Oct 8, 2011
Oct 7, 2011
From the More Vintage Lugosi File: Dig this 1943 Playbill from Bela Lugosi’s stage performance as Dracula. Apparently, Bela was outstanding in all of the theatrical versions. What else would we expect?
Oct 7, 2011
From the Horror Movie Poster of the Day File: House of Dracula (1945) turned out to be the last hurrah for the Universal Monsters. The previous year, Universal Studios combined its biggest monster stars - Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man - in one film, House of Frankenstein. The film did fairly well at the box office. Well enough to generate a sequel. House of Dracula had its moments, but for the most part it felt weary and tired and contrived. Boris Karloff appeared in House of Frankenstein - not in his famous monster role, but as a doctor who seeks to revive all of the monsters killed off in earlier movies. He’s killed off in House of Frankenstein (sorry for the spoiler), but that never stopped Universal from bringing characters back. Still, he’s nowhere to be seen in H.O.D. John Carradine reprises his role as Dracula, Lon Chaney, Jr. is back as the Wolf Man and Glenn Strange plays the lumbering and zombie-like Frankenstein’s monster, devoid of all the emotion he showed in the first two masterpieces. Interestingly, Larry Talbot (Chaney) is cured of his lycanthropy. The others are “destroyed.” But let’s get real. It’s like Michael Myers and Jason and Freddy Krueger getting “destroyed.” Meaningless. All of the monsters would return for the classic horror comedy Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Actually, House of Dracula did well at the box office, released in theaters just before Christmas 1945. But it was the last serious outing for the Universal Monsters.
Oct 3, 2011
Oct 2, 2011
Nostalgia Tripping 101: “USE AJAX! BOM-BOM! THE FOAMING CLEANSER! B-B-B-B-B-B-BOM!” This Ajax commercial predates Yours Truly by decades. It came on television during the infancy of that medium, in 1948. You might recognize the voice of June (Rocky the Squirrel) Foray as one of the Pixies (the others are voiced by Hans Conreid and Joe Silver). Foray is alive and well and still doing voice acting, appearing recently as sweet old Granny on The Looney Tunes Show. The Ajax Pixies were among the first recurring, recognizable TV commercial characters. They appeared on TV well into the 1950s.
Sep 24, 2011
From the One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other File: Dig this portion of a Johnson Smith & Co. comic book novelty advertisement from 1940. It features some of the ugliest Halloween masks of some of the world’s worst tyrants. Hirohito. Stalin. Mussolini. Hitler. WAIT A MINUTE! What’s Mahatma Gandhi doing there? I didn’t think he was such a bad guy. He didn’t go around executing political prisoners, sending Jewish families in cattle cars to concentration camps, shipping dissidents to gulags, raping Nanking, etc. To add insult to injury: They spelled his name wrong! This reminds me of that Sesame Street song. “One of these things is not like other…”
Sep 21, 2011
Cartoon Time!: Greetings, Comrades! Here is a Soviet cartoon from 1949 titled Someone Else’s Voice. It’s a fascinating cartoon. Here is what one Blogger had to say about it:
In this tale, the little peasant birds are singing their traditional songs. So pretty, so Russian. But along comes a magpie from a long time abroad. While abroad, the magpie has learned foreign ways and bringing foreign music into the motherland.
This foreign music, of course, is jazz. The magpie makes fun of the traditional bird music, calling it old-hat and talking about how foreign birds sing so much better. The magpie then puts on a performance of modern music. The magpie squawks and squawks. Some of the stupider birds like it. But the good peasant birds reject this noise as cultural imperialism. They attack the magpie and kick it out of the forest in a stand against foreign intervention.
It is a fascinating cartoon to watch, with shades of Disney from start to finish. And there’s nothing like a little, old-fashioned Soviet anti-imperialism to spice up a cartoon. By the way, for those of you who - like me - do not speak Russian, this cartoon includes subtitles so you can tell what the cute little xenophobic birds are saying. Chirp chirp, comrades!
Sep 17, 2011
From the UFO Files: Kenneth Arnold (1915-1984), a businessman from Boise, Idaho, sighted nine unusual objects while flying his private CallAir A2 airplane over Mt. Rainier, Washington, on June 24, 1947. By the following day, June 25, 1947, Arnold’s case went “viral” via the newspapers. Long before the Internet, his account of nine strange disc-like objects flying in the clear skies near his airplane spread like wildfire across the country. He became an instant celebrity. Newsreels, radio and television - still in its infancy - turned him into a household name. Moreover, Arnold almost single-handedly touched off the frenzied postwar UFO Craze. For the next several years, “flying saucer” headlines could be found almost daily in newspapers across the United States. The Arnold sightings proved to be his 15 minutes of fame. He lived a quiet life, occasionally granting interviews about his pioneering sightings and even running (unsuccessfully) for Lieutenant Governor of Idaho in 1962. He passed away on January 16, 1984.
Sep 17, 2011
From the Driver’s Ed File: This 10-minute educational short, Live and Let Live (1947), has to be the FUNNIEST driver’s ed film I’ve ever seen. It utilizes toy cars and a tabletop model town and countryside to educate youthful audiences of the late 1940s and 1950s about the importance of road and highway safety. The most hilarious moment in the film comes about six minutes into it, when a drunk driver gets behind the wheel of a little yellow toy car. The scene with the toy electric train colliding with the car a minute later is also priceless. Live and Let Live was produced by the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company of Hartford, Connecticut, and it represents campy educational short movies at their very best.
Sep 14, 2011
From the Better Dead Than Red File: I Married a Communist (1949), starring Laraine Day, Thomas Gomez, John Agar and my personal favorite actor from the 1940s and 1950s, Robert Ryan. In real life, Ryan was a hardcore liberal who supported racial equality and opposed the war in Vietnam. But he appeared as a heavy in a fair number of flag-waving films like this one. Even in movies that weren’t masterpieces, he gave it his all and added a certain dramatic weight to even the flimsiest of pictures.
Sep 12, 2011
From the L.A. Noir File: This is a fascinating six-minute ride through the Bunker Hill and Financial District of Los Angeles during the late 1940s. It comes to us courtesy of the wonderful folks at the Internet Archive. I can almost hear the tense Miklós Rózsa musical score and the Fred MacMurray narration. For a fantastic annotated Blog that walks you through all of the locations in the film, visit the Blogdowntown. There you will find both the film and a scene-by-scene description of the locations. It’s worth the time and the visit, especially for hardcore L.A. fans.
Sep 3, 2011
From the Kitchens of Tomorrow File: This 1943 photo spread from Life magazine showed what Americans thought the Kitchen of Tomorrow would look like. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, there was a “Kitchens of Tomorrow” craze, where magazines and newsreels and newspapers would show off the most cutting edge, state-of-the-art kitchens they could imagine. This is a very handsome imagining, if you ask me.
Sep 1, 2011
Aug 29, 2011
From the Marx Brothers File: The first part of this video consists of promotional footage of the Four Marx Brothers for their wonderful movie Monkey Business (1931). The second part of the video features a scene of Groucho Marx and Carole Landis entertaining U.S. troops during World War II. Both films are delightful, showcasing the brothers at their hilarious best.
Aug 28, 2011
From the I Was a Cold War Pin-up Gal File: Another Bill Randall pin-up girl, this one from his 1949 Date Book calendar. May, to be specific. Painting such a svelte Soviet woman was a pretty bold thing to do in 1949. I’m not sure rabid anticommunist Ayn Rand would’ve been happy with this calendar girl being so hot. When you consider all of those Congressional committees were trying to root out Reds from American life at the time, painting this babe actually took some guts on Randall’s part.
