first superstar earned Berle the sobriquet "Mr. Television.". He also earned a slightly more familiar nickname after ending a 1949 broadcast with a brief ad lib remark to children watching the show: "Listen to your Uncle Miltie and go to bed."

Berle asked NBC to switch to film to make possible future reruns and residuals, and he was not happy when NBC showed little interest. He also risked his newfound TV stardom at its zenith to challenge Texaco when the sponsor tried to prevent black performers from appearing. In his autobiography, Berle recalled the incident:

Another thing that was a constant anger to me was that I didn't have approval on the acts and performers I wanted on the show. I remember clashing with the sponsor and the advertising agency and the sponsor over my signing the four Step Brothers for an appearance on the show. The only thing I could figure out was that there was an objection to black performers on the show, but I couldn't even find out who was objecting. "We just don't like them,: I was told, but who the hell was "we"? Because I was riding high in 1950, I sent out the word: "If they don't go on, I don't go on." At ten minutes of eight--ten minutes before show time--I got permission for the Step Brothers to appear. If I broke the color-line policy or not, I don't know, but later on I had no trouble booking Bill Robinson or Lena Horne."

NBC signed him to an exclusive, unprecedented 30-year television contract in 1951. The problem with Berle's 30-year deal was that NBC could not have realized the relatively short lifespan of a comedian on television, compared to radio, where careers went on for two decades or longer. In part, this was due to the more ephemeral nature of visual comedy (those who don't adapt quickly don't survive), and a single television appearance could equal years of exposure on the nightclub circuit. It has also been said that Berle had less appeal with audiences outside the Borscht Belt as television expanded from big East Coast markets to smaller cities. In any event, Berle wore out his welcome on television almost as quickly as he had built it.

Texaco pulled out of sponsorship of the show in 1953. Buick picked it up, prompting a renaming to The Buick-Berle Show, but Berle's ratings continued to fall and Buick pulled out after two seasons. By the time the again-renamed Milton Berle Show finished its only full season, Berle was already becoming history – though his final season provided some of the earliest television appearances by a young rock and roll singer named Elvis Presley.

NBC finally cancelled the Berle show in 1956. He later appeared in the Kraft Music Hall series, but NBC was finding increasingly fewer roles for its one-time superstar. By 1960, he was reduced to hosting a game show, Jackpot Bowling, delivering his quips between the efforts of bowling contestants.

In Las Vegas, Berle played to packed showrooms at Caesar's Palace, the Sands, the Desert Inn and other casino hotels. Berle had appeared at the El Rancho, one of the first Vegas hotels, in the late 1940s. In addition to constant club appearances, Berle performed on Broadway in Herb Gardner's The Goodbye People in 1968.

He appeared in numerous films, including Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) with Virginia Mayo and Bert Lahr; Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand (1960); It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963); The Loved One (1965); The Oscar (1966); Lepke (1975); Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose (1984) and Driving Me Crazy (1991).

Freed in part from the obligations of his NBC contract, Berle was signed in 1966 to a new weekly variety series on ABC. The show failed to capture a large audience and was cancelled after one season. He later appeared as guest villain Louie the Lilac on ABC's Batman series. His other TV guest appearances included The Jack Benny Show, Make Room for Daddy, The Lucy Show, The Big Valley, Get Smart, The Mod Squad, Ironside, Mannix, McCloud, The Love Boat, CHiPs, Fame, Fantasy Island, Gimme a Break, Diff'rent Strokes, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, Beverly Hills 90210, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Nanny, Roseanne and Sister, Sister.

Like his contemporary Jackie Gleason, Berle proved a solid dramatic actor and was acclaimed for several such performances, most notably his lead role in "Doyle Against The House" on The Dick Powell Show in 1961, a role for he later received an Emmy nomination for. He also played the part of a blind survivor of an airplane crash in Seven in Darkness, the first in ABC's popular Movie of the Week series, and was often seen on the Hollywood Palace variety show on ABC.

During this period, Berle was named to the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of charity performances made by a show-business performer. Unlike the high-profile shows done by Bob Hope to entertain the troops, Berle did more shows, over a period of 50 years, on a lower-profile basis. Berle received an award for entertaining at stateside military bases in World War I as a child performer, in addition to traveling to foreign bases in World War II and Vietnam. The first charity telethon (for the Damon Runyan Cancer Fund) was hosted by Berle in 1949 [5]. A permanent fixture at charity benefits in the Hollywood/Los Angeles area, he was instrumental in raising millions for charitable causes.

Berle presided as the master of ceremonies for countless Friar's Club roasts and other gatherings. He was also an occasional guest on the Howard Stern radio show, during which he endured Stern's questions about the enormous size of his genitals (rumors of which were legendary in Hollywood) and what Marilyn Monroe was like in bed. The television show Mad About You refered to his size in an episode where Jamie's aunt confirmed it was 100% true. In an episode of the popular situation comedy Friends, it was suggested that Milton Berle was "well-endowed." It was also referenced in the Family Guy episode "Fifteen Minutes of Shame." Rumors of Berle's size were well-known in Hollywood, but this episode brought the legend to a wider audience. Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, in Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, is quoted, noting that while Berle's SNL episode was in production, he had revealed his penis to Zweibel, who testifies that it was enormous, "like a pepperoni".

In comparison to many of his peers, Berle's off-stage lifestyle never included drugs or drinking, but did include cigars, a "who's who" list of beautiful women, and a lifelong addiction to gambling, primarily horse racing. His obsession with "the ponies" would be responsible for Berle never amassing the wealth or business success of others in his position.

Berle was known to have a colorful vocabulary and few limits on when it was used. Surprisingly, however, he "worked clean" for his entire onstage career, except for the infamous Friars Club all-male, private celebrity roasts. Berle often admonished younger comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin about their X-rated humor, and challenged them by saying that they could be just as funny without the four-letter words. Hundreds of younger comics, including several who are now comedy superstars, were encouraged and given guidance by Berle. Despite some less than flattering (and true) stories told about Berle being difficult to work with, he was a source of encouragement and technical assistance for many new comics who were fortunate enough to meet him. Young comics were always "invited over to the table" with a smile, and given an audience with "the King".

Berle was well known among his peers to have one of the greatest joke collections in the world, the size of which Berle himself estimated as being somewhere in the vicinity of five to six million jokes. Occasional claims by Berle and others that all of these jokes had been transferred to computer media are suspect, as a member of Berle's family verified that the vast majority of the jokes were on sheets and scraps of paper and index cards in a vast, disorganized collection amassed over decades, well before the age of personal computers. The books Milton Berle's Private Joke File and The Rest of the Best of Milton Berle's Private Joke File each contained 10,000 of these jokes.

On April 14, 1979, Berle guest-hosted Saturday Night Live. During the performance, Berle seemed to spend as much time trying to upstage the show's youthful cast as he did trying to work with or augment them. Berle's long reputation for taking control of an entire television production—whether invited to do so or not—was a cause of stress on the set. Thirty years earlier, Berle had designed and built the studio that SNL used and was apparently not ready to accept that he didn't know how to do everyone's job (from the stagehands to the lighting crew) better than they did.

In Shales and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, one of the show's writers, Rosie Shuster, described the rehearsals for the Berle SNL show and the telecast as "sort of like watching a comedy train accident in slow motion on a loop." Upstaging, camera mugging, inserting old comedy bits and a maudlin performance of "September Song" complete with pre-arranged standing ovation (something creator Lorne Michaels and company had never sanctioned), resulted in Berle being banned from the show. In the weeks that followed, Berle's household in Beverly Hills received rambling, stoned phone calls from John Belushi, loudly proclaiming that Berle was the greatest comedian in history. The Berle episode of SNL has reportedly been banished to the vaults on the direct order of Michaels.

Another well-known incident of upstaging occurred during the 1982 Emmy Awards, when Berle and Martha Raye were the presenters of the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a variety or music program. Berle was reluctant to give up the microphone to the award's recipients, from Second City Television, and interrupted actor Joe Flaherty's acceptance speech several times. The SCTV actors and writers left the stage looking very upset, and later created a parody sketch of the incident, in which Flaherty's character beats up a Berle look-alike, shouting, "You'll never ruin another acceptance speech, Uncle Miltie!"

As "Mr. Television," Berle was one of the first seven people to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. The following year, he appeared on NBC's Amazing Stories (created by Steven Spielberg) in an episode called "Fine Tuning". In this episode, friendly aliens from space receive TV signals from the Earth of the 1950s and travel to Hollywood in search of their idols, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Burns and Allen—and Milton Berle. Speaking gibberish, Berle is the only person able to communicate directly with the aliens.

In 1988, a series of syndicated TV specials with the umbrella title "Milton Berle: The Second Time Around," recycled footage from the live Texaco Star Theater programs (unseen for decades) helped to introduce Berle's brand of comedy to a new audience. One of his most popular performances in his later years was guest starring in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a womanizing, joke-making patient who leads Will to think that he died because the patient fell asleep right away. Most of his dialogue was improvised and shocked the audience in one blooper where he screamed out a four-letter word by mistake.

Berle made a notorious appearance with RuPaul at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, where the younger performer, appearing in drag as Berle had often done on television, made a remark that was perceived by many as treating the legendary Berle poorly.

Milton Berle died of colon cancer on March 27, 2002, at the age of 93. Berle left detailed arrangements for burial with his third wife, Ruth, at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Burbank. However, his fourth wife, Lorna Adams, altered the plan so that Berle was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. He was survived by two adopted children; a daughter, Victoria, born in 1945, and a son, William, born in 1961.

Miltie at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000926/

Museum of Broadcast Communications page for The Milton Berle Show
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/miltonberle/miltonberle.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Red Buttons RIP 1919-2006

2006-07-13T22:04:04Z

Comedian Red Buttons dies in L.A. at 87 By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer
2 minutes ago

Red Buttons, the carrot-topped burlesque comedian who became a top star in early television and then in a dramatic role won the 1957 Oscar as supporting actor in "Sayonara," died Thursday. He was 87.

Buttons died of vascular disease at his home in the Century City area of Los Angeles, publicist Warren Cowan said. He had been ill for some time, and was with family members when he died, Cowan said.

With his eager manner and rapid-fire wit, Buttons excelled in every phase of show business, from the Borscht Belt of the 1930s to celebrity roasts in the 1990s.

His greatest achievement came with his "Sayonara" role as Sgt. Joe Kelly, the soldier in the post-World War II occupation forces in Japan whose romance with a Japanese woman (Myoshi Umeki, who also won an Academy Award) ends in tragedy.

Josh Logan, who directed the James Michener story that starred Marlon Brando, was at first hesitant to cast a well-known comedian in such a somber role.

"The tests were so extensive that they could just put scenery around them and release the footage as a feature film," Buttons remarked.

Buttons' Academy Award led to other films, both dramas and comedies. They included "Imitation General," "The Big Circus," "Hatari!" "The Longest Day," "Up From the Beach," "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" "The Poseidon Adventure," "Gable and Lombard" and "Pete's Dragon."

A performer since his teens, Buttons was noticed by burlesque theater owners and he became the youngest comic on the circuit. He had graduated to small roles on Broadway before being drafted in 1943.

Along with dozens of other future stars, including Mario Lanza, John Forsythe, Karl Malden and Lee J. Cobb, Buttons was enlisted for "Winged Victory," the play that famed director-playwright Moss Hart created for the Air Force. Buttons also appeared in the 1944 film version, directed by George Cukor.

Discharged in 1946, Buttons returned to nightclub and theater work. In 1952, CBS signed him for a weekly show as the network's answer to NBC's Milton Berle.

"The Red Buttons Show" was first broadcast on CBS Oct. 14, 1952, without a sponsor since the star was virtually unknown. Within a month, the show became a solid hit and advertisers were clamoring.

Buttons drew on all his past experience for monologues, songs, dances and sketches featuring such characters as a punch-drunk fighter, a scrappy street kid, a Sad Sack GI and a blundering German. The hit of the show was a silly song in which he pranced about the stage singing, "Ho! Ho!... He! He!... Ha! Ha!... Strange things are happening!" It became a national craze.

After a sensational first season, "The Red Buttons Show" began to slide. Reports circulated that the star had fits of temper and frequently fired writers, and the show ended after three seasons.

"Certainly I made mistakes, and mistakes were made for me," he said in 1960. "When you go into TV cold, as I did, it's murder."

While the failure was a severe blow to the normally optimistic comedian, he soon recovered and resumed his career as a guest star on TV shows. A straight role on "Suspense" brought him to the attention of Logan, who cast him for the career-making "Sayonara."

In 1966, Buttons starred in another series, "The Double Life of Henry Phyfe," as a humble accountant enlisted as a government spy. The show lasted only six months.

Over the years Buttons remained a steady performer on television, appearing on such series as "Knots Landing," "Roseanne" and "ER." He also took his act on the road, appearing at Las Vegas, Atlantic City, conventions, and returning to his beginnings in the Catskills.

Still in good health at 76 ("They call me the only Yiddish leprechaun"), he appeared in New York in 1995 with an autobiographical one-man show, "Buttons on Broadway."

It was his first Broadway show since 1948, when he appeared in a play with the unfortunate title of "Hold It." One critic, Buttons recalled, began his review: "`Hold It?' Fold it."

Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on Feb. 15, 1919, son of an immigrant milliner, in a tough Manhattan neighborhood where, he once said, "you either grew up to be a judge or you went to the electric chair."

He struggled through schools in Manhattan and the Bronx — "Mom and Pop went to school as often as I did; they should have graduated with me." He started performing at the age of 12, winning an amateur contest singing "Sweet Jenny Brown" in a sailor's suit.

At 16 he was working as a singer and bellhop in a gin mill on New York's City Island. Since all bellhops were called Buttons and Chwatt had red hair, he got his new name.

During his summer vacation, he worked as a singer on the Borscht Circuit — the string of Catskills resorts catering to a largely Jewish clientele where Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Hart and others trained for stardom.

In later years, Buttons became a favorite at testimonial/roast dinners with his roaringly funny "Never had a dinner" routine. He cited famous figures who had never been so honored. Examples: "Abe Lincoln, who said `A house divided is a condominium,' never had a dinner"; "(Perennial presidential candidate) Jerry Brown, whose theme song is `California, Here I Go,' never had a dinner." (When he did "Buttons on Broadway," he altered the routine and named people who never did one-man shows.)

In 1982, Red Buttons finally had a dinner. The Friars Club honored him with a star-filled roast and a life-achievement award.

"When I was a kid in the Bronx and watching and dreaming from the second balcony," the guest of honor said, "in my wildest imagination I couldn't have written this scenario tonight."

Buttons was married and divorced twice in his early career. He is survived by his third wife, Alicia, their children, Amy and Adam, and a sister.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060713/ap_en_mo/obit_buttons_15

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

June Allyson 1917 - 2006

2006-07-11T15:56:02Z

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/articles/_a/perfect-wife-june-allyson-dies-at-88/20060710175309990001

www.juneallyson.com

http://imdb.com/name/nm0000742/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Curly or Shemp?

2006-07-10T06:37:57Z

Hi,
I just recently started watching the 3 Stooges again. My Bro and I used to watch them every Saturday and Sunday a.m. when we were kids. Now I'm netflixing all these episodes that I hadn't seen in so long. It's been great!
I definitely love Curly the best. Moe and Larry also have many moments but I was watching a few Shemp episodes and it's sometimes hard to get into. He too has his great moments.
I would like to know what others' thoughts are on that.
Thanks,
Liz

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 13 replies

6/28 Mel Brooks

2006-07-06T21:11:50Z

Mel Brooks (born June 28, 1926) is an American actor, writer /director, and producer best known as a creator of broad film farces and comedy parodies, or as he says, "spoofs."

Early life
Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents Maximillian Kaminsky and Kate Brookman, Brooks graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School before serving in the US Army during World War II as an engineer, stationed in North Africa.

Career
He started out in show business as a stand-up comic before becoming a comedy writer for television, working on Your Show of Shows. In 1961, with Carl Reiner, he created the persona of the 2000 Year Old Man, a collection of ad libbed comedy routines made into a series of comedy records. With Buck Henry, he created the successful TV series Get Smart. In 1975, Brooks created When Things Were Rotten, a well-received Robin Hood parody that lasted only 13 episodes; nearly 20 years later, Brooks mounted another Robin Hood parody with Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

He later moved into film, working as an actor, director, writer and producer. Among his most popular films have been Young Frankenstein (co-written with Gene Wilder) and Blazing Saddles (co-written with Richard Pryor), both of which were released in 1974. Brooks developed a repertory company of sorts for his film work: performers with three or more Brooks films to their credit include Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Ron Carey, Andréas Voutsinas and, of course, Brooks himself. Dom Deluise has appeared in six of Mel's 12 films; only one person has more appearances than Deluise and that is Brooks himself.

In 1980 Brooks became interested in producing the film "The Elephant Man" directed by David Lynch. Knowing that anyone seeing the poster with "Mel Brooks presents The Elephant Man" would go along expecting a comedy, he set up the company Brooksfilm to produce the film. Brooksfilm has since produced a number of non-comedy films, including David Cronenberg's The Fly, Frances, and 84 Charing Cross Road, starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft, as well as comedies, including Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year.

Brooks' most recent success has been a transfer of his film The Producers to the Broadway stage. Brooks also had a vocal role in the 2005 animated film Robots. He is supposedly currently working on a sequel to his 1987 hit Spaceballs, a parody of the Star Wars and Star Trek series.

Brooks is one of a select group who have received an Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted #50 of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Three of Brooks' films are on the American Film Institute's list of funniest American films: Blazing Saddles (#6), The Producers (#11), and Young Frankenstein (#13).

Brooks and wife Anne Bancroft worked together on three films: Brooks' 1983 remake of To Be or Not to Be, his 1995 film Dracula: Dead and Loving It and in his 1976 Silent Movie. Years later, they appeared as themselves in the fourth season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm, spoofing the finale of The Producers. It is reported that Bancroft encouraged Brooks to take The Producers to Broadway where it became an enormous success, as the show broke the Tony record with 12 wins, a record that had previously been held for 37 years by Hello, Dolly! at 10 wins. Such success has translated to a big screen version of the Broadway adaptation/remake with actors Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane reprising their stage roles, in addition to new cast members Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell for Christmas 2005. As of early April 2006, Brooks had begun composing the score to a Broadway musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein, which he says is "perhaps the best movie [he] ever made." No deadline has been set for the work's completion, but after it is finished Brooks will begin fundraising and production.

Personal life
Brooks was married to Florence Baum from 1951 to 1961. Their marriage ended in divorce. Mel and Florence had three children, Stefanie, Nicky, and Eddie. More famously, he was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death June 6, 2005. They met on rehearsal for the Perry Como variety show in 1961 and married three years later, August 5th. They had one son, Maximillian, in 1972.

Mel at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000316/

a Mel fansite
http://www.righty-o.com/brookslyn/

Mel Brooks web-ring
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/1382/webring.html

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

6/21 Judy Holliday

2006-06-21T21:42:40Z

Judy Holliday (June 21, 1921–June 7, 1965) was an Academy Award-winning American actress.

Born Judith Tuvim ("Tuvim" is Yiddish for "Holiday") in New York City, she was the only child of Abe and Helen Tuvim, who were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Her first job was as an assistant switchboard operator at the Mercury Theatre run by Orson Welles and John Houseman. She began her show business career in December, 1938, as part of a nightclub act called "The Revuers". The other four members of the group were Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Alvin Hammer and John Frank. The Revuers were a staple of the New York nightlife scene until they disbanded in early 1944.

ACTING CAREER

Holliday made her Broadway debut on March 20, 1945, at the Belasco Theatre in Kiss Them for Me and was one of the recipients that year of the Clarence Derwent Award. In 1946 she was back on Broadway as the scatterbrained "Billie Dawn" in Born Yesterday.

Author Garson Kanin wrote the play specifically for his friend, the brilliant but difficult Jean Arthur. Arthur played the role of "Billie" out-of-town, but after many complaints and illnesses, resigned. Kanin chose Holliday as her replacement. In 1949, she was cast in a supporting role opposite Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy on film in one of the year's biggest comedies, Adam's Rib.

The part gave her the chance to star in the film version of Born Yesterday the next year for which she won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actress, beating out such formidable competitors as Gloria Swanson, who was nominated for Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis, who was nominated for All About Eve.

INVESTIGATED FOR COMMUNISM

In 1950, Holliday was the subject of an FBI investigaton looking into allegations that she was a Communist. The investigation "did not reveal positive evidence of membership in the Communist Party" and was concluded after 3 months. Unlike many others that were tainted by the Communist scandal, she was not blacklisted from the movie business, but she was blacklisted from performing on radio and television for almost 3 years.

In 1952, she was called to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to "explain" why her name had been linked to Communist front organizations. She was advised to play dumb, like one of her film characters and did so excellently. She used this technique to avoid giving up names of people that she knew to be Communists.

LATER LIFE AND CAREER

In 1956 she starred in The Solid Gold Cadillac, and, in 1960 in Bells Are Ringing, in the role she had originated on Broadway in 1956, and for which she had won the 1957 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical.

In 1965 she died from breast cancer at the age of 43, survived by her young son. She was interred in the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Filmography
· Too Much Johnson (1938) (short subject)
· Greenwich Village (1944)
· Something for the Boys (1944)
· Winged Victory (1944)
· Adam's Rib (1949)
· On the Town (1949) (voice only)
· Born Yesterday (1950)
· The Marrying Kind (1952)
· It Should Happen to You (1954)
· Phffft! (1954)
· The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956)
· Full of Life (1957)
· Bells Are Ringing (1960)

Stage Work
· My Dear Public (1942) (w./ The Revuers)
· Kiss Them for Me (1945)
· Born Yesterday (1946)
· Dream Girl (1951)
· Bells Are Ringing (1956)
· Laurette (1960)
· Hot Spot (1963)

Judy Holliday Resource Center
http://www.wtv-zone.com/lumina/judy/main.html

Judys FBI Files
http://www.wtv-zone.com/lumina/judy/fbi.html

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0391062/

Judy at Classic Movies
http://www.thegoldenyears.org/holliday.html

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

6/11 Happy 73rd Gene Wilder

2006-06-18T21:06:04Z

Gene Wilder (born Jerome Silberman on June 11, 1933 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American actor, who has starred in more than thirty movies.
He is best known as the title character from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and is also known for his collaborations with writer, producer, director Mel Brooks. He also collaborated on many projects with comedian Richard Pryor. Gene Wilder made many movies with Brooks starting with The Producers in 1968, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing Young Frankenstein with Brooks. (Years later, he would spoof himself while guest-starring on Will & Grace as a character named "Frank Stein.")

Born in Milwaukee, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Wilder studied drama at the University of Iowa, where he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity, graduating in 1955, and later attended Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK. He served in the United States Army from 1956 to 1958.

Returning to the United States, Wilder sought work in the theater supporting himself by driving a limousine and teaching fencing. His career started with the theater in various off- Broadway shows before making it on the Great White Way. It was on Broadway that he had a particularly good year in 1961 with the plays "The Complaisant Lover" and "Roots" and garnered the Clarence Derwent Award. It was several years later when casting for Mother Courage and Her Children in 1964 with actress Anne Bancroft that gave his career an even greater boost; comedian Mel Brooks, whom Bancroft was dating at the time, took a liking to Wilder and cast him in several films.

Wilder's first big part was in Bonnie and Clyde where he played an undertaker abducted by the couple. Perhaps two of his best known roles are as Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and as Leo Bloom in The Producers.

In the late 1970s and 1980s he appeared in a number of movies with Richard Pryor, making them the most prolific inter-racial comedy double act in movies during the period. However, Wilder later admitted the two were not as close as people believed. In fact, in his autobiography Wilder said many negative things about Pryor. He mentioned how difficult he was, his severe drug addiction and how he often held up shooting with his antics.
In 1979 he starred alongside Harrison Ford in the comedy The Frisco Kid.

Wilder was married to Saturday Night Live actress Gilda Radner from 1984 until her death from ovarian cancer in 1989. Since then he has remained active in promoting cancer awareness and treatment. Wilder himself was hospitalized with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1999 and made a full recovery in 2000.
He has been married to voice therapist Karen Boyer since 1991.

On March 1, 2005, Wilder released his highly-personal memoir Kiss Me Like A Stranger, an account of his life covering everything from his childhood, when his mother died of heart disease, up through his wife's death.

“Putting on The Ritz” # from Young Frankenstein

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGN2aa3oQRM&search=gene%20wilder

“Pure Imagination” from Willie Wonka

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckZmX4Hr4Z0&search=gene%20wilder

IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000698/

Gene Wilder.com

http://www.genewilder.com/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 3 replies

Happy Birthday Mae Busch

2006-06-18T16:05:34Z

May Busch
June 18, 1891

www.imdb.com/name/nm0123994/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Happy Birthday Stan Laurel!

2006-06-16T15:54:47Z

Stan Laurel -June 15, 1890

http://www.laurel-and-hardy.com/
www.imdb.com/name/nm0491048/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

June 15 Birthdays

2006-06-15T16:08:14Z

Harry Langdon -1884

www.imdb.com/name/nm0003377/

Hal Roach Jr. -1918

www.imdb.com/name/nm0729984/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Jerry Lewis Has Heart Attack

2006-06-14T15:37:59Z

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/movies/articles/_a/jerry-lewis-suffers-minor-heart-attack/20060614065809990001

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

June 3 Birthdays

2006-06-03T17:02:44Z

Paulette Goddard -1910

www.imdb.com/name/nm0002104/

Leo Gorcey -1917

www.imdb.com/name/nm0329832/

Tony Curtis -1925

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000348/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

5/30 Mel Blanc

2006-06-02T23:13:04Z

Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989), was a famous American voice actor for both classic American radio programs and many animation studios, primarily the Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera studios.

EARLY YEARS AND RADIO

Born in San Francisco, California, he grew up in Portland, Oregon, attending Lincoln High School. At 16 he changed the spelling of his last name, from "Blank". Blanc was working as a voice actor in radio when his ability to create voices for multiple characters first attracted attention. He was a regular on the Jack Benny Program in various roles, including Benny's automobile (a Maxwell in desperate need of a tune up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, and Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael.

Blanc's success on the Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show on the CBS radio network, The Mel Blanc Show, which ran from September 3, 1946 to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it shop, in addition to a wide range of comical support characters. Other regular characters were played by Mary Jane Croft, Joseph Kearns, Hans Conried, Alan Reed, Earle Ross, Jim Backus and Bea Benaderet.

Blanc also appeared on other national radio programs such as Burns and Allen as the Happy Postman, August Moon on Point Sublime, Sad Sack on G.I. Journal, Floyd the Barber on The Great Gildersleeve, and later played various small parts on Benny's television show. Blanc's most memorable routine from Benny's radio and TV programs is called "Sy, the little Mexican" in which he spoke one word at a time. The famous 'si...Sy...sew...Sue' routine was so effective that no matter how many times it was performed, the laughter was always there, thanks to the comedic timing of the Blanc and Benny. Another famous Blanc role on Jack's show was the Union Train Depot announcer who inevitably intoned, sidelong: "Train leaving on Track Five for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga". What made that phrase so funny was the pregnant pause that evolved over time between "Cuc.." and "...amonga" -- eventually minutes would pass while the skit went on, the audience awaiting the inevitable conclusion of the word. For his contribution to radio, Mel Blanc has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Blvd.

ANIMATION VOICE WORK DURING HOLLYWOOD GOLDEN AGE

Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Studios (the subsidiary of Warner Brothers Pictures which produced animated cartoons) in 1936. He soon became noted for voicing a wide variety of cartoon characters, including Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and many others. His natural voice was that of Sylvester the cat but without the lispy spray (you can hear it in an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, which also featured frequent Blanc vocal foil Bea Benaderet; in his small appearance, Blanc plays a vexed cab-driver).

Though his best-known character was a carrot-chomping rabbit, Blanc himself was allergic to raw carrots; they caused his vocal cords to swell and prevented him from speaking easily. No other vegetable produced the desired crunch, however, so Blanc would save the "carrot-eating" sections of Bugs Bunny's dialogue for the end of the recording session, when he would chomp a raw carrot, say his lines, and then hawk a mouthful of chewed carrot into a convenient wastebasket. He claimed his most challenging job was the voicing Yosemite Sam; it was rough on the throat because of Sam’s sheer volume.

Blanc's long association with the theatrical cartoons of Warner Brothers gave him an edge over the made-for-TV voice actors like the two greats Daws Butler and Don Messick. Although Daws and Don both had voice roles in MGM theatrical cartoons (Daws being the southern talking wolf who always whistled and Don at times being "Droopy"), the two didn't do as many theatricals as Mel.

On January 24, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal auto accident on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Hit head-on, Blanc suffered a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for three weeks, and fractures of both legs and the pelvis.

The accident prompted over 15,000 get-well cards from anxious fans, including some addressed only to "Bugs Bunny, Hollywood, USA". Blanc reports in his autobiography that he was awakened from the coma by a clever doctor who addressed him as Bugs Bunny, and therefore credits Bugs with saving his life.

Blanc returned home from the UCLA Medical Center on March 17 to the cheers of more than 150 friends and neighbors. He was not so happy on March 22 when he filed a $500,000 lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection, resulted in the city quickly providing money to reconstruct curves at the dangerous corner.

At the time of the accident, Blanc served as the voice of Barney Rubble on ABC's The Flintstones. His absence from the show would be relatively brief after the show's producers set up recording equipment in Blanc's house to allow him to work from his residence. He also returned to "The Jack Benny Show" to film the program's 1961 Christmas show, moving around via crutches and/or a wheelchair.

HANNA BARBERA

In the early 1960s Mel went to Hanna Barbera and continued to voice various characters, with Barney Rubble from The Flintstones (whose dopey laugh is very similar to Foghorn Leghorn's booming chuckle) and Mr. Spacely from The Jetsons being his most famous. Daws Butler and Don Messick were Hanna-Barbera's top voice men and Mel was the newcomer to H-B. However, all of the 1930s and 1940s theatrical cartoons from Warner Brothers were making their way to Saturday morning TV to compete with the made-for-TV Hanna-Barberas and Mel was once more deemed relevant. Warner Bros then started to make first-run cartoon shorts for TV in the late '60s, mostly shorts consisting of Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales or Tweety and Sylvester (he was forbidden by Hanna-Barbera to voice Bugs Bunny). Mel did these voices plus the ones he did for the ensemble cartoons like Wacky Races and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop for Hanna-Barbera. Mel even shared the spotlight with his two rivals and personal friends Daws Butler and Don Messick. In a short called Lippy the Lion, Daws was Lippy while Mel was his side-kick, Hardy Har-Har. In the short Ricochet Rabbit, Don provided the voice of the gun slinging rabbit while Mel was his sidekick, Deputy Droop-a-Long.

LATER CAREER AND PASSING

Blanc was one of hundreds of individuals that George Lucas auditioned to provide the voice for the character of C-3PO for his 1977 motion picture Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and it was he who ultimately suggested that the producers utilize mime actor Anthony Daniels' own voice in the role.

After spending most of two seasons voicing the robot Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Blanc's last original character was an orange cat named Heathcliff, who spoke a little like his famed Bugs Bunny but with a more street tough demeanor. This was the early 1980s. Mel continued to voice his famous characters in commercials and TV specials for most of the decade, although he increasingly left the "yelling" characters like Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil to other voice actors as performing these were too hard on his throat and voice by the time of his old age in the 1980s. One of his last recording sessions was for a new animated theatrical version of The Jetsons, Jetsons: The Movie.

His death from cardiovascular disease was considered a significant loss to the cartoon industry because of his skill, expressive range, and the sheer volumes of continuing characters he portrayed, which are currently taken up by several other voice talents; no one individual can currently match the vocal range Blanc was able to establish. Indeed, as movie critic Leonard Maltin once pointed out, “it is astounding to realize that Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam are the same man!”. That range was partially aided by recording technology. For instance, Mel’s standard Daffy Duck voice is essentially his Sylvester voice played back a few percent faster than it was recorded to give it a higher pitch. Blanc would later develop the skill to reproduce such "sped up" voices himself live as necessary. Other character voices that were given this special treatment included Porky Pig, Henery Hawk, and Speedy Gonzales.

After his death, Blanc's voice continued to be heard in newly released properties. In particular, a recording of him doing Dino the dinosaur's bark from the 1960s Flintstones series was utilized in the 1994 live-action theatrical film based upon the series. This resulted in legal action against the film studio by the Blanc estate, which claimed his recordings were used without permission or proper credit.

Blanc died in Los Angeles, California, and is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. Blanc's will stated his desire to have the inscription on his gravestone read, "THAT'S ALL FOLKS", considered by some to be one of the most famous epitaphs in the world.

LINKS

List of characters, what show and what year was performed

http://www.thegremlin.com/CELMAIL.mblanc.html

Mel’s page at Voice Chasers

http://voicechasers.com/database/showactor.php?actorid=1113

Mel at IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000305/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

May 30 Birthdays

2006-05-30T15:41:16Z

Howard Hawks -1896

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001328/

Irving Thalberg -1899

www.imdb.com/name/nm0856921/

Stepin Fetchit -1902

www.imdb.com/name/nm0275297/

Mel Blanc -1908

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000305/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

May 23 Birthdays

2006-05-27T11:26:08Z

Max Davidson -1875

www.imdb.com/name/nm0203439/

James Gleason -1882

www.imdb.com/name/nm0322299/

Douglas Fairbanks -1883

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001196/

Scatman Crothers -1910

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001079/

Rosemary Clooney -1928

www.imdb.com/name/nm0167041/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 3 replies

Film Revivals In L.A.

2006-05-26T01:51:22Z

For those of you who will be in or around the L.A. area, here is a list of films being shown around town:

June 7, 2006

BALL OF FIRE (1941)
THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

James Bridges Theater
Westwood

June 19, 2006

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)

Samuel Goldwyn Theater
Beverly Hills

July 1 - 29, 2006

Screwball Comedy Series featuring:
TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932)
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934)
MY MAN GODFREY (1936)
THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937)
BRINGING UP BABY (1938)
HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)
BALL OF FIRE (1941)
THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

One Colorado Courtyard
Pasadena

I will post more when information becomes available. :)

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Frank Capra

2006-05-22T15:40:35Z

Last week I forgot to post the birthday of one of my favorite directors. Frank Capra. He was born on May 18, 1897. Some people think his films are a bit too sentimental, but I've always loved them.

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001008/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

May 22 Birthday

2006-05-22T15:37:24Z

Robert McGowan -1901

www.imdb.com/name/nm0569696/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

George Gobel

2006-05-20T12:54:23Z

George Leslie Gobel (May 20, 1919 - February 24, 1991) was an American comedian, born in Chicago, Illinois, and known as Lonesome George. He appeared on the National Barn Dance on WLS radio, and also in several movies. He hosted his own weekly television show in 1954, and in later years appeared regularly on Hollywood Squares. Gobel's quiet, homespun style was a departure from the rough-and-tumble nature of early television humor that often featured outlandish costumes and exploding seltzer bottles. For decades he was a frequent guest star on many TV shows as well as on The Tonight Show during the years Johnny Carson was its host.

His comedy routines were mainly humorous stories about things that had supposedly happened to him (and his wife "Alice"), and they often involved word play, such as spoonerisms ("in one swell foop"). He had a special version of the Gibson L-5 archtop guitar built featuring diminished dimensions of neck scale and body depth, befitting his own small stature; a series of several dozen of this "L-5CT" or "George Gobel" model was produced in the late 1950's and early 1960's. He also played harmonica.

The giant tortoise Lonesome George may have been named after him.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0323597/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

5/13 Bea Arthur ?

2006-05-12T21:54:28Z

Not sure if she is technically in the realm of Classic Film Comedy. But what the hell.

Bernice Frankel (born May 13, 1923), known professionally as Beatrice Arthur, is an Emmy Award-winning American actress and comedienne. She has a distinctive deep voice, acid wit, and prominent stature, standing almost 5 ft 10 in

Arthur was born in New York City to Jewish American parents Philip and Rebecca Frankel and was raised in Maryland. She became a medical technologist before World War II, when she volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps, becoming one of its first female recruits.

Her notable television roles included the title role on the popular sitcom Maude in the 1970s, and a starring role on The Golden Girls in the 1980s and 1990s. In the former she played Maude Findlay, an outspoken "limousine liberal" and "New Deal fanatic", living in the wealthy community of Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York, with her husband, Walter (Bill Macy).

The show was a spinoff from All in the Family, on which Arthur had appeared in the same role, playing Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton)'s cousin, a feminist Democrat, and alter-ego to the prejudiced, conservative Republican Archie (Carroll O'Connor).

Like the show which spawned it, "Maude" often found its humor—and, occasionally drama—by striking close to the bone on weighty, topical sociopolitical issues. In one controversial episode, Maude had an abortion. It remains to this day the only prime-time network television show, comedy or drama, that has had its lead character get an abortion.

In The Golden Girls she played the character Dorothy Zbornak, a past middle-age substitute teacher who lived in a Florida house owned by man-hungry Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan). Her other roommates included dim-but-sweet Rose Nylund (Betty White) and Dorothy's short-tempered, yet "hip" Sicilian mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty). Getty was actually two months younger than Arthur in real life, and was heavily made up to look significantly older. Arthur and Betty White did not get along particularly well, but like professionals they carried on.

On stage, her roles included "Lucy Brown" in the 1954 Off-Broadway premiere of Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, "Yente the Matchmaker" in the 1964 premiere of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, and a 1966 Tony Award-winning portrayal of "Vera Charles" to Angela Lansbury's Mame (she recreated the role on film opposite Lucille Ball in 1974). In 1981, she appeared in Woody Allen's The Floating Lightbulb.

Two decades later she toured the U.S. with a one-woman show in which she made a triumphant return to Broadway in 2002. Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends, a collection of stories and songs and based on her life and long career, was nominated for a Tony award for Best Special Theatrical Event but lost to Elaine Stritch At Liberty.

Arthur recently took part in the Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson.

She was married for many years to her second husband, director Gene Saks, with whom she adopted two sons, but the marriage ended in divorce.

Arthur has also been a committed animal rights activist, taking part in numerous campaigns for PETA. In the late 90's, a Bea Arthur fan attracted considerable attention for his bumper sticker campaign, "Bea Arthur - Be Naked," as well as for a CK1 ad spoof, "Just Bea."

Arthur is a gay icon and has long maintained a loyal gay fanbase. She has frequently been mistaken as a lesbian due to various personality and physical traits, which stand out and become more notable with the passing of time, that are stereotypically associated with gay women. Arthur has come out in strong support of gay rights while proudly proclaiming her own heterosexuality, and has granted cover interviews to a variety of gay magazines

Trivia

The Marvel Comics character Deadpool harbors a bizarre obsession with Bea Arthur and seems to consider her particularly sexy.

In the movie Airheads (1994) — with Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler — the main characters ask for naked pictures of Bea Arthur as part of an elaborate ploy to build an insanity defense.

Arthur is referenced in the song "California" by singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright on his 2001 album Poses. The lyric, "I don't know this sea of neon / Thousand surfers, whiffs of freon / And my new grandma Bea Arthur", references in part a chance meeting with Arthur. A homesick Wainwright, away from his native Canada, told her seeing her on reruns of The Golden Girls made him feel like he was with his own grandmother, to which Arthur is to have curtly replied, "I am not your f----ng grandmother!"

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0037735/

Bea at the Museum of Broadcast History

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/A/htmlA/arthurbeatr/arthurbeatr.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

5/11 Phil Silvers

2006-05-10T15:01:48Z

Phil Silvers (May 11, 1911 – November 1, 1985) was an American entertainer and comedy actor.

His best-known work is The Phil Silvers Show, a 1950s sitcom set on a US Army post in which he played Sergeant Bilko; the show was also often referred to by this name. He won a Tony Award for Top Banana in 1952 (it was turned into a film in 1954). The show's chief writer, Nat Hiken, was TV's first writer-producer, and Hiken helped set a high comic tone for the show through his inventive plots and snappy comedic repartee for the characters.

Born Philip Silversmith in Brooklyn, New York, Silvers was the youngest of eight children in a Russian Jewish family. His father was one of the workers on the early New York skyscrapers. Silvers started entertaining at age 11, when he would sing in theaters when the projector broke down (a common occurrence in those days). Two years later, he left school to sing professionally, before appearing in vaudeville as a stooge.

Silvers then landed work in short films, burlesque houses, and on Broadway, where he made his debut in the short-lived show Yokel Boy. The critics raved about Silvers, who was hailed as the bright spot in the mediocre play. He then wrote the revue High Kickers, until he went to Hollywood to star in films.

He made his film debut in Hit Parade of 1941 (1940) (his previous appearance as a pitch man in Strike Up the Band was cut). Over the next two decades, he appeared in character roles for MGM, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, in such films as Lady Be Good, Coney Island, Cover Girl, and Summer Stock. When the studio system started collapsing, he then turned to television and more stardom in the role of Sgt. Ernie Bilko.

Throughout the 1960's, he appeared in films such as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He also guested on various variety shows such as The Carol Burnett Show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and The Dean Martin Show.

He famously starred as a guest in one of the famed British Carry On films, Follow That Camel (1967), as a Sergeant Bilko character in a spoof of the Foreign Legion films. Peter Rogers employed him to ensure the Carry On films' success in America.

His salary was £30,000, the largest Carry On salary ever, only later met by the appearance of Elke Sommer in Carry On Behind (1975). Despite his appearance in the film, he didn't ensure the film's success on either side of the Atlantic.

Famed voice actor Daws Butler employed an impression of Silvers as the voice of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Hokey Wolf and also used the same voice in numerous cartoons for Jay Ward. Furthermore, the premise of The Phil Silvers Show was the basis for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Top Cat.

Silvers was very ill in the last few years of his life, even though he continued work into the early 1980s in film and TV, including a cameo appearance on Happy Days as the father of "Jenny Piccolo" (played by his real-life daughter Cathy Silvers). He died in 1985 of a heart attack at the age of 74.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted #42 on the list of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

Links

The Phil Silvers Show site

http://www.philsilversshow.homestead.com/

IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0799014/

Fan site

http://www.comedyorama.com/philsilvers/index.html

Museum of Broadcast Communications Silvers page

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/P/htmlP/philsilvers/philsilvers.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

May 2 Birthdays

2006-05-02T16:40:14Z

Bing Crosby -1903

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001078/

Pinky Lee -1907

www.imdb.com/name/nm0498035/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

WC Fields

2006-04-29T18:23:02Z

incase you missed the other thread a tribe has sprouted for our Bulbous nosed curmedgeon

http://tribes.tribe.net/wcfields

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

April 26 Birthdays

2006-04-26T14:19:43Z

Anita Loos -1888

www.imdb.com/name/nm0002616/

Edgar Kennedy -1890

www.imdb.com/name/nm0448012/

Guinn "Big Boy" Williams -1899

www.imdb.com/name/nm0930711/

Carol Burnett -1933

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000993/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

April 20 Birthday

2006-04-20T16:12:24Z

Harold Lloyd

www.haroldlloyd.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0516001/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

April 16 Birthdays!

2006-04-16T16:32:07Z

Charlie Chaplin -1889

http://www.charliechaplin.com/article.php3?id_article=3
www.imdb.com/name/nm000012

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

April 9 Birthday

2006-04-09T16:23:18Z

Ward Bond -1903

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000955/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

2/25 Zeppo Marx

2006-04-08T00:25:49Z

Almost forgot about Zeppo today.

Herbert Marx (February 25, 1901 – November 29, 1979) is best known as Zeppo Marx, the name he used when he performed with his brothers, The Marx Brothers.

There are different theories to where Zeppo got his stage name: Groucho once said that the name was derived from the Zeppelin, a new invention at the time of his birth. However, it is more commonly suggested that the name derived from that of another vaudeville performer named Mr. Zippo, whom Herbert resembled. It is possible that both are true and that some punning was involved. (Another story tells of the time the Marxes were pretending to be gentleman farmers in order to avoid conscription into World War I. The brothers would refer to each other by "hayseed" names like Zeke and Zeb; Zeb became Zeppo.)

Zeppo appeared in the first five Marx Brothers movies, as a straight man and romantic lead, before leaving the team. He had sufficient comic abilities to have stood in for Groucho when the brothers performed on stage, and he was reputed to be very funny offstage; but he never invented a comic persona of his own that could stand up against those of Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx, even though the role he formerly filled would continue to exist in the brothers' remaining films.

Offstage, Zeppo had great mechanical skills and was largely responsible for keeping the Marx family car running. Zeppo later owned a company which machined parts for the war effort during World War II including the Marman clamps used to hold the Hiroshima bomb inside the Enola Gay. He also founded a large theatrical agency with his brother Gummo Marx, and invented a wrist watch that would monitor the pulse rate of cardiac patients and give off an alarm if they went into cardiac arrest.

On April 12, 1927, Zeppo married Marion Benda. The couple would adopt one child, Timothy, in 1944 and would later divorce on May 12, 1954. On September 18, 1959, Zeppo married Barbara Blakeley, whose son, Bobby Oliver, he adopted and gave his surname. Zeppo and Blakely would divorce in 1972 or 1973. Blakely would later marry singer Frank Sinatra.

The last surviving Marx Brother, Zeppo died of lung cancer in 1979 at the age of 78.

Links

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0555688/

Zeppo’s page at the Marx Bros site
http://www.marx-brothers.org/living/zeppo.htm

Zeppo Fan Page
http://www.geocities.com/sls2002x/zeppomarx.html

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

April 3 Birthdays

2006-04-03T16:51:34Z

Dooley Wilson -1894

www.imdb.com/name/nm0933330/

T. Marvin Hatley -1905

www.imdb.com/name/nm0368943/

Doris Day -1924

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000013/

Marlon Brando -1924

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000008/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlon_Brando

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

4/2 Buddy Ebsen

2006-04-03T00:05:40Z

Buddy Ebsen (April 2, 1908 – July 6, 2003) was an American actor, who is best-remembered for his role as Jed Clampett in the popular television series The Beverly Hillbillies.

Born Christian Ludolf Ebsen in Belleville, Illinois, where he was raised until age 10 when his family moved to Palm Beach County, Florida. After a very brief stay there, Ebsen and his family, in 1920, relocated to Orlando, Florida. He graduated from Orlando High School in 1926. Initially interested in a medical career, Ebsen attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida from 1926-1927; and then Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida from 1927-1928. Family financial problems, that resulted from the collapse of the Florida land boom, forced him to leave college for good at age 20.

Ebsen then left for New York in 1928 to try his luck as a dancer on the Vaudeville circuit. He made his film debut in 1935's Broadway Melody of 1936 and appearing in various screen musicals including Born to Dance, Captain January (both 1936) and The Girl of the Golden West (1938). Ebsen was noted for his unusual, almost surreal dancing and singing style (see, for example, his contribution to the "Swingin' the Jinx Away" finale of Born to Dance), and in Broadway Melody of 1936, his dancing partner was his sister, Vilma Ebsen.

Ebsen was originally cast as the "Tin Man" in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. He recorded all his songs, went through all the rehearsals, and started filming with the rest of the cast. He was rushed to the hospital nine days after filming began, when his lungs seized after a week of inhaling aluminum dust from the dangerously experimental "tin" makeup.

While Ebsen was in the hospital for two weeks, recovering from a near-fatal allergic reaction to the dust, he was replaced by Jack Haley. Haley didn't run the same risk, as the makeup was changed in the meantime from a dust to a paste. (Although Haley re-recorded most of Ebsen's vocals, Ebsen's midwestern voice with the enunciated "R" in the word "Wizard" can still be heard on the soundtrack during a couple of the reprises of "We're Off to See the Wizard".) As noted in a documentary included with the 2005 DVD release of Wizard of Oz, MGM did not publicize the reasons for Ebsen leaving the film, and even Haley wasn't made aware of why Ebsen left until later; in an interview videotaped before his death (also included on the DVD), Ebsen recalled that the studio heads didn't believe he was sick until someone tried to order Ebsen back to the set and was intercepted by an angry nurse. No footage of Ebsen as the Tin Man has to date surfaced.

After the Oz debacle, Ebsen appeared only in minor Westerns for many years. From 1941 to 1946, Ebsen served as a lieutenant in the United States Coast Guard.

Ebsen lost yet another iconic landmark role: he was originally slated to play Davy Crockett on television for Walt Disney, until Disney saw Fess Parker. Parker played Crockett and Ebsen was demoted to Crockett's fictional sidekick "George Russell" in the Davy Crockett series produced by Disney in the mid-1950s, which became an astonishing audience sensation. Ebsen finally became truly famous in 1962 with the lead role of Jed Clampett in the television show The Beverly Hillbillies. The show depicted a hillbilly family from a fictionalized hamlet in the Ozarks called Bugtussle; striking it rich on oil and moving to a tony neighborhood in Beverly Hills, California. Although scorned by critics, the show was a massive hit, attracting as many as sixty million viewers on CBS between 1962 and 1971. It was still earning good ratings when it was canceled by CBS because advertisers shunned a series that attracted a rural audience. A conservative Republican, there was some fallout from Ebsen's refusal to endorse fellow Beverly Hillbillies co-star, Nancy Kulp, for a Congressional seat in Pennsylvania as she was "too liberal" for his tastes and he endorsed her opponent; they never spoke again.

Ebsen also had a notable role as a country farmer who was once married to Holly Golightly in the 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, which is credited for bringing him to the attention of the producers of Beverly Hillbillies, who cast him in a similar role.

He later starred in a TV detective series, Barnaby Jones, beginning in 1973 and running for most of the decade. His last work was mainly in television, reprising his Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones roles.

Athough generally retired from acting as he entered his 80s, he had an amusing cameo in the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies, again playing "Barnaby Jones", with the TV theme underscoring the scene. Oddly, he would go on to outlive the actor portraying the film version of "Jed Clampett," Jim Varney, who died from lung cancer in 2000. This cameo would prove to be his final motion picture appearance, although Ebsen would go on to appear in an episode of the 1994 revival of Burke's Law and, in 1999, make his final acting appearance anywhere providing a voice for an episode of King of the Hill.

As Ebsen entered his 90s, he continued to keep active, and there were media reports that he had begun work on his first novel about a year before his death at the age of 95. One of the last known on camera interviews with Buddy Ebsen was conducted by Steven F. Zambo. A small portion of this interview can be seen in the 2005 PBS' program The Pioneers of Primetime.

Some writers have stated that his reaction to the aluminum dust of the Tin Man was nearly fatal. Ironically, he far outlived almost all the cast and crew members of The Wizard of Oz, except for a few Munchkins; although to be fair he was somewhat younger than almost all of his major co-stars, except, of course, for Judy Garland.

Buddy Ebsen has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Buddy at IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001171/

Buddy Ebsen Tribute Page
http://www.actorbuddyebsen.info/

The Official Buddy Ebsen Webpage
http://www.buddyebsen.com/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Upcoming DVD Releases

2006-03-31T19:01:54Z

April 11, 2006:

THE LAUREL & HARDY COLLECTION (GREAT GUNS /JITTERBUGS /THE BIG NOISE)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E6ESF8/ref=pd_rhf_p_3/103-4614669-6882230?no=%2A&s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

April 18, 2006:

LOVE HAPPY (1949)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E6EJW0/qid=1143831225/sr=1-113/ref=sr_1_113/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

April 25, 2006:

LEMONADE JOE (1966)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EMGIN2/qid=1143831104/sr=1-104/ref=sr_1_104/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

THREE LITTLE WORDS (1950)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EBD9S0/qid=1143831511/sr=1-177/ref=sr_1_177/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

May 2, 2006:

I LOVE LUCY -THE COMPLETE 6TH SEASON

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E6EJWA/qid=1143830819/sr=1-89/ref=sr_1_89/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

May 23, 2006:

AFRICA SCREAMS (1949)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EOTW8I/qid=1143830222/sr=1-12/ref=sr_1_12/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

May 30, 2006:

THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1941)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EU1Q1S/qid=1143831225/sr=1-119/ref=sr_1_119/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

June 6, 2006:

CHAPLIN MUTUAL COMEDIES

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F4TMIW/qid=1143830577/sr=1-32/ref=sr_1_32/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

DUMBO (BIG TOP EDITION)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EYK4GW/ref=pd_rhf_p_5/103-4614669-6882230?no=%2A&s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

June 20, 2006

A FINE MADNESS (1966)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ERVK3K/qid=1143830701/sr=1-59/ref=sr_1_59/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS! (1968)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ERVK44/qid=1143830819/sr=1-90/ref=sr_1_90/103-4614669-6882230?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 31 Birthdays

2006-03-31T18:21:12Z

Eddie Dunn -1896

www.imdb.com/name/nm0242554/

Eddie Quillan -1907

www.imdb.com/name/nm0703600/

Sydney Chaplin -1926

www.imdb.com/name/nm0152261/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 30 Birthdays

2006-03-30T15:58:48Z

Robert Riskin -1897

www.imdb.com/name/nm0728307/

John Astin -1930

www.imdb.com/name/nm0040014/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 28-29 Birthdays

2006-03-28T16:49:10Z

Dorothy Deborba
March 28, 1925

www.imdb.com/name/nm0213496/

Warner Baxter
March 29, 1889

www.imdb.com/name/nm0062828/

Pearl Bailey
March 29, 1918

www.imdb.com/name/nm0047440/

Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins
March 29, 1925

www.imdb.com/name/nm0404257/

Eric Idle
March 29, 1943

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001385/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 25 Birthdays

2006-03-25T16:33:50Z

Jackie Condon -1918

www.imdb.com/name/nm0174393/

Shirley Jean Rickert -1926

www.imdb.com/name/nm0419880/
http://www.measuresup.com/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 24 Birthdays

2006-03-24T18:51:12Z

Roscoe Arbuckle -1887

http://silent-movies.org/Arbucklemania//home.html
www.imdb.com/name/nm0000779/

Joseph Barbera -1911

www.imdb.com/name/nm0053484/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 21-23 Birthdays

2006-03-22T18:35:09Z

Broncho Billy Anderson
March 21, 1880

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001908/

W.S. Van Dyke
March 21, 1889

www.imdb.com/name/nm0886754/

Russ Meyer
March 21, 1922

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000540/

James Coco
March 21, 1930

www.imdb.com/name/nm0168394/

Chico Marx
March 22, 1887

www.imdb.com/name/nm0555597/

Virginia Grey
March 22, 1917

www.imdb.com/name/nm0340706/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

3/22 Chico Marx

2006-03-22T17:25:35Z

Leonard Marx, known as Chico, (March 22, 1887 – October 11, 1961) was one of the Marx Brothers.
Originally nicknamed Chicko due to his reputation as a ladies man, or a "chicken chaser" in the popular slang of the day. A typesetter accidentally dropped the "k" in his name and it became Chico. It was still pronounced "Chick-o" although those who were unaware of its origin tended to pronounce it "Cheek-o". He used an Italian accent, developed off-stage to deal with neighbourhood toughs, for his on-stage character; stereotyped ethnic characters were common with Vaudeville comedians, and all the Marx brothers sometimes performed "dialect characters" early in their careers, but Chico was the only one to continue this into their films.

for complete bio go here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico_Marx

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 16 Birthdays

2006-03-16T18:23:52Z

Florence Roberts -1861

www.imdb.com/name/nm0731095/

Sydney Chaplin -1885

www.imdb.com/name/nm0152260/

Jerry Lewis -1926

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001471/
www.jerrylewiscomedy.com/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 15 Birthdays

2006-03-15T18:28:58Z

Nat Perrin -1905

www.imdb.com/name/nm0674759/

Frank "Junior" Coghlan -1916

www.imdb.com/name/nm0169067/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 13 Birthdays

2006-03-13T17:46:15Z

Henry Hathaway -1898

www.imdb.com/name/nm0368871/

Paul Fix -1901

www.imdb.com/name/nm0280707/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 12 Birthday!

2006-03-12T17:16:53Z

Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas -1931

www.imdb.com/name/nm0858537

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

March 10 Birthday

2006-03-10T18:40:36Z

It's always good to acknowledge those familiar faces that don't get enough credit.

Baldwin Cooke
March 10, 1888

www.imdb.com/name/nm0177371/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

Screwball Comedies?

2006-03-10T09:11:50Z

I was in the mood for something classic with snappy patter, interesting situations, classy dames, dapper dudes and a little romance. But I drew a blank when I was at Reel this afternoon. I've already seen "His Gal Friday", a number of the Spencer-Tracy films, "Bringing Up Baby" and some others. What would you list as the best screwball comedies?

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 31 replies

Upcoming DVD Releases

2006-03-09T18:42:04Z

Mae West: The Glamour Collection -April 4

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E6ESX0/qid=1141926280/sr=1-114/ref=sr_1_114/103-3103820-1335842?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

Carole Lombard: The Glamour Collection -April 4

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E6ESWG/qid=1141926088/sr=1-30/ref=sr_1_30/103-3103820-1335842?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection -April 4

Thttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E6ESXK/qid=1141926871/sr=1-117/ref=sr_1_117/103-3103820-1335842?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

The Lucy & Desi Collection -May 9

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EHQU0I/qid=1141926871/sr=1-112/ref=sr_1_112/103-3103820-1335842?s=dvd&v=glance&n=130

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

Belated Birthdays

2006-03-08T18:38:14Z

Walter Long -March 5, 1879

www.imdb.com/name/nm0519227/

Guy Kibbee -March 6, 1882

www.imdb.com/name/nm0452128/

Gus Meins -March 6, 1893

www.imdb.com/name/nm0576940/

Rob Reiner -March 6, 1947

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001661/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

3/6 Lou Costello

2006-03-06T14:44:26Z

Louis Francis Cristillo aka Lou Costello (March 6, 1906 - March 3, 1959) was an American actor, producer and comedian. He is best known as half of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, with Bud Abbott.

Birth
Costello was born in Paterson, New Jersey to an Italian American father and an Irish American mother; the family was Catholic. In 1927 he went to Hollywood to become an actor, but found work as a laborer at MGM and Warner Brothers. He worked temporarily as a stuntman, and then eventually became a burlesque comedian.

Bud Abbott
In the early 1930s, Costello crossed paths with a talented straight man named Bud Abbott. They formally teamed up in 1936, and performed together in burlesque shows, minstrel shows, vaudeville and movie houses.

Hollywood
In 1938 they received national exposure for the first time by performing on the Kate Smith radio show, which led to the duo signing with Universal the following year. Abbott and Costello appeared in their first film in 1940, a movie entitled One Night in the Tropics. Although Abbott and Costello were only filling supporting roles, they stole the film with their classic routine Who's On First?. (Abbott and Costello are often mentioned as the only two non-baseball players honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame museum in Cooperstown, New York, because of their legendary Who's On First? routine, even though that is not true.)

The team's breakout picture, however, was "Buck Privates" which was released early in 1941. They immediately became the top ranking comedy stars in Hollywood and fans looked upon each of their pictures as a major event. Most movie-goers had never seen the duo's Vaudeville routines, and so their dated but hilarious material seemed fresh. Many of their films showed them as bumbling servicemen such as In The Navy and Keep 'Em Flying. An amusing footnote to this is that the Japanese military showed these films to Japanese soldiers to demonstrate how inept American soldiers were.

Death of son
In 1943, Costello had an attack of rheumatic fever and was unable to work for a year. A tragic event shadowed his comeback. On the day Costello returned to do the team's popular radio show, his infant son, 'Butch', drowned in the family pool by accident. Lou said he had asked his wife in the morning to keep Butch up that night so he could hear his Dad on the radio for the first time. Rather than cancel the show, Lou said, "Wherever he is tonight, I want him to hear me." and went on as planned. No one in the audience knew of the tragedy, and Lou performed just as he always did. Only after the show had ended did Bud Abbott explain how the phrase "The show must go on" had been epitomized by Lou that night. People who knew Lou Costello said that he never recovered from the loss of his son.

Split up
Abbott and Costello split up in 1957, after troubles with the Internal Revenue Service that forced both men to sell off their large homes and the rights to some of their films.

Death
After making one unsuccessful solo film, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, Costello died of a heart attack three days before his 53rd birthday in 1959. He was interred in the Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California.

Watch Abbot and Costello in Jack and The Beanstalk
http://tesla.liketelevision.com/liketelevision/tuner.php?channel=11&format=movie&theme=guide

Watch Abbot and Costello in Africa Screams
http://tesla.liketelevision.com/liketelevision/tuner.php?channel=790&format=movie&theme=guide

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0182579/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

3/3 Jean Harlow

2006-03-03T23:02:31Z

I like all of Harlows movies I have seen. But her comedies are my favorites

Jean Harlow (born March 3, 1911 - died June 7, 1937) was an American film actress who became known as the "original blonde bombshell," predating Marilyn Monroe as a blonde sex symbol.

Harlow was the first blonde to be cast in "bad girl" roles. Before her, bad girls in movies were dark-haired and exotic looking. She made over 30 films during a career that lasted only 10 years, and had a talent for comedy as well as drama that is still recognized today by record numbers of fans and film critics alike.

Harlow was born Harlean Carpenter in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Mont Clair Carpenter, a dentist, and his wife, Jean Poe Harlow. Her given name (Harlean) was invented from parts of her mother's maiden name, Jean Harlow. At first, Harlow adopted her mother's name as a stage name, then legally changed it in 1935.

Mother Jean, as she was known, divorced Harlean's father and moved to Hollywood with hopes of becoming an actress herself. Shortly afterward she remarried and moved to Chicago, where Jean attended Ferry Hall School, a private girls' academy in the wealthy suburb of Lake Forest. At the age of 16, Jean eloped with Charles McGrew 2nd, a wealthy young stockbroker and the couple moved to Los Angeles, California. They divorced two years later.

Jean wanted to be a wife and mother, but to please Mother Jean she looked for work as an extra in films, in which she made $7 a day. In the beginning Jean landed bit parts in silent films such as Why is a Plumber? (1927), Moran of the Marines (1928) and The Love Parade (1929). She had a more substantial role in Laurel and Hardy's short Double Whoopee (1929). She got her first major role when producer Howard Hughes cast her in the World War I film Hell's Angels (1930).

Notable for its two-strip Technicolor sequences (including some footage of Harlow in color), this film launched Harlow as the premier sex symbol of the 1930s and started a craze for platinum blonde hair that continues to this day.

In 1931, Harlow began to gain popularity when she appeared in The Public Enemy, Goldie, The Secret Six with Clark Gable, and Platinum Blonde. In 1932 she had bigger roles in Red-Headed Woman, for which she received a salary of $1,250/week, and Red Dust, her second film with Clark Gable. Harlow and Gable worked well together and co-starred in a total of six films.
It was during the making of Red Dust that Harlow's second husband, MGM producer Paul Bern (né Paul Levy) died in an incident that remains mysterious to this day; he was found naked in his wife's bedroom, shot in the head and drenched in his wife's perfume. Years later it was suggested by screenwriter Ben Hecht that Bern was murdered by an unbalanced former lover, Dorothy Millette, who actually committed suicide the next day. (Years later, the Bern-Harlow house became the home of Jay Sebring and, for a time, Sharon Tate. They were later both murdered by Charles Manson's followers.)

By 1933, Harlow was becoming a superstar. She had a great comedic part in Dinner at Eight, and later that year she starred in Bombshell. Because of Harlow's indiscreet affair with boxer Max Baer, Mrs. Baer threatened divorce proceedings, naming Harlow as a co-defendent for "alienation of affection," then the common term for adultery. MGM diffused the situation by arranging a quick marriage between Harlow and cinematographer Harold Rosson. Still feeling the aftershocks of the mysterious Bern death, the studio didn't want another Harlow scandal on its hands. Rosson and Harlow were friends, and the cameraman went along with the plan. They divorced quietly seven months later. Harlow then starred in two more films with Clark Gable, China Seas (1935) and Wife vs. Secretary (1936). Other co-stars included Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor and William Powell.

Critics early on praised Harlow's beauty, but panned her sometimes clumsy acting in the standard '30s gangster potboilers and romantic melodramas. After seeing her in Bombshell, many started to reconsider their previous opinions of Harlow's acting, and MGM discovered Harlow's strong suit: comedy. Her performance in Dinner at Eight cemented her reputation as an expert comedienne, not just a sex symbol.

Following the end of her third marriage, Harlow met MGM star William Powell. They reportedly were engaged for two years, but differences kept them from marrying swiftly (she wanted children; he did not). Harlow also said that studio head Louis B. Mayer would never allow them to wed.

Harlow fell ill with influenza during the early part of 1937; although she recovered, the attack weakened her body against the onslaught of a more serious illness that was just beginning to take hold: kidney failure. In retrospective analysis, Harlow's kidneys may have been slowly failing during the ten years since she contracted scarlet fever while in her early teens. In the days before kidney dialysis and transplants, this condition was fatal.
While filming Saratoga (1937) with Clark Gable, Harlow collapsed on set and was rushed to the hospital, diagnosed with uremic poisoning. She died just days later, at the age of 26.

Harlow is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California. William Powell paid for her tomb, which bears the simple inscription "Our Baby." Her funeral took place in the Wee Kirk O' The Heather Chapel at Forest Lawn Cemetery. She was buried in the negligee that she had worn just weeks before, while filming a scene from Saratoga. It's been reported that a single white gardenia with an unsigned note attached that read "Good night, my dearest darling" were placed in her hands. It is assumed that both were from her beloved William Powell, who also paid for her final resting place—the $25,000, 9x10-foot private room lined with multicolored imported marble located in the Sanctuary of Benediction.

Many myths have swirled around Harlow's death and it was not until the early 1990s that her long-sealed medical records were uncovered. Legend had it that Harlow's mother, a Christian Scientist, prevented doctors from attending to her dying daughter, but this myth has been extinguished; records prove Harlow received constant medical attention. Other long-standing myths, such as the suggestion that Harlow's kidneys were damaged in a beating from husband Paul Bern or that bleach from her hair seeped into her brain and killed her, are equally untrue.

Links
Harlow at Movie Maidens
http://www.moviemaidens.com/profile.asp?i=1020

Jean Harlow Website
http://www.jeanharlow.com/

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001318/

The Platinum Page
http://www.jeanharlow.org/

Quotes
“No one ever expects a great lay to pay all the bills.”

“I like to wake up each morning feeling a new man.”

“This place certainly reeks of hospitality and good cheer, or maybe it's this cheese.”

“Underwear makes me uncomfortable and besides my parts have to breathe.”

“When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

On Howard Hughes

"One day when he was eating a cookie he offered me a bite. Don't underestimate that. The poor guy's so frightened of germs, it could darn near have been a proposal."

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

March 1 Birthdays

2006-03-01T18:22:26Z

Lionel Atwill -1885

www.imdb.com/name/nm0041172/

David Niven -1910

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000057/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

R.I.P. Don Knotts

2006-03-01T18:09:39Z

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=cp-tos-feat-h-02&idq=/ff/story/0001/20060225/1747970188.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 8 replies

2/26 Betty Hutton

2006-02-25T15:14:32Z

Betty Hutton, (born Elizabeth June Thornburg on February 26, 1921 in Battle Creek, Michigan) is an American actress, musician and comedienne.

Raised by a single mother, Hutton (along with her sister, Marion Hutton) started singing in the family's speakeasy at age 3. Related troubles with the police kept the family on the move; eventually they moved to Detroit. When interviewed much later, as an established star, she commented on a recent Detroit homecoming parade in her honor, "This time the police were in front of us." As a teenager, she sang in several local bands, and at one point visited New York hoping to perform in Broadway, where she was rejected.

A few years later, she was scouted by orchestra leader Vincent Lopez, who gave Hutton her entry into entertainment. In 1939 she appeared in several musical shorts for Warner Bros., and appeared on Broadway in Panama Hattie and Two for the Show, produced by Buddy DeSylva.

When DeSylva became a producer at Paramount Studios, Hutton acquired a starring role in The Fleet's In in 1942. She made 14 films in 11 years during the 1940s and early 1950s, including Annie Get Your Gun, in which she stepped in to replace Judy Garland in the role of Annie Oakley. The film, retooled to fit Hutton, was a smash hit, with the biggest critical praise going to Betty. Like her closest movie musical rival, Garland, Hutton was earning a reputation for being extremely difficult.

In 1942, she signed with Capitol Records, one of the first artists to do so, but was unhappy with their management, and signed with RCA. Her status as a Hollywood star ended during contract disagreements with Paramount.

Hutton worked in radio and toured in nightclubs, then tried her luck on the new fairly new medium of television during the mid-50s. An original musical TV "spectacular," as they were called then, was written and produced for Hutton. The expensive "Satin 'n' Spurs" was an enormous flop with the public and critics. Desilu took a chance on Betty and gave her a sitcom alternately called "Goldie" or "The Betty Hutton Show." It quickly faded. Her last TV outing was a brief guest appearance in the 70s popular detective show Barretta.

In 1967, she was signed for starring roles in two low-budget Paramount westerns, but was fired shortly after the projects began. Afterwards, Hutton had trouble with alcohol and substance abuse, eventually attempting suicide, and had a nervous breakdown. However, after regaining control of her life, she went on to teach acting and do kitchen chores at a church rectory, where she lived as a charity case.

A 9th-grade dropout, Betty Hutton went back to school in the 1970s with the help of a Catholic priest, Father Peter Maguire. She earned a bachelors degree from Salve Regina University and was later awarded an honorary Ph.D. She taught theater for a time at the University. She later moved to Palm Springs, California to be closer to her children.

Her one big musical number in the Broadway show "Panama Hattie" was cut just before opening night by orders of star Ethel Merman. Hutton was so upset, a producer on the show promised to make her a star in movies at Paramount and he kept his word. The incident was later used in both the book and film Valley of the Dolls

Married four times with three children, Hutton as of 2005 lives in Palm Springs.

Hit songs
· Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief
· I Wish I Didn't Love You So
· It Had To Be You
· Hit the Road to Dreamland
· Orange Colored Sky
· You Can't Get a Man with a Gun
· Can't Stop Talking
· It's Oh So Quiet

Filmography
· Happy Go Lucky (1943)
· Let's Face It (1943)
· The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)
· And the Angels Sing (1944)
· Skirmish on the Home Front (1944) (short subject)
· Here Come the Waves (1944)
· Incendiary Blonde (1945)
· Duffy's Tavern (1945)
· Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945) (short subject)
· The Stork Club (1945)
· Cross My Heart (1946)
· The Perils of Pauline (1947)
· Dream Girl (1948)
· Red, Hot and Blue (1949)
· Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
· Let's Dance (1950)
· The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
· Sailor Beware (1952) (cameo)
· Somebody Loves Me (1952)
· Spring Reunion (1957)

Links

Hutton at Classic Actresses
http://www.classicactresses.com/bettyh.html

Listen to 12 Hutton songs here
http://great-song-stylists-uk.com/Betty%20Hutton/Bettyhutton2.htm

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002149/

Fan website
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/2440/hutton.html

Hutton page at Solid
http://www.parabrisas.com/d_huttonb.php

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

2/24 Marjorie Main

2006-02-24T16:31:34Z

Marjorie Main (24 February 1890 - 10 April 1975) was an Oscar-nominated American character actress, perhaps best known for her role as Ma Kettle in a series of ten Ma and Pa Kettle movies.

Main was born in Acton, Indiana as Mary Tomlinson. She attended Franklin College, in Franklin, Indiana and adopted a stage name to avoid embarrassing her father, who was a minister. She worked in vaudeville on the Chautauqua and Orpheum circuits, and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her first film was A House Divided in 1931.

Main began playing upper class dowagers, but was ultimately typecast in abrasive, domineering, salty roles: her distinct voice was like chalk upon a blackboard. She repeated her stage role in Dead End in the movie version of 1937, and was subsequently cast repeatedly as the mother of gangsters. She again transferred a strong stage performance, as a dude ranch operator in The Women, to film in 1939. She made six comedies with Wallace Beery in the 1940s.

She played Ma Kettle in The Egg and I in 1947 opposite Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and repeated it in nine more films.

Main married Stanley LeFevre Krebs, who died in 1935. Her near-pathological fear of germs did not interfere with her career.
She was later a open lesbian, and was one of Boze Hadleigh's most open interviewees in his book Hollywood Lesbians (1996). Her own lover was Spring Byington with whom she lived openly in Beverly Hills, and which might have surprised many people given Byington's near constant casting in sweetly maternal roles. Main was quoted by Hadleigh as saying: "...it's true that Spring never had any use for men."

Main died in Los Angeles, California, of lung cancer at the age of 85.

Links
Life and Films of Ma Kettle
http://www.michellevogel.com/Main.html

IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0537685/

Marjorie at Classic Movies The Golden Years
http://www.thegoldenyears.org/main.html

Great Character Actors
http://www.dougmacaulay.com/kingspud/sel_by_actor_index_2.php?actor_first=Marjorie&actor_last=Main

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

Feb 16 Birthdays

2006-02-16T16:46:13Z

Mack Swain -1876

www.imdb.com/name/nm0841501/

Bert Kalmar -1884

www.imdb.com/name/nm0436095/

Edgar Bergen -1903

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001944/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Feb 14 Birthdays

2006-02-15T15:36:45Z

John Barrymore -1882

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000858/

Jack Benny -1894

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000912/

Trudy Marshall -1922

www.imdb.com/name/nm0551221/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 3 replies

Feb 15 Birthdays

2006-02-15T04:54:07Z

Bud Jamison -1894

www.imdb.com/name/nm0417168/

Cesar Romero -1907

www.imdb.com/name/nm0003110/

William Janney -1908

www.imdb.com/name/nm0417829/

Roland Kibbee -1914

www.imdb.com/name/nm0452134/

Harvey Korman -1927

www.imdb.com/name/nm0466327/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Feb 12 Birthday

2006-02-12T17:46:19Z

William "Buster" Collier

www.imdb.com/name/nm0171873/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Feb 11 Birthday

2006-02-12T07:20:05Z

Thomas Edison -1847

www.imdb.com/name/nm0249379/

Anita Garvin -1907

www.imdb.com/name/nm0308793/

Joseph L. Mankiewicz -1909

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000581/

Leslie Nielsen -1926

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000558/

Burt Reynolds -1936

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000608/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary

2006-02-12T07:15:41Z

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10408.html

Edited and Annotated by Cari Beauchamp
Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary
Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s
Letters of Valeria Belletti, Foreword by Sam Goldwyn Jr.

Looks like this will be fascinating.

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

Fe 10 Birthdays

2006-02-10T16:17:56Z

Alan Hale -1892

www.imdb.com/name/nm0002118/

Jimmy Durante -1893

www.imdb.com/name/nm0002051/

Lon Chaney Jr. -1906

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001033/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Feb 9 Birthdays

2006-02-09T20:26:56Z

Ronald Coleman -1891

www.imdb.com/name/nm0172903/

Brian Donlevy -1901

www.imdb.com/name/nm0002046/

Carmen Miranda -1909

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000544/

Clive Swift -1936

www.imdb.com/name/nm0842578/

Mia Farrow -1945

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001201/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

Feb 8 Birthdays

2006-02-08T18:31:32Z

Jack Lemmon -1925

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000493/

Audrey Meadows -1926

www.imdb.com/name/nm0575031/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Feb 7 Birthdays

2006-02-07T16:43:40Z

George Oppenheimer -1900

www.imdb.com/name/nm0649183/

Eddie Bracken -1915

www.imdb.com/name/nm0102787/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Feb 4-6 Birthdays

2006-02-06T16:33:38Z

Ida Lupino
Feb 4, 1914

www.imdb.com/name/nm0526946/

Sid Fields
Feb 5, 1898

www.imdb.com/name/nm0276352/

Arthur Sheekman
Feb 5, 1901

www.imdb.com/name/nm0790654/

John Carradine
Feb 5, 1906

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001017/

Red Buttons
Feb 5, 1919

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000999/

Christopher Guest
Feb 5, 1948

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001302/

Ronald Reagan
Feb 6, 1911

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001654/

Mamie Van Doren
Feb 6, 1931

www.imdb.com/name/nm0886638/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Feb 2 Birthdays

2006-02-03T18:01:07Z

Noah Young -1887

www.imdb.com/name/nm0949927/

Tom Smothers -1937

www.imdb.com/name/nm0810691/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

Feb 1 Birthdays

2006-02-01T17:04:58Z

John Ford -1894

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000406/

Clark Gable -1901

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000022/
www.clarkgable.com

S.J. Perelman -1904

www.imdb.com/name/nm0673279/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Jan 31 Birthday

2006-02-01T05:53:55Z

Eddie Cantor -1892

www.imdb.com/name/nm0134662/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

1/29 Bday WC Fields

2006-01-30T14:08:15Z

There are a handful of links at the bottom and have a link to two sites with Fieldisms.

W. C. Fields (January 29, 1880 – December 25, 1946) was an American comedian and actor. Fields created one of the great American comic personas of the first half of the 20th century—a misanthrope who teetered on the edge of buffoonery but never quite fell in, an egotist blind to his own failings, a charming drunk, and a man who hated children, dogs and women, unless they were the wrong sort of women. ("I'm very fond of children... girl children, around 18 or 20!")

Birth and early career
Born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania. His father, Jim Dukenfield, came from an English-Irish family of noble origins (being descendants of Lord Dukenfield of Cheshire), and his mother, Kate Spangler Felton, was also of British descent. However, Jim Dukenfield was of the working class in England, and in the United States, sold vegetables from a cart, an enterprise in which the young William assisted. Fields left home at age 11 and entered vaudeville. By age 21 he was traveling as a comedy juggling act, becoming a headliner in both North America and Europe. In 1906 he made his Broadway debut in the musical comedy The Ham Tree, signing with impresario Florenz Ziegfeld.

Hollywood
Like many vaudevillians, Fields worked in silent films and one-reelers, but he first hit big theatrical fame in 1923 in the Broadway musical Poppy, where he perfected his persona as an oily, failed confidence man. Fields later appeared in talking feature films and short subjects, including the 1934 classic It's a Gift, which included a version of his stage sketch of trying to sleep on the back porch as a result of nagging family and being bedeviled by noisy neighbors and traveling salesmen. ("You're drunk!" "Yeah, and you're crazy! But I'll be sober tomorrow, and you'll be crazy for the rest of your life!")

Fields had an affection for unlikely names and many of his characters bore them. As he was often also a writer on his films, the credits often include quite unusual names substituting for his own, such as "Mahatma Kane Jeeves" or "Otis Cribblecoblis". He also used the ordinary-sounding "Charles Bogle" several times.
He was an expert juggler, and this staple of his vaudeville act found its way into small and tantalizing segments of his movies from time to time. His vaudeville act also included a routine with a pool table, so the pool table also made many appearances in his films over the years. In somewhat of a parallel to Groucho Marx's famous greasepaint mustache, Fields wore a scruffy looking clip-on mustache in virtually all of his silent films, finally discarding it once talkies began.

In his films he often played hustlers such as carnival barkers and card sharks, spinning yarns and distracting his marks, as with this gem from Mississippi: "Whilst traveling through the Andes Mountains, we lost our corkscrew. Had to live on food and water for several days!"

He was a lifelong fan of author Charles Dickens, and achieved one of his career ambitions by playing the character Mr. Micawber, in MGM's David Copperfield, directed by George Cukor, in 1935. In 1936, Fields recreated his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures wherein Richard Cromwell, played the suitor of Fields' daughter, Rochelle Hudson. ("If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice." "Yes, Pop?" "Never give a sucker an even break!"). He had previously transferred his famous role onto the screen a decade earlier in Sally of the Sawdust (1925) directed by the legendary D.W. Griffith (whose career was in a slump). The previous effort at bringing Poppy to the screen was not a success.

Fields's ego sometimes got in the way of important roles. He turned down the role of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz fearing the role would be "too small".

Radio
Illness, worsened by his heavy drinking, stopped Fields' film work for a time, but he made a comeback trading insults with Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on radio in 1938. ("Is it true your father was a gate-leg table?" "If it is, your father was under it!"). This so-called "rivalry" between the two carried onto film in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939). In 1940 he made My Little Chickadee with Mae West, as well as The Bank Dick, which perhaps might be his most well-known film ("Was I in here last night, and did I spend a $20 bill?" "Yeah!" "Boy, is that a load off my mind... I thought I'd lost it!").

He was known to his friends as "Bill", a fact evidenced in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, in which he played himself. Edgar Bergen also called him "Bill" in the radio shows. Charlie McCarthy called him by other names. In films in which he was portrayed as having a son, he sometimes named the character "Claude". In England he was sometimes billed as "Wm. C. Fields", presumably to avoid controversy due to "W.C." being the abbreviation for "Water Closet", although it might be safely assumed that Fields himself was amused by the coincidence.

Death
Fields spent his final weeks in a hospital, where a friend stopped by for a visit and caught Fields reading the Bible. He enquired as to why, since Fields was an atheist, to which Fields replied, "I'm checking for loopholes." In a final irony, W. C. Fields died in 1946 of a stomach hemorrhage on the holiday he claimed to despise: Christmas Day. He died in a bungalow-type sanatarium where, as he lay in bed dying, his long-time and final love, Carlotta Monti, went outside and turned the hose onto the roof, so as to allow Fields to hear for one last time his favourite sound of rain on the roof.
He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. There have been stories that he wanted his grave marker to read, "On the whole, I would rather be in Philadelphia", his home town, and similar to a line he used in My Little Chickadee, "I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia would do!" This rumor has also been twisted into "I would rather be here than in Philadelphia." Whatever his wishes might have been, his interment marker merely has his name, and birth and death years.
His long-time mistress Carlotta Monti is among several people who have chronicled Fields's life, in her book, W.C. Fields and Me. The book was made into a film of the same name in 1976.

Links

IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001211/

The Radio Years

http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/WCRadio.html

WC Fields Fan CLub

http://www.webtrec.com/wcfields/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 3 replies

Weekend Birthdays!

2006-01-28T16:55:48Z

Ernst Lubitsch -Jan 28, 1892

www.imdb.com/name/nm0523932/

W.C. Fields -Jan 29, 1880

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001211/

Archie Mayo -Jan 29, 1891

www.imdb.com/name/nm0562845/

Wilfrid Lucas -Jan 30, 1871

www.imdb.com/name/nm0524306/

Dick Martin -Jan 30, 1922

www.imdb.com/name/nm0552189/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Jan 27 Birthdays

2006-01-27T16:25:23Z

Harry Ruby -1895

www.imdb.com/name/nm0748438/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Jan 26 Birthdays

2006-01-26T16:32:32Z

Alf Goulding -1896

www.imdb.com/name/nm0332531/

Paul Newman -1925

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000056/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Coming Soon To DVD

2006-01-25T22:26:10Z

February 21, 2006:

The Paramount Comedy Shorts 1928-1942: Cavalcade of Comedy feat. Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Milton Berle, George Jessel, Mack Swain, Ben Turpin, Eddie Cantor & more!

The Paramount Comedy Shorts 1928-1941: Robert Benchley and the Knights of the Algonquin feat. 14 complete classic films!

March 7, 2006:

The Buster Keaton Collection

Soon as I get more information, I'll post it.

April 18, 2006:

TCM Archives - The Laurel and Hardy Collection (The Devil's Brother / Bonnie Scotland)

Disc One:
The Devil's Brother (1933)
Bonnie Scotland (1935)
Commentaries on both movies by Laurel and Hardy aficionados Richard W. Bann and Leonard Maltin
Introductions by Turner Classic Movies Host Robert Osborne

Disc Two:
Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story 2002 TCM Feature-length documentary
Vintage Laurel and Hardy excerpts from feature films
Theatrical Trailers

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 5 replies

1/23 Ernie Kovacs

2006-01-25T17:59:25Z

Ernie Kovacs (January 23, 1919 – January 13, 1962) was a creative and innovative entertainer from the early days of television. His on-air antics would go on to inspire TV shows like Laugh-In, the Uncle Floyd Show, Saturday Night Live and TV hosts like David Letterman.

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Kovacs became a pioneer of television comedy as a distinct medium; earlier television comedians mostly continued comedy styles of vaudeville, film, or radio.

His shows were innovative for their time because of their ad-libbed routines; experimentation with video effects (including superimpositions, reverse polarity, and reverse scanning which flipped images upside down); the use of quick "blackouts" and running gags; abstraction and non-sequitur; and a willingness to break the "fourth wall" by allowing viewers to see activity beyond the set - including crew members and, on occasion, outside the studio itself. He would also talk to the off-camera crew, or introduce segments from the control room.

Visual Humor and Characters

Kovacs invented many camera tricks that are still common today. One of his most popular gags was a bit where Kovacs sat down at a table to eat his lunch. He took items out of his lunch box and one by one, each item mysteriously rolled down the table into a gentleman reading the newspaper at the other end. Kovacs then started to pour a glass of milk. The milk appeared to pour from the thermos in an unusual direction. The visual trick, which had not been seen on TV before, was created with a crooked table and an equally crooked camera tilted to the same angle as the table.

Kovacs constantly pushed the envelope of what was possible in the video medium, and accomplished many visual tricks with very primitive and improvised means to produce effects that later were more commonly done electronically. He once had the inspiration of attaching a children's kaleidoscope to the camera lens with cardboard and tape -- the resulting abstract images, set to music, were very avant-garde and very much ahead of his time.

Kovacs was rarely seen without a cigar, which he often incorporated as a prop. In one memorable segment, he was seen sitting in an easy chair, calmly reading a newspaper. After a short interval, he took the cigar out of his mouth and exhaled smoke. The unique feature of this otherwise ordinary sequence was that it took place entirely underwater. (The "smoke" was actually milk that Kovacs had filled his mouth with prior to submerging.)

Other popular bits included such gems as an all-gorilla version of Swan Lake; a poker game set to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony; The Nairobi Trio, three derby-hatted apes miming mechanically to the tune "Solfeggio"; the Silent Show, in which a nerdy character interacts with the world accompanied solely by music and sound effects; parodies of typical TV commercials and movie genres; and various musical segments with everyday items (such as kitchen appliances or office equipment) moving in sync to music. He used everything from long, extended sketches and mood pieces to quick "blackout" gags lasting a few seconds. (One famous example was a bit involving a used-car salesman, a jalopy, and a breakaway floor -- a bit that cost $50,000 to produce and lasted 6 seconds on screen!) There were no wasted moments in a Kovacs show, with gags starting during the opening theme song, and continuing even into the midst of the ending credits (which frequently incorporated bizarre fake credits and comments interspersed between the legitimate crew names and titles).

Recurring characters created by Kovacs included fey and lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils; German disc jockey Wolfgang von Sauerbraten; horror show host Auntie Gruesome; bumbling magician Matzoh Heppelwhite; Miklos Molnar, the sardonic Hungarian host of a children's show; Frenchman Pierre Ragout; and The Question Man, who would answer queries supposedly sent in by viewers.

Use of Music

His musical choices were certainly eclectic. His main theme was called "Oriental Blues", a quirky piano number derived from a Gershwin tune. A German version of "Mack the Knife" frequently underscored mimed sketches. Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio" became so associated with the infamous derby-hatted apes that it became better known simply as "The Song of the Nairobi Trio". The piece de resistance, if that's the term, were tunes by Leona Anderson such as "Rats in My Room". Leona was reportedly a kind and gentle soul, whose singing voice, in contrast, could be unfavorably compared to fingernails on a blackboard. Naturally, Kovacs incorporated her songs at every opportunity. Kovacs also incorporated classical music into his shows, usually as background for abstract visual images and montages. Two such pieces used were the "Concerto for Orchestra" by Bela Bartok and music from the opera "The Love for Three Oranges" by Sergei Prokofiev. The classical piece most often associated with Kovacs is Haydn's "String Quartet, Opus 3, Number 5" (the "Serenade," which was indeed written by Haydn, not Roman Hoffstetter[1]), which was used in his memorable Dutch Masters commercials.

Death

Kovacs died in a car accident in Los Angeles. He was driving a Corvair station wagon, a make of car later assailed as "unsafe at any speed" by Ralph Nader. During a rare Southern California rainstorm, he lost control of the car while making a turn, and crashed into a power pole. Kovacs was thrown halfway out the passenger door, killed almost instantly--his chest and head taking fatal injuries. Newsmen on the scene moments later put a full photograph of his dead body across front pages all over the United States. At the time of his death, he owed the IRS several hundred thousand dollars in back taxes. Kovacs had always felt the tax system was unfair, and had simply refused to pay, resulting in the eventual garnishment of up to 90% of his wages. Edie Adams eventually paid off the taxes herself, refusing help from their celebrity friends. Kovacs is buried in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. His epitaph reads "Nothing in moderation-We all loved him".
Kovacs' daughter with Edie Adams, Mia Susan, was killed in 1982, also in an automobile accident (off Mullholland Drive). His daughter Kippie died in 2001, after a lingering illness and an adult lifetime of poor health, largely due to addiction. She is buried next to her father and younger half sister. Ernie has one grandchild, Keigh, the daughter of Kippie and screenwriter Bill Lancaster(deceased), the son of actor Burt Lancaster. Kovacs' oldest daughter Elizabeth was alive doing well as of 2006.

Links
IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0468237/

Ernie Kovacs Tribute Site

http://www.erniekovacs.net/

Museum of Broadcast Communications

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/E/htmlE/ErnieKovaksShow/erkovacshow.htm

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 5 replies

Jan 24 Birthdays

2006-01-24T19:43:52Z

Ernest Borgnine -1917

www.imdb.com/name/nm0012148/

John Belushi -1949

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000004/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Other Birthdays

2006-01-23T16:52:13Z

D.W. Griffith -Jan22, 1875

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000428/

Constance Collier -Jan 22, 1878

www.imdb.com/name/nm0171887/

Felix Adler -Jan 22, 1884

www.imdb.com/name/nm0012148/

Franklin Pangborn -Jan 23, 1888

www.imdb.com/name/nm0659427/

Dan Duryea -Jan 23, 1907

www.imdb.com/name/nm0002053/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Jan 21 Birthday

2006-01-21T17:16:16Z

Benny Hill -Jan 21, 1925

http://imdb.com/name/nm0001350/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

1/20 George Burns

2006-01-20T16:52:51Z

George Burns (b. Nathan Birnbaum, January 20, 1896, New York; d. March 9, 1996, Los Angeles, California), was a titan of American comedy. His virtuosity in that role actually refined him in his late life renaissance as a standup punch-liner in his own right: his long-practised discipline as a straight man meant that, as a punch-liner, he probably knew by long-developed second nature what most comics spend years barely mastering in terms of prodding laughs with subtlety.

His career spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television, with and without his equally legendary wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow (as effective at drawing laughs as best friend Jack Benny's exasperated pregnant pause) and cigar smoke punctuation (he used it as a pregnant pause prop, even though cigar smoking was as second-nature to him as to Groucho Marx) became familiar trademarks for over three-quarters of a century. But even more remarkable was his resurrection at an age when most men are either retired or deceased. Beginning at age 79, and ending with his passing at age 100, George Burns became better known in his 80s and 90s than he was at any other time in his life and career. Considering he was once world famous as half of one of America's most beloved and enduring comic partnerships, that achievement was nothing short of sensational . . . and singular.

for the entire bio go here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Burns

IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122675/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 2 replies

Hey Sal! Time to start a W.C Fields tribe?

2006-01-20T16:35:34Z

You the man!

;)

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 1 reply

Jan 18 Birthdays! It's a good one!

2006-01-18T15:03:50Z

Oliver Hardy -1892

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001316/

Cary Grant -1904

www.imdb.com/name/nm0000026/

Danny Kaye -1913

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001414/

Norman "Chubby" Chaney -1914

www.imdb.com/name/nm0151610/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

Jan 17 Birthday

2006-01-17T17:14:11Z

Mack Sennett -1880

www.imdb.com/name/nm0784407/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies

January 15 & 16 Birthdays

2006-01-16T16:16:55Z

Charley Rogers -Jan 15 1887

www.imdb.com/name/nm0736778/

Marjorie Bennett -Jan 15 1896

www.imdb.com/name/nm0071913/

Roy Gordon -Jan 15 1896

www.imdb.com/name/nm0330574/

Buddy Lester -Jan 16 1917

www.imdb.com/name/nm0504424/

and of course let's not forget Ethel Merman!

www.imdb.com/name/nm0581062/

posted in Classic Film Comedy - 0 replies