Music and dance contribute to early Disney animation
In this clip from a talk at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival last summer, the amazing Marge Champion, 91, chats with the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, Norton Owen, about her participation in Walt Disney’s Snow White (1937). The occasion was the publishing of Mindy Aloff’s super book, “Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation.” Mindy, ...
Valentine’s Day movie date
Feb
2
2011
There’s a good Valentine’s Day selection at the movies this year. For the unabashedly romantic, Bogie and Ilsa will always have Paris at Cinefamily on Fairfax Boulevard — the Champs-Elysees of Los Angeles. Further down Fairfax, at LACMA, “Klute,” a hard-nosed film about a harder-nosed call girl follows film critic Kenneth Turan’s in-person Jane Fonda interview. This should ...
“Scarecrow” cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond @ LACMA
Jan
23
2011
Following a double bill at LACMA so soulful and affecting that the feeling was beatific [“Electra Glide in Blue” & “Scarecrow” both from 1973], the museum hosted the great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond for a talk. Zsigmond, in tandem with his compatriot Laszlo Kovacs, introduced a palette of mittel European muted natural light to Hollywood. According to ...
Ronni Chasen’s restaurant renaming
Gaining her first p.r. experience by promoting her brother Larry’s blaxploitation movies, Ronni Chasen soon joined the renowned entertainment publicity firm, Rogers & Cowan. The powerful p.r. macher, Warren Cowan, became the young woman’s mentor, and by some accounts, her lover. Urban legend has it that early in their ten-year working relationship, Cowan took his ...
Judy Garland doesn’t care, and I don’t care either! 1
I love the insouciant song written for vaudevillian Eva Tanguay in 1906, “I Don’t Care.” It’s my theme song. Here Judy Garland sings it in “I Don’t Care,” from “In the Good Old Summertime” (1943). The anthem is also the arts•meme theme song. They say I’m crazy Got no sense But I don’t care They ...
Proud Hollywood Boulevard survivor: Larry Edmunds Book Shop 1
Dec
11
2010
Film historian and author Robert S. Birchard contributes this story to arts•meme. For over 70 years and through three locations, Larry Edmunds Book Shop has been a Hollywood institution, known the world over as the place to go for books related to the movies as well as stills, posters and other film-related memorabilia. Few today ...
L.A. noir: Ronni Chasen suspect dies @ Harvey Apartments, formerly Harvey Hotel, El Cortez Hotel
Reprinted from L.A.Times: Ronni Chasen slaying: Suspect shoots himself as police serve search warrant; Suspect had been under police surveillance before he killed himself. December 1, 2010 | 8:34 pm Los Angeles Times A man described as a suspect in the slaying of veteran Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen fatally shot himself at a Hollywood apartment house ...
A heady evening with Hedy Lamarr 2
Nov
16
2010
While he was growing up in Ottawa, Illinois, the film writer Stephen Shearer’s mother told him that in 1939 she and a girlfriend went to the local cinema to see Charles Boyer in “Algiers.” Co-starring with the Frenchman was MGM’s latest European import, Hedy Lamarr. In her first appearance in the film, cinematographer James Wong ...
Jack Cole & Marilyn Monroe reunite at Jacob’s Pillow
It was my great honor to join a panel at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival on Saturday, August 14, 2010, to honor the peerless jazz choreographer Jack Cole, whom I revere and about whom I have written. As a former Denishawn dancer, Cole had a distinct history at “The Pillow.” Here I contribute a snippet about Cole’s choreography for Marilyn Monroe ...