After almost 19 years writing Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, this is post #1400.
While, admittedly and embarrassingly, I deleted at least two or three posts due to laughably egregious errors, shall proclaim this Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog entry to officially be the 14 hundredth! Yay!
How does the blogmeister feel about writing post #1400? Feel like Virginia O'Brien, the deadpan diva, in this great song from PANAMA HATTIE, which should begin with her slapping overbearing Red Skelton across his overacting kisser (and, bear in mind, we like him as Red Skeleton in the Tex Avery MGM cartoon WHO KILLED WHO).
So this blog shall celebrate post #1400 without bubbly (thanks T2 diabetes, ya rat bastard). We'll start with some supercharged improvisational proto-metal British rock from Deep Purple, live in Belgium. Yes, indeedy, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord and Ian Paice had chops.
How will we celebrate the silver screen stuff we love, while also kicking ourselves for missing the 80th anniversary of the execution of Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci on April 28. With a respectful nod to the enduring classic movie genre that broke big time during World War II, film noir.
On Noir Alley, our favorite TCM show by far, the Czar Of Noir elaborates:
The Burt Lancaster starring vehicle Brute Force is an inspired cross between Jimmy Cagney style caper thriller and film noir.
Nearly eight decades after noir's heydey, celluloid heroes Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame still bring the heat.
Don't recall any other noirs featuring larger-than-life Charles Laughton (except the harrowing tale of evil he directed, Night Of The Hunter), but the following classic, THE BIG CLOCK, is a chiaroscuro dilly and post 1400 worthy.
Prominent in the "silver screen stuff we love" category is silent era comedy. Here are several all-time favorites from all-time favorite silent movie comedians, starting with Buster Keaton in ONE WEEK.
Next up: vintage musical short subjects from way back when Sammy Davis, Jr. thrilled vaudeville as a ridiculously talented child entertainer and Frank Sinatra was studying the phrasing of Bing Crosby and Russ Colombo. Especially love those pre-Code musical short subjects, especially Vitaphone's Melody Masters series.
Here, in the 1932 Vitaphone musical classic, The Yacht Party, the mindblowingly limber Melissa Mason does her best terpsichorean triple-jointed impersonation of the even more mindblowingly limber and quadruple-jointed comedienne Charlotte Greenwood. All we can say is "go, Melissa, go!"
The following Vitaphone 1-reelers present absolutely amazing and talent-filled mini musicals, the glaring preponderance of 1920's and early 1930's style racial stereotype bits notwithstanding. That's The Spirit stars the comedy team of Flournoy Miller & Mantan Moreland (yes, that guy, Sidney Toler's sidekick in Charlie Chan flicks), The Washboard Serenaders, powerhouse singer/tapdancer/actress Cora La Redd and Noble Sissle's red-hot swing band.
Alas, as there was still a color line, big time, in 1932, Cora La Redd, who would have mopped up the floor with all tapdancers not named Eleanor Powell and given the Sophie Tuckers of the world a run for their money, did not subsequently get to appear, even briefly, in RKO, Paramount and MGM musicals.
Backing actress of stage and screen, vocalist and dancer Nina Mae McKinney, star of King Vidor's Hallelujah, Eubie Blake's band headlined the following 1932 Vitaphone short.
Another of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog's all-time favorite films is Smash Your Baggage (1932), starring Small's Paradise Entertainers. Jazz legend Roy Eldridge is in the band!
And then there are pre-Code feature films!
Lupe Velez rocks the pre-Code opus The Half Naked Truth, directed by Gregory LaCava.
Lupe's co-star in this terrific comedy is the fast talking EPITOME of pre-Code. . . the one, the only Lee Tracy.
Also on hand: the familiar croaking voice of Eugene Palette.
Of course, the pre-Code flick we REALLY want to see is Convention City (1933).
The phrase pre-Code and the names of splendid actresses, Aline MacMahon and Ann Dvorak mean the gang here is watching this movie! And it features screen immortal Lyle Talbot, two decades before Plan 9 From Outer Space, as an oily rat bastard!
Of course, we also love pre-Code cartoons, even those Ub Iwerks Studio productions starring Willie Whopper!
And the very pre-Code Van Beuren Studio version of Tom & Jerry!
Any Fleischer Talkartoon featuring Betty Boop, Koko and Bimbo is sure to be a winner.
Always liked this 1932 Screen Song featuring Betty Boop as a mermaid and using a certain Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby ditty from the Marx Brothers opus Horse Feathers.
What's the best way to finish post #1400? Warner Brothers cartoons!
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog extends multiple hat tips to the directors of these cartoons, Bob Clampett and Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin. Love those guys!
It's the sincere hope of the gang here that we shall be lucky enough to still be alive, kicking (even slowly) and blogging for post #1500 down the road.
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