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3 episodes with garson kanin
2 episodes with garson kanin
Welcome to It's A Wonderful Podcast! Happy New Year! We hope 2025 proves to be a wonderful year for you! Back to Old Hollywood hilarity for this week's New Years Eve movie with a rom-com that mixes pure silliness with deep sincerity in a way writer/director Garson Kanin would become even more noted for as Morgan and Jeannine talk BACHELOR MOTHER (1939) starring Ginger Rogers and David Niven! Our YouTube Channel for Monday Madness on video, Morgan Hasn't Seen TV, Retro Trailer Reactions & More https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvACMX8jX1qQ5ClrGW53vow The It's A Wonderful Podcast Theme by David B. Music. Donate: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ItsAWonderful1 Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ItsAWonderful1 IT'S A WONDERFUL PODCAST STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/user/g9design Sub to the feed and download now on all major podcast platforms and be sure to rate, review and SHARE AROUND!! Keep up with us on (X) Twitter: Podcast: https://twitter.com/ItsAWonderful1 Morgan: https://twitter.com/Th3PurpleDon Jeannine: https://twitter.com/JeannineDaBean_ Keep being wonderful!!
Book Vs. Movie: Born YesterdayThe 1946 Play Vs.The 1950 Movie"Born Yesterday" (based on the 1946 play by Garson Kanin) is a sharp critique of corruption and a celebration of personal growth. It explores the transformative power of education and delves into themes of ethics and integrity. Even after over seven decades, its themes of empowerment, integrity, and social critique remain relevant, making it a timeless classic. George Cukor directed the 1950 film, which featured an electrifying performance by Judy Holliday, who won an Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1993, the film was adapted with Melanie Griffith in the lead role. Which version did we (the Margos) prefer? Have a listen to find out. In this ep, the Margos discuss:The 1946 play and its successful run on BroadwayThe career of Judy Holliday The 1950 Movie Cast: Judy Holliday (Billie Dawn,) Broderick Crawford (Harry Brock,) William Holden (Paul Verrall,) Howard St. John (Jim Devery,) Frank Otto (Eddie,) Larry Oliver (Congressman Hedges,) Barbara Brown (Mrs. Anna Hedges,) Grandon Rhodes (Sanborn) and Claire Carlton as Helen the maid. Clips used:“I am not 30!” Born Yesterday (1950 trailer)“Gin!”“Glasses?”The 1993 remake TV adMusic by Frederick Hollander Book Vs. Movie is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more podcasts you will love Frolic.Media/podcasts. Join our Patreon page “Book Vs. Movie podcast”You can find us on Facebook at Book Vs. Movie Podcast GroupFollow us on Twitter @bookversusmovieInstagram: Book Versus Movie https://www.instagram.com/bookversusmovie/Email us at bookversusmoviepodcast@gmail.com Margo D. Twitter @BrooklynMargo Margo D's Blog www.brooklynfitchick.com Margo D's Instagram “Brooklyn Fit Chick”Margo D's TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@margodonohuebrooklynfitchick@gmail.comYou can buy your copy of Filmed in Brooklyn here! Margo P. Twitter @ShesNachoMamaMargo P's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shesnachomama/Margo P's Blog https://coloniabook.weebly.com/ Our logo was designed by Madeleine Gainey/Studio 39 Marketing Follow on Instagram @Studio39Marketing & @musicalmadeleine
Book Vs. Movie: Born YesterdayThe 1946 Play Vs.The 1950 Movie"Born Yesterday" (based on the 1946 play by Garson Kanin) is a sharp critique of corruption and a celebration of personal growth. It explores the transformative power of education and delves into themes of ethics and integrity. Even after over seven decades, its themes of empowerment, integrity, and social critique remain relevant, making it a timeless classic. George Cukor directed the 1950 film, which featured an electrifying performance by Judy Holliday, who won an Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1993, the film was adapted with Melanie Griffith in the lead role. Which version did we (the Margos) prefer? Have a listen to find out. In this ep, the Margos discuss:The 1946 play and its successful run on BroadwayThe career of Judy Holliday The 1950 Movie Cast: Judy Holliday (Billie Dawn,) Broderick Crawford (Harry Brock,) William Holden (Paul Verrall,) Howard St. John (Jim Devery,) Frank Otto (Eddie,) Larry Oliver (Congressman Hedges,) Barbara Brown (Mrs. Anna Hedges,) Grandon Rhodes (Sanborn) and Claire Carlton as Helen the maid. Clips used:“I am not 30!” Born Yesterday (1950 trailer)“Gin!”“Glasses?”The 1993 remake TV adMusic by Frederick Hollander Book Vs. Movie is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more podcasts you will love Frolic.Media/podcasts. Join our Patreon page “Book Vs. Movie podcast”You can find us on Facebook at Book Vs. Movie Podcast GroupFollow us on Twitter @bookversusmovieInstagram: Book Versus Movie https://www.instagram.com/bookversusmovie/Email us at bookversusmoviepodcast@gmail.com Margo D. Twitter @BrooklynMargo Margo D's Blog www.brooklynfitchick.com Margo D's Instagram “Brooklyn Fit Chick”Margo D's TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@margodonohuebrooklynfitchick@gmail.comYou can buy your copy of Filmed in Brooklyn here! Margo P. Twitter @ShesNachoMamaMargo P's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shesnachomama/Margo P's Blog https://coloniabook.weebly.com/ Our logo was designed by Madeleine Gainey/Studio 39 Marketing Follow on Instagram @Studio39Marketing & @musicalmadeleine
The Stuph File Program Featuring astronomy buff, Brian Michel; Katherine Hayes, author of A Fifth Of A Story; & Stuart Nulman with Book Banter Download Brian Michel is an astronomy buff who has created telescopes with a 3D printer. Katherine Hayes is the author of the thriller novel, A Fifth Of A Story. Stuart Nulman with another edition of Book Banter. This week Stuart lovingly suggests some classic titles appropriate for Valentine's Day: Love Story by Erich Segal (originally published in 1970 by Harper) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (originally published in 1936 by Macmillan) Tracy and Hepburn by Garson Kanin (originally published in 1971 by Viking) Bogart and Bacall: A Love Story by Joe Hyams (originally published in 1975 by McKay) You can also read Stuart's reviews in The Montreal Times. This week's guest slate is presented by voice over artist, Donald James, a lifelong friend.
Nick And Simon talk about the Jazz Novel Blow up a storm published in 1959 [ a seminal year in Jazz history]This is a first novel by the director, producer and dramatist, Garson Kanin, whose short stories have appeared in Esquire, Vogue and the Atlantic Monthly. Written in the first person and told in flashback this is a dramatist's recollections of his early days in jazz -- during the depression and the close of prohibition. While in Chicago, on tour with his actress wife, the narrator receives a phone call from a forgotten Lee Woodruff which brings back a flood of impressions and memories of their small combo shaped and led by Woody. Through a haze of half remembered incidents he recalls the growth of their trio into a sextet, the men who gave the group impetus and the women who were tenuously involved with the band. Woodruff, now an emotional wreck, unable to play, in and out of hospitals, insists upon unburdening himself to the narrator and attempts to explain the eventual failure of their group.Kanin's best-remembered for his screenplays, however, which were written in collaboration with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon, whom he married in 1942. Together, they wrote many screenplays, including six that were directed by George Cukor. These included the Spencer Tracy - Katharine Hepburn film comedies Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952), as well as A Double Life (1947), starring Ronald Colman.This is our website This is our InstagramThis is our Facebook group
A screwball comedy, set between Christmas and New Years, where a woman (Ginger Rogers) finds a baby on the steps of an adoption home, and everyone believes her to be the mother. David Niven stars as the somewhat oblivious potential love interest. Will McKinley joins us to talk about 1939's Bachelor Mother in the first of our sixth annual 12 Days of Christmas series!
On this episode I am joined by film historian and critic Raquel Stecher to discuss Bachelor Mother (1939).You can read more of Raquel's work here: https://www.outofthepastblog.com/ and https://quellemovies.com/, and follower her on Twitter @RaquelStecher Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
FUNNY GIRL Music by Jule Styne | Lyrics by Bob Merrill | Book by Isabel Lennart from an original story by Miss Lennart Works Consulted & Reference :Funny Girl (Original Libretto) by Isabel Lennart & Bob MerrillJule: The Story of Composer Jule Styne by Theodore TaylorMusic Credits:"Overture" from Dear World (Original Broadway Cast Recording) | Music by Jerry Herman | Performed by Dear World Orchestra & Donald Pippin"The Speed Test" from Thoroughly Modern Millie (Original Broadway Cast Recording) | Music by Jeanine Tesori, Lyrics by Dick Scanlan | Performed by Marc Kudisch, Sutton Foster, Anne L. Nathan & Ensemble"Why God Why" from Miss Saigon: The Definitive Live Recording (Original Cast Recording / Deluxe) | Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Lyrics by Alain Boublil & Richard Maltby Jr. | Performed by Alistair Brammer"Back to Before" from Ragtime: The Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording) | Music by Stephen Flaherty, Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens | Performed by Marin Mazzie"Chromolume #7 / Putting It Together" from Sunday in the Park with George (Original Broadway Cast Recording) | Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim | Performed by Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Judith Moore, Cris Groenendaal, Charles Kimbrough, William Parry, Nancy Opel, Robert Westenberg, Dana Ivey, Kurt Knudson, Barbara Bryne"What's Inside" from Waitress (Original Broadway Cast Recording) | Music & Lyrics by Sara Bareilles | Performed by Jessie Mueller & Ensemble"Don't Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl (Original Broadway Cast Recording) | Music by Jule Styne | Lyrics by Bob Merrill | Performed by Barbra Streisand"Maria" from The Sound of Music (Original Soundtrack Recording) | Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II | Performed by Evadne Baker, Anna Lee, Portia Nelson, Marni Nixon"My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music (Original Soundtrack Recording) | Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II | Performed by Julie Andrews"Corner of the Sky" from Pippin (New Broadway Cast Recording) | Music & Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz | Performed by Matthew James Thomas“What Comes Next?” from Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording) | Music & Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda | Performed by Jonathan Groff
Our Valentine's Day 2023 episode is all about loves from the past who have inconveniently returned. In My Favorite Wife (1940), Irene Dunne is newly remarried Cary Grant's presumed dead wife, while in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), James Caan is Sally Field's actually dead, or undead, husband, interfering with her engagement to the (ostensibly) less charismatic Jeff Bridges. We apply Stanley Cavell's concept of the "comedy of remarriage" to these movies and conclude that the comedy of My Favorite Wife really has nothing to do with its premise, whereas Kiss Me Goodbye does perform some interesting twists on comedy of remarriage tropes. In Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, two more movies about love pick up these themes: Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1987) and Dorothy Arzner's Merrily We Go to Hell (1932). Happy Haunted Valentine's Day! Time Codes: 0h 0m 45s: MY FAVORITE WIFE (1940) [dir. Garson Kanin] 0h 29m 59s: KISS ME GOODBYE (1982) [dir. Robert Mulligan] 0h 49m 58s: FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – ROUGE (1987) by Stanley Kwan & MERRILY WE GO TO HELL (1932) by Dorothy Arzner +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!
You can lose yourself in cinema -- and you can find yourself in it. Jai Arjun Singh and Subrat Mohanty join Amit Varma in episode 294 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about the films in their lives, why we should watch old films, why we should watch new films, why Bollywood and Hollywood and other woods are all great, and why we live in a wonderful technicolor world. This episode is a celebration of cinema! (For full linked show notes, go to SeenUnseen.in.) Also check out: 1. Jai Arjun Singh on Twitter and Instagram. 2. Haal-Chaal Theek Thaak Hai -- Subrat Mohanty and Pavan Jha's podcast. 3. Jai Arjun Singh Lost It at the Movies -- Episode 230 of The Seen and the Unseen. 4. Jabberwock — Jai Arjun Singh's blog. 5. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron: Seriously Funny Since 1983 — Jai Arjun Singh. 6. The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee -- Jai Arjun Singh. 7. Popcorn Essayists: What Movies do to Writers -- Edited by Jai Arjun Singh. 8. The Golden Era -- Subrat Mohanty's YouTube playlist of 100 lesser-known songs from the golden era of Hindi film music (mostly 1935-65). 9. The Unseen Lata -- Subrat Mohanty's YouTube playlist of 54 lesser-heard songs from Lata Mangeshkar, from 1948 to 1976. 10. Old posts by Subrat Mohanty from the Passion For Cinema web archives. 11. Some Spotify playlists, courtesy Nishant Shah, from Haal-Chaal Theek Thaak Hai episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4. 12. Pavan Jha's YouTube channel. 13. The only 1980s Maltova Mum commercial I could locate from the 1980s. (Couldn't find Singer.) 14. Kashmir Ki Kali -- Shakti Samanta. 15. Mughal-E-Azam -- K Asif. 16. Khuda Nigehbaan Ho -- Song from Mughal-E-Azam, sung by Lata Mangeshkar, music by Naushad, lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni. 17. Cinema Paradiso -- Giuseppe Tornatore. 18. Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan -- talk show by Tabassum. 19. Old episodes of Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan with RD Burman, Deepti Naval, Anand Bakshi and Bhupinder. 20. The Indiana Jones and Superman franchises. 21. The Evil Dead -- Sam Raimi. 22. Sam Raimi, Wes Craven and John Carpenter. 23. The Fugitive and The Bodyguard. 24. The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- Milan Kundera. 25. The Antichrist -- Friedrich Nietzsche. 26. The 400 Blows -- Francois Truffaut. 27. Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom -- Pier Paolo Pasolini. 28. Łódź Film School and Andrzej Wajda. 29. Do the Right Thing -- Spike Lee. 30. On Exactitude in Science (Wikipedia) -- Jorge Luis Borges. 31. Titus Andronicus -- William Shakespeare. 32. A Chess Story (previously published as The Royal Game) -- Stefan Zweig. 33. The World of Yesterday -- Stefan Zweig. 34. The Friday the 13th franchise. 35. Tracy and Hepburn -- Garson Kanin. 36. Bhimsen Joshi, Mallikarjun Mansur, Kumar Gandharva and Lata Mangeshkar on Spotify. 37. Vijay Anand, Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee. 38. Guide -- Vijay Anand. 39. Kaagaz Ke Phool -- Guru Dutt. 40. Jean-Luc Godard and Federico Fellini. 41. Shankar–Jaikishan, Hasrat Jaipuri, Shailendra, Mukesh, KA Abbas, Ramanand Sagar and Kidar Sharma. 42. Aag, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Awaara, Barsaat and Shree 420.43. Nargis and Nadira. 44. Mud Mud Ke Na Dekh -- Song from Shree 420, sung by Asha Bhosle and Manna Dey, music by Shankar-Jaikishan, lyrics by Shailendra. 45. Orson Welles. 46. Squid Game on Netflix. 47. The Immediate Experience -- Robert Warshow. 48. Dil Dhadakne Do, Luck by Chance and Gully Boy -- Zoya Akhtar. 49. Casablanca -- Michael Curtiz. 50. Yudh and Tridev -- Rajiv Rai. 51. Amit Varma's Twitter threads on the MAMI festival from 2018 and 2019. 52. The Art of Translation -- Episode 168 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arunava Sinha). 53. Dead Poet's Society -- Peter Weir. 54. The desire to help, and the desire not to be helped — Roger Ebert's review of Goodbye Solo. 55. Pauline Kael on Amazon. 56. Dekalog — Krzysztof Kieślowski. (And Roger Ebert's essay on it.) 57. The Dead — John Huston. 58. In the Bedroom -- Todd Field. 59. Devdas (Sanjay Leela Bhansali) and Parineeta (Pradeep Sarkar). 60. Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Seth. 61. Raag Darbari (Hindi) (English) — Shrilal Shukla. 62. PG Wodehouse on Amazon and Wikipedia. 63. Films, Feminism, Paromita — Episode 155 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Paromita Vohra). 64. Dharmyug and Dharamvir Bharati. 65. Andha Yug (Hindi) (English) -- Dharamvir Bharati. 66. Suraj ka Satvaan Ghoda -- Dharamvir Bharati. 67. Gunahon Ka Devta — Dharamvir Bharati. 68. Sara Rai Inhales Literature — Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 69. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande — Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 70. Anil Biswas, SD Burman, Chitragupt, Roshan, C Ramchandra and Madan Mohan. 71. Naushad and Aan. 72. Maan Mera Ehsan -- Song from Aan, sung by Mohammad Rafi, music by Naushad, lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni. 73. Sebastian D'Souza, Anthony Gonsalves, Ghulam Mohammed and Mohammed Shafi. 74. Khayyam and RD Burman. 75. The Long Tail -- Chris Anderson. 76. The Sound of Music -- Robert Wise. 77. Do-Re-Mi -- Song from The Sound of Music. 78. Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi on Spotify. 79. Tosca -- Giacomo Puccini -- performed at Arena di Verona. 80. Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo, Lizzo and Billie Eilish on Spotify. 81. About That Time -- Lizzo. 82. Renaissance -- Beyoncé. 83. Ae Dil Hai Mushkil -- Karan Johar. 84. Aar Paar, Geeta Dutt and Eminem. 85. Pet Shop Boys, Guns N' Roses, U2, REM and Stone Temple Pilots on Spotify. 86. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. 87. How This Nobel Has Redefined Literature -- Amit Varma. 88. Mera Joota Hai Japani -- Song from Shree 420, sung by Mukesh, music by Shankar-Jaikishen, lyrics by Shailendra. 89. Sahir Ludhianvi and Majrooh Sultanpuri. 90. Do Bigha Zamin -- Bimal Roy. 91. Dharti Kahe Pukaar Ke -- Song from Do Bigha Zamin, sung by Manna Dey and Lata Mangeshkar, music by Salil Chowdhury, lyrics by Shailendra. 92. Varun Grover Is in the House -- Episode 292 of The Seen and the Unseen. 93. Mondegreen. 94. Tragedy -- Bee Gees. 95. Aap Jaisa Koi -- Song from Qurbani, sung by Nazia Hassan, music by Biddu Appaiah, lyrics by Masth Ali & Shashi Pritam. 96. Ek Akela Is Shaher Mein -- Song from Gharaonda, sung by Bhupinder Singh, music by Jaidev, lyrics by Gulzar. 97. Jonathan Haidt on Amazon. 98. Amar Akbar Anthony and Andrei Tarkovsky. 99. 2001: A Space Odyssey -- Stanley Kubrick. 100. Mirza Ghalib (and the show on him by Gulzar). 101. Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, Jackson Pollock, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso and the Pre-Raphaelites. 102. The Wire, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. 103. Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorcese, Quentin Tarantino, Coen Brothers and Preston Sturges. 104. Ball of Fire -- Howard Hawks. 105. The Lady Eve -- Preston Sturges. 106. Barbara Stanwyck and Lawrence Olivier. 107. Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma and Alfred Hitchcock. 108. How to Read and Why -- Harold Bloom. 109. Malayankunju -- Sajimon Prabhakar. 110. Muqaddar Ka Sikandar -- Prakash Mehra. 111. Agatha Christie on Amazon and Wikipedia. 112. Nayak -- Satyajit Ray. 113. Prakash Mehra and Kader Khan. 114. Laawaris -- Prakash Mehra. 115. Don and Majboor. 116. Sample SSR conspiracy theory: He's alive! 117. David Cronenberg. 118. Masaan — Directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and written by Varun Grover. 119. Moonlight — Barry Jenkins. 120. Chacha Bhatija, Parvarish, Amar Akbar Anthony and Dharam Veer -- Manmohan Desai. 121. Man, Woman and Child -- Erich Segal. 122. Man, Woman and Child (1983 film) -- Dick Richards. 123. Masoom -- Shekhar Kapoor. 124. Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Mrinal Sen and Robert Bresson. 125. Au Hasard Balthazar -- Robert Bresson. 126. Uski Roti -- Mani Kaul. 127. Narendra Shenoy and Mr Narendra Shenoy — Episode 250 of The Seen and the Unseen. 128. Calcutta 71 -- Mrinal Sen. 129. Ivan's Childhood, Solaris and Andrei Rublev -- Andrei Tarkovsky. 130. Stanislaw Lem on Amazon and Wikipedia. 131. Cahiers du Cinéma and Mayapuri. 132. Black Friday and Paanch -- Anurag Kashyap. 133. Navdeep Singh, Sudhir Mishra, Neeraj Ghaywan, Raj Kumar Gupta and Rajkumar Kohli. 134. Nagin and Nagina. 135. Jaani Dushman -- Rajkumar Kohli. 136. Three Colors: Blue -- Krzysztof Kieślowski. 137. Three Colors: Red -- Krzysztof Kieślowski. 138. Three Colors: White -- Krzysztof Kieślowski. 139. The Double Life of Veronique -- Krzysztof Kieślowski. 140. The legendary Babbar Subhash. 141. Dance Dance -- Babbar Subhash. 142. Aagaya Aagaya Halwa Wala -- Song from Dance Dance. 143. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro -- Kundan Shah. 144. Leke Pehla Pehla Pyar -- Song from CID, sung by Shamshad Begum, Asha Bhosle and Mohammad Rafi., music by OP Nayyar, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri. 145. Rote Hue Aate Hain Sab -- Song from Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, sung by Kishore Kumar, music by Kalyani-Anandji, lyrics by Anjaan. 146. Kai Baar Yun Bhi Dekha Hai -- Song from Rajnigandha, sung by Mukesh, music by Salil Chowdhury, lyrics by Yogesh. 147. Rim Jhim Gire Saawan -- Song from Manzil, sung by Lata Mangeshkar, music by RD Burman, lyrics by Yogesh. 148. Andrew Sarris and André Bazin. 149. Sergei Eisenstein and the Odessa Steps sequence. 150. Court — Chaitanya Tamhane. 151. Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Love Sex Aur Dhokha, Shanghai and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! -- Dibakar Banerjee. 152. Jean Renoir. 153. Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu. 154. Tokyo Story -- Yasujirō Ozu. 155. Rashomon -- Akira Kurosawa. 156. The 2012 Sight and Sound poll of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. 157. Early Summer -- Yasujirō Ozu. 158. Make Way for Tomorrow -- Leo McCarey. 159. Citizen Kane -- Orson Welles. 160. Vertigo -- Alfred Hitchcock. 161. Setsuko Hara. 162. Sara Akash -- Basu Chatterjee. 163. Bhuvan Shome -- Mrinal Sen. 164. KK Mahajan. 165. One Cut of the Dead -- Shin'ichirō Ueda. 166. Unsane -- Steven Soderbergh. 167. Promising Young Woman -- Emerald Fennell. 168. Psycho -- Alfred Hitchcock. 169. Hitchcock's Films Revisited -- Robin Wood. 170. Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poet's Society and The Truman Show -- Peter Weir. 171. Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. 172. John Ford and Girish Shahane. 173. Everything is Cinema -- Don Palathara. 174. Hi Mom! -- Brian De Palma. 175. Taxi Driver -- Martin Scorcese. 176. Joyful Mystery -- Don Palathara. 177. The Postman Always Rings Twice -- Tay Garnett. 178. Treasure of the Sierra Madre -- John Huston. 179. Noir's arc - notes on an excellent anthology -- Jai Arjun Singh. 180. Key Largo -- John Huston. 181. Gun Crazy -- Joseph H Lewis. 182. Sullivan's Travels -- Preston Sturges. 183. O Brother, Where Art Thou? -- Coen Brothers. 184. Winchester '73 and Bend of the River -- Anthony Mann. 185. Shaheed (1948) -- Ramesh Saigal, starring Dilip Kumar. 186. Andaz -- Mehboob Khan. 187. Duniya Na Mane -- V Shantaram. 188. Some Like it Hot and Ace in the Hole -- Billy Wilder. 189. Ernst Lubitsch and James Wong Howe. 190. Sweet Smell of Success -- Alexander Mackendrick. 191. Mere Apne -- Gulzar. 192. Haal Chaal Thik Thak Hai -- Song from Mere Apne, sung by Kishore Kumar and Mukesh, music by Salil Chowdhury, lyrics by Gulzar. 193. Mr Sampat -- SS Vasan. 194. Miss Malini -- Kothamangalam Subbu. 195. Mr. Sampath: The Printer Of Malgudi -- RK Narayan. 196. Achhe Din Aa Rahe Hain -- Song from Mr Sampat, sung by Shamshad Begum and ML Vasantakumari, music by Balkrishna Kalla, lyrics by Pandit Indra Chander. 197. Parakh -- Bimal Roy. 198. O Sajna Barkha Bahaar Aayee -- Song from Parakh, sung by Lata Mangeshkar, music by Salil Chowdhury, lyrics by Shailendra. 199. Oonche Log -- Phani Majumdar. 200. Major Chandrakanth -- K Balachander. 201. Jaag Dil-E-Deewana -- Song from Oonche Log, sung by Mohammad Rafi, music by Chitragupt, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri. 202. Birendranath Sircar, RC Boral and Timir Baran. 203. PC Barua, Bimal Roy and KL Saigal. 204. Devdas (1936) -- PC Barua. 205. President -- Nitin Bose. 206. Ek Bangla Bane Nyara -- Song from President, sung by KL Saigal, music by RC Boral, lyrcs by Kidar Sharma. 207. Street Singer -- Phani Majumdar. 208. Babul Mora Naihar Chhooto Hi Jaye -- Song from Street Singer, sung by KL Saigal, music by RC Boral, lyrics by Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. 209. Wajid Ali Shah. 210. Shatranj Ke Khilari -- Satyajit Ray. 211. Duniya, Yeh Duniya, Toofan Mail-- Song from Jawab, sung by Kanan Devi, music by Kamal Dasgupta, lyrics by Pandit Madhur. 212. Rajnigandha -- Basu Chatterjee. 213. Rajnigandha/राजनीगंधा -- Mannu Bhandari. 214. The Conversation -- Francis Ford Coppola. 215. Deer Hunter -- Michael Cimino. 216. The Godfather -- Francis Ford Coppola. 217. The Godfather: Part 2 -- Francis Ford Coppola. 218. Sisters -- Brian De Palma. 219. Blow Out -- Brian De Palma. 220. Blowup -- Michelangelo Antonioni. 221. The Long Goodbye and Nashville -- Robert Altman. 222. The Missouri Breaks -- Arthur Penn. 223. The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What's Up, Doc? and Targets -- Peter Bogdanovich. 224. This is Orson Welles -- Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich. 225. Hitchcock -- Francois Truffaut. 226. Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not -- Howard Hawks. 227. The Big Sleep -- Raymond Chandler. 228. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway on Amazon. 229. Johny Mera Naam and Jewel Thief -- Vijay Anand. 230. Sholay -- Ramesh Sippy. 231. Back to the Future -- Robert Zemeckis. 232. Mr India -- Shekhar Kapoor. 233. Rahul Rawail, JP Dutta, Mukul Anand and Rajiv Rai. 234. Hathyar and Ghulami -- JP Dutta. 235. Raat Bhat Jaam Se Jaam Takrayega -- Song from Tridev with galaxy of villains. 236. Naseeb -- Manmohan Desai. 237. Dan Dhanoa, Mahesh Anand, Dalip Tahil and Tej Sapru. 238. The Ramsay Brothers! 239. Don't Disturb the Dead: The Story of the Ramsay Brothers -- Shamya Dasgupta. 240. Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche -- Tulsi and Shyam Ramsay. 241. Veerana -- Ramsay Brothers. 242. Purana Mandir -- Ramsay Brothers. 243. Govinda! 244. Ilzaam -- Shibu Mitra. 245. I am a Street Dancer and Main Aaya Tere Liye from Ilzaam. 246. Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction -- Quentin Tarantino. 247. Halloween -- John Carpenter. 248. A Nightmare on Elm Street -- Wes Craven. 249. Scream -- Wes Craven. 250. Terminator 2: Judgment Day -- James Cameron. 251. Mad Max: Fury Road -- George Miller. 252. Nicholas Cage and Keanu Reeves. 253. Wild at Heart -- David Lynch. 254. Red Rock West -- John Dahl. 255. The Last Seduction -- John Dahl. 256. Edward Norton in American History X and Rounders. 257. New Delhi Times -- Ramesh Sharma. 258. Drohkaal -- Govind Niahalani. 259. Gupt and Mohra by Rajiv Rai. 260. Sonam! 261. Wild -- Nicolette Krebitz. 262. Waves -- Trey Edward Shults. 263. Climax -- Gaspar Noé. 264. Mother! -- Darren Aronofsky. 265 Eho — Dren Zherka. 266. The Magic Mountain -- Thomas Mann. 267. Invisible Cities -- Italo Calvino. 268. Cosmicomics -- Itali Calvino. 269. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller -- Italo Calvino. 270. A House For Mr Biswas -- VS Naipaul. 271. A Bend in the River -- VS Naipaul. 272. Middlemarch -- George Eliot. 273. Mrs Dalloway -- Virginia Woolf. 274. To the Lighthouse -- Virginia Woolf. 275. Decline and Fall -- Evelyn Waugh. 276. Scoop -- Evelyn Waugh. 277. Brighton Rock -- Graham Greene. 278. Brighton Rock (1948 film) -- John Boulting. 279. Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis. 280. Lucky Jim -- Kingsley Amis. 281. The Siege Of Krishnapur -- JG Farrell. 282. Alfie -- Lewis Gilbert. 283. Get Carter -- Mike Hodges. 284. Blame it on Rio -- Stanley Donen. 285. Gangs of Wasseypur -- Anurag Kashyap. 286. Tamas -- Govind Nihalani. This episode is sponsored by Capital Mind. Check out their offerings here. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art by Simahina, in a homage to Jackson Pollock.
Featured on Cavalcade of America, based on the 1939 Garson Kanin film, "The Great Man Votes," which starred John Barrymore. From the original short story by Gordon Malherbe Hillman. This episode aired: December 15, 1941. Cast: Orson Welles and Ray Collins. Produced and Directed by Homer Fickett. Music composed and conducted by Robert Armbruster. Story: An unsuccessful alcoholic school teacher who is the sole voter in a vital city precinct. When politicians rush to flatter and console him, he shows that, despite his down-trodden state, he still has the old basic integrity. Cavalcade of America was initially broadcast on radio from 1935 to 1953, and later on television from 1952 to 1957. Originally on CBS, the series pioneered the use of anthology drama for company audio advertising. : : : : : My other podcast channels include: MYSTERY x SUSPENSE -- DRAMA X THEATER -- SCI FI x HORROR -- COMEDY x FUNNY HA HA -- VARIETY X ARMED FORCES. Subscribing is free and you'll receive new post notifications. Also, if you have a moment, please give a 4-5 star rating and/or write a 1-2 sentence positive review on your preferred service -- that would help me a lot. Thank you for your support. https://otr.duane.media/ (https://otr.duane.media) | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/duane.otr/ (@duane.otr)
For our RKO 1939 episode, a Directed by Garson Kanin double feature: Bachelor Mother, starring Ginger Rogers as an unwed department store clerk accused of motherhood; and The Great Man Votes, starring John Barrymore as an alcoholic intellectual struggling to raise two children, including the most precocious child actor of them all, Virginia Weidler (of Philadelphia Story fame). We discuss the "plausible deniability" structure of Bachelor Mother and the kind of social commentary it permits, and the particular brand of autobiographical pathos and dishevelled charm that Barrymore brings to the part of an eccentric, melancholy widower. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: BACHELOR MOTHER [dir. Garson Kanin] 1h 04m 48s: THE GREAT MAN VOTES [dir. Garson Kanin] Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!
Arnold Margolin joined me to discuss his upbringing; favorite radio shows; first time watching TV; working as an office boy on Broadway; being an understudy in a William Saroyan play and going on; Garson Kanin offering him a role in the original Diary of Anne Frank; moving to LA; Garry Marshall offers him a job and a partner; My Mother the Car; Hey Landlord; Andy Griffith Show; He & She; writing Disney movies; Love, American Style; Star Spangled Girl; writing an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show which was a backdoor pilot for Bill Dailey; a pilot with Don Knotts & Eve Arden; trying to salvage the McLean Stevenson Show; pilot- The Dooley Brothers with Shelley Long; problems with Eileen Brennan on Private Benjamin; Growing Pains; One Big Family; That Girl; drug problems on Webster; working with a young Sally Field and Michael Constantine; how Joey Bishops not liking a friends script lead to him writing roast jokes that Garry Marshall saw; writing the Adventures of Mary Kate and Ashley; Between Love & Honor about Crazy Joe Gallo. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
I am so thrilled today to announce Part 1 of my episode with Broadway star and Tony Nominee Nancy Dussault. She's done it all: from starring on Broadway in Do Re Mi, The Sound of Music, and Bajour, to her memorable appearances on screen in Too Close for Comfort, The In-Laws, and more. In this candid and funny conversation, she shares just some of the stories of her amazing career. Those include a quip from Judy Garland, how Garson Kanin made her cry, why she felt uncomfortable around Richard Rodgers, why it's so rare to be a Broadway star, the art of putting together a cabaret act, watching her name go up on a marquee, the brilliance of Joseph Papp and John Kenley, the kindness of Lady Bird Johnson, the one project of hers she would love to see a video of, her signature audition songs, compliments from Lena Horne and Jule Styne, plus Liza Minnelli, Marc Blitzstein, Burton Lane, and more!
This week It Was a Thing on TV presents what may be one of their best efforts yet as they look into the history of CBS' Bicentennial Minute segments produced between 1974-1976. The butt of many a joke in its day and even into the 21st century, The Bicentennial Minute was an occasionally bland but also occasionally interesting minute-long segment delivered by a celebrity about what happened in U.S. history 200 years ago that day. Celebrate your Fourth of July holiday listening about this patriotic throwback to the 70s. Links to all the segments we referenced are down below. Remember to follow us on our socials @ItWasAThingOnTV "Lucy's Bicentennial Minute" - https://papermoonloveslucy.tumblr.com/post/175503525253/lucys-bicentennial-minute Betty Ford Bicentennial Minute Materials (Gerald Ford Presidential Library and Museum): - https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0126/1489543.pdf Press Release for Congressman Butler Derrick's (D-SC) appearance on the Bicentennial Minute on November 12, 1975 (University of South Carolina Library) - https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/derrick/id/89/ April 1975: Janet Leigh (Partial) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tWIoa1lhuk August 24, 1975: Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-NY) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsnFrd63j4k August 31, 1975: Jessica Tandy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUoto1lsX50 January 8, 1976: Laurence Luckinbill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir6pabr4CD0 January 22, 1976: Gary Lockwood - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hai2OxMwl9w March 9, 1976: Jim Hutton - https://youtu.be/zgwiC4TT9aM?t=499 March 18, 1976: Val Avery - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93s5mXL0WZk May 7, 1976: Otto Preminger - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1HwX6TdHbk May 12, 1976: Mitchell Ryan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TpBK7tZc2k May 20, 1976: Zubin Mehta - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7bt3SNBOrw May 27, 1976: Garson Kanin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgxOYH7fHX4 June 4, 1976: Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHDXxzuXBok July 22, 1976: Will Rogers Jr. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfG8LHyRlNY December 20, 1976: Emlyn Williams - https://youtu.be/8nUKzWGVWe4?t=1671 December 31, 1976: President Gerald Ford (Last 42 Seconds) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0TB76tc5Tg
The butt of many a joke in its day and even into the 21st century, The Bicentennial Minute was an occasionally bland but also occasionally interesting minute-long segment delivered by a celebrity about what happened in U.S. history 200 years ago that day. Celebrate your Fourth of July holiday listening about this patriotic throwback to the 70s. Betty Ford Bicentennial Minute Materials (Gerald Ford Presidential Library and Museum): - https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0126/1489543.pdf Press Release for Congressman Butler Derrick's (D-SC) apperance on the Bicentennial Minute on November 12, 1975 (University of South Carolina Library) - https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/derrick/id/89/ August 24, 1975: Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-NY) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsnFrd63j4k August 31, 1975: Jessica Tandy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUoto1lsX50 January 8, 1976: Laurence Luckinbill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir6pabr4CD0 January 22, 1976: Gary Lockwood - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hai2OxMwl9w March 9, 1976: Jim Hutton - https://youtu.be/zgwiC4TT9aM?t=499 March 18, 1976: Val Avery - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93s5mXL0WZk May 7, 1976: Otto Preminger - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1HwX6TdHbk May 12, 1976: Mitchell Ryan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TpBK7tZc2k May 20, 1976: Zubin Mehta - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7bt3SNBOrw May 27, 1976: Garson Kanin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgxOYH7fHX4 June 4, 1976: Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHDXxzuXBok July 22, 1976: Will Rogers Jr. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfG8LHyRlNY December 20, 1976: Emlyn Williams - https://youtu.be/8nUKzWGVWe4?t=1671 December 31, 1976: President Gerald Ford (Last 42 Seconds) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0TB76tc5Tg
SHOWS: Pippin, Getting Away With Murder, Wicked In Part One of our interview with John Rubinstein we hear how the man who has appeared in Pippin, Children of a Lesser God, Fools, Hurlyburly, M Butterfly, Ragtime, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, not to mention The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Crazy Like a Fox, Feud, and so many more, has sustained a career as an actor, director, writer, and educator for over fifty years! John pulls back the curtain on his career to discuss how he befriended Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, what it was like collaborating with Bob Fosse, and why he is such an advocate for Los Angeles theatre. Also, John shines the spotlight on Arthur Rubinstein, Stephen Schwartz, and Ben Vereen! Become a sponsor of Behind The Curtain and get early access to interviews, private playlists, and advanced knowledge of future guests so you can ask the legends your own questions. Go to: http://bit.ly/2i7nWC4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode fifty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran, and at the first great rock and roll film Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Teen-Age Crush” by Tommy Sands. —-more—- Resources There are several books available on Cochran, but for this episode I mostly relied on Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis. I’ll be using others as well in forthcoming episodes. While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran’s music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. And as always there’s a Mixcloud with the full versions of all the songs featured in today’s episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript To tell the story of rock music, it’s important to tell the story of the music’s impact on other media. Rock and roll was a cultural phenomenon that affected almost everything, and it affected TV, film, clothing and more. So today, we’re going to look at how a film made the career of one of the greats of rock and roll music: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, though in later life he would always claim to be an Okie rather than from Albert Lea. His parents were from Oklahoma, they moved to Minnesota shortly before Eddie was born, and they moved back to Oklahoma City when he was small, moved back again to Minnesota, and then moved off to California with the rest of the Okies. Cochran was a staggeringly precocious guitarist. On the road trip to California from Albert Lea, he had held his guitar on his lap for the entire journey, referring to it as his best friend. And once he hit California he quickly struck up a musical relationship with two friends — Guybo Smith, who played bass, and Chuck Foreman, who played steel guitar. The three of them got hold of a couple of tape recorders, which allowed them not only to record themselves, but to experiment with overdubbing in the style of Les Paul. Some of those recordings have seen release in recent years, and they’re quite astonishing: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Chuck Foreman, “Rockin’ It”] Cochran plays all the guitars on that (except the steel guitar, which is Foreman) and he was only fourteen years old at the time. He played with several groups who were playing the Okie Western Swing and proto-rockabilly that was popular in California at the time, and eventually hooked up with a singer from Mississippi who was born Garland Perry, but who changed his name to Hank Cochran, allowing the duo to perform under the name “the Cochran Brothers”. The Cochran Brothers soon got a record deal. When they started out, they were doing pure country music, and their first single was a Louvin Brothers style close harmony song, about Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams: [Excerpt: The Cochran Brothers, “Two Blue Singing Stars”] But while Hank was perfectly happy making this kind of music, Eddie was getting more and more interested in the new rock and roll music that was starting to become popular, and the two of them eventually split up over actual musical differences. Hank Cochran would go on to have a long and successful career in the country industry, but Eddie was floundering. He knew that this new music was what he should be playing, and he was one of the best guitarists around, but he wasn’t sure how to become a rock and roller, or even if he wanted to be a singer at all, rather than just a guitar player. He hooked up with Jerry Capehart, a singer and songwriter who the Cochran Brothers had earlier backed on a single: [Excerpt: Jerry Capehart and the Cochran Brothers, “Walkin’ Stick Boogie”] The two of them started writing songs together, and Eddie also started playing as a session musician. He played on dozens of sessions in the mid-fifties, mostly uncredited, and scholars are still trying to establish a full list of the records he played on. But while he was doing this, he still hadn’t got himself a record contract, other than for a single record on an independent label: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Skinny Jim”] Cochran was in the studio recording demos for consideration by record labels when Boris Petroff, a B-movie director who was a friend of Cochran’s collaborator Jerry Capehart, dropped in. Petroff decided that Cochran had the looks to be a film star, and right there offered him a part in a film that was being made under the working title Do-Re-Mi. Quite how Petroff had the ability to give Cochran a part in a film he wasn’t working on, I don’t know, but he did, and the offer was a genuine one, as Cochran confirmed the next day. There were many, many, rock and roll films made in the 1950s, and most of them were utterly terrible. It says something about the genre as a whole when I tell you that Elvis’ early films, which are not widely regarded as cinematic masterpieces, are among the very best rock and roll films of the decade. The 1950s were the tipping point for television ownership in both the US and the UK, but while TV was quickly becoming a mass medium, cinema-going was still at levels that would stagger people today — *everyone* went to the cinema. And when you went to the cinema, you didn’t go just to see one film. There’d be a main film, a shorter film called a B-movie that lasted maybe an hour, and short features like cartoons and newsreels. That meant that there was a much greater appetite for cheap films that could be used to fill out a programme, despite their total lack of quality. This is where, for example, all the films that appear in Mystery Science Theater 3000 come from, or many of them. And these B-movies would be made in a matter of weeks, or even days, and so would quickly be turned round to cash in on whatever trend was happening right at that minute. And so between 1956 and 1958 there were several dozen films, with titles like “Rock! Rock! Rock!”, “Don’t Knock The Rock” and so on. [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Don’t Knock the Rock”] In every case, these films were sold entirely on the basis of the musical performances therein, with little or no effort to sell them as narratives, even though they all had plots of sorts. They were just excuses to get footage of as many different hit acts as possible into the cinemas, ideally before their songs dropped off the charts. (Many of them also contained non-hit acts, like Teddy Randazzo, who seemed to appear in all of them despite never having a single make the top fifty. Randazzo did, though, go on to write a number of classic hits for other artists). Very few of the rock and roll films of the fifties were even watchable at all. We talked in the episode on “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” about the film “Rock! Rock! Rock!” which Chuck Berry appeared in — that was actually towards the more watchable end of these films, terrible as it was. The film that Cochran was signed to appear in, which was soon renamed The Girl Can’t Help It, is different. There are plenty of points at which the action stops for a musical performance, but there is an actual plot, and actual dialogue and acting. While the film isn’t a masterpiece or anything like that, it is a proper film. And it’s made by a proper studio. While, for example, Rock! Rock! Rock! was made by a fly-by-night company called Vanguard Productions, The Girl Can’t Help It was made by Twentieth Century Fox. And it was made in both colour and Cinemascope. The budget for Rock! Rock! Rock! was seventy-five thousand dollars compared to the 1.3 million dollars spent on The Girl Can’t Help It. [Excerpt: Little Richard, “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Indeed, it seems to be as much an attempt to cash in on a Billy Wilder film as it is an attempt to cash in on rock and roll. The previous year, The Seven-Year Itch had been a big hit, with Tom Ewell playing an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Marilyn Monroe. The film had been a massive success (and it’s responsible for the famous scene with Monroe on the air grate, which is still homaged and parodied to this day) and so the decision was taken to cast Tom Ewell as an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Jayne Mansfield doing her usual act of being a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Just as the film was attempting to sell itself on the back of a more successful hit film, the story also bears a certain amount of resemblance to one by someone else. The playwright Garson Kanin had been inspired in 1955 by the tales of the jukebox wars — he’d discovered that most of the jukeboxes in the country were being run by the Mafia, and that which records got stocked and played depended very much on who would do favours for the various gangsters involved. Gangsters would often destroy rivals’ jukeboxes, and threaten bar owners if they were getting their jukeboxes from the wrong set of mobsters. Kanin took this idea and turned it into a novella, Do-Re-Mi, about a helpless schlub who teams up with a gangster named “Fatso” to enter the record business, and on the way more or less accidentally makes a young woman into a singing star. Do-Re-Mi later became a moderately successful stage musical, which introduced the song “Make Someone Happy”. [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Make Someone Happy”] Meanwhile the plot of The Girl Can’t Help It has a helpless schlub team up with a mobster named “Fats”, and the two of them working together to make the mobster’s young girlfriend into a singing star. I’ve seen varying accounts as to why The Girl Can’t Help It was renamed from Do-Re-Mi and wasn’t credited as being based on Kanin’s novella. Some say that the film was made without the rights having been acquired, and changed to the point that Kanin wouldn’t sue. Others say that Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights perfectly legally, but that the director, Frank Tashlin changed the script around so much that Kanin asked that his credit be removed, because it was now so different from his novella that he could probably resell the rights at some future point. The latter seems fairly likely to me, given that Tashlin’s next film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which also starred Jayne Mansfield, contained almost nothing from the play on which it was based. Indeed, the original play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was by the author of the original play on which The Seven-Year Itch was based. The playwright had been so annoyed at the way in which his vision had been messed with for the screen that he wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? as a satire about the way the film industry changes writers’ work, and Mansfield was cast in the play. When Tashlin wanted Mansfield to star in The Girl Can’t Help It but she was contractually obliged to appear in the play, Fox decided the easiest thing to do was just to buy up the rights to the play and relieve Mansfield of her obligation so she could star in The Girl Can’t Help It. They then, once The Girl Can’t Help It finished, got Frank Tashlin to write a totally new film with the title Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, keeping only the title and Mansfield’s character. While The Girl Can’t Help It has a reputation for satirising rock and roll, it actually pulls its punches to a surprising extent. For example, there’s a pivotal scene where the main mobster character, Fats, calls our hero after seeing Eddie Cochran on TV: [excerpt: dialogue from “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Note the wording there, and what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that Cochran can’t sing, merely that he “ain’t got a trained voice”. The whole point of this scene is to set up that Jerry Jordan, Mansfield’s character, could become a rock and roll star even though she can’t sing at all, and yet when dealing with a real rock and roll star they are careful to be more ambiguous. Because, of course, the main thing that sold the film was the appearance of multiple rock and roll stars — although “stars” is possibly overstating it for many of those present in the film. One thing it shared with most of the exploitation films was a rather slapdash attitude to which musicians the film would actually feature. And so it has the genuinely big rock and roll stars of the time Little Richard, the Platters, and Fats Domino, the one-hit wonder Gene Vincent (but what a one hit to have), and a bunch of… less well-known people, like the Treniers — a jump band who’d been around since the forties and never really made a major impact, or Eddie Fontaine (about whom the less said the better), or the ubiquitous Teddy Randazzo, performing here with an accordion accompaniment. [Excerpt: Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles, “Cinnamon Sinner”] And Cochran was to be one of those lesser-known acts, so he and Capehart had to find a song that might be suitable for him to perform in the film. Very quickly they decided on a song called “Twenty Flight Rock”, written by a songwriter called Nelda Fairchild. There has been a lot of controversy as to who actually contributed what to the song, which is copyrighted in the names of both Fairchild and Cochran. Fairchild always claimed that she wrote the whole thing entirely by herself, and that Cochran got his co-writing credit for performing the demo, while Cochran’s surviving relatives are equally emphatic in their claims that he was an equal contributor as a songwriter. We will almost certainly never know the truth. Cochran is credited as the co-writer of several other hit songs, usually with Capehart, but never as the sole writer of a hit. Fairchild, meanwhile, was a professional songwriter, but pieces like “Freddie the Little Fir Tree” don’t especially sound like the work of the same person who wrote “Twenty Flight Rock”. As both credited writers are now dead, the best we can do is use our own judgment, and my personal judgment is that Cochran probably contributed at least something to the song’s writing. The original version of “Twenty Flight Rock”, as featured in the film, was little more than a demo — it featured Cochran on guitar, Guybo Smith on double bass, and Capehart slapping a cardboard box to add percussion. Cochran later recorded a more fully-arranged version of the song, which came out after the film, but the extra elements, notably the backing vocals, added little to the simplistic original: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] It was that simpler version that appeared in the film, and which took its place alongside several other classic tracks in the film’s soundtrack. The film was originally intended to have a theme tune recorded by Fats Domino, who appeared in the film performing his hit “Blue Monday”, but when Bobby Troup mentioned this to Art Rupe, Rupe suggested that Little Richard would be a more energetic star to perform the song (and I’m sure this was entirely because of his belief that Richard would be the better talent, and nothing to do with Rupe owning Richard’s label, but not Domino’s). As a result, Domino’s role in the film was cut down to a single song, while Richard ended up doing three — the title song, written by Troup, “Ready Teddy” by John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell, and “She’s Got It”. We’ve mentioned before that John Marascalco’s writing credits sometimes seem to be slightly exaggerated, and “She’s Got It” is one record that tends to bear that out. Listen to “She’s Got It”, which has Marascalco as the sole credited writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “She’s Got It”] And now listen to “I Got It”, an earlier record by Richard, which has Little Richard credited as the sole writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “I Got It”] Hmm… The Girl Can’t Help It was rather poorly reviewed in America. In France it was a different story. There’s a pervasive legend that the people of France revere Jerry Lewis as a genius. This is nonsense. But the grain of truth in it is that Cahiers du Cinema, the most important film magazine in France by a long way — the magazine for which Godard, Truffaut, and others wrote, and which popularised the concept of auteur theory, absolutely loved Frank Tashlin. In 1957, Tashlin was the only director to get two films on their top ten films of the year list — The Girl Can’t Help It at number eight, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter at number two. The other eight films on the list were directed by Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and Sidney Lumet. Tashlin directed several films starring Jerry Lewis, and those films, like Tashlin’s other work, got a significant amount of praise in the magazine. And that’s where that legend actually comes from, though Cahiers did also give some more guarded praise to some of the films Lewis directed himself later. Tashlin wasn’t actually that good a director, but what he did have is a visual style that came from a different area of filmmaking than most of his competitors. Tashlin had started out as a cartoon director, working on Warner Brothers cartoons. He wasn’t one of the better directors for Warners, and didn’t direct any of the classics people remember from the studio — he mostly made forgettable Porky Pig shorts. But this meant he had an animator’s sense for a visual gag, and thus gave his films a unique look. For advocates of auteur theory, that was enough to push him into the top ranks. And so The Girl Can’t Help It became a classic film, and Cochran got a great deal of attention, and a record deal. According to Si Waronker, the head of Liberty Records, Eddie Cochran getting signed to the label had nothing to do with him being cast in The Girl Can’t Help It, and Waronker had no idea the film was being made when Cochran got signed. This seems implausible, to say the least. Johnny Olenn, Abbey Lincoln and Julie London, three other Liberty Records artists, appeared in the film — and London was by some way Liberty’s biggest star. Not only that, but London’s husband, Bobby Troup, wrote the theme song and was musical director for the film. But whether or not Cochran was signed on account of his film appearance, “Twenty Flight Rock” wasn’t immediately released as a single. Indeed, by the time it came out Cochran had already appeared in another film, in which he had backed Mamie Van Doren — another Marilyn Monroe imitator in the same vein as Mansfield — on several songs, as well as having a small role and a featured song himself. Oddly, when that film, Untamed Youth, came out, Cochran’s backing on Van Doren’s recordings had been replaced by different instrumentalists. But he still appears on the EP that was released of the songs, including this one, which Cochran co-wrote with Capehart: [Excerpt: Mamie Van Doren, “Ooh Ba La Baby”] It had originally been planned to release “Twenty Flight Rock” as Cochran’s first single on Liberty, to coincide with the film’s release but then it was put back for several months, as Si Waronker wanted Cochran to release “Sitting in the Balcony” instead. That song had been written and originally recorded by John D Loudermilk: [Excerpt: John D Loudermilk, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Waronker had wanted to release Loudermilk’s record, but he hadn’t been able to get the rights, so he decided to get Cochran to record a note-for-note cover version and release that instead: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Cochran was not particularly happy with that record, though he was happy enough once the record started selling in comparatively vast quantities, spurred by his appearance in The Girl Can’t Help It, and reached number eighteen in the charts. The problem was that Cochran and Waronker had fundamentally different ideas about what Cochran actually was as an artist. Cochran thought of himself primarily as a guitarist — and the guitar solo on “Sittin’ in the Balcony” was the one thing about Cochran’s record which distinguished it from Loudermilk’s original — and also as a rock and roller. Waronker, on the other hand, was convinced that someone with Cochran’s good looks and masculine voice could easily be another Pat Boone. Liberty was fundamentally not geared towards making rock and roll records. Its other artists included the Hollywood composer Lionel Newman, the torch singer Julie London, and a little later novelty acts like the Chipmunks — the three Chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, being named after Al Bennett, Si Waronker, and Theodore Keep, the three men in charge of the label. And their attempts to force Cochran into the mould of a light-entertainment crooner produced a completely forgettable debut album, Singin’ to My Baby, which has little of the rock and roll excitement that would characterise Cochran’s better work. (And a warning for anyone who decides to go out and listen to that album anyway — one of the few tracks on there that *is* in Cochran’s rock and roll style is a song called “Mean When I’m Mad”, which is one of the most misogynist things I have heard, and I’ve heard quite a lot — it’s basically an outright rape threat. So if that’s something that will upset you, please steer clear of Cochran’s first album, while knowing you’re missing little artistically.) “Twenty Flight Rock” was eventually released as a single, in its remade version, in November 1957, almost a year after The Girl Can’t Help It came out. Unsurprisingly, coming out so late after the film, it didn’t chart, and it would be a while yet before Cochran would have his biggest hit. But just because it didn’t chart, doesn’t mean it didn’t make an impression. There’s one story, more than any other, that sums up the impact both of “The Girl Can’t Help It” and of “Twenty Flight Rock” itself. In July 1957, a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, led by a teenager called John Lennon, played a village fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. After the show, they were introduced to a young boy named Paul McCartney by a mutual friend. Lennon and McCartney hit it off, but the thing that persuaded Lennon to offer McCartney a place in the group was when McCartney demonstrated that he knew all the words to “Twenty Flight Rock”. Lennon wasn’t great at remembering lyrics, and was impressed enough by this that he decided that this new kid needed to be in the group. [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty Flight Rock”] That’s the impact that The Girl Can’t Help It had, and the impact that “Twenty Flight Rock” had. But Eddie Cochran’s career was just starting, and we’ll see more of him in future episodes…
Episode fifty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran, and at the first great rock and roll film Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Teen-Age Crush” by Tommy Sands. —-more—- Resources There are several books available on Cochran, but for this episode I mostly relied on Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis. I’ll be using others as well in forthcoming episodes. While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran’s music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. And as always there’s a Mixcloud with the full versions of all the songs featured in today’s episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript To tell the story of rock music, it’s important to tell the story of the music’s impact on other media. Rock and roll was a cultural phenomenon that affected almost everything, and it affected TV, film, clothing and more. So today, we’re going to look at how a film made the career of one of the greats of rock and roll music: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, though in later life he would always claim to be an Okie rather than from Albert Lea. His parents were from Oklahoma, they moved to Minnesota shortly before Eddie was born, and they moved back to Oklahoma City when he was small, moved back again to Minnesota, and then moved off to California with the rest of the Okies. Cochran was a staggeringly precocious guitarist. On the road trip to California from Albert Lea, he had held his guitar on his lap for the entire journey, referring to it as his best friend. And once he hit California he quickly struck up a musical relationship with two friends — Guybo Smith, who played bass, and Chuck Foreman, who played steel guitar. The three of them got hold of a couple of tape recorders, which allowed them not only to record themselves, but to experiment with overdubbing in the style of Les Paul. Some of those recordings have seen release in recent years, and they’re quite astonishing: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Chuck Foreman, “Rockin’ It”] Cochran plays all the guitars on that (except the steel guitar, which is Foreman) and he was only fourteen years old at the time. He played with several groups who were playing the Okie Western Swing and proto-rockabilly that was popular in California at the time, and eventually hooked up with a singer from Mississippi who was born Garland Perry, but who changed his name to Hank Cochran, allowing the duo to perform under the name “the Cochran Brothers”. The Cochran Brothers soon got a record deal. When they started out, they were doing pure country music, and their first single was a Louvin Brothers style close harmony song, about Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams: [Excerpt: The Cochran Brothers, “Two Blue Singing Stars”] But while Hank was perfectly happy making this kind of music, Eddie was getting more and more interested in the new rock and roll music that was starting to become popular, and the two of them eventually split up over actual musical differences. Hank Cochran would go on to have a long and successful career in the country industry, but Eddie was floundering. He knew that this new music was what he should be playing, and he was one of the best guitarists around, but he wasn’t sure how to become a rock and roller, or even if he wanted to be a singer at all, rather than just a guitar player. He hooked up with Jerry Capehart, a singer and songwriter who the Cochran Brothers had earlier backed on a single: [Excerpt: Jerry Capehart and the Cochran Brothers, “Walkin’ Stick Boogie”] The two of them started writing songs together, and Eddie also started playing as a session musician. He played on dozens of sessions in the mid-fifties, mostly uncredited, and scholars are still trying to establish a full list of the records he played on. But while he was doing this, he still hadn’t got himself a record contract, other than for a single record on an independent label: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Skinny Jim”] Cochran was in the studio recording demos for consideration by record labels when Boris Petroff, a B-movie director who was a friend of Cochran’s collaborator Jerry Capehart, dropped in. Petroff decided that Cochran had the looks to be a film star, and right there offered him a part in a film that was being made under the working title Do-Re-Mi. Quite how Petroff had the ability to give Cochran a part in a film he wasn’t working on, I don’t know, but he did, and the offer was a genuine one, as Cochran confirmed the next day. There were many, many, rock and roll films made in the 1950s, and most of them were utterly terrible. It says something about the genre as a whole when I tell you that Elvis’ early films, which are not widely regarded as cinematic masterpieces, are among the very best rock and roll films of the decade. The 1950s were the tipping point for television ownership in both the US and the UK, but while TV was quickly becoming a mass medium, cinema-going was still at levels that would stagger people today — *everyone* went to the cinema. And when you went to the cinema, you didn’t go just to see one film. There’d be a main film, a shorter film called a B-movie that lasted maybe an hour, and short features like cartoons and newsreels. That meant that there was a much greater appetite for cheap films that could be used to fill out a programme, despite their total lack of quality. This is where, for example, all the films that appear in Mystery Science Theater 3000 come from, or many of them. And these B-movies would be made in a matter of weeks, or even days, and so would quickly be turned round to cash in on whatever trend was happening right at that minute. And so between 1956 and 1958 there were several dozen films, with titles like “Rock! Rock! Rock!”, “Don’t Knock The Rock” and so on. [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Don’t Knock the Rock”] In every case, these films were sold entirely on the basis of the musical performances therein, with little or no effort to sell them as narratives, even though they all had plots of sorts. They were just excuses to get footage of as many different hit acts as possible into the cinemas, ideally before their songs dropped off the charts. (Many of them also contained non-hit acts, like Teddy Randazzo, who seemed to appear in all of them despite never having a single make the top fifty. Randazzo did, though, go on to write a number of classic hits for other artists). Very few of the rock and roll films of the fifties were even watchable at all. We talked in the episode on “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” about the film “Rock! Rock! Rock!” which Chuck Berry appeared in — that was actually towards the more watchable end of these films, terrible as it was. The film that Cochran was signed to appear in, which was soon renamed The Girl Can’t Help It, is different. There are plenty of points at which the action stops for a musical performance, but there is an actual plot, and actual dialogue and acting. While the film isn’t a masterpiece or anything like that, it is a proper film. And it’s made by a proper studio. While, for example, Rock! Rock! Rock! was made by a fly-by-night company called Vanguard Productions, The Girl Can’t Help It was made by Twentieth Century Fox. And it was made in both colour and Cinemascope. The budget for Rock! Rock! Rock! was seventy-five thousand dollars compared to the 1.3 million dollars spent on The Girl Can’t Help It. [Excerpt: Little Richard, “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Indeed, it seems to be as much an attempt to cash in on a Billy Wilder film as it is an attempt to cash in on rock and roll. The previous year, The Seven-Year Itch had been a big hit, with Tom Ewell playing an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Marilyn Monroe. The film had been a massive success (and it’s responsible for the famous scene with Monroe on the air grate, which is still homaged and parodied to this day) and so the decision was taken to cast Tom Ewell as an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Jayne Mansfield doing her usual act of being a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Just as the film was attempting to sell itself on the back of a more successful hit film, the story also bears a certain amount of resemblance to one by someone else. The playwright Garson Kanin had been inspired in 1955 by the tales of the jukebox wars — he’d discovered that most of the jukeboxes in the country were being run by the Mafia, and that which records got stocked and played depended very much on who would do favours for the various gangsters involved. Gangsters would often destroy rivals’ jukeboxes, and threaten bar owners if they were getting their jukeboxes from the wrong set of mobsters. Kanin took this idea and turned it into a novella, Do-Re-Mi, about a helpless schlub who teams up with a gangster named “Fatso” to enter the record business, and on the way more or less accidentally makes a young woman into a singing star. Do-Re-Mi later became a moderately successful stage musical, which introduced the song “Make Someone Happy”. [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Make Someone Happy”] Meanwhile the plot of The Girl Can’t Help It has a helpless schlub team up with a mobster named “Fats”, and the two of them working together to make the mobster’s young girlfriend into a singing star. I’ve seen varying accounts as to why The Girl Can’t Help It was renamed from Do-Re-Mi and wasn’t credited as being based on Kanin’s novella. Some say that the film was made without the rights having been acquired, and changed to the point that Kanin wouldn’t sue. Others say that Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights perfectly legally, but that the director, Frank Tashlin changed the script around so much that Kanin asked that his credit be removed, because it was now so different from his novella that he could probably resell the rights at some future point. The latter seems fairly likely to me, given that Tashlin’s next film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which also starred Jayne Mansfield, contained almost nothing from the play on which it was based. Indeed, the original play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was by the author of the original play on which The Seven-Year Itch was based. The playwright had been so annoyed at the way in which his vision had been messed with for the screen that he wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? as a satire about the way the film industry changes writers’ work, and Mansfield was cast in the play. When Tashlin wanted Mansfield to star in The Girl Can’t Help It but she was contractually obliged to appear in the play, Fox decided the easiest thing to do was just to buy up the rights to the play and relieve Mansfield of her obligation so she could star in The Girl Can’t Help It. They then, once The Girl Can’t Help It finished, got Frank Tashlin to write a totally new film with the title Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, keeping only the title and Mansfield’s character. While The Girl Can’t Help It has a reputation for satirising rock and roll, it actually pulls its punches to a surprising extent. For example, there’s a pivotal scene where the main mobster character, Fats, calls our hero after seeing Eddie Cochran on TV: [excerpt: dialogue from “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Note the wording there, and what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that Cochran can’t sing, merely that he “ain’t got a trained voice”. The whole point of this scene is to set up that Jerry Jordan, Mansfield’s character, could become a rock and roll star even though she can’t sing at all, and yet when dealing with a real rock and roll star they are careful to be more ambiguous. Because, of course, the main thing that sold the film was the appearance of multiple rock and roll stars — although “stars” is possibly overstating it for many of those present in the film. One thing it shared with most of the exploitation films was a rather slapdash attitude to which musicians the film would actually feature. And so it has the genuinely big rock and roll stars of the time Little Richard, the Platters, and Fats Domino, the one-hit wonder Gene Vincent (but what a one hit to have), and a bunch of… less well-known people, like the Treniers — a jump band who’d been around since the forties and never really made a major impact, or Eddie Fontaine (about whom the less said the better), or the ubiquitous Teddy Randazzo, performing here with an accordion accompaniment. [Excerpt: Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles, “Cinnamon Sinner”] And Cochran was to be one of those lesser-known acts, so he and Capehart had to find a song that might be suitable for him to perform in the film. Very quickly they decided on a song called “Twenty Flight Rock”, written by a songwriter called Nelda Fairchild. There has been a lot of controversy as to who actually contributed what to the song, which is copyrighted in the names of both Fairchild and Cochran. Fairchild always claimed that she wrote the whole thing entirely by herself, and that Cochran got his co-writing credit for performing the demo, while Cochran’s surviving relatives are equally emphatic in their claims that he was an equal contributor as a songwriter. We will almost certainly never know the truth. Cochran is credited as the co-writer of several other hit songs, usually with Capehart, but never as the sole writer of a hit. Fairchild, meanwhile, was a professional songwriter, but pieces like “Freddie the Little Fir Tree” don’t especially sound like the work of the same person who wrote “Twenty Flight Rock”. As both credited writers are now dead, the best we can do is use our own judgment, and my personal judgment is that Cochran probably contributed at least something to the song’s writing. The original version of “Twenty Flight Rock”, as featured in the film, was little more than a demo — it featured Cochran on guitar, Guybo Smith on double bass, and Capehart slapping a cardboard box to add percussion. Cochran later recorded a more fully-arranged version of the song, which came out after the film, but the extra elements, notably the backing vocals, added little to the simplistic original: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] It was that simpler version that appeared in the film, and which took its place alongside several other classic tracks in the film’s soundtrack. The film was originally intended to have a theme tune recorded by Fats Domino, who appeared in the film performing his hit “Blue Monday”, but when Bobby Troup mentioned this to Art Rupe, Rupe suggested that Little Richard would be a more energetic star to perform the song (and I’m sure this was entirely because of his belief that Richard would be the better talent, and nothing to do with Rupe owning Richard’s label, but not Domino’s). As a result, Domino’s role in the film was cut down to a single song, while Richard ended up doing three — the title song, written by Troup, “Ready Teddy” by John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell, and “She’s Got It”. We’ve mentioned before that John Marascalco’s writing credits sometimes seem to be slightly exaggerated, and “She’s Got It” is one record that tends to bear that out. Listen to “She’s Got It”, which has Marascalco as the sole credited writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “She’s Got It”] And now listen to “I Got It”, an earlier record by Richard, which has Little Richard credited as the sole writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “I Got It”] Hmm… The Girl Can’t Help It was rather poorly reviewed in America. In France it was a different story. There’s a pervasive legend that the people of France revere Jerry Lewis as a genius. This is nonsense. But the grain of truth in it is that Cahiers du Cinema, the most important film magazine in France by a long way — the magazine for which Godard, Truffaut, and others wrote, and which popularised the concept of auteur theory, absolutely loved Frank Tashlin. In 1957, Tashlin was the only director to get two films on their top ten films of the year list — The Girl Can’t Help It at number eight, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter at number two. The other eight films on the list were directed by Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and Sidney Lumet. Tashlin directed several films starring Jerry Lewis, and those films, like Tashlin’s other work, got a significant amount of praise in the magazine. And that’s where that legend actually comes from, though Cahiers did also give some more guarded praise to some of the films Lewis directed himself later. Tashlin wasn’t actually that good a director, but what he did have is a visual style that came from a different area of filmmaking than most of his competitors. Tashlin had started out as a cartoon director, working on Warner Brothers cartoons. He wasn’t one of the better directors for Warners, and didn’t direct any of the classics people remember from the studio — he mostly made forgettable Porky Pig shorts. But this meant he had an animator’s sense for a visual gag, and thus gave his films a unique look. For advocates of auteur theory, that was enough to push him into the top ranks. And so The Girl Can’t Help It became a classic film, and Cochran got a great deal of attention, and a record deal. According to Si Waronker, the head of Liberty Records, Eddie Cochran getting signed to the label had nothing to do with him being cast in The Girl Can’t Help It, and Waronker had no idea the film was being made when Cochran got signed. This seems implausible, to say the least. Johnny Olenn, Abbey Lincoln and Julie London, three other Liberty Records artists, appeared in the film — and London was by some way Liberty’s biggest star. Not only that, but London’s husband, Bobby Troup, wrote the theme song and was musical director for the film. But whether or not Cochran was signed on account of his film appearance, “Twenty Flight Rock” wasn’t immediately released as a single. Indeed, by the time it came out Cochran had already appeared in another film, in which he had backed Mamie Van Doren — another Marilyn Monroe imitator in the same vein as Mansfield — on several songs, as well as having a small role and a featured song himself. Oddly, when that film, Untamed Youth, came out, Cochran’s backing on Van Doren’s recordings had been replaced by different instrumentalists. But he still appears on the EP that was released of the songs, including this one, which Cochran co-wrote with Capehart: [Excerpt: Mamie Van Doren, “Ooh Ba La Baby”] It had originally been planned to release “Twenty Flight Rock” as Cochran’s first single on Liberty, to coincide with the film’s release but then it was put back for several months, as Si Waronker wanted Cochran to release “Sitting in the Balcony” instead. That song had been written and originally recorded by John D Loudermilk: [Excerpt: John D Loudermilk, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Waronker had wanted to release Loudermilk’s record, but he hadn’t been able to get the rights, so he decided to get Cochran to record a note-for-note cover version and release that instead: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Cochran was not particularly happy with that record, though he was happy enough once the record started selling in comparatively vast quantities, spurred by his appearance in The Girl Can’t Help It, and reached number eighteen in the charts. The problem was that Cochran and Waronker had fundamentally different ideas about what Cochran actually was as an artist. Cochran thought of himself primarily as a guitarist — and the guitar solo on “Sittin’ in the Balcony” was the one thing about Cochran’s record which distinguished it from Loudermilk’s original — and also as a rock and roller. Waronker, on the other hand, was convinced that someone with Cochran’s good looks and masculine voice could easily be another Pat Boone. Liberty was fundamentally not geared towards making rock and roll records. Its other artists included the Hollywood composer Lionel Newman, the torch singer Julie London, and a little later novelty acts like the Chipmunks — the three Chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, being named after Al Bennett, Si Waronker, and Theodore Keep, the three men in charge of the label. And their attempts to force Cochran into the mould of a light-entertainment crooner produced a completely forgettable debut album, Singin’ to My Baby, which has little of the rock and roll excitement that would characterise Cochran’s better work. (And a warning for anyone who decides to go out and listen to that album anyway — one of the few tracks on there that *is* in Cochran’s rock and roll style is a song called “Mean When I’m Mad”, which is one of the most misogynist things I have heard, and I’ve heard quite a lot — it’s basically an outright rape threat. So if that’s something that will upset you, please steer clear of Cochran’s first album, while knowing you’re missing little artistically.) “Twenty Flight Rock” was eventually released as a single, in its remade version, in November 1957, almost a year after The Girl Can’t Help It came out. Unsurprisingly, coming out so late after the film, it didn’t chart, and it would be a while yet before Cochran would have his biggest hit. But just because it didn’t chart, doesn’t mean it didn’t make an impression. There’s one story, more than any other, that sums up the impact both of “The Girl Can’t Help It” and of “Twenty Flight Rock” itself. In July 1957, a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, led by a teenager called John Lennon, played a village fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. After the show, they were introduced to a young boy named Paul McCartney by a mutual friend. Lennon and McCartney hit it off, but the thing that persuaded Lennon to offer McCartney a place in the group was when McCartney demonstrated that he knew all the words to “Twenty Flight Rock”. Lennon wasn’t great at remembering lyrics, and was impressed enough by this that he decided that this new kid needed to be in the group. [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty Flight Rock”] That’s the impact that The Girl Can’t Help It had, and the impact that “Twenty Flight Rock” had. But Eddie Cochran’s career was just starting, and we’ll see more of him in future episodes…
Episode fifty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Twenty Flight Rock" by Eddie Cochran, and at the first great rock and roll film Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Teen-Age Crush" by Tommy Sands. ----more---- Resources There are several books available on Cochran, but for this episode I mostly relied on Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis. I'll be using others as well in forthcoming episodes. While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran's music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. And as always there's a Mixcloud with the full versions of all the songs featured in today's episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript To tell the story of rock music, it's important to tell the story of the music's impact on other media. Rock and roll was a cultural phenomenon that affected almost everything, and it affected TV, film, clothing and more. So today, we're going to look at how a film made the career of one of the greats of rock and roll music: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Twenty Flight Rock"] Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, though in later life he would always claim to be an Okie rather than from Albert Lea. His parents were from Oklahoma, they moved to Minnesota shortly before Eddie was born, and they moved back to Oklahoma City when he was small, moved back again to Minnesota, and then moved off to California with the rest of the Okies. Cochran was a staggeringly precocious guitarist. On the road trip to California from Albert Lea, he had held his guitar on his lap for the entire journey, referring to it as his best friend. And once he hit California he quickly struck up a musical relationship with two friends -- Guybo Smith, who played bass, and Chuck Foreman, who played steel guitar. The three of them got hold of a couple of tape recorders, which allowed them not only to record themselves, but to experiment with overdubbing in the style of Les Paul. Some of those recordings have seen release in recent years, and they're quite astonishing: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Chuck Foreman, "Rockin' It"] Cochran plays all the guitars on that (except the steel guitar, which is Foreman) and he was only fourteen years old at the time. He played with several groups who were playing the Okie Western Swing and proto-rockabilly that was popular in California at the time, and eventually hooked up with a singer from Mississippi who was born Garland Perry, but who changed his name to Hank Cochran, allowing the duo to perform under the name "the Cochran Brothers". The Cochran Brothers soon got a record deal. When they started out, they were doing pure country music, and their first single was a Louvin Brothers style close harmony song, about Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams: [Excerpt: The Cochran Brothers, "Two Blue Singing Stars"] But while Hank was perfectly happy making this kind of music, Eddie was getting more and more interested in the new rock and roll music that was starting to become popular, and the two of them eventually split up over actual musical differences. Hank Cochran would go on to have a long and successful career in the country industry, but Eddie was floundering. He knew that this new music was what he should be playing, and he was one of the best guitarists around, but he wasn't sure how to become a rock and roller, or even if he wanted to be a singer at all, rather than just a guitar player. He hooked up with Jerry Capehart, a singer and songwriter who the Cochran Brothers had earlier backed on a single: [Excerpt: Jerry Capehart and the Cochran Brothers, "Walkin' Stick Boogie"] The two of them started writing songs together, and Eddie also started playing as a session musician. He played on dozens of sessions in the mid-fifties, mostly uncredited, and scholars are still trying to establish a full list of the records he played on. But while he was doing this, he still hadn't got himself a record contract, other than for a single record on an independent label: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Skinny Jim"] Cochran was in the studio recording demos for consideration by record labels when Boris Petroff, a B-movie director who was a friend of Cochran's collaborator Jerry Capehart, dropped in. Petroff decided that Cochran had the looks to be a film star, and right there offered him a part in a film that was being made under the working title Do-Re-Mi. Quite how Petroff had the ability to give Cochran a part in a film he wasn't working on, I don't know, but he did, and the offer was a genuine one, as Cochran confirmed the next day. There were many, many, rock and roll films made in the 1950s, and most of them were utterly terrible. It says something about the genre as a whole when I tell you that Elvis' early films, which are not widely regarded as cinematic masterpieces, are among the very best rock and roll films of the decade. The 1950s were the tipping point for television ownership in both the US and the UK, but while TV was quickly becoming a mass medium, cinema-going was still at levels that would stagger people today -- *everyone* went to the cinema. And when you went to the cinema, you didn't go just to see one film. There'd be a main film, a shorter film called a B-movie that lasted maybe an hour, and short features like cartoons and newsreels. That meant that there was a much greater appetite for cheap films that could be used to fill out a programme, despite their total lack of quality. This is where, for example, all the films that appear in Mystery Science Theater 3000 come from, or many of them. And these B-movies would be made in a matter of weeks, or even days, and so would quickly be turned round to cash in on whatever trend was happening right at that minute. And so between 1956 and 1958 there were several dozen films, with titles like "Rock! Rock! Rock!", "Don't Knock The Rock" and so on. [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Don't Knock the Rock”] In every case, these films were sold entirely on the basis of the musical performances therein, with little or no effort to sell them as narratives, even though they all had plots of sorts. They were just excuses to get footage of as many different hit acts as possible into the cinemas, ideally before their songs dropped off the charts. (Many of them also contained non-hit acts, like Teddy Randazzo, who seemed to appear in all of them despite never having a single make the top fifty. Randazzo did, though, go on to write a number of classic hits for other artists). Very few of the rock and roll films of the fifties were even watchable at all. We talked in the episode on "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" about the film "Rock! Rock! Rock!" which Chuck Berry appeared in -- that was actually towards the more watchable end of these films, terrible as it was. The film that Cochran was signed to appear in, which was soon renamed The Girl Can't Help It, is different. There are plenty of points at which the action stops for a musical performance, but there is an actual plot, and actual dialogue and acting. While the film isn't a masterpiece or anything like that, it is a proper film. And it's made by a proper studio. While, for example, Rock! Rock! Rock! was made by a fly-by-night company called Vanguard Productions, The Girl Can't Help It was made by Twentieth Century Fox. And it was made in both colour and Cinemascope. The budget for Rock! Rock! Rock! was seventy-five thousand dollars compared to the 1.3 million dollars spent on The Girl Can't Help It. [Excerpt: Little Richard, “The Girl Can't Help It”] Indeed, it seems to be as much an attempt to cash in on a Billy Wilder film as it is an attempt to cash in on rock and roll. The previous year, The Seven-Year Itch had been a big hit, with Tom Ewell playing an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Marilyn Monroe. The film had been a massive success (and it's responsible for the famous scene with Monroe on the air grate, which is still homaged and parodied to this day) and so the decision was taken to cast Tom Ewell as an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Jayne Mansfield doing her usual act of being a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Just as the film was attempting to sell itself on the back of a more successful hit film, the story also bears a certain amount of resemblance to one by someone else. The playwright Garson Kanin had been inspired in 1955 by the tales of the jukebox wars -- he'd discovered that most of the jukeboxes in the country were being run by the Mafia, and that which records got stocked and played depended very much on who would do favours for the various gangsters involved. Gangsters would often destroy rivals' jukeboxes, and threaten bar owners if they were getting their jukeboxes from the wrong set of mobsters. Kanin took this idea and turned it into a novella, Do-Re-Mi, about a helpless schlub who teams up with a gangster named "Fatso" to enter the record business, and on the way more or less accidentally makes a young woman into a singing star. Do-Re-Mi later became a moderately successful stage musical, which introduced the song "Make Someone Happy". [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Make Someone Happy”] Meanwhile the plot of The Girl Can't Help It has a helpless schlub team up with a mobster named "Fats", and the two of them working together to make the mobster's young girlfriend into a singing star. I've seen varying accounts as to why The Girl Can't Help It was renamed from Do-Re-Mi and wasn't credited as being based on Kanin's novella. Some say that the film was made without the rights having been acquired, and changed to the point that Kanin wouldn't sue. Others say that Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights perfectly legally, but that the director, Frank Tashlin changed the script around so much that Kanin asked that his credit be removed, because it was now so different from his novella that he could probably resell the rights at some future point. The latter seems fairly likely to me, given that Tashlin's next film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which also starred Jayne Mansfield, contained almost nothing from the play on which it was based. Indeed, the original play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was by the author of the original play on which The Seven-Year Itch was based. The playwright had been so annoyed at the way in which his vision had been messed with for the screen that he wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? as a satire about the way the film industry changes writers' work, and Mansfield was cast in the play. When Tashlin wanted Mansfield to star in The Girl Can't Help It but she was contractually obliged to appear in the play, Fox decided the easiest thing to do was just to buy up the rights to the play and relieve Mansfield of her obligation so she could star in The Girl Can't Help It. They then, once The Girl Can't Help It finished, got Frank Tashlin to write a totally new film with the title Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, keeping only the title and Mansfield's character. While The Girl Can't Help It has a reputation for satirising rock and roll, it actually pulls its punches to a surprising extent. For example, there's a pivotal scene where the main mobster character, Fats, calls our hero after seeing Eddie Cochran on TV: [excerpt: dialogue from "The Girl Can't Help It"] Note the wording there, and what he doesn't say. He doesn't say that Cochran can't sing, merely that he "ain't got a trained voice". The whole point of this scene is to set up that Jerry Jordan, Mansfield's character, could become a rock and roll star even though she can't sing at all, and yet when dealing with a real rock and roll star they are careful to be more ambiguous. Because, of course, the main thing that sold the film was the appearance of multiple rock and roll stars -- although "stars" is possibly overstating it for many of those present in the film. One thing it shared with most of the exploitation films was a rather slapdash attitude to which musicians the film would actually feature. And so it has the genuinely big rock and roll stars of the time Little Richard, the Platters, and Fats Domino, the one-hit wonder Gene Vincent (but what a one hit to have), and a bunch of… less well-known people, like the Treniers -- a jump band who'd been around since the forties and never really made a major impact, or Eddie Fontaine (about whom the less said the better), or the ubiquitous Teddy Randazzo, performing here with an accordion accompaniment. [Excerpt: Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles, “Cinnamon Sinner”] And Cochran was to be one of those lesser-known acts, so he and Capehart had to find a song that might be suitable for him to perform in the film. Very quickly they decided on a song called "Twenty Flight Rock", written by a songwriter called Nelda Fairchild. There has been a lot of controversy as to who actually contributed what to the song, which is copyrighted in the names of both Fairchild and Cochran. Fairchild always claimed that she wrote the whole thing entirely by herself, and that Cochran got his co-writing credit for performing the demo, while Cochran's surviving relatives are equally emphatic in their claims that he was an equal contributor as a songwriter. We will almost certainly never know the truth. Cochran is credited as the co-writer of several other hit songs, usually with Capehart, but never as the sole writer of a hit. Fairchild, meanwhile, was a professional songwriter, but pieces like "Freddie the Little Fir Tree" don't especially sound like the work of the same person who wrote "Twenty Flight Rock". As both credited writers are now dead, the best we can do is use our own judgment, and my personal judgment is that Cochran probably contributed at least something to the song's writing. The original version of "Twenty Flight Rock", as featured in the film, was little more than a demo -- it featured Cochran on guitar, Guybo Smith on double bass, and Capehart slapping a cardboard box to add percussion. Cochran later recorded a more fully-arranged version of the song, which came out after the film, but the extra elements, notably the backing vocals, added little to the simplistic original: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Twenty Flight Rock"] It was that simpler version that appeared in the film, and which took its place alongside several other classic tracks in the film's soundtrack. The film was originally intended to have a theme tune recorded by Fats Domino, who appeared in the film performing his hit "Blue Monday", but when Bobby Troup mentioned this to Art Rupe, Rupe suggested that Little Richard would be a more energetic star to perform the song (and I'm sure this was entirely because of his belief that Richard would be the better talent, and nothing to do with Rupe owning Richard's label, but not Domino's). As a result, Domino's role in the film was cut down to a single song, while Richard ended up doing three -- the title song, written by Troup, "Ready Teddy" by John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell, and "She's Got It". We've mentioned before that John Marascalco's writing credits sometimes seem to be slightly exaggerated, and “She's Got It” is one record that tends to bear that out. Listen to “She's Got It”, which has Marascalco as the sole credited writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “She's Got It”] And now listen to “I Got It”, an earlier record by Richard, which has Little Richard credited as the sole writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “I Got It”] Hmm… The Girl Can't Help It was rather poorly reviewed in America. In France it was a different story. There's a pervasive legend that the people of France revere Jerry Lewis as a genius. This is nonsense. But the grain of truth in it is that Cahiers du Cinema, the most important film magazine in France by a long way -- the magazine for which Godard, Truffaut, and others wrote, and which popularised the concept of auteur theory, absolutely loved Frank Tashlin. In 1957, Tashlin was the only director to get two films on their top ten films of the year list -- The Girl Can't Help It at number eight, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter at number two. The other eight films on the list were directed by Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and Sidney Lumet. Tashlin directed several films starring Jerry Lewis, and those films, like Tashlin's other work, got a significant amount of praise in the magazine. And that's where that legend actually comes from, though Cahiers did also give some more guarded praise to some of the films Lewis directed himself later. Tashlin wasn't actually that good a director, but what he did have is a visual style that came from a different area of filmmaking than most of his competitors. Tashlin had started out as a cartoon director, working on Warner Brothers cartoons. He wasn't one of the better directors for Warners, and didn't direct any of the classics people remember from the studio -- he mostly made forgettable Porky Pig shorts. But this meant he had an animator's sense for a visual gag, and thus gave his films a unique look. For advocates of auteur theory, that was enough to push him into the top ranks. And so The Girl Can't Help It became a classic film, and Cochran got a great deal of attention, and a record deal. According to Si Waronker, the head of Liberty Records, Eddie Cochran getting signed to the label had nothing to do with him being cast in The Girl Can't Help It, and Waronker had no idea the film was being made when Cochran got signed. This seems implausible, to say the least. Johnny Olenn, Abbey Lincoln and Julie London, three other Liberty Records artists, appeared in the film -- and London was by some way Liberty's biggest star. Not only that, but London's husband, Bobby Troup, wrote the theme song and was musical director for the film. But whether or not Cochran was signed on account of his film appearance, "Twenty Flight Rock" wasn't immediately released as a single. Indeed, by the time it came out Cochran had already appeared in another film, in which he had backed Mamie Van Doren -- another Marilyn Monroe imitator in the same vein as Mansfield -- on several songs, as well as having a small role and a featured song himself. Oddly, when that film, Untamed Youth, came out, Cochran's backing on Van Doren's recordings had been replaced by different instrumentalists. But he still appears on the EP that was released of the songs, including this one, which Cochran co-wrote with Capehart: [Excerpt: Mamie Van Doren, "Ooh Ba La Baby"] It had originally been planned to release "Twenty Flight Rock" as Cochran's first single on Liberty, to coincide with the film's release but then it was put back for several months, as Si Waronker wanted Cochran to release "Sitting in the Balcony" instead. That song had been written and originally recorded by John D Loudermilk: [Excerpt: John D Loudermilk, "Sitting in the Balcony"] Waronker had wanted to release Loudermilk's record, but he hadn't been able to get the rights, so he decided to get Cochran to record a note-for-note cover version and release that instead: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Sitting in the Balcony"] Cochran was not particularly happy with that record, though he was happy enough once the record started selling in comparatively vast quantities, spurred by his appearance in The Girl Can't Help It, and reached number eighteen in the charts. The problem was that Cochran and Waronker had fundamentally different ideas about what Cochran actually was as an artist. Cochran thought of himself primarily as a guitarist -- and the guitar solo on "Sittin' in the Balcony" was the one thing about Cochran's record which distinguished it from Loudermilk's original -- and also as a rock and roller. Waronker, on the other hand, was convinced that someone with Cochran's good looks and masculine voice could easily be another Pat Boone. Liberty was fundamentally not geared towards making rock and roll records. Its other artists included the Hollywood composer Lionel Newman, the torch singer Julie London, and a little later novelty acts like the Chipmunks -- the three Chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, being named after Al Bennett, Si Waronker, and Theodore Keep, the three men in charge of the label. And their attempts to force Cochran into the mould of a light-entertainment crooner produced a completely forgettable debut album, Singin' to My Baby, which has little of the rock and roll excitement that would characterise Cochran's better work. (And a warning for anyone who decides to go out and listen to that album anyway -- one of the few tracks on there that *is* in Cochran's rock and roll style is a song called "Mean When I'm Mad", which is one of the most misogynist things I have heard, and I've heard quite a lot -- it's basically an outright rape threat. So if that's something that will upset you, please steer clear of Cochran's first album, while knowing you're missing little artistically.) “Twenty Flight Rock” was eventually released as a single, in its remade version, in November 1957, almost a year after The Girl Can't Help It came out. Unsurprisingly, coming out so late after the film, it didn't chart, and it would be a while yet before Cochran would have his biggest hit. But just because it didn't chart, doesn't mean it didn't make an impression. There's one story, more than any other, that sums up the impact both of "The Girl Can't Help It" and of "Twenty Flight Rock" itself. In July 1957, a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, led by a teenager called John Lennon, played a village fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. After the show, they were introduced to a young boy named Paul McCartney by a mutual friend. Lennon and McCartney hit it off, but the thing that persuaded Lennon to offer McCartney a place in the group was when McCartney demonstrated that he knew all the words to "Twenty Flight Rock". Lennon wasn't great at remembering lyrics, and was impressed enough by this that he decided that this new kid needed to be in the group. [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty Flight Rock”] That's the impact that The Girl Can't Help It had, and the impact that "Twenty Flight Rock" had. But Eddie Cochran's career was just starting, and we'll see more of him in future episodes...
The Kechi Playhouse is putting Living on Love onstage Fridays through Sundays from September 6 to the 29 th . This two-act farce from Joe DiPietro is actually a re-working of the play Peccadillo , by Garson Kanin.
Enhance your appreciation of American Players Theatre's 2018 production of Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin with this enlightening conversation with director Brenda DeVita and actors David Daniel and Colleen Madden. Listen on your way to or from the theater to gain insight into the play and the artistic decisions that make the APT production special.
KPFA theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Born Yesterday” by Garson Kanin, at San Francisco Playhouse through March 10, 2018. SF Playhouse website The post Review: Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin, at SF Playhouse appeared first on KPFA.
There were nine films starring Tracy and Hepburn, but ADAM'S RIB is arguably the best. Writers Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, friends of the famous couple, wrote the film specifically for them, and Hepburn insisted on her favorite director, George Cukor. The result is a comedy that remains the best "battle of the sexes" film ever made. In our review, James and Lara get into how watching this film feels like spying on a real-life married couple, as Spencer and Kate talk over each other and are very playful together. We talk about George Cukor's static camera, the Cole Porter-penned "Goodbye, Amanda" (one of the original earworms), and are joined by actress Jennifer Lynn O'Hara of "A Single Girl's Guide To..." to discuss the pervasive double standard that women in the entertainment industry experience.
One of the great screenwriting teams of all time talk about the old Hollywood with stories about Bogart and Bacall, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. (October 22, 1981) Click here to return to the Roy Leonard Audio Archive. For more about Roy Leonard, visit royleonard.com.
Director Pamela Berlin (Steel Magnolias, Crossing Delancey), playwright Cindy Lou Johnson (Brilliant Traces), playwright/director Garson Kanin (Born Yesterday) and playwright Wendy Wasserstein (Tony winner for The Heidi Chronicles) discuss how they first got involved in playwriting and directing from other areas of writing and theatre, their first professional shows, and play development at Playwrights Horizons and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Playwrights Conference.
Director Pamela Berlin ("Steel Magnolias", "Crossing Delancey"), playwright Cindy Lou Johnson ("Brilliant Traces"), playwright/director Garson Kanin ("Born Yesterday") and playwright Wendy Wasserstein ("The Heidi Chronicles") discuss how they first got involved in playwriting and directing from other areas of writing and theatre, their first professional shows, and play development at Playwrights Horizons and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Playwrights Conference.
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