Smoke a few Lucky Strike "LSMFT" cigarettes back in the 1940's and the next thing you know. . . well, you're so darn "Happy-Go-Lucky" you're sitting in a wheelbarrow straddling a pumpkin and next to a live turkey! While the gobbler will not be thoroughly baked for Thanksgiving, you are - now that's smoking pleasure! After all, Luckies' slogan was "It's Toasted" - and, indeed, so are you, if not necessarily in deeply obliterated 1967 style.
Luckies were so good that physicians, convinced momentarily to abandon the hippocratic oath, claimed the smokes were. . . "less irritating." Not quite a ringing endorsement, said 20,679 docs notwithstanding.
Glamorous movie stars got into the act, too, stressing how their golden throats appreciated the light taste of Luckies. Still looking for a matinee idol endorsement that claims Lucky Strikes were "a lot less irritating than that director on my last picture."
Even Janet Gaynor, star of the brilliant 1920's William Fox Productions - F.W. Murnau - Frank Borzage movie milestones Sunrise, 4 Devils, 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Lucky Star, as well as the 1937 David O. Selznick version of A Star Is Born, got into the act.
Found on Bangshift.com: the following "Road Roller" commercial starring one of the subjects of our post from last weekend (March 18), celluloid heroine Doris Day. This print ad from 1949 plugs tractors and her latest movie, It's A Great Feeling, in one fell swoop!
One imagines Doris would have enjoyed plowing a few dishonest husbands and ex-husbands into the ground with this beauty from International Harvester.
Dino did not necessarily want anyone to think he was anything but the Glenlivet-sipping host of The Dean Martin Show and/or one-liner machine entertaining an SRO audience on such records as Dino In Vegas and in The Rat Pack, but he also possessed a conscientious side; Dean took his movie roles seriously, showed up on time, prepared and ready to roll. It's a good bet that Dino never admitted to having that side as long as he lived!
Especially in Some Came Running and Rio Bravo, he demonstrates undeniable character role mojo.
The following clip offers a glimpse of Darin the musician and entertainer, plus an endorsement from none other than George Burns.
Bobby epitomized the concept of "all-around entertainer", as did his friend Sammy Davis Jr. Although character acting was not Darin's primary focus - delivering a show-stopping musical mix with a touch of comedy and celebrity impersonations for SRO audiences was - he has his moments as a supporting player in several movies. Most notably, Bobby co-stars in Don Siegel's Hell Is For Heroes with none other than daredevil screen icon (and big time jazz enthusiast) Steve McQueen.
Doris Day Vocalist and silver screen star Doris Day, who began her career as the vocalist from Les Brown and His Band Of Reknown, remains to movies what Dionne Warwick is to 1960's pop records: both made it look easy. Her renditions of standards are frequently exceptional.
For decades the Doris Day - Rock Hudson comedies were met with snickers and snark by the hipper than thou. Seen 50 years after packing the movie palaces and neighborhood theaters, surprise - these light romantic comedies strike this writer as surprisingly fun, nicely done and entertaining, to no small degree because of the deft work of the two stars and, in key supporting roles, Comic Character Actor Hall Of Fame first ballot selection Tony Randall. Day's films with James Garner are also delightful. It should not be a surprise, given Day's abilities as an entertainer and how Hudson co-starred with heavy hitters James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant without getting overpowered or defined as a pretty boy lightweight.
Formulaic? Sure. Hollywood entertainment? Of course. That said, seeing how skillfully the cast handles the character relationships and farcical situations, the reaction is, "damn, they're good!"
Essential to Day's success as a star of movie musicals is her ability to not just belt out those songs but get into character. In Calamity Jane, she is not a singer-movie star cast in a role but essentially portraying herself; one believes she IS Calamity Jane and that's the key to the movie's success.
Further demonstrating versatility: Miss Day's role as Ruth Etting - and co-starring with the great James Cagney - in the biopic Love Me Or Leave Me.
Whatever tumult was transpiring offscreen, in a wide range of movies, Doris Day, onscreen, exemplifies the line "nice and easy does it every time."
Dick Powell
Before Crosby, Sinatra and Doris Day starred in Hollywood movies, there was a crooner who became a headliner of movie musicals: Dick Powell. The Pittsburgh master of ceremonies and singer debuted in feature films in 1932, AFTER Bing and would, as part of a team with ever-spunky Ruby Keeler, headline musical after musical after musical for Warner Brothers, before his second career in hard-boiled film noir roles, and third career as a prolific director/producer in television.
Transitioning from chorus boy to hard-boiled gumshoe, Powell proved one of the stellar presences in film noir. He is believable, either as Philip Marlowe or the poor sap targeted by the femme fatale, in several unbeatable classic movies.
Frank Sinatra The legend of Sinatra can overwhelm everything, including his work as a character actor. His role as Maggio in From Here To Eternity, which won an Oscar for Best Actor In A Supporting Role, was just one of many examples of stellar film acting from The Voice. One imagines that Sinatra, if he cared to talk about it, would insist that music to movies was not a jump at all, that singing was the purest method acting a person could do; "you can't do the song justice, pally, without feeling what the lyrics mean and giving them your all." No doubt there were some interesting conversations between Sinatra and Brando on the set of Guys & Dolls.
The Man With The Golden Arm is fascinating. While Frank did not have issues with opiates, he knew friends, band mates and colleagues in the music world who did, and having an idea of how they suffered very likely informed this part.
The Chairman Of The Board's musical bent and skill interpreting the songs of Rodgers & Hart meets his equally strong character acting impulse for a bit of a tug of war in Pal Joey.
An adaptation of the stage show based on John O'Hara stories and starring Gene Kelly, it is on the surface a 1950's style musical in which Frank plays his ultra-macho "ring-a-ding-ding" self. As the film progresses, his character, Joey Evans, evolves - slowly - from womanizing scumbag to someone who might actually choose a partner, become emotionally involved and make the effort to do right by her. Sinatra delves into the part and, as he does many times in his movie roles, gives the character some unexpected depth. Pal Joey is one of the better showbiz flicks - and it never hurts to have the formidable star power of Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth in the cast.
Sinatra's performance in Some Come Running, in an ensemble cast with Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, would be a standout.
Between tours, Frank would tackle the occasional character role thoughtfully and with the same conviction with which he sang, right up to his last starring role in the 1980 crime thriller The First Deadly Sin.
Although there were quite a few more luminaries from the music world who acted in films and television back then - Hoagy Carmichael comes to mind, as well as bandleaders who played themselves in movies (Louis Jordan of 5 Guys Named Moe fame) - the rise of rock and soul music to some degree put the kibbosh on this, especially as the 1960's progressed. Still, the trend of musicians transitioning into acting, rather prevalent in mid-20th century entertainment, would continue into the 1980's and 1990's, not surprisingly, as vocalists/lyricists from hip-hop (Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur) are experienced actors and performance artists. Many in more recent memory - Will Smith, Ice Cube, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake - deftly carried their onstage success into movies and television, in some cases as filmmakers, skilled in front of and behind of cameras. To arguably a slightly lesser degree than such crooners as Sinatra and Cole did in the 1950's, they would still profoundly influence the entertainment world, from TV shows to Broadway.
In yet another sucker-punch to the forces of civility, Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne passed at 84 earlier this week.
Since, for this blogger and many more, classic movies rank very high among those brilliant yet remarkably reliable north stars to follow when those pesky pot holes, valleys and dilemmas of life (both unexpected and totally expected) rear their snarky little heads, seeing Robert Osborne on TCM was always most welcome.
Robert's mojo was straightforward: urbane, sophisticated, intelligent, charming, funny and well-spoken. The author of Academy Awards Illustrated and former columnist for The Hollywood Reporter also knew more about stage, screen, showbiz and the history of motion pictures than anyone! Madame Blogmeister and I were big fans of his weekly show The Essentials: Mr. Osborne's enthusiastic co-hosts included Alec Baldwin, Drew Barrymore and Sally Field.
Found the discussions before and after the movie on The Essentials to frequently be great television.
We especially loved Mr. Osborne's numerous informative and perceptive stories about great movies that played on TCM. Here's a preface and coda to Scarface, the hard-boiled 1932 Howard Hawks crime thriller starring Paul Muni - it is brilliant and the tidbits on product placement and the soon-to-be-enforced Production Code are fascinating.
It would be an understatement to say that Mr. Osborne possessed uncanny interviewing skills. Here he is, getting interviewed - and talking classic movies and theater - on Theater Talk.
This writer and equally avid classic movie buff did not get to meet him, but did see Robert introduce what turned out to be an amazing lecture by his fellow film historian Kevin Brownlow. Funny, I have an inkling that bringing up the subjects of recent posts at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, very likely Robert would have immediately launched into GREAT stories about each and every of them.
R.I.P. and thanks, Robert - film buffs around the world are missing you big time!
Turner Classic Movies will be presenting a tribute to Robert Osborne, featuring many exceptional interviews he conducted for the Private Screenings program, on March 18-19, and also at the TCM Classic Film Festival from April 6-9.
Since 20th century music has clearly been the topic du jour at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog so far in 2017, Mr. Blogmeister has been, while watching YouTube clips in the process of researching posts, stumbling upon excellent Swing For Victory 1940's recordings, most waxed smack dab in the middle of the World War II-era recording ban.
While writing the January 7 post about the astonishingly talented pianist Hazel Scott, found just one of her many V-discs. Not surprisingly, Ms. Scott is outstanding!
Ms. Scott is followed here by power-packed percussionist "Big Sid" Catlett, known for his work driving the latter 1940's lineup of Louis Armstrong's All-Stars (from Satchmo At Symphony Hall and The Complete Town Hall Concert).
Now what were these V-discs, anyway? Records for the armed forces that to some degree circumvented the wartime recording ban and in many cases featuring two recording artists. They are chock full of top 1930's and 1940's big bands and jazz artists, such as Gene Krupa, Count Basie, The Don Redman Orchestra, Red Norvo and Mildred Bailey (a.k.a. "Mr. And Mrs. Swing"), and ace Benny Goodman Quartet pianist Teddy Wilson.
And John Kirby's Sextet AND Nat King Cole.
Could the following be the last recorded appearance of Thomas "Fats" Waller?
Guitar geeks will go gaga over the numerous Les Paul appearances on v-disc.
Here's a wonderfully schizoid record in which the King Sisters (who may or may not have been related to 1960's variety television's squeaky-clean King Family), offering a bit of 1940's style sibling harmony on "When The Swallows Go Back To Capistrano", are followed by none other than the soulful swing-to-bop saxophone genius Lester "Pres" Young, performing his signature tune, Lester Leaps In.
V-discs continued to be recorded and issued for a bit after World War II. One of this writer's favorites from all the v-discs is the Duke Ellington Orchestra's performance of Deep South Suite.
There is a YouTube channel that consists entirely of these V-discs and the sheer number of top performers from jazz and swing represented is impressive.
