Category Archives: Video Links

While we wait for the judge's decision in the trial to overturn Proposition 8 here in California, the two lawyers on the side of its repeal — Ted Olson and David Boies — are already taking victory laps. Here's Mr. Boies explaining that following depositions, most of the opposition witnesses were withdrawn…and the main witness against Gay Marriage wound up more or less flipping on the witness stand and admitting he couldn't defend its ban.

The verdict, assuming it's what everyone seems to be expecting, is not going to settle the matter. If anything, the battle will escalate and the whole thing seems likely to head for the Supreme Court at some future date. But as I watched Boies describe the trial, I found myself wishing it could have been televised because it might have changed some minds that are stubbornly set in concrete. And then just as I was thinking that, I heard him say much the same thing. Watch this. It's not long…

This is the opening for the 1966 cartoon show, Super 6, which is largely forgotten, though it lasted several years on NBC's Saturday morning schedule. That's Gary Lewis and the Playboys, who are also largely forgotten, singing the theme song. It was the first show the DePatie-Freleng studio produced for Saturday morn and it was written and animated by a number of refugees from the old Warner Brothers cartoon studio. I haven't seen one in years but I remember them as being clever cartoons about unclever, uninteresting characters…with one exception. The main part of the show was these silly super-heroes but there was also a strange cartoon each week about The Brothers Matzoriley. The Brothers Matzoriley was/were a three-headed person with multi-ethnic heads. Daws Butler and Paul Frees generally did their voices but every so often, one head was Pat Harrington. One of the heads was a bad Chinese stereotype…and I guess that explains why you don't see those cartoons around these days. Here's the opening…

A lot of folks probably assume that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, being slapstick comedians, threw a lot of pies in their movies. Not so. Whatever urges they had in that direction were pretty much satisfied in The Battle of the Century, one of their earliest two-reel silent comedies. This is the last four minutes…the biggest pie fight staged in movies for many years. I think the one in the 1965 movie The Great Race may have been the one that usurped the title. The only other strong contender is the meringue massacre in Half-Wits Holiday, a 1947 short with The Three Stooges. Footage from that pie fight was reused in several other Stooges films.

There's kind of an interesting story as to how the Laurel and Hardy brawl even manages to exist. In 1957, a man named Robert Youngson was assembling a compilation feature called The Golden Age of Comedy using clips of great silent movies. He got access to the negative of The Battle of the Century, duped the big fight at the end and used it in his film. What he didn't know was that in so doing, he was preserving that footage for all eternity. The negative was in bad shape and within a few years, it had completely decomposed. There was no other known copy of the film anywhere.

So for a few decades, The Battle of the Century was a "lost" movie. Only the last few minutes still existed in any form, thanks to Mr. Youngson. Finally in the seventies, a copy of the first reel turned up. It's an extended boxing match in which Mr. Hardy shoves Mr. Laurel into the ring, and it's most interesting because among the extras who played spectators, one can spot a very young Lou Costello.

No full copy of the second reel has ever been located so all we have of it are these four minutes. They're four pretty memorable minutes…

The great Spanish tenor Placido Domingo began his career with small roles, including a part in the first Mexican production of My Fair Lady, in which he did not get to sing this song. But he sang it later in many later venues and here he is singing it in English and then in Spanish…

Just because I felt like watching this again…

I have one loyal reader who'll be upset if I don't give him a big up-front warning label that this contains naughty words so: WARNING: THIS CONTAINS NAUGHTY WORDS. For the rest of you who don't faint when you hear such things, here's ten minutes of insults from movies…

Fiddler on the Roof in Japanese. Well, why the hell not?

In honor of what day it is, many of you will be watching the movie 1776 on Turner Classic Movies or DVD or elsewhere. Here's nine minutes of an interview with the late Peter Stone, who wrote the book for the musical and later the screenplay for the movie version. (The screenplay couldn't have taken him more than about an hour since it's almost exactly the same as the play with a few scenes converted to exteriors.) This clip ends abruptly but it does end with a few moments from the 1997 Broadway revival which I mentioned in the previous message. Merwin Foard is not in the clip. The lead performer, who was playing John Dickinson, was Michael Cumpsty. Have a safe 'n' sane Fourth.

Okay, they've changed this video so I can now embed it here. If the closed captions are on, turn 'em off and you'll enjoy it more…

Mao Daichi is a popular Japanese stage actress who has often toured in productions over there of My Fair Lady. And I have to say that I'm a little puzzled as to how that show translates. Does Henry Higgins sing, "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?" in a language other than English? If so, I would imagine some translator had to do a helluva conversion job. Anyway, here she is in a rehearsal hall somewhere performing one of Liza's numbers from the show…

I can't embed this so just go watch it on YouTube. It's the Swedish Chef from the Muppets and he's making popcorn.

The late comic artist Wally Wood was one of those brilliant-but-tortured talents. When he was at his best, nobody was better…but he suffered for his deadlines and drank in self-destructive quantities. If you're interested in the sad story, Jim McLauchlin has written an overview of the man's life and too-soon death.

Wood struggled with his work and was rarely paid what it was worth. Like many comic artists, especially of his generation, he was always looking for ways to increase his output…to spend less time on a page and therefore make more $$$ per week. He often doodled out little staging tricks and pinned them up near his drawing board or shared them with his assistants. Years later, one of those assistants, Larry Hama, assembled the visual notes into a page called "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work." You can read the story of its invention here and download a copy of the page.

(You will notice references to "ben day." That's an outmoded term referring to a fine dot pattern that like a half-toned photo, reads like grey on the printed page.)

And once you've read the page, you can watch the movie…

One of the most famous dance numbers ever performed in movies wasn't done by Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire or anyone like that. It was done by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in their 1937 film, Way Out West. Recently, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, actress Tilda Swinton and film critic Mark Cousins led a mob in performing the dance as, I guess, a publicity stunt for a good cause…

If you're grateful for today's treasure, thank Huffington Post columnist Bob Elisberg. He's the one who told me about it.

One of those hard-to-see (i.e., not currently available on home video) movies is Where's Charley?, the 1952 film version of the Broadway show of the same name. In the film, Ray Bolger reprised his acclaimed performance from the stage version…and most folks are interested in this number, which is the show's big hit, "Once in Love With Amy." On stage, the song ran much, much longer. During tryouts, Bolger started expanding it…and he would basically stop the plot and break character to chat with the audience and lead them in a sing-along each night. It became a famous theatrical moment and a lot of folks went to see the show just to see that twenty minutes or so.

The film version, clocking in at around seven, obviously does not replicate that experience but it's all we've got. It's still kinda delightful…

Another one of these. Among other topics, Mr. Welles explains why women don't like magic (I think they do) and there's a story about John Barrymore…