Sex Education #32
Julie Christie
for the series:
Sex Education
August 31, 2005
August 30, 2005
From 'The Black Panther Coloring Book' #1
"The pig is afraid of the Black man. He strikes out against little children"
(It probably would behoove those of us here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . to explain this series: This (along with future entries) comes directly from a Coloring Book published in 1969 by The Black Panther Party, presumably handed out to children at those Free Breakfasts that were seen by such people as then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as so pernicious and sinister. The Panthers are responsible for its contents and in no way should our featuring it here suggest any endorsement of its ideas. Necessarily.)
for the series:
From the Black Panther Coloring Book
Tom's Influences #5
Before and After #9:
Gore Vidal
Before
After
for the series:
Before and After,
Tom's Influences
The Golden Age of Prurience #25
Cloak 'n' Dagger
(August, 1964)
for the series:
The Golden Age of Prurience
August 27, 2005
Brock Peters Dies at 78
Brock Peters (1927-2005)
Sad to hear of the death from pancreatic cancer of To Kill a Mockingbird star Brock Peters, a distinguished actor who was always a strong presence, whether in groundbreaking films like Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess or genre fare like Soylent Green and Slaughter's Big Rip-Off. I was surprised to learn he also played Darth Vader in the radio dramatization of the original three Star Wars films ... I guess James Earl Jones was off somewhere recording CNN IDs.
Renowned for his stage work as much as his film and TV appearances, Peters will likely be best remembered for playing Tom Robinson in Mockingbird, falsely accused of raping a white woman in Robert Mulligan's adaptation of the Harper Lee novel, although I'm looking forward to watching him play Aesop again in Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee when the extended cut of that mangled masterpiece finally emerges on DVD later in the fall.
for the series:
Obits
August 26, 2005
August 25, 2005
Seminal Image #275
They Were Collaborators #71
Margaret Dumont and Groucho Marx
in Duck Soup
(Leo McCarey; 1933)
for the series:
Seminal Images,
They Were Collaborators
What I'm Doing Tonight
Drop on by if you're in the neighbourhood. (No, I didn't make the poster, but it's a flattering likeness, dontcha think?)
August 24, 2005
Credits Where Credit is Due
Saul Bass title for Advise and Consent
(Otto Preminger, 1962)
Thanks to the folks over at Cartoon Brew, I've been made aware of this Saul Bass tribute site, featuring some of his greatest title sequences in still form. There's no Walk on the Wild Side, the first one I thought of, but lots of his work with Preminger and Hitchcock is represented.
Looking at these just makes me want to grab copies of In Harm's Way and The Cardinal (boy, Preminger sure knew how to throw a cast together) and lock myself away for the weekend. Too bad duty calls...
August 23, 2005
Great Con Artists of the 20th Century #5
Ayn Rand
for the series:
Great Con Artists of the 20th Century
August 22, 2005
The Art of Cinema #83
After the Thin Man
(W.S. Van Dyke; 1936)
Guess what just showed up in the mail today...?
for the series:
Art of Cinema
People Who Died #22
Director W.S. Van Dyke (1889-1943), seen here with Norma Shearer on the set of Marie Antoinette in 1938.
for the series:
People Who Died
Heroes of American Literature #7
We here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . would like to note that, on this day, one of America's great writers of the last century, Ray Bradbury, turns 85. If you haven't read The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes or any of the dozens upon dozens of short stories he wrote in the 1940s through the 1960s, then you qualify as deprived (benignly so) in our book.
for the series:
Heroes of American Literature
The Golden Age of Prurience #24
Office Wife
(by Richard Grant)
(Beacon Books; 1950)
(our thanks to Richard Gibson for this bit of lurid splendor)
for the series:
The Golden Age of Prurience
Adventures in American Filmmaking #38
Today's Adventure: Filling in for an absent Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga presides over the world premiere of Empire at the Warhol Factory (1964)
for the series:
Adventures in American Filmmaking
August 21, 2005
Stacks o' Wax #10
Peter Pan with Jean Arthur and Boris Karloff (Columbia Records)
Although I believe there is no filmed performance of Boris Karloff playing Captain Hook, there is this recorded version, with the added bonus of the great Jean Arthur doing a Mary Martin as the original lost boy. As they do every week, the folks at kiddierecords.com have posted the audio from this double 78 r.p.m. disc set, along with all the graphics and even the label. You can just download the audio, or get a torrent .zip file with the whole shooting match.
Other recent postings include The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (read by Paul Wing) and The Great Gildersleeve reading Hansel and Gretel and The Brave Little Tailor.
And, if you keep an eye on the site in the next couple of weeks, you'll get to hear Gloria Swanson doing Joey the Jeep. As she might say, viewing the state of recorded music today, "I AM big...it's the discs that got small."
for the series:
Stacks o' Wax
August 20, 2005
Authors on Authors #5
"Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't want to shake hands with him."
-- Jacqueline Susann
for the series:
Authors on Authors
August 19, 2005
Seminal Image #273
Dnevnik Glumova
(Glumov's Diary)
(Sergei Eisenstein; 1923)
for the series:
Seminal Images
August 18, 2005
Seminal Image #272
Gold Diggers of 1933
(Mervyn LeRoy; Busby Berkeley; 1933)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Kino Art #5
Дворец и крепость: Историческая кинодрама
(The Palace and the Fortress: A Historical Cine-Drama)
(Aleksandr Ivanovsky; 1924)
for the series:
Kino Art
They Were Collaborators #67
The Carry On Gang (Sid James, Joan Sims, producer Peter Rogers, director Gerald Thomas, Barbara Windsor, Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques and Jim Dale) on the set of Carry On Again, Doctor in 1969.
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
August 17, 2005
August 16, 2005
When Legends Gather #52
Chester Conklin, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and George Bagnall, as the Big E contributes $50,000 to the Motion Picture and Television Archive in 1963.
Chester Conklin?
Go here for more pictures from this event.
for the series:
When Legends Gather
Seminal Image #270
Tengoku to Jigoku
(High and Low)
(Akira Kurosawa; 1963)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Great Philosophers of the 20th Century #14: Webb Pierce
"There stands the glass
That will ease all my pain
That will settle my brain
It's my first one to day
"There stands the glass
That will hide all my tears
That will drown all my fears
Brother, I'm on my way"
for the series:
Great Philosophers of the 20th Century
When Legends Gather #51
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Francis Albert Sinatra
for the series:
When Legends Gather
August 15, 2005
Tricky: Scenes from a Life #23
Tricky and his wife enjoy a rare moment of contact (1970)
for the series:
Tricky: Scenes from a Life
They Were Collaborators #65
Francois Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Leaud
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
The Art of the Centerfold #19
Marilyn Monroe
(Miss December, 1953)
for the series:
Art of the Centerfold
August 14, 2005
The Present Day Composer #18
Great Madmen of the 20th Century #9
Shortly before his death on August 14, 1972, Pianist/Composer/Actor/Raconteur Oscar Levant turned up at Richard Avedon's studio in Manhattan for this Portrait session wearing pajamas, slippers, and a bathrobe replete with foodstains from God only knows when. No one's essence has been rendered in a single frame more bluntly, more cruelly.
for the series:
Great Madmen of the 20th Century,
The Present Day Composer
August 13, 2005
August 13, 1899
Alfred Hitchcock, who rendered unto cinema some of its enduring works while managing, in the process, to remain one of its most enigmatic figures, was born on this day in the year of Our Lord, baby, 1899.
Here are seven images from that life:
The firebrand young director in action; a publicity photo (1926)
Father of the Year; a publicity photo with his daughter (1947)
Another day, another waste-of-time, avuncular publicity photo (1957)
Artist in recession; at a press conference (1965)
The firebrand extinguished; directing on his way out (1969)
Amuse the actors; the last film (1976)
Another day, another . . . ; near the end (1979)
Great Con Artists of the 20th Century #4
Matt Drudge
for the series:
Great Con Artists of the 20th Century
They Were Collaborators #64
Bob and Ray
Write if you get work...and hang by your thumbs.
Hear Bob and Ray in their '80s NPR incarnation here.
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
August 12, 2005
When Legends Gather #50
Portland Hoffa, Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Mary Livingston
for the series:
When Legends Gather
August 11, 2005
Adventures in American Filmmaking #37
Today's Adventure: director Herbert Brenon lends a hand to Lon Chaney on the set of Laugh, Clown, Laugh in 1928, while cinematographer James Wong Howe looks on.
for the series:
Adventures in American Filmmaking
British Sounds #1:
The Rolling Stones
Now half as old as time and with all the lissome grace of a broken luggage rack, The Rolling Stones continue to tour the world with an act no one under forty cares about; fueled by corporate sponsorship that ought to disqualify them from the human race on general principles. They are, in every respect, the walking illustration of why old people should not play (or, in their case, pretend to play) Rock'n'Roll music. But there was a time when, for a few errant moments, they were indeed what they once claimed themselves to be: The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band. Monumentally proficient in Pop music as well as straight-ahead Rock; with lyrics of far greater sophistication than anything McCartney or Lennon were cooking up at the time, the Stones may have come in number two in the British Invasion sweepstakes, but their finest music has dated less than anyone else's.
