FredCDobbs

If you listen closely about half-way through the film ?Scarface? (1931), you?ll hear Louie Armstrong and his band playing ?St. Louie Woman? as the gangsters enter a fancy nightclub. Armstrong?s band is in several early-?30s films but is most often uncredited. He had a local jazz band in L.A. for a couple of years.

?but I honestly think brandy tastes like Vick's Formula 44 cough syrup? I guess there might be different kinds and flavors. I bought a bottle of ?El Cheapo? at Wal-Mart for $10, but I saw a bottle of ?El Expensivo? at Sam?s Club for $45. I?ve heard that the Chinese think Coke and Pepsi tase like cough syrup.

?It says ?The men were mixing chemicals in the preparation of a substance to be used in operating the picture machine when the explosion occurred.? ? ?The substance used for the machine replaces a dynamo.?? Calcium Carbide. This used to provide the light for a movie projector that was hand-cranked when electricity was not available. When water touches Calcium Carbide crystals, a flammable gas is given off, and the flame is a bright white. Many early streetlamps used Carbide gas provided by local gas companies before natural gas was used. Portable Carbide lamps were used by miners for a while, since they were much brighter lights than old-fashioned candles. I used to have a Carbide miner?s lamp when I was a kid in the ?50s, and Calcium Carbide crystals were still available in some hardware stores back then. If there is some leak in the supply system (pipes and hoses) the Carbide gas can build up in a room and cause an explosion when ignited.

Very good Tracy! You get a gold star for the day! I think not many people realize that for many years New Orleans really did have a streetcar named ?Desire.? It ran along Desire Street. By the early ?60s the track was removed and it was replaced by a ?Desire? bus. I suppose Tennessee Williams always thought it was interesting and amusing to see a streetcar with the ?Desire? name on it.

I was thinking the same thing regarding Judy Garland. Deanna Durbin actually got cuter as she grew older, while Judy Garland got more homely looking. I wonder if Durbin?s voice might have changed as she got older? I don?t think she sings at all in ?Lady on a Train.?

I used to work in the TV business, and our Program Director was in charge of keeping our local station and local shows and commercials and promos timed out just right to match the network shows. Sometimes a Programmer will make a slight mistake in calculating all the times, and will insert some local promo that is too long, or he/she will mis-count the minutes of all the shows, commercials, and promos they are working with. It can take a few days or more to get that extra time removed from the schedule. Sometimes the schedule is made up weeks ahead of time, and it takes a while to get it straightened out if extra time is inserted into the programs by accident. One of the problems is that clock time is based on the ?60? minute system, while the running time of a show or promo is often based on total numbers of minutes, so a 1:59 movie time (one hour and fifty nine minutes) reads on a paper schedule as 119 minutes. I used to have to try to time a news program and add up all the times of the news reports and commercials, like 1:20, :60, :30, :15, 1:45, etc., and it drove me bonkers to try to get all of that to add up to exactly :30 minutes.

I liked this film too. She had a great voice. I often wondered whatever happened to her, then I saw a film she made as a lady detective in 1945, ?Lady on a Train?. She grew up and did dramatic roles. She was great in them too.

The various little repeated promots that last 1, 2, 3 4, etc minutes are supposed to be used to fill in the gaps so that the films can start and end within their designated time slots. But I noticed yesterday that some of the promos were messing up the proper start and stop time of some of the films.

I noticed this yesterday. Some movies were starting 4-5 minutes too late and ending 4-6 minutes after they were supposed to end. I was wondering if this was an attmept to mess up everyone's recordings of the movies. I suppose some of the network's executives don't like the idea that viewers tape and DVD the movies.

Some of my 25 year old video tapes are still in excellent condition. They seem to store well under all conditions. But those were the old thick tapes. I think modern new tapes are thinner. I can tell by the weight. My 25 year old tapes are heavy, my new tapes are light weight. Playing a tape will damage it. Especially when the player mechanism takes the tape into the machine and returns it to the cassette. So, playing a tape many times will shorten its lifespan. DVD disk makers claim up to a 100 year lifespan, but that might not be true when the DVDs are played frequently.

HGL3, I barely remember the two shows. We did not have a TV until 1953, but in the late ?40s we lived in Montana and Nebraska. We traveled around a lot. Every now and then we would go into a bar or restaurant that had an early TV. Hoffman was one of the early models back then. I remember the opening of ?I Remember Mama? show, I remember family people talking about family things, and I also remember Molly Goldberg?s family too. At the end of that show, Molly would often have a few minutes left over and she would talk to the audience and tell a little story. These shows were two of the earliest TV shows, so I guess I got them mixed up. I didn?t understand either one of them because they were filled with adults talking. I didn?t think TV would ever become popular because the shows contained no gangsters shooting at cops, no cowboys and Indians, and no wars with big explosions. Finally they invented the Howdy Doody Show and Pinky Lee and I knew television was here to stay.

Good thread idea, CharlieT. Here?s my question: Vivian Leigh was most famous for playing Scarlet O?Hara in ?Gone With the Wind?. She is also famous for two other films, one British and one American: ?Waterloo --------------? And ?A -------------- Named Desire? Fill in the blanks.

President Grant was buried in Grant's Tomb. It's in northern Manhattan.

I like this film. It's rare to see natural color from 1938.

?It is as though one can actually travel in time for a few moments to see the hearts and minds of those who made and watched them. They were different in many ways, the same in others.? I agree. It?s fascinating. I read the original book, ?Mission to Moscow? as part of a study I was doing about Stalinism. It was published in the late 1930s. I was surprised at how much the American Ambassador to Moscow tried to justify the mass deaths in Russia in the ?20s and ?30s due to starvation. He accepted Stalin?s excuse that it was just something Russia had to go through to bring itself into the modern industrialized world. This part of the book was cut out of the movie. I read years ago that there were a lot of criticisms against Roosevelt for having this kind of guy as our representative in Moscow. ?I am curious about how people saw these movies-with-a-message at the time they were made.? I remember seeing ?Intruder in the Dust? when I was a kid in 1949 or ?50. And I remember parts of the South being just like that, except with no local liberal lawyers anywhere to be found. The liberal lawyers usually had to come from out of state, from Chicago or New York, such as the one in ?They Won?t Forget?. I was living in the South about 200 miles away from where Emmitt Till was lynched and about 100 miles away from where Mack Charles Parker were lynched back in the ?50s.

pktrekgirl, vecchiolarry, Well, I?m sure going to have a brandy the next time I watch Dr. Zhivago, because that movie sure makes me cold. I agree that it is a classic, and I think it is one of the few modern, Technicolor, and Cinemascope classics. I can?t imagine it being filmed in b&w and on a narrow screen. I was very glad they didn?t over-do the color, because the white and bluish cold, snow, and ice scenes are just great. By the way, I read a film book a long time ago that said in the 17th ? 19th Centuries there were art books in Europe that told about ?the psychology of color?. The various great artists would sit around and talk together and come up with various color symbolisms, such as red for scarlet women (Scarlet O?Hara.... get it?) and blue for royalty. Well, yellow was supposed to be used in paintings for ?fond memories? and daydreaming and thinking of past good times. The book I read said this is supposed to be why the cinematographer used so many yellow daffodils in the ?springtime? scenes in Dr. Zhivago.

Well, I can?t wait until I?m in a plane crash, a car wreck, or almost murdered by some fiend in the London fog, because now I know that one glass of Brandy will cure me and make me feel as good as new! Now I know how the Brits survived the Blitz.

Matt, I?m glad your ancestor saved himself or you might not be here today. Let me tell you about a Thanksgiving shock that I had when I moved out here to the US South-west. I had always grown up in the South-east and I had always heard the old story taught in school that the ?first Thanksgiving? was held with early English settlers and American Indians, and they all pooled their food and had a big festival together. I played one of the Pilgrims a 3rd grade play. Other kids in my class played some of the Indians. Well, I got out here and I got invited to a local school Thanksgiving play, near an Indian reservation, where the school is about 75% Indian. I thought, ?Oh boy! Real Indians in the Thanksgiving play!? But it turns out the play was supposed to be based on some old Indian legend that is supposed to be well-known out here. Something to do with ?stone soup?. An Indian who has no food tells everyone in his village that he knows how to make ?stone soup.? He provides the stone, and everyone else provides the meat and vegetables. They all sit together and have ?stone soup? on Thanksgiving day. That?s the most stupid idea for a ?Thanksgiving play? I?ve ever heard. There were no Pilgrims, no English, no references to the East Coast or early America. I think a modern liberal unpatriotic teacher thought up the theme of the play.

?A "Christmassy" film that might be of interst is "O. Henry's Full House" which is based on three of O. Henry's short stories? That?s a good idea. I alway get the impression that the old artist who paints the leaf on the brick wall is Jewish. What do you think?

Ok, I just got the two mixed up over the years. Here?s what I got off a website. I was trying to remember back about 57 years. Mama (aka I Remember Mama) Premiere Date: July 1, 1949 Network: CBS Prod. Company: RKO Radio Pictures Inc. Episodes: 200 (estimate) One of television's first family comedies, this series established a warm, gentle tone that found laughs in everyday situations. With Mama (Peggy Wood) in charge, no matter what happened, one could always be assured that a lesson would be learned and a happy ending would be had by all. ========================== The Goldbergs Premiere Date: Jan. 10, 1949 Networks: CBS, NBC, DuMont, Syndicated Prod. Companies: CBS, DuMont, Guild Films, NBC Episodes: 132 (estimate) A radio staple for 20 years, this middle-class Jewish family from the Bronx, N.Y., became one of the first successful sitcoms of the new medium. Led by matriarch Molly Goldberg (Gertrude Berg), the series found humor in typical family problems.

FredCDobbs: you said- "What made me think of this is the upcoming movie ?I Remember Mama?. I suggest that it be shown in early to mid-December each year as Hanukkah-holiday type movie." I hope you meant this should be shown at Chanuka because it is a family film-not because the family is Jewish...they are Norwegian and not Jewish...back in the dark ages I actually stage managed a production of the play. ------------------ Dang! I must be getting old! I was thinking of the ?I Remember Mama? TV show from the late ?40s and early ?50s, with Molly Goldberg! I just assumed the movie was about that family? That?s the first TV show I ever saw, sometime around 1949, on a little Hoffman TV set.

I've been to thanksgiving dinner at different Jewish friends houses, so I think it is mainly thought of as an American holiday now. Also a lot of people think of it as a ?family reunion? type universal American holiday. But opinions might vary from family to family. I was down in El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, one Thanksgiving, and I noticed some Thanksgiving dinner types of advertising in Mexican grocery stores. Also, the Mexican patriotic holiday of Cinco de Mayo has spread into the Southwest US. I saw a Cinco de Mayo celebration in L.A. on TV a few years ago, sponsored by the City of Los Angeles. A Mariachi band played the Mexican National Anthem, but, they played the US National Anthem first, which I think is required by US law whenever a foreign National Anthem is played at some official ceremony. I think it would be appropriate for TCM to have an annual Mexican film festival centered around the Fifth of May.

?I for some reason thought that the music for a movie was written while the movie was being made my apoligies for being such an idiot I guess.? Some Hollywood movies were based in part or totally on earlier Broadway musical shows. Some movie biographies might contain segments of earlier Broadway musicals. James Cagney?s ?Yankee Doodle Dandy? is a good example.

Ok, I think you are right. I've changed my mind. Scratch "The Rag Man" off the list.

?But it actually is, Fred. 3 Godfathers (and its predecessors) is a take on the Three Wise Men and the Duke delivers the baby to civilization on Christmas day or eve, thanks to the divine intervention that kept him going in the desert when he was at the end of his rope.? Hmm..... interesting.