Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

            When a movie was going to be made of Neil Simon's Play "The Sunshine Boys", Red Skelton and Jack Benny were cast as the leads. Since the characters were aging vaudevillians the casting seemed perfect as both actors had started in Vaudeville. However, Skelton backed out and Benny had health issues, in fact he died a short time later. Benny had recommended his friend George Burns for his part and he filled it well. The movie started a renaissance for Burns, the film roles kept coming, including the classic Oh, God!  with Burns in the title role. In an interview promoting The Sunshine Boys  George joked that the last time he made a movie was 36 years before and "they must have liked me because they brought me back." I can only imagine if Jack Benny had lived longer and played the role, he would joke that they finally gave him another chance after his flop The Horn Blows at Midnight .      Here is the make-up test of Benny a...

      When I was younger, I was disappointed that there was no soundtrack released for the movie Harold and Maude . When Cat Stevens released the greatest hits album Footsteps in the Dark,  I finally had all of his songs from the film and I made my own soundtrack, including the Tchaikovsky piece that plays when Harold's mother is swimming in the pool while her son pretends to be drowned.      I was going to make the soundtrack one of my blog posts but while looking some things up I found that an official soundtrack was released in 2022! It even included Tchaikovsky's concerto and dialogue snippets. Now I just need to find a different blog idea.

      My friend Wayne is partly responsible for this blog. We were both fans of Nick Lowe, I had the LP of  Labour of Lust  and he had Pure Pop for Now People . By extension I got into Dave Edmunds and Wayne told me about the troubles they had putting out an album together as Rockpile, since they both were under contract to different labels. Looking at the Rockpile album they did release I saw that Lowe, Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Terry Williams made up the band; the same people playing on Labour of Lust . Researching this on the internet I found that the four of them Lowe's album and Edmunds' album, Repeat When Necessary  where recorded at the same sessions and were essentially Rockpile records. I combined the two to make it a proper Rockpile album. Rockpile - Repeat When Necessary 1979 - YouTube

       After they putting out their popular album  Gaucho in 1980 Steely Dan broke up...sort of. From 1990 to 1993 Donald Fagen recorded Kamakiriad  which Walter Becker played on and produced. The two of them even co-wrote "Snowbound" for the album. From 1993-1994 Walter Becker recorded "11 Tracks of Whack" which Fagen played on and co-produced. Dean Parks played on Becker's album as well, he had previously played on four of Steely Dan's albums. "Book of Lies" was the only Becker solo tune that Steely Dan played live and can be heard on Alive in America . Steely Dan - 9 Tracks of Whack - YouTube

           Most of my favorite silent movie actors are the comedians but I also love Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) for adventure and Lon Chaney (Sr.) for pathos. Although mostly known as a horror actor for the make-up he designed and wore as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame  and as the Phantom of Opera he played a variety of roles. Having been raised by deaf parents he could express so much without a word, which helped in silent films.      He made ten films with the great director Tod Browning ( Dracula and Freaks ). One of them is the subject of this blog. London After Midnight  may well be the most famous lost film. Surprisingly a copy of it still exited in 1965 when the vault it was in at MGM went up in flames. No actual footage is known to exist. I imagined what if this movie still exited and Phantom of the Opera  had been lost. A reconstruction was made based on the script and the existing photos from the film.   ...

             Last May I had a post based on "Galaxy Quest". I wasn't sure how many people were still fans of it then I went to the market this week and saw this magazine on the stand. That would have helped when I was trying to get it all together last year. :)