Montage

For weeks, no months really I have been waiting for December, not for Christmas, no something just as good though. Finally after wishing and hoping for the last couple of years I would get to see Buster Keaton on a big screen with an audience. Last Monday night was that night. I know that I have mentioned Buster Keaton a couple of times on my blog before but if you really haven't seen one of his movies I really urge you do so. So where did this interest in Buster begin. About 3 years ago I went into my local DVD store and there he was staring out at me amongst the "nostalgia" section. I thought to myself he's got an interesting face I think I would like to watch that movie, but I couldn't as they only had it on Video Tape and my video machine had long ago died a natural death. So instead I went home and on my online DVD outlet I ordered The General to rent, it arrived a day or so later, on a Friday. On the copy that they sent me was also a two-reeler that Buster h...

I love Mickey Rooney and I especially love the Andy Hardy series of movies, recently I was able to get a copy of Andy Hardy's Private Secretary, that makes two now in my collection. I also have a copy of Love Laughs at Andy Hardy. I recently read one of Mickey's books, Lifes Too Short. And sure Mickey could have been a little more shall we say, less descriptive in regards to his wives. But Mickey, and we have to remember this has lead an extraordinary life, even more than most "film stars". Dragged out of poverty to be become for quite a number of years the top star of MGM, then the biggest and best in the business, and then sinking to backruptcy not once but several times throughout his life. I think I know why I like Mickey so much. He is this wonderful link to the past. He was a star in the 30's and into the 40's when Private Secretary was made, and yet even today he still works. Have a look at IMDB and just see how much work he has planned and that...

I have recently become very interested in the career of Cliff Edwards know to many in the 30's as Ukulele Ike. Now Cliff if you have never heard of him was HUGE in the 20's and 30's, he was everywhere, he could do everything. He was a comedian, he could act, he played Ukulele (of course) and he could sing, boy could he sing . Cliff was a great "scat singer", he is amazing to listen to and his music although not much heard of today would be I think if more widely known make him famous all over again. He had over his career sales of over 70 million (no that is not a typo) records, his own radio show and later his own television show. He starred with such legends as Buster Keaton (which is where I first came to know of him) in the early 30's. Cliff was the first person on film to sing "Singin in the Rain" you should hear his version from "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" a major outing by MGM to welcome sound. Cliff lived an amazing life, sadly it...

I've just uploaded a montage that I made to Buster Keaton's 1925 movie Go West. I love the song by Tex Ritter and of course he sang the title tune in High Noon, which is another great song.

In the 50's Danny Kaye was a superstar. I lot of people today haven't even heard of him and it is sad. True Kaye's humour has not really aged well but I still think that if you watched The Secret Life of Water Mitty or Wonderman (my favourite Kaye movie) that you couldn't fail to see the charm in Kaye and understand why he was so popular. Kaye may be known to modern audiences for work that he did later in his life on The Crosby Show. But it is the movies that he made in the beautiful technicolour world of the 50's that Kaye will always be remembered for and rightly so. No-one could do what Kaye did so well, and together with his wife Sylvia Fine they were a very talented team, now that is was an unusual marriage. They lived apart and yet neither of them ever divorced the other and it was not because of a genuine like of each other for all accounts they could be quite brutal to each other at times. He left his estate to his daughter Dena but only on the understanding...

Recently uncovered is 50 seconds of film that is of enormous historical value to Australia and New Zealand. This piece of film was filmed by Mr. Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, an English journalist. This film was part of a larger film called "With the Dardanelles Expedition : Heroes of Gallipoli"and it was filmed between July and September 1915 and shown in Australia and New Zealand in 1916. Why this piece of the film was removed from the the Dardanelles Expedition film is a mystery, but thankfully it has survived and was recently found in amongst some other film of WW1. So why is this film of such importance, because some would argue that it shows the first steps of a nation, it is on this very beach in the Dardenelles that Australia became a nation, truely united for the first time; not as separate counties or states we were Australian. We went to WW1 as British Troops and returned as The Australian Infantry. To watch this piece of film follow this link http://www.awm.gov.au/comme...

This weekend I went to see The Great Dictator. This was a moment that I had been waiting for for a long time, the chance to see an old comedy on the big screen, it doesn't happen too often where I live sadly. There was a good crowd at this movie, around 250 I would say. Not too bad on a Saturday afternoon, when the weather was perfect, certainly you could have found a million other things to do rather than lock yourself away in a movie theatre. And we had a large car race on the weekend also, which about 250,000 people attended over the 4 days that it ran. So this makes me ask why, why don't theatre chains of today ever show old movies? Why don't they show Ängels with Dirty Faces, The Third Man, Philadelphia Story etc. I really think that once a month perhaps on a traditionally slow night, say Thursday's perhaps theatre houses should grab an old movie and give it a try. In the multiplex cinema's of today you would just need to use one theatre and one showing and try...

In Adelaide on November 18th 1922 you could have gone to see Charlie Chaplin in Tillie's Punctured Romance at The York. Why it was on so late after it was released I don't know, did it take 8 years to make it to South Australia? It is advertised as "The Biggest Show in Town" so you would take from that that it hadn't been shown beforehand. It is the largest ad by far taking up nearly a 1/4 of the page. So what else could you see if you had already seen Tillies. There is Harold Lloyd in Get Out and Under (c 1920) or Never Weaken (1921). Douglas Fairbanks could be seen in When the Clounds Roll By (1919) , this is advertised as his new big picture, but it was nearly 3 years old in 1922. Mary Miles Minter could be seen in The Little Clown(1921). The Sheik too was playing, which I assume was the 1921 Valentino movie, not the 1922 British made movie, it is "advertised as "The Grand Farewell Screening of", so I think I am correct in my assumption...