About
This website was a birthday present from a friend of mine who read my posts on Facebook at movies and actors and said to me one day “you should have your own website so that you can share your knowledge with the world”.
So this website is a work in progress. My friend has promised to work with me on the design. He said that the content is up to me because I’m the expert on that part.
So, I want to thank my friend, who wants to remain anonymous, and welcome you to this new endeavor which touches upon a passion of mine and I hope you learn something along the way as I pay tribute to all those that make movies possible.
A bizarre little film called “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians”
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
In 1964 Saturday and Sunday morning matinees became littered with a bizarre little film called “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians”. One of the most notorious bad films ever made, it is a strange movie, but one thing it never is is boring.
Martians kidnap Santa Claus so that he can give presents to the children of mars. It’s a dopey idea, but it could work in a fanciful way. Unfortunately the filmmakers spent about $5 on the film, and in the long run it all comes off like a local theater or grammar school play, acted with that kind of unbelievably amateurish performances.
I’d heard of the film for decades and never cared to even see anything of it, knowing its quality was none existent. Around 2002 I saw they were playing it on American Movie Classics late on one Friday night, and happened to catch it. Right from the opening I was shocked that the opening song was REALLY melodic, and quite enjoyable.
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Last G Rated Disney Movie “Herbie Goes Bananas”
“I got another one.”
Forty years ago on 6/25/80 Walt Disney Productions’ last G rated comedy would be released. “Herbie Goes Bananas” is an important film in the history of the Disney studio, it being the last G-rated comedy they’d produce. In the preceding 6 months the studio had jumped into PG rated films with “The Black Hole” being released in Christmas of 1979. It was a signal of things changing at the studio, and in some ways “Herbie Goes Bananas” is an example of how they weren’t going back. It has been maligned as rock bottom Disney, and in many ways that is true, a major misfire, but it has some charms that are easily missed if one doesn’t get passed the questionable script. There is plenty to criticize, and, surprisingly, enough to admire.
Herbie is now stranded in Mexico, having been left there by Jim Douglas because in a Baja race Herbie’s girlfriend Lancia Giselle made a bad turn, and Herbie was never the same. Jim’s nephew Pete Stanchek (Stephen W. Burns) and Pete’s friend David Johns, DJ for short (Charlie Martin Smith), are picking Herbie up, not knowing anything about the car, just that it won some races, and that his Uncle Jim is giving it to him. Arriving in Mexico off a bus they are pickpocketed by a rascal orphan named Paco (Joaquin Garay III), who takes the wallet for the money, and puts the wallets in post office boxes, picking up another wallet from Shepard (Richard Jaeckel) who is trying to take ancient Inca gold from a Mexican ruin with mastermind Joe Prindle (John Vernon) and his henchman Quinn (Alex Rocco).
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“O Holy Night” sung by the great Enrico Caruso
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
Around 2015 I was coming home from being at the Christmas gathering I go to almost every year, and the radio was on as I turned on the car, the CD I had going off because of little problems that it has with cold weather (and at times in warm weather too!), automatically going to the radio. I don’t listen to the radio, never caring for the idea of listening to what others choose to play, and caring for only a fragment of what would play on that station.
My father always had the classical station on, his love of classical music and opera being something that was incredibly important to him his whole life. As I found out on the day he passed he was passing the halls of a building when he was in college and heard beautiful music. He wondered what it was, and found out it was Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op. 125. His life was sealed from that day on in what he loved in music.
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Childhood Productions: The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
In the 1960s there were Saturday and Sunday matinees for kiddie flicks, and it became something of a small market that existed into the 70s. One company named Childhood Productions run by producer Barry Yellen took European films, dubbed them into English, and adapt the edit of the film to fit into a more American format. They had done several of these, and actor/composer/writer Paul Tripp was a founder of the company, working for them in doing narration, etc.
Childhood Productions would make one original production that was released in 1966, the children’s film “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t”. It was shot in Italy with a mostly Italian cast, and a few American actors. The film was made without sound, and everything post synched in the dubbing process, like many Italian films of the time.
Paul Tripp plays Sam Whipple, a lawyer who tries to help Santa Claus (Alberto Rabagliati), Mrs. Claus (Lydia Brazzi), and Santa’s elves when they are going to be evicted from their home in the North Pole by a Scrooge-like character named Phineas T. Prune (Rossano Brazzi). Santa goes to work at a department store run by Mr. Prim (Sonny Fox, the early 60s host of “Wonderama”), trying to raise money, but Mr. Prune will not go down without a fight.
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The City That Forgot About Christmas
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
46 years ago on 12/22/74 the classic animated special from Lutheran Television “The City That Forgot About Christmas” first aired in syndication.
This quiet little film, animated on a lower budget, is one of the most beautiful animated specials in capturing the true meaning of Christmas.
With a wonderful cast it tells the story of a boy, Benji, who’s grandfather (Sebastian Cabot) is able to let him know how important it is to remember the significance of the Christ child, and not the other things that detract from it just being a holiday. Charles Nelson Reilly, Louis Nye, Casey Kasem, Robie Lester, and Joan Gardner also lend their voices to this beautifully made film that stays with one for life.
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Rudolph: He went down in history!
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
“He went down in history!”
56 years ago on 12/6/64 the most popular, and the greatest, Christmas animated special appeared on NBC’s General Electric Fantasy Hour. It used songs that existed of Johnny Marks and some he wrote for the special. It was the first big special for Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, Rankin/Bass, having done two animated series up to that point, “The New Adventures Of Pinocchio” in stop motion and “Tales Of The Wizard Of Oz” in cel animation, it having a sequel in 1964 called “Return To Oz” that aired on the GE Fantasy Hour of NBC.
After the huge success of the first airing of “Rudolph” the sponsor, GE, asked for some changes, since audiences complained that Santa didn’t rescue the misfit toys. An additional song, which ended up being “Fame And Fortune”, replaced a second version of “Misfits”, and the misfit toys were rescued at the end.
This all required some edits: “We Are Santa’s Elves” was cut in half, the reprise of “Misfits” was now the “new” “Fame And Fortune” song, after Santa takes off at the end, dialogue with the family is removed, as well as Yukon discovering a peppermint mine (with gorgeous animation), and the original end credits were removed, with the action of Santa delivering toys with the elves taking center stage, and the packages having the credits removed.
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The Aristocats A Walt Disney Classic
“Everybody, everybody, everybody wants to be a cat!” “Why did I listen to that O’Malley cat!”50 years ago today Walt Disney Productions’ animated classic “The Aristocats” opened in theaters. It had a premiere in LA on 12/11/70 but opened two weeks later.
One of the most important films in my life, it was “The Aristocats”, and two weeks later “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, that I saw in the Walt Disney Summer Film Festival in 1975 that made my knowledge of what paradise was like in film. With its wonderful songs, from the opening titles with Maurice Chevalier singing the title song, to “Thomas O’Malley” introducing the Phil Harris voiced character, to most of all “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat” the film is a joyous affair from beginning to end. The songs were written by the Sherman Brothers, along with Terry Gilkyson contributing “Thomas O’Malley”, and Floyd Huddleston and Al Rinker contributed “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat”.
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The Sounds of Christmas by Pete Renoudet
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
Back in 1973 the Disney studio released an album titled “The Sounds Of Christmas” with Pete Renoudet (later Pete Renaday) as narrator and singer of the journey. It’s a depiction of a night at a household on Christmas night with Pete Renoudet as the father of the house, as well as playing Santa later on.
The title song was written by Pete Renoudet, a gorgeous heartfelt delight called “The Sounds Of Christmas”. It is an incredibly touching and deep song, telling of Christmases past. His voice is wonderfully rich, and it’s a pity he didn’t do more singing.
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TCM: We’re No Angels / Lady On A Train
Tonight on TCM it’s the 1955 classic “We’re No Angels” with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray, Basil Rathbone, Leo G. Carroll and Gloria Talbot, in a delightful Christmas oriented film. Then at 10pm Deanna Durbin’s 1945 classic “Lady On A Train”, one of her best films, as well as the film where she met her 3rd and final husband Charles David. She sings “Silent Night” as beautifully as it can be sung.Both classics tonight.
Quiney Magoo aka Mr. Magoo
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
“A hand for each hand was made for the world,
Why don’t my fingers reach.
Millions of grains of sand in the world,
Why such a lonely beach.
Where is a voice to answer mine back
Where are two shoes that click to my clack.
I’m all alone in the world.”
Back in 1949 a new animation studio that was trying to be the non-traditional, rebellious studio (essentially anti-Disney) established their first actual character Quiney Magoo, or simply Mr. Magoo, a short sighted, at times temperamental, and often hilarious charmer voiced by the great Jim Backus. It was rather rare for an animated leading character of cartoons to be a human, so he was unique right from his being a person and not an animal. They’d have several classic cartoons, winning Academy Awards for two of the Magoos, and Mr. Magoo would star in his own feature film in 1959, the classic “1001 Arabian Nights”.
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Scrooge, the Classic Musical Version
A song a day keeps the coronavirus blues away:
50 years ago, on 11/5/70, the classic musical version of “Scrooge”, starring the wonderful Albert Finney as Ebenezer Scrooge, premiered. The songs of Leslie Briscusse are generally quite good, especially the classic “Thank You Very Much”, and the adaptation of Handel’s Messiah that is converted into the opening and closing title tracks. The gorgeous artwork in the titles are done by the great Ronald Searle, of St. Trinian’s fame, his artwork in glorious color.
Albert Finney, only 37 when he played Scrooge in heavy make-up, is a very enjoyable little scum as Scrooge, and he has fun with the more negative aspects of the character, but also brings nice pathos with the love story, which allows him to play the character when he’s young (since Finney was younger, he could play the younger Scrooge, something most of the actor’s didn’t get to do). The song “You” is rather powerful in relaying how Scrooge’s mistakes have left him with pain.
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Richard Fleischer’s delightful classic “The Happy Time”
Tonight on TCM Richard Fleischer’s delightful classic “The Happy Time” from 1952, starring Charles Boyer, Louis Jourdan, Marsha Hunt, Linda Christian, Kurt Kasznar, and Bobby Driscoll in his last starring role.
It’s a warm tale of a boy discovering about girls at that certain age called “The Happy Time”, with charming performances by all. Bobby is wonderful, and it is probably the best performance by Louis Jourdan, but it is Charles Boyer who really stands out.
Unseen for decades, it finally resurfaced on TCM about 10 years ago. It’s on TCM at 1:45am (isn’t everyone up at that time?), but it’s worth catching.
Tonight on TCM it’s an all Rankin/Bass feature production
“Oh what a fine party we’ll have when they all arrive, eh my boy?”
Tonight on TCM it’s an all Rankin/Bass feature production evening, with “Mad Monster Party?” getting it’s first prime-time broadcast on TCM, followed by the two other films they did through Joseph E. Levine’s Avco/Embassey Pictures.
First up is the all-time classic “Mad Monster Party?”, one of the greatest animated features of all time, with gorgeous songs by the great Maury Laws and Jules Bass. The voice cast has the greats Boris Karloff and Phillis Diller, Gale Garnett unforgettable as Francesca, and Allen Swift as almost everybody else.
The film has wonderful stop-motion animation, along with great songs, including the title song sung by Ethel Ennis, one of the greatest title songs of all time, simply spectacular. The other musical highlight is “It’s Our Time” sung by Francesca while conspiring with Dracula, a song that if you listen is an unbelievably beautiful love song, though used for scheming in the context of the film, showing the multiple levels that the songwriters were nurturing with their art.
60 years ago today, on Thursday 5/19/60, Walt Disney’s classic “Pollyanna”
“We look for the good in them, and we found it didn’t we?”
60 years ago today, on Thursday 5/19/60, Walt Disney’s classic “Pollyanna” opened at Radio City Music Hall. Probably the greatest drama the studio would ever make, it is a glorious film that celebrates life, with an all-star cast, the biggest cast the studio ever put together.
It would earn Hayley Mills a special juvenile Academy Award, the last one issued by the Academy, for her beautiful, nuanced performance, and directed beautifully by the great David Swift, bringing out great joy, but also powerful drama throughout the 134 minute film.
Walt Disney’s “Pollyanna” is as great as film gets.
Disney’s Oscar Winners 40 Years Ago
40 years ago on 4/13/80 “Disney’s Wonderful World” presented “Disney’s Oscar Winners”, an episode that was airing at the time of the airing of the Academy Awards on Monday 4/14/20, back when it was given yearly in April.
It’s a pleasant special showing the history of the studio in earning many Oscars over the decades, with John Forsythe narrating, who was currently the voice of Charlie on “Charlie’s Angels”, this being his only Disney project.
Walt Disney won more Academy Awards than any other filmmaker. There are reasons for it. Dick Van Dyke says in “Mary Poppins”, “When you’re with Mary Poppins suddenly you’re in places you never dreamed of. The most unusual things begin to happen.” The same words could describe what Walt Disney did in his career, the most influential filmmaker in history, touching people around the world from the time they are children till the time of old age.
Top of the world entertainment from the Disney studio.
40 years ago today, on Easter Sunday 4/6/80, I went to see the reissue of Walt Disney’s classic “Lady And The Tramp”, along with the reissue of Walt Disney Productions’ “The Island At The Top Of The World”.
I’d seen “Lady” in 1975, but this would be my first exposure to “Island”, which had been released as the big Christmas Disney film of 1974. A loose remake of “In Search Of The Castaways”, also directed by Robert Stevenson, it stars David Hartman, Donald Sinden, Jacques Marin, Mako, David Gwillim, and Agneta Eckemyr in an adventure of a man searching for his son, traveling across the world, to find him in a lost Vikings world, flying by a dirigible, and encountering challenges from locals from an Arctic civilization. The film has many visual wonders, and a nicely played low-key sense of humor.
With a wonderful score by Maurice Jarre, it would be the last film to be finished by Disney veteran Winston Hibler. I’d see it at the State Theater in Jersey City on Kennedy Blvd, which unfortunately wasn’t a very safe theater at that time, marring the cinematic experience, the only time we’d ever step foot in that theater.
Walt Disney’s The Shaggy D.A.
“Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Dr. Sterdivant on sabbatical from the Sorbonne.”
“Oh hi, I’m Tim, the ice cream man from Dolly Dixons.”
40 years ago Walt Disney Productions’ comedy classic “The Shaggy D.A.” returned to network television, presented in two parts, a 1976 sequel to Disney’s first live-action comedy, the 1959 classic “The Shaggy Dog”, a whole 17 years later.
Wilby Daniels (Dean Jones) is now grown up and a lawyer with a wife (Suzanne Pleshette) and son (Shane Sinutko) who’s house is robbed twice, and decides to run for District Attorney, against the crooked current DA John Slade (Keenan Wynn) and his crooked partner Eddie Rochack (Vic Tayback). The Lucrezia Borgia ring cursed with magical transformative powers from the museum is stolen by the same two crooks that robbed the Daniels’ house (Dick Bakalyan and Warren Berlinger), and eventually falls into the hands of local ice cream man Tim (Tim Conway) and his girlfriend (Joanne Worley), and the reading of the inscription turns Wilby into Elwood, Tim’s dog. Slade’s henchman Raymond (Dick Van Patten) finds out about the powers of the ring, and the campaign is going to the pound!
“The Shaggy D.A.” is a wonderful, joyous film that incorporates a great cast with an engaging plot for some truly inspired fun. The interview with host Jonathan Daly, the pie fight with Iris Adrian hoping to find the ring for the reward, the nocturnal prowls with Tim to try to get evidence on Keenan Wynn, and the dog pound with John Fiedler and Michael McGreevey as two very unfortunate kennel keepers makes for one of the best comedies the studio ever made. The voices by George Kirby for the dogs in the kennel, with imitations of Bogart, Cagney, Robinson and even Mae West make for one inspired film.
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We all have to be like Pollyanna during this time.
“Smile Darn Ya Smile
You know that this big world is a big world after all.”
That is the song and title of one of the early Warner Brothers cartoons, which came out in 1931. In today’s world it’s a little tougher to not be worried about what’s going on in our world and SMILE. My father would always say that positive thinking was so crucial to getting better, possibly the most important ingredient to getting better from ANYTHING.
We all need to keep positive, and try to keep our spirits high. Yes we’re going through something of epic proportions, and it’s hard to know what exactly will happen, but our grandparents (or at least SOME of our grandparents) had to go through the 1918 Spanish Flu, and we’ve gone through essentially 100 years of nothing of that epic nature happening again. There’s a tendency to think that this is a whole new experience to man, but it is just to several generations down that haven’t had such a horrible calamity. It’d be wonderful if it wasn’t happening, and at times this seems like a bad nightmare we’ll wake up from, but we will come out of this. We always do.
In Walt Disney’s classic “The Three Lives Of Thomasina” Patrick McGoohan plays a disillusioned vet who’s lost his wife and despite loving his daughter has lost a lot of his worth and love of living. When he first encounters Susan Hampshire, the local girl who happens to take care of animals at her cottage, she has just found a badger who has been caught in a metal spring trap, and possibly going to die. He looks at it and arrives quickly at the futile conclusion that the badger is beyond help, and that it would be more merciful to put it out of its misery. She insists to him that he has to try; that even if the creature goes through some pain that it’s always worth trying. As she states, “and wonderful to give him his life.” Life is always worth it, no matter what challenges are presented to us.
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Walt Disney’s Son of Flubber 40th Anniversary
40 years ago today, on 3/16/80, Walt Disney’s comedy classic “Son Of Flubber” came to network television for the first time on NBC’s “Disney’s Wonderful World”. It was the first sequel done at the Disney studio, the joys of the first film providing too many wonderful ideas for the filmmakers to resist.
This 1963 comedy continues the adventures of Professor Ned Brainard (Fred MacMurray) and his gravity defying discovery Flubber, which he develops into a gas, Flubbergas, which can make it rain at will, be a great fertilizer, and have some unfortunate side effects like breaking glass.
One of the greatest comic casts ever put together into one film, it stars Fred MacMurray, Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Elliott Reid, Joanna Moore, Ed Wynn, Charlie Ruggles, Ken Murray, Edward Andrews, Paul Lynde, Gregg Hoyt, William Demarest, Bob Sweeney, Leon Tyler, Stuart Erwin, Alan Carney, Gordon Jones, Alan Hewitt, Norman Grabowski, James Westerfield, Forrest Lewis, Jack Albertson, Harriett MacGibbon, Joe Flynn, Byron Foulger, Dallas McKennon, Wally Boag, Beverly Wills, Don Edmonds, Burt Mustin, J. Pat O’Malley, Hal Smith, the voice of Ginny Tyler, and Walt Disney’s grandson Wed Miller as the bouncing baby boy in the Flubberoleum commercial.
One of the greatest comedies of the studio, the 100 minute film was cut for television to 95 minutes, cutting out the Bob Sweeney scene where he tries to collect the taxes of the Brainards. It would be the only showing of the film on network television. In the late 90s a colorized version would appear on The Disney Channel, but the film is best in its original black and white, one of the last black and white films to premiere on network television.
“Son Of Flubber” is one of the best Disney comedies of all time, and a film with great heart (at its trial scene). It is one joyous film.
“I guess I’ll have to go along with that.”
Walt Disney Productions’ classic TV movie “The Kids Who Knew Too Much”
“Adventure, humor and suspense are interwoven when a maverick newspaper woman teams up with THE KIDS WHO KNEW TOO MUCH.
Don’t miss Sharon Gless, Larry Cedar, Lloyd Haynes, David Sheiner and THE KIDS WHO KNEW TOO MUCH in a special 2-hour presentation on Disney’s Wonderful World”.
40 years ago, on 3/9/80, Walt Disney Productions’ classic TV movie “The Kids Who Knew Too Much” premiered on “Disney’s Wonderful World”.
A small-time pickpocket (Erik Stern aka: Jack Lemp) gets killed when betraying a fence (David Sheiner), his thugs (Michael Dante, John Milford and Don Knight), and the connection they have to a crooked senator (Jared Martin) and police commissioner (Richard O’Brian) who are going to try to assassinate a Russian Premier (Ben Astor). A boy (Rad Daly) stumbles upon it with his friends (Dana Hill, Christopher Holloway, and Kevin King Cooper), as well as an unsuspecting reporter (Sharon Gless), along with the photographer assigned to her (Larry Cedar). Accordingly their lives will be in major danger.
“The Kids Who Knew Too Much” is a taught, exciting adventure, with a tight plot, and plenty of incident laced with humor. Directed by Robert Clouse, who had done the Disney classic “The Omega Connection” a year earlier, the movie doesn’t have the budget of the previous film, but is beautifully interwoven in its story that makes it very involving.
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