Thursday, August 6, 2009

Shirt Subject

And for those of you who love spotting little continuity errors in movies, Buzz Dixon notes how Ray Walston's shirt buttons and unbuttons itself in the clip I posted earlier. Must be the beginning of Mr. Walston's Martian powers...or maybe the work of the devil.

• Posted at 7:38 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

A week or three ago here, writing about the movie Gypsy, I made the comment that among the things that spoiled the film for me was that Rosalind Russell simply felt dubbed. There was a disconnect between her speaking and singing voices that, to me, removed the credibility of her characterization. This is my complaint about a lot of movie musicals.

Here's a scene from another film where this kind of thing bothers me — the 1958 South Pacific. I'm not sure how many of the actors in this were lip-syncing to their own voices. Ray Walston obviously did his own singing. The sailor named "Stew Pot" obviously did not. In fact, his singing voice was supplied by the legendary Thurl Ravenscroft, better known as the voice of Tony the Tiger. (Though for some reason, no attempt was made to match his speaking voice, which you'll note is quite different and perhaps not his own either, to Ravenscroft's deep tones.) Some of the others, I'm guessing, did their own singing...but almost none of the voices feel to me like they're coming from those sailors...

• Posted at 4:43 PM · LINK

Charlie 'n' Mitzi

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I usually plug what's coming up on Stu's Show, my pal Stu Shostak's program on my pal Stu Shostak's radio station. I got busy and wasn't able to tell you about yesterday's show, which featured two of my favorite folks, Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall.

Charlie and Mitzi are famously remembered as the comedy team that had to hold the stage before an audience full of screaming Beatles fans on the night the singing moptops made their historic debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. But more than that, they've been popular entertainers for close to fifty years, working not just as a comedy team but individually and collectively as actors, writers, voiceover artists, game show panelists and radio personalities.

They met around '59 in a comedy workshop class that Jerry Lewis was running. They went on to work with everyone in their field. You think I've got a lot of show biz anecdotes? Hang around Charlie and Mitzi for an evening. Whenever I have, I always laugh myself sick and learn even more about all they've done.

It was a great show today. They were joined by their pal, actor Jack Riley, and they told wonderful tales...so I'm sorry I didn't promote it here. Fortunately for you though, the show reruns all week — at 7 PM Eastern, 4 PM Pacific time...and you can figure out the time for your part of the world from that. Tune in and listen, which you can do by going to the website of Shokus Internet Radio and clicking on the player there. You have six more chances to do this.

• Posted at 12:21 AM · LINK

August 5, 2009 • Current • August 7, 2009