harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallow
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/what-january-20-2009-meant-to-me/
Dinah Washington, 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
It's important to understand who is and is not an elitist.
Click on the “more” button for a free utility to clean your computer monitor … from the inside. Another public service from the non-blog. more about “Internal Monitor Screen Cleaning Uti...
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I love this guy. Change is in the air this political season — in the ever-increasing likelihood that an African American will stand as the Democ...
Raving about Juan Diego Flórez and Natalie Dessay in La fille du régiment.
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/moshpitting-at-the-met/
My screenplay Equity has won a Silver Remi at the 2008 Houston WorldFest International Film Festival.
For the second year in a row, one of my screenplays has won a Remi Award from the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival. This year’s award winner is Equity, my original script about the...
From the Tony Award telecast of June 3, 1990, Brent Barrett and Michael Jeter perform “We’ll Take A Glass Together” from the musical Grand Hotel: Immediately afterward, Lily Tomlin presents...
This was originally posted on democrats.com. George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls and is expected to resign or be impeached, according to C...
The last of the great 20th-century Italian tenors, the man whom Luciano Pavarotti called a role model, has died at the age of eighty-seven. Here he is with his one-time lover and most famous sopr...
Not like in the good old days …
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/shadowy-puppetmasters/
… I would be a lot more enthusiastic about him … Thanks to Joe Bratcher for the links. Technorati tags: Barack Obama, Derrick Ashong
Eleanor Steber, that is, singing “Depuis le jour” from Gustave Charpentier’s Louise. The (possibly apocryphal) story is that she recorded this for HMV because she was too hung over to sing ...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/happy-valentines-day-from-eleanor/
Back in the summer of 2006, my friend Bob was so scornful of bloggers, that to avoid his snark I told him the only reason I was setting up a … well, a non-blog … was to promote my writing pro...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/an-non-break-from-not-blogging/
From Sun Valley Serenade (1941), an intro by the Glenn Miller Orchestra segues into … “Chattanooga Choo Choo” by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon, with the delicious Dorothy Dandridge and Harol...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/chattanooga-choo-choo/
A year after Sun Valley Serenade, Glenn Miller, the Nicholas Brothers and Harry Warren and Max Gordon continue their survey of songs about American cities with funny names … … performing “I...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/i-got-a-gal-in-kalamazoo/
From The Black Network, a 1936 short, fifteen-year-old Harold and twenty-two-year-old Fayard Nicholas perform “Lucky Numbers” by Cliff Hess. Technorati tags: Lucky Numbers, Harold Nicholas, F...
From 1935, the VitaPhone short “An All-Colored Vaudeville Show” … The song playing over the Three Whippets’ acrobatics is “Nagasaki” by Harry Warren and Mort Dixon. Adelaide Hall sing...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/nicholas-vaudeville/
Somebody involved with Janet Jackson’s 1990 music video Alright had a nice sense of cultural history … Can you spot the cameos from Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers and Cyd Charisse? Techn...
This clip from Stormy Weather (1943) features Calloway and his orchestra, and the amazing Nicholas Brothers (Harold and Fayard). Technorati tags: Cab Calloway, Jumpin’ Jive, Stormy Weather, Nic...
From the 1996 Met tribute to James Levine, tenor Roberto Alagna and baritone Bryn Terfel, conducted by Levine. And if that wasn’t good enough, my favorite recording of the aria … hell, just ...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/au-fond-du-temple-saint-2/
Maybe not exactly forgotten, but if all you know of Lerner and Loewe‘s first Broadway hit is the lousy MGM movie or even the disappointing abridged original cast album, check this out. In 1991,...
Obviously influenced by the success of Oklahoma!, this 1944 musical featured two of that show’s stars, Celeste Holm and Joan McCracken, and its choreographer Agnes De Mille, in a show with musi...
A washed-up Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright gets hired to adapt his most famous work into a musical … thirty years after the original. And he dies before rehearsals have begun. The star is be...
Forgotten by myself, amongst others. When I did my series of non-posts about the Nicholas Brothers, I forgot that they co-starred in a musical by one of my favorite Broadway composers. The book f...
After a look at Offenbach’s take on the Iliad, we segue to a unique Broadway take on both the Iliad and the Odyssey, an all-but-forgotten masterpiece that Offenbach himself would have been prou...
Don’t click the More… tab until you’ve listened to this sound clip: Click this link if the widget doesn’t work The singer (and star of the show) is making his only appearance in a Broa...
There once was a time when I made a point of seeing every Woody Allen movie the day it opened. Why? Because I remember breaking down in tears at this … It may be apocryphal, but I’ve read tha...
Today would have been the one hundredth birthday of the greatest jazz violinist of all time. Above, from 1991, the eighty-three-year-old Stéphane Grappelli performs “How High The Moon” by Na...
“Sunday”, the electrifying first-act finale to Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork, performed by the original Broadway cast including Mandy Patinkin as George and Bernadette Peters as Dot. Given ...
In this clip from International House (1933), the strangest film W. C. Fields ever made (and that’s saying a lot), Cab Calloway And His Orchestra, featuring the legendary Al Morgan on bass, per...
I’ve always been fascinated with child prodigies, having been a little bit of one myself. Lucy, the heroine of my screenplay The Arch Conspirators, is a child prodigy. And so was violinist Sara...
Click the thumbnail for a full-sized image. My favorite strip in the Los Angeles Times.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic...
The Brecker Brothers … … at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Den Haag, Holland, July 11, 1980. Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Randy Brecker on trumpet, Neil Jason on bass, Richie Morales on drums,...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/bb-some-skunk-funk/
Watercolor by Virgil “Vip” Partch. Left to right: Sam Cobean, Tony Rivera, Bill McIntyre, Vip Partch, Reginald Massie (foreground), Dick Shaw. This probably dates from late 1941 or 1942, afte...
The last completed movie my father ever worked on was his personal favorite. The narrator of “John Henry and the Inky-Poo,” Rex Ingram, had become famous as De Lawd in the movie of Marc Conne...
Unlike clay animators like Nick Park, Will Vinton or Art Clokey, George Pal’s animators worked in a “replacement technique” using hand-carved wooden puppets. A separate puppet (or puppet pa...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/gpal-tubby-the-tuba/
Here’s a goodie from George Pal with the music of Johann Strauß* … This was released in May 1942, so it’s possible my father worked on it before he went in the Army earlier that year. That...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/geschichten-aus-dem-wienerwald/
From 1946, a George Pal Puppetoon featuring Charlie Barnet and Peggy Lee, and designed by Reg Massie. This was the best of the Puppetoons headlining “Jasper.” As we’ll see in Friday’s off...
This week, a festival of George Pal Puppetoons designed by my father, Reginald Massie (1909-1989). Below: George Pal George Pal (1908-1980) had worked as an animator in his native Hungary and els...
Although I would personally vote differently, many have called this the greatest cartoon ever made. Directed by Chuck Jones; written by Mike Maltese and designed by Maurice Noble. With the voices...
And if you disagree, you’re wrong. Everybody do the Michigan Rag Everybody likes the Michigan Rag Every Mame and Jane and Ruth From Weehawken to Duluth Slide, ride, glide the Michigan Stomp, ro...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/the-greatest-cartoon-of-all-time/
From 1974, Ella Fitzgerald and my favorite of her many accompanists, the guitarist Joe Pass. The song, with music by Duke Ellington and lyrics by John LaTouche, is featured on Take Love Easy, the...
I celebrated Valentine’s Day by posting “Isn’t It Romantic” from Love Me Tonight (1932). Here we see the remarkable opening sequence from this bubbly and innovative Rodgers and Hart movie...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/thats-the-song-of-paris/
I had to comment on the passing of one of my favorite historical novelists, author of the twelve books known collectively as the Flashman Papers, and also several wonderful screenplays, most nota...
https://maxzook.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/george-macdonald-fraser-1925-2008/