Vaslav & the Tramp 2
Los Angeles, December 1916: An encounter between two great body-artists — Vaslav Nijinsky and Charles Chaplin. Never saw Nijinsky looking happier. Chaplin was making Easy Street. The Tramp met The Dying Swan in 1922. Like this? Read more: The Tramp meets the Dying Swan Charlie Chaplin in China
Brilliant at ‘transforming people’ says Tippi Hedren of Edith Head
One of the marvelous interactive exhibits at the just-opened “Hollywood Costume” exhibition, a co-presentation by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and the Victoria & Albert Museum at LACMA’s May Company building, is a virtual conversation between three movie collaborators. Two, alas, are deceased, but one is still vibrantly alive. Director Alfred Hitchcock ...
Houdini’s Hollywood hijinx revealed @ Barn
Sep
22
2014
It’s not widely known that magician/escape artist Harry Houdini produced and starred in several silent films, including two features for Famous Players-Lasky Paramount. Yes, in his spare time (i.e., when he was not tied up) Houdini was a film pioneer. It’s a story that John Cox, a screenwriter and blogger at wildaboutharry, will soon unlock, ...
MoMA to bring Chakiris, arts·meme for talks, screenings Oct 26-27 4
A wonderful celebration of Los Angeles cultural history soon kicks off the Museum of Modern Art’s 12th annual “To Save and Project” film preservation festival. Three events, each related directly or indirectly to Hollywood dance history, will highlight the Festival’s opening weekend. The first, Sunday October 26, 2014, is an interview with dancer-actor George Chakiris ...
Flying men of Hollywood dance
Is it a bird? Is is a plane? No, it’s a Hollywood dance man, flying. Like this? Read more: Ailey guys fly
James Cagney studied ballet with Kosloff 5
In my soon-published long essay, “Theodore Kosloff and Cecil B. DeMille Meet Madam Satan,”* I write as follows: James Cagney, too, studied ballet with Kosloff, or so the actor-hoofer let drop to the Los Angeles Times in January 1938. Cagney confessed that he was training for a pet project: playing Nijinsky in a bio-pic. (This ...
Good God, Universal! Save Stage 28.
Does anyone have extra space in their basement or attic? Universal Pictures has something it needs to store … It’s the ornate set replicating the interior of the Paris Opera House (Palais Garnier) which now sits like a big immovable rock in Universal’s Sound Stage 28. The set, constructed in 1924 for filming silent-movie classic ...
Walk this way … to “Young Frankenstein”‘s 40th birthday party
Aug
25
2014
As the young Doctor (“Frankensteen“) has now advanced to prime middle age, his story, told with pinpoint historic accuracy in the great Mel Brooks movie spoof, “Young Frankenstein” (1974), will spool at the Academy in celebration of his fortieth birthday this year. Brooks, twice that age, will submit to interview by Leonard Maltin at the ...
Pardon our French, but we’re loving “Hollywood Exiles in Europe” @ UCLA Film & Television Archive
Aug
5
2014
Whose good idea was this film series? One person, Rebecca Prime, author of the recent Hollywood Exiles in Europe: The Blacklist and Cold War Film Culture, certainly inspired it. Working with UCLA Film & Television Archive, Prime has co-curated a line-up of works by Jules Dassin, Joseph Losey, Cy Endfield, Ben and Norma Barzman, and ...
Boyhood revisited: in film, dance, and theater 1
Some contend that the final frontier is space. But in the creative world, that distinction has been relegated to childhood — an exploration lately undertaken by kids themselves. Many by now have seen Richard Linklater‘s astonishing and critically acclaimed film BOYHOOD. The movie tracks one young man’s bumpy coming of age, filmed in real time over ...