I wanted to include something to recognize my connection to Shirley Temple Black, in light of her death on February 10th of this year. This is the first chance I’ve had to include a few links to her life and work.
You can certainly go search YouTube for more, but I’ll tell you I’ve had a thing for Shirley Temple’s work ever since my sitter first wrapped my curly hair in vertical ringlets at a very tender age. I wanted dance lessons like crazy, I thought I could sing just like Shirley. I’m certain I wasn’t alone. Long, long after she stopped making movies, I was a staunch fan. I knew this song by heart, but it wasn’t the only one I could sing (in my own, off-key way):
In later years, after she ended her movie career at the top of her game, Shirley Temple Black became a diplomat, serving in a variety of locations. She also became one of the first public figures to highlight breast cancer, when she was diagnosed with the disease in 1972. She received lifetime recognition through both the Screen Actors Guild and the Kennedy Center Honors.
In the long, long list of child stars, Shirley Temple’s early works remain a sweet, sunny reminder of childhood’s best moments, even if her own life wasn’t among the fairy tales with which she became associated later in life. This biopic from 2001 tells a lot of her story. In a lot of ways, she led the way through a minefield for child stars, and she did it with poise and grace. I’m glad to have experienced her work.
This is the reason why I skipped Ben Stiller’s 2013 remake of the movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” which was in turn based on a James Thurber short story. I just couldn’t bring myself to see the king of deadpan take the classic I adore and bend it to his will.
Danny Kaye didn’t read music. That never ever mattered. I don’t think there are many (any?) actors alive today who could actually do what he did in his movies.
No, the movie didn’t have that much to do with the original short story. And that’s okay. The new one didn’t, either. And that’s another story.
When I first started watching The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson sat in the driver’s seat and I always imagined what life would be like when I got on the show. That never happened, of course.
Jay Leno first appeared on the show as a stand-up comic in 1977 (the year I started high school). Here’s the clip from that first appearance.
There was never, ever, a time in my life when Johnny hadn’t hosted the show…until 14 years later, that is.
Jay was preparing to take over for Johnny, who was finally ready to retire after thirty years with The Tonight Show. But not before Johnny had David Letterman on to discuss the change in regime. Raucous hilarity ensues.
Those of us who are still here are a lot grayer, but Leno’s done what relatively few men or women have managed. And I still haven’t been called to the hot seat. What’s up with that? Maybe I’ll have better luck with Jimmy Fallon. You never know.
[An aside – internet outages and college classwork may interfere with getting these posted on schedule. I’m back in the ‘net for now. Hope it stays that way for a while. I’ve got homework to do!]
In a few days a large percentage of the US will plop down in front of their televisions and watch either a game involving an odd-shaped ball that gets tossed between two teams or every single commercial that comes between tossing and running after said ball.
When did commercials during the Super Bowl become a thing? Well, Wikipedia has an answer for that.
Ironically, until I went to find the answer to my question, I didn’t know there was a link to the description of the very short clip below. But there it is.
I know where I’ll be this coming Sunday. Where will you be? Watching the Super Bowl or the commercials?
Released on May 1, 1984, this wild performance art piece directed by Zbigniew Rybczyński sums up the surreal aspects of music video. From the Wikipedia entry for the song, there’s this:
“I thought it was a fun video,” Anne Dudley said, “but some people thought it was unnecessarily violent. It was banned in New Zealand as encouraging violence towards children. Nothing could have been further from our minds.” The video later won the MTV Video Music Awards for Most Experimental Video and the Best Editing in 1985.
I love the song and the artistry of the video, so it made the cut early on. It’s one of the videos I used to wait for on MTV, back when it was still about music and not reality junk.
I didn’t realize until I started creating my Music Video playlist that there was a second version of this video, but there was. And here it is. (Actually, there are three, but I like these two the best.)
No, it doesn’t make any more sense than the first version, but that’s okay, because ART.
Trust me when I say this is just the first of the Danny Kaye clips you’ll see this year. This clip comes from Kaye’s movie The Five Pennies (1959), .
I had SUCH a crush on him back when I first started watching the Golden Age musicals. I have as many of his films on DVD as I can get my hands on. I just love his work.
Louis Armstrong is such a great partner for this piece. Sit back and enjoy the patter and scat.
Can’t get enough?
Here’s another clip, from Kaye’s television series.
Welcome to Throwback Thursday. It might not be what you expect, but then, where would we be in this world if everything was the way everyone expected?
I ran across this little clip while looking for a reference for a short story. I confess, until I looked her up, I had no idea who Beatrice “Bea” Lillie was, but I thought of Fanny Brice (a sort-of contemporary of Bea’s). Ed Sullivan’s intro is so very typical of his shows, which were among my favorite things to watch.
If you find it difficult to follow the lyrics, you can see the original poem here: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/fyleman.html
Life in a Minor Key 