Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms yearning to breathe free.
Here she is: the original…the one-and-only, Ms. Rita Hayworth. Feast your eyes on the screen goddess performing “Put the Blame on Mame” from the 1946 film noir classic “Gilda.” It’s one of Hollywood’s most iconic scenes, and a top favorite of mine. And, as an added treat, you get to see the “Rita head toss” … Read more
“Boy, if we ever hit number one, we’d love to be on the Joe Franklin Show!” That’s what J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf quipped to the host of TV’s longest running talk show, on the night he and his bandmates hijacked Franklin’s late-night program. Was the jive-talking rocker being straight, or was he merely mocking the institution that was Joe Franklin? There was no doubt in my mind that Peter “Woofa Goofa” Wolf was dead-on serious. I mean, who wouldn’t want to join the ranks of the top-tier celebrities who once graced Joe Franklin’s couch? From 1950 through his last show on August 6, 1993, he hosted 21,425th episodes, interviewing legends like Cary Grant, John Wayne, Muhammad Ali, Charlie Chaplin, Bing Crosby, Elvis, John and Yoko, Andy Warhol, and five U.S presidents. Joe was one of the people who helped fuel my knowledge and love of performers – big or small, A-list or D-list – who hailed from an entertainment era that’s long gone. Here’s my tribute to the talk show king, who died on January 24, 2015, at age 88.
I was ready to log out of Facebook, with a vow to shake that social-media-monkey off my back for the rest of the day and get some real work done. And then I saw a post about a new video directed by filmmaker Max Weiland, cut to one of Elton John’s classic songs: “Tiny Dancer.” … Read more
Throughout my teenage years (and for a good part of my 20s) the only date I ever had on New Year’s Eve was with Dick Clark. His New Year’s Rockin’ Eve TV specials provided me with a way to see the big acts of the day in the comfort of my living room. (You know the story: “Last night I saw a rock star in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.”) Tonight marks the third year the show will be broadcast on ABC without the presence of its creator and long-time host, who passed away on April 18, 2012. Dick conceived the special in 1972, hoping to give viewers a hip alternative to the bland Guy Lombardo New Year’s Eve program that had aired every year since 1956. Here’s a look at those early shows.
I’ve stayed in my share of dreary motels, haughty hotels, Socialist-designed apartments with poster-board walls, and even nuclear plant “guest houses” (don’t even ask) in villages with names that lacked vowels, but I’ve never experienced anything quite like Frank Zappa’s 1971 mind-blowing movie, “200 Motels.” But then, I never dropped acid, either. (Becherovka was the only substance available to numb the reality of the Motel Moskva in Brno, Czechoslovakia, the worst of my many lodging nightmares). Every time I thought I was losing my mind – traveling the weary road on business trips in the 1990s – I remembered the opening line of a movie I once saw, and suddenly I didn’t feel so alone in my misery: “Ladies and gentlemen, you can go mad on the road.” So goes the intro to Zappa’s “surrealistic documentary,” which opened at London’s Piccadilly Classic Cinema in the U.K. on this date in 1971.