When Legends Gather #106
William Wyler, Norma Shearer and Howard Hawks
for the series:
When Legends Gather
March 31, 2006
March 30, 2006
March 29, 2006
March 28, 2006
Relevant Quote #72
"The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
for the series:
Relevant Quotes
Seminal Image #405
Il Miracolo
(The Miracle)
(segment from L'Amore)
(Roberto Rossellini; 1948)
for the series:
Seminal Images
This Week's Lichtenstein #2
Emigrant Train After William Ranney (1951)
for the series:
This Week's Lichtenstein
They Were Collaborators #133
Leonard Bernstein and Benny Goodman
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
March 27, 2006
March 26, 2006
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #2
In Part Two of The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes, Alfred Hitchcock speaks of creative depredations wrought by the so-called Star System upon both his 1927 film The Lodger as well as 1941's Suspicion. He scrupulously avoids implicating Cary Grant in the latter film's distortion . . . keep in mind that, at the time of this interview, Grant was still a major presence at the box-office . . . and then details his original ending, which is so poorly conceived as to make the dénouement imposed by RKO sound like a masterstroke of cinematic storytelling. François Truffaut goes way way out on a limb by declaring Suspicion a finer work than the largely unread novel from which it was adapted, and then praises it in terms normally reserved for something hanging in the Louvre.
Hitchcock, who no doubt thought he'd heard it all by then, immediately shifts gears for an extended discussion of The Lodger, pausing only to ask Truffaut for his insight into the role hand-cuffs sometimes play in aberrant sexual fetishism (Truffaut admits that, alas, his is not an analytical mindset . . . and, to the best of our knowledge, no newspaper on earth altered their front page that day to accomodate this revelation), then closes on a note of lavish cynicism with the old one about Silent film being a richer, more purely cinematic form.
for the series:
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes
The Art of Cinema #122
10 Rillington Place
(Richard Fleischer; 1970)
Richard Fleischer passed away today. He was 89. The cause of death was not revealed in press accounts, and I could, if I wanted to, advance a very credible theory as to what may have helped usher him into the beyond. But I think it's best that we simply remember what once was: an extraordinary, under-explored legacy that will hopefully one day get the attention it deserves.
for the series:
Art of Cinema,
Obits
When Legends Gather #105
Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong and Leni Riefenstahl in Berlin, 1928
for the series:
When Legends Gather
The Women #10
Joan Crawford
(from The New Movie Album: An Autographed Who's Who of the Screen, 1931)
"Born in San Antonio, Texas, and educated in a finishing school in Kansas City, I embarked upon my career in 1924, obtaining a start as a dancer in a musical show. From there I went to New York to dance at the Winter Garden. There I was discovered by Harry Rapf. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer, who offered me an opportunity to try my luck in pictures. I was known on the stage as Lucile Le Sueur, and I was christened Joan Crawford in a motion picture magazine name contest. My first picture was Pretty Ladies in which I played an extra part. I was given a role in Old Clothes, a Jackie Coogan film, and as a result of that cast in a leading part in Our Dancing Daughters. This later was followed by Our Modern Maidens, in which I won stardom. The talkie companion to these two earlier films, Our Blushing Brides, established even great box-office results and critical praise. My first two talking pictures were Untamed and Montana Moon, and my latest is Paid, in which I play my first straight dramatic role. I am five feet, four inches tall, weight 120 pounds and have dark hair and blue-brown eyes. I was born in 1908 and am married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr."
for the series:
The Women
El Cine Del Oro #22
El Muchacho Alegre (The Cheerful Lad)
(Alejandro Galindo, 1947)
for the series:
El Cine Del Oro
March 25, 2006
Buck Owens Dead at 76
No one can say it wasn't a good ride (both for him and for us), but we here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . feel that the passing of Buck Owens, the Telecaster brandishing madman who was also one of the seminal voices in Country, is still sufficient cause for regret. Those among you (and I'm certain there are still a few) who only know of him as the co-host of a deranged Country music minstrel show called Hee-Haw have a lot of homework to do.
In the meantime, here is the account of his life and work rendered by the Associated Press.
for the series:
Obits
Artists in Action #50
Ronald Reagan plays the Last Frontier in Vegas; a two-week engagement cut short due to illness . . .
. . . the customers got sick of him.
for the series:
Artists in Action
They Were Collaborators #132
Ethel Waters, Carson McCullers and Julie Harris
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
Fun at Bohemian Grove #6
The Bohemians engage in lunacy . . . again (1925)
for the series:
Fun at Bohemian Grove
March 22, 2006
March 21, 2006
This Week's Lichtenstein #1
Washington Crossing the Delaware (1951)
for the series:
This Week's Lichtenstein
March 20, 2006
Great Madmen of the 20th Century #16
Dr. Gene Scott
for the series:
Great Madmen of the 20th Century
March 19, 2006
Artists in Action #48
Bayard Rustin records a 10'' LP in his spare time.
for the series:
Artists in Action
March 17, 2006
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #1
From now until I run out, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . will be bringing our visitors the interview recordings that made up the bulk of a coffee-table book beloved by millions, Hitchcock/Truffaut. The voices you will hear are those of Alfred Hitchcock, the director of Waltzes in Vienna, Easy Virtue and Juno and the Paycock; François Truffaut, ex-film critic, pioneering cinephile hustler and co-director of Tire-au-flanc 62 and Une histoire d'eau; and Helen Scott, interpreter and Truffaut groupie extraordinaire.
In Part One of The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes, Hitchcock speaks with palpable fatigue about his childhood, his early interest in theater, his work as a commercial artist and his gradual involvement in the medium upon which he would soon make an everlasting impact. Truffaut valiantly attempts to understand his answers (even in translation), while he and Helen Scott laugh way too hard at Hitchcock's half-hearted jokes.
While the general atmosphere is never what anyone with a pulse would call electric, these recordings are nonetheless engrossing, and indispensible for anyone who places great value in interviews with movie directors.
We hope you enjoy them.
for the series:
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes
March 15, 2006
March 14, 2006
Great Moments in Marketing #6
Norman Mailer promotes The Deer Park (1955)
for the series:
Great Moments in Marketing
They Were Collaborators #131
The Velvet Underground (circa 1971)
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
March 13, 2006
A Who's Who of Swinging London #2
Christine Keeler
With the passing a day or two ago of former British Secretary of State for War John Profumo at 91, this is an admitted no-brainer.
For those who can't imagine why Profumo would slip around on Valerie Hobson, I'd say this photo sums it up nicely.
for the series:
A Who's Who of Swinging London
March 11, 2006
When Legends Gather #102
Harrison Salisbury and Robert F. Kennedy
for the series:
When Legends Gather
March 10, 2006
When Legends Gather #101
Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and Harold Lloyd
for the series:
When Legends Gather
March 09, 2006
March 08, 2006
March 07, 2006
Gordon Parks Dead at 93
Sad news moving on the wires this evening brings word of the passing of Gordon Parks; one of this country's seminal Photo-Journalists, director of The Learning Tree and Shaft, composer, essayist and novelist. He was just 93. Since not enough time has passed for any but the most cursory appreciation, all we can offer is the account of his life and work rendered by Reuters News Service.
for the series:
Obits
They Were Collaborators #129
Luchino Visconti and Alain Delon
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
March 06, 2006
Great Moments in Moxie #4
Roscoe Arbuckle in The Butcher Boy. (1917)
No Coca Cola jokes, please.
for the series:
Great Moments in Moxie
Orpheus on the Air #1
Folksinger's Choice was the name of a series broadcast on New York's venerable Pacifica Radio affiliate WBAI-FM during the heady and lawless days of what came to be known as the Folk Revival. It was hosted by Cynthia Gooding, herself a Folk singer of some note at the time, and gave its listeners an up-close and personal glimpse of their favorite Folk personalities (assuming that term is at all operative in this context) as they reconnected en masse with the lost vernacular of American culture. This was serious radio, children; no Murray the K or WMCA Good Guys here; no remotes from Jones Beach or Roosevelt Field, no payola lest it be in the coin of a marketable integrity.
The featured guest for this edition of Folksinger's Choice . . . recorded on March 11, 1962 (there is some dispute, however, as to whether it actually aired) . . . was a raw youth of some 20 summers named Bob Dylan. In the course of its 58 minutes, he sang 11 songs, opening with Hank Williams' Lonesome Whistle Blues and closing with Hard Times in New York Town, his own rather charming theft of The Bentley Boys' 1929 Columbia recording, Down on Penny's Farm (no doubt cadged from the grooves of Harry Smith's landmark Anthology of American Folk Music). In between numbers, Dylan speaks with characteristic frankness about his life up to that point: his boyhood journeys across the fruited plains or pastures of plenty or wherever, his years working carnivals (Woody Guthrie by way of Stanton Carlisle), and on and on. In other words, the latter day Okie routine he was selling the minute his feet hit the Manhattan pavement.
But soft . . . let us not dally in introduction any longer. As this recording attests, Bob Dylan at 20 was as consummate a performer as he was a fabulist (even when working the Folk music racket). I'm sure you'll all agree that hard-scrabble showmanship has rarely been given such graceful expression.
for the series:
Orpheus on the Air
They Were Collaborators #128
Luther Perkins, Johnny Cash and Marshall Grant
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
March 05, 2006
Poets are both clean and warm
And most are far above the norm
Whether here, or on the roam
Have a poet in every home! #5
William Butler Yeats
for the series:
Poets are both clean and warm
