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3 episodes with tom ewell
2 episodes with tom ewell
3 episodes with tom ewell
RMR 0315: Special Guest, DJ Bryant, joins your hosts, Dustin Melbardis and Russell Guest for the Retro Movie Roundtable as they revisit The Seven Year Itch (1955) [PG] Genre: Comedy, Screwball Comedy, Romance Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell, Evelyn Keyes, Sonny Tufts, Robert Strauss, Oscar Homolka, Marguerite Chapman, Victor Moore, Dolores Rosedale, Donald MacBride, Carolyn Jones Directed by: Billy Wilder Recorded on 2025-05-04
EPISODE 66 - “WHEN CLASSIC FILM'S SUPPORTING ACTORS STEAL THE SHOW” - 12/16/2024 There is nothing quite like watching a film when suddenly a supporting character comes in and walks away with the film. (Think THELMA RITTER, S.Z. SAKALL, or GALE SONDERGAARD in almost every one of their films!) This week we are focusing on some of our favorite supporting charters who come in and snatch that scene right about from under the big stars. From JOANNA BARNES' Gloria Upson declaring, “It was just ghastly!” in “Auntie Mame” to the impassioned monologue about love that BEAH RICHARDS delivers to SPENCER TRACY in “Guess Who's Coming To Dinner,” we take a fun look at these powerful performances that we're still talking about today. SHOW NOTES: Sources: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (1997) by Roger Lewis; But Darling, I'm Your Auntie Mame!: The Amazing History of the World's Favorite Madcap Aunt (1998), by Richard Tyler Jordan; Tennessee Williams & Company: His Essential Screen Actors (2010), by John DiLeo; “Judy Holiday, Winner of Oscar, Does of Cancer,” June 8, 1965, Los Angeles Times; “Mildred Natwick, 89, Actress Who Excelled at Eccentricity,” October 26, 1994, by Peter B. Flint, New York Times; “Steve Franken, Actor in ‘Dobie Gillis,' Dies at 80,” August 29, 2012, by Daniel E. Slotnik, New York Times; “Madeleine Sherwood, 93, Actress on Stage, Film and ‘Flying Nun,' Dies,” April 26, 2016, by Sam Roberts, New York Times; “The Making of ‘TheParty',” January 13, 2017, by FilMagicians, Youtube.com; “Beah Richards, 80, Actress in Stalwart Roles,” September 16, 2000, by Mel Gussow, New York Times; “Joanna Barnes, Actress in ‘The Parent Trap' and its Sequel. Dies at 87,” May 12, 2022, by Richard Sanomir, New York Times; TCM.com; IMDBPro.com; IBDB.com; Wikipedia.com; Roger Ebert.com; Movies Mentioned: Adams's Rib (1949), starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Judy Holiday, David Wayne, Hope Emerson, Jean Hagen, and Tom Ewell; Born Yesterday (1950), starring Judy Holiday, Broderick Crawford, & William Holden; Auntie Mame (1958), starring Rosalind Russell, Forrest Tucker, Fred Clark, Roger Smith, Jan Handzlik, Corale Brown, Pippa Scott, Lee Patrick, Willard Waterman, Joanna Barnes, Connie Gilchrist, Patric Knowles, and Yuki Shimudo; Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson, and Madeleine Sherwood; Spartacus (1960), starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Tony Curtis, & Joanna Barnes; The Parent Trap (1961), starring Haley Mills, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Joanna Barnes, Charles Ruggles, Ana Merkel, Leo G. Carroll, & Cathleen Nesbitt; The Americanization of Emily (1963), starring Julie Andrews & James Garner; The Time Traveler (1964), starring Preston Foster; Goodbye Charlie (1964), starring Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds, Ellen Burstyn, Pat Boone, & Joanna Barnes; Barefoot In The Park (1967), starring Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Mildred Natwick, Charles Boyer, Herb Edelman, and Mabel Albertson; Don't Make Waves (1967) starring Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, and Joanna Barnes; Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967), starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Houghton, Beah Richards, Roy E. Glen Sr, Cecil Kellaway, Isabelle Sanford, and Virginia Christine; The Party (1968), starring Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Denny Miller, Carol Wayne, Gavin MacLeod, Faye McKenzie, Marge Champion, Steve Frankel, Jean Carson, Corine Cole, J. Edward McKinley, and Herb Ellis; The Parent Trap (1998), starring Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson, Elaine Hendrix, & Lisa Ann Walter. --------------------------------- http://www.airwavemedia.com Please contact sales@advertisecast.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
EPISODE 25 - “Paul Douglas: Star of the Month” - 03/04/2024 In a new feature, we are highlighting a “Star of the Month” where we will dive into the life, career, and legacy of a single performer. To kick things off in this episode, we'll be discussing the great PAUL DOUGLAS. You may not know his name, but you certainly know his face. With his somewhat craggy mug that usually sported a hang-dog look, he made a career at playing gruff, tough guys who were usually softies underneath, as he does so perfectly as LINDA DARNELL's rough-around-the-edges businessman husband in “A Letter To Three Wives” (1949). So listen in and learn about this most excellent actor. SHOW NOTES: Sources: The Encyclopedia of Film Actors (2003), by Barry Monush; The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema (1983), by Ann Lloyd and Graham Fuller; Quinlan's Illustrated Registry of Film Stars (1986), by David Quinlan; “Paul Douglas, 52, Film Star, Dead,” September 12, 1959, The New York Times; IMDBPro.com; Wikipedia.com; Movies Mentioned: A Letter to Three Wives (1949), starring Jeanne Crain, Ann Southern, Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Jeffrey Lynn, Thelma Ritter, Connie Gilchrist; Born Yesterday (1950), starring Judy Holiday, Broderick Crawford, and William Holden; Adam's Rib (1949), starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Judy Holiday, Jape Emerson, David Wayne, Jean Hagen, Tom Ewell; It Happens Every Spring (1949), starring Paul Douglas, Jean Peters, and Ray Milland; Everybody Does It (1949), starring Paul Douglas, Linda Darnell, Charles Coburn, Celeste Holm; The Big Lift (1950), starring Paul Douglas, Montgomery Clift, Cornell Borchers; Panic In The Streets (1950), starring Paul Douglas, Richard Widmark, Barbara Bel Geddes; Fourteen Hours (1951), starring Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Barbara Bel Geddes, Agnes Moorhead, Robert Keith, Grace Kelly, Debra Paget, Jeffrey Hunter; Angels In The Outfield (1951), starring Paul Douglas, Janet Leigh, and Keenan Wynn; We're Not Married (1952), starring Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen, Paul Douglas, Marilyn Monroe, Eve Arden, Victor Moore, Eddie Bracken, Mitzi Gaynor, David Wayne, Louis Calhern, Zsa Zsa Gabor, James Gleason, Paul Stewart, Jane Darwell; Green Ice (1954), staring Stewart Granger, Grace Kelly, Paul Douglas, John Ericsson; Clash By Night (1952), starring Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan, Paul Douglas, Marilyn Monroe, Keith Andes, J. Carroll, Naish; Executive Suite (1954), starring William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Louis Calhern, Nina Foch, Dean Jagger; The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), starring Judy Holiday, Paul Douglas, Fred Clark, Neva Patterson, Arthur O'Connell; The Mating Game (1959), Debbie Reynolds, Tony Randall, Paul Douglas, Fred Clark, Una Merkel, Philip Ober, Charles Lane; --------------------------------- http://www.airwavemedia.com Please contact sales@advertisecast.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
No episódio mais recente do QueIssoAssim, Brunão, Zitos e Plínio celebram um clássico do cinema: "O Pecado Mora ao Lado" (The Seven Year Itch, 1955). Este filme icônico eternizou a imagem da diva Marilyn Monroe, já com a então famosa cena do vestido esvoaçante sobre uma ventilação de metrô. Dirigido por Billy Wilder, a trama gira em torno de Richard Sherman (interpretado por Tom Ewell), marido e pai dedicado, mas que fica em Nova Iorque para trabalhar enquanto sua família viaja. Sherman é atormentado pela "crise dos sete anos de casamento" ao mesmo tempo em que se sente atraído pela escultural vizinha do andar de cima. Além de discutir o filme em detalhes, o episódio traz curiosidades de bastidores e fofocas sobre a vida pessoal de Marilyn Monroe, mas sem esquecer de falar de seu trágico destino. Então já vai ouvir esse podcast esperando informações essenciais para os apaixonados por filmes clássicos e pela história do cinema. E cuidado para não esgasgar de tanto rir porque este episódio está hilariante! Mas espere um pouco: clicando no link abaixo e comprando O Pecado Mora Ao Lado em Blu-ray (ou qualquer produto) você ajuda o Portal Refil! Ajudaê, meu amazônico! Links extras: Já falamos também sobre outro clássico de Billy Wilder: Se Meu Apartamento Falasse! Pode ouvir o programa clicando aqui. Você pode conferir a famosa cena do vestido esvoaçante de Marilyn Monroe aqui. Não esquece então de seguir a gente nas redes sociais e de contribuir financeiramente com nosso podcast, sendo nosso patrão! Os links estão a seguir.
A delusional middle-aged married man (Tom Ewell) becomes infatuated with his new neighbor (Marilyn Monroe) while his wife and son are away on vacation for the summer. Directed by Billy Wilder.
Who could talk midcentury showbiz without mentioning the trending soundtrack to juvenile delinquency known as rock'n'roll? No one, that's who! Save your energy now for the sighing you will be doing later because we're talking about 1956's The Girl Can't Help It! Featuring Shrishma Naik, Carolyn Naoroz, and Justin Zeppa. The Girl Can't Help It was directed by Frank Tashlin and stars Jayne Mansfield and Tom Ewell. Join us on Patreon at the Boom Room for exclusive, ad-free bonus content in the form of super-deluxe length episodes: patreon.com/oldmovietimemachine We appreciate your support, so please subscribe, rate, review, and follow the show: Instagram: @timemachinepodcasts Facebook: facebook.com/oldmovietimemachine Email: partyline@oldmovietimemachine.com Buy our luxurious merchandise: www.teepublic.com/user/old-movie-time-machine ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Tom Ewell joins the Western Friend Podcast for Episode 20 to discuss non violent organizing and his work with the Sound Defense Alliance. Tom is is a member of Whidbey Island Friends Meeting and is active with Quaker Voice on Washington Public Policy and Friends Committee on National Legislation. He is joined by maryon attwood and Terra Huey as they discuss the urgent need to address the noise made by Growler aircraft at the navy air station at Whidbey Island in Washington state. You can read Tom's article, Persistence, in the Jan/Feb issue of the Western Friend Magazine HERE. You can find the full archive of Western Friend Podcast episodes HERE.
Was war zuerst da: Die Henne, oder das Ei? Genau so gut könnte man fragen, ob wir so besessen sind von Marilyn weil wir sie ständig überall sehen und Artikel, Bücher und Filme über sie rauskommen, oder kommen diese ganzen Dinge nur permanent raus, weil wir immer noch so besessen von ihr sind? In jedem Fall kann man sagen, dass Marilyn Monroe nach wie vor die Menschen berührt, interessiert und 60 Jahre nach ihrem Tod einfach noch nicht los lässt. Quellen:Marilyn Monroe--20th Anniversary of Death--Yves Montand, Tom Ewell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uADq62ksZLQhttps://www.portalkunstgeschichte.de/meldung/marilyn__legende__mythos_und_iko-1903.htmlhttps://www.grunge.com/773382/this-is-how-jane-fonda-remembers-her-time-with-marilyn-monroe/https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/ikone-marilyn-monroe-vergoettert-vergiftet-verkauft-a-948815.htmlhttps://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/jane-fonda-says-she-shares-this-heartbreaking-trait-with-marilyn-monroe.html/https://www.grunge.com/791643/the-surprising-gift-marilyn-monroe-got-from-frank-sinatra/Why Marilyn Monroe Is Still So Famoushttps://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/why-do-people-still-love-marilyn-monroe/https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/umsatz-mit-toten-bis-in-alle-ewigkeit-1.1855114https://www.filmstarts.de/nachrichten/18489239.htmlhttps://www.ndr.de/kultur/kunst/Warhols-Marilyn-erzielt-Rekordsumme-von-195-Millionen-Dollar,warhol144.htmlhttps://www.bild.de/news/ausland/news-ausland/andy-warhol-knackt-seine-marilyn-monroe-den-auktions-rekord-80024318.bild.htmlhttps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smash_(Fernsehserie)#Handlunghttps://bwiebeweis.blogspot.com/2021/02/mark-roesler-marilyn-monroes-licensing.htmlhttps://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2006/04/10/A-battle-erupts-over-the-right-to-market-Marilyn/stories/200604100088https://www.wbur.org/npr/157483945/monroes-legacy-is-making-fortune-but-for-whomhttps://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/streit-um-rechte-wem-gehoert-marilyn-a-411109.htmlhttps://www.stern.de/lifestyle/leute/mehr-als-50-jahre-nach-ihrem-tod-marilyn-monroe-wirbt-demnaechst-fuer-parfuem-3314628.htmlUnsere allgemeinen Datenschutzrichtlinien finden Sie unter https://art19.com/privacy. Die Datenschutzrichtlinien für Kalifornien sind unter https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info abrufbar.
Make noise about noise! The issue of aviation noise doesn't just impact the communities around Northwest Washington - it affects people across the United States and even the world. We want you to be a part of speaking up about the problem. In this final episode of the Sound Defense Alliance podcast, the Founder and President of Quiet Communities Jamie Banks (she/her) frames the national aviation noise issue and what Quiet Communities is doing to bring local groups together and equip them with the tools they need to create change. We are also going to hear from Quaker organizer Tom Ewell (he/him) and political consultant Teresa Purcell (she/her) about how to speak to our legislators. We can't emphasize enough how important it is to raise your voice about this issue, and we hope that after this episode and this podcast, that you are equipped and inspired to do so. Resources: Learn more about the Growler jets and how to take action at: www.SoundDefenseAlliance.org Quiet Communities Quiet American Skies Program American Public Health Association (APHA) Policy Statement - “Noise is a Public Health Hazard” If you're interested in joining Quiet Communities' upcoming conferences, contact: events@quietcommunities.org National Environmental Justice Advisory Council White House Environmental Justice Advisory Councils Citizens of Ebey's Reserve (COER) Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) Glossary Terms: Day-Night Average Sound Level (DNL) - A metric that reflects a person's cumulative exposure to sound over a 24-hour period, expressed as the noise level for the average day of the year on the basis of annual aircraft operations. NextGen - The FAA's ongoing multibillion-dollar infrastructure program to modernize the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS), which is the world's busiest and most complex. Also known as the Next Generation Air Transportation System. Nature sounds recorded in the Olympic National Park (Gordon Hempton, The Sound Tracker, Co-Founder Quiet Parks International) Hosted by Terra Huey and Caitlin Epstein Produced by Caitlin Epstein in partnership with the Sound Defense Alliance
This month on the podcast we're celebrating the filmography of Marilyn Monroe, one of the most iconic and culturally significant actresses of all time. For part one of our two part series we looked at Monroe's most commercially successful films, The Seven Year Itch. Also starring Tom Ewell and directed by the great Billy Wilder, this film includes one of the most iconic images of Marilyn Monroe's life (and it isn't what you imagine)! Stay tuned for part two where we explore the classic film Some Like it Hot. In addition, we have a special announcement regarding a movie draft which we're really excited to be doing in September. Feel free to drop some ideas regarding the categories we've selected in the comments below! Where to watch: The Seven Year Itch - movie: watch streaming online (justwatch.com)
" La Tentación Vive Arriba" es comedia de Billy Wilder (1955) protagonizada por Tom Ewell y Marilyn Monroe. Trata del fatal atractivo de un «hombre común» por sexy y encantadora rubia “in absentía” de esposa. La escena del vestido blanco revoloteando sobre una rejilla del metro y "I Wanna Be Loved", "Heat Wave” y el resto del repertorio Marilyn junto a chispeantes diálogos hacen de esta "Babel Experience” una experiencia altamente refrescante. Aire acondicionado en todas las habitaciones.
" La Tentación Vive Arriba" es comedia de Billy Wilder (1955) protagonizada por Tom Ewell y Marilyn Monroe. Trata del fatal atractivo de un «hombre común» por sexy y encantadora rubia “in absentía” de esposa. La escena del vestido blanco revoloteando sobre una rejilla del metro y "I Wanna Be Loved", "Heat Wave” y el resto del repertorio Marilyn junto a chispeantes diálogos hacen de esta "Babel Experience” una experiencia altamente refrescante. Aire acondicionado en todas las habitaciones.
Kill the heat of summer realities with a tall glass of fantasy, then chase it with 1955's The Seven Year Itch! Featuring Shrishma Naik, Carolyn Naoroz, Katherine Sherlock, and Justin Zeppa.The Seven Year Itch was directed by Billy Wilder and stars Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell.Join us on Patreon at the Boom Room for exclusive, ad-free bonus content in the form of super-deluxe length episodes:patreon.com/oldmovietimemachineWe appreciate your support, so please subscribe, rate, review, and follow the show:Instagram: @timemachinepodcastsFacebook: facebook.com/oldmovietimemachineEmail: partyline@oldmovietimemachine.comBuy our luxurious merchandise:www.teepublic.com/user/old-movie-time-machine★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Book Vs. Movie: The Seven Year ItchThe George Axelrod 1952 Play Vs. the 1955 Billy Wilder FilmWhen the coronavirus pandemic began, the Margos decided to expand on the very idea of a “book” to movie adaptation to cover weekly. The timing of putting our four episodes a month means we can't always cover anything longer than 200 pages. This is why we have also talked about magazine articles, songs, and plays on this show. This episode is devoted to The Seven Year Itch which started on Broadway in 1952 with Tom Ewell and Vanessa Brown and was written by George Axelrod (who later adapted Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Manchurian Candidate which we have discussed on this show before.) The story of a married man, Richard Sherman played by Ewell, whose family spends the summer in Maine while he sweats it out in their Gramercy Park apartment. (And I thought I had problems!) While learning about extramarital affairs from a book he is publishing, he soon begins a friendly relationship with a new neighbor. THE GIRL is never given a name and she is vexing him with her beauty. In the play (spoiler!), they have a brief romantic encounter which leaves him feeling guilty and heading up to Maine and back to his wife. The show features dream sequences and we actually hear Richard's inner dialog the whole time. Supposedly Ewell worked to change the quirky behavior with each performance (he would go on to win a TONY for best dramatic actor) and at 1,141 performances--it was the longest-running nonmusical play of the 1950s on Broadway. Ewell was pleasantly surprised to be asked to lead in the film adaptation by Billy Wilder. Years later, Wilder would complain that the current Hays Codes ruined the story by not allowing Richard to actually have an affair with THE GIRL (played by a shimmering Marilyn Monroe.) The movie is special for many reasons: Marilyn and the “white dress” moment is a classic, and the original Pennsylvania Station is featured before its horrible destruction in 1963 (a blight on NYC) to name just two things. It's impossible to talk about Monroe without talking about her chaotic private life which always seemed to create havoc on movie sets. Her husband Joe DiMaggio was NOT happy about the world watching his wife getting her dress blown by a wind machine. Monroe's battle with anxiety and depression caused her to be late to set. Her legendary ability to forget her lines caused major delays to the film which caused the budget to go to $1.8 million. The movie was a hit and made money but her reputation for being a problem followed her for the rest of her career. So between the two, which did we like more? The play or the movie? In this ep the Margos discuss:The stage version and how it became a huge success.Marilyn Monroe's life and career in the 1950s.Changes to the film that critics and Wilder dislikedThe cast: Tom Ewell (Richard Sherman,) Marilyn Monroe (The Girl,) Evelyn Keyes (Helen Sherman,) Sonny Tufts (Tom MacKenzie,) Victor Moore (plumber,) Oscar Homolka (Dr. Brubaker,) Marguerite Chapman (Miss Morris,) and Carolyn Jones as Nurse Finch. Clips used:Subway grate sceneThe Seven Year Itch 1955 trailerMeet the new neighborChampagne sceneThe piano scene“My wife never gets jealous…”Music by Alfred NewmanBook Vs. Movie is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more podcasts you will love Frolic.Media/podcasts. Join our Patreon page to help support the show! https://www.patreon.com/bookversusmovie Book Vs. Movie podcast https://www.facebook.com/bookversusmovie/Twitter @bookversusmovie www.bookversusmovie.comEmail us at bookversusmoviepodcast@gmail.com Margo D. @BrooklynFitChik www.brooklynfitchick.com brooklynfitchick@gmail.comMargo P. @ShesNachoMama https://coloniabook.weebly.com/ Our logo was designed by Madeleine Gainey/Studio 39 Marketing Follow on Instagram @Studio39Marketing & @musicalmadeleine
Book Vs. Movie: The Seven Year ItchThe George Axelrod 1952 Play Vs. the 1955 Billy Wilder FilmWhen the coronavirus pandemic began, the Margos decided to expand on the very idea of a “book” to movie adaptation to cover weekly. The timing of putting our four episodes a month means we can't always cover anything longer than 200 pages. This is why we have also talked about magazine articles, songs, and plays on this show. This episode is devoted to The Seven Year Itch which started on Broadway in 1952 with Tom Ewell and Vanessa Brown and was written by George Axelrod (who later adapted Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Manchurian Candidate which we have discussed on this show before.) The story of a married man, Richard Sherman played by Ewell, whose family spends the summer in Maine while he sweats it out in their Gramercy Park apartment. (And I thought I had problems!) While learning about extramarital affairs from a book he is publishing, he soon begins a friendly relationship with a new neighbor. THE GIRL is never given a name and she is vexing him with her beauty. In the play (spoiler!), they have a brief romantic encounter which leaves him feeling guilty and heading up to Maine and back to his wife. The show features dream sequences and we actually hear Richard's inner dialog the whole time. Supposedly Ewell worked to change the quirky behavior with each performance (he would go on to win a TONY for best dramatic actor) and at 1,141 performances--it was the longest-running nonmusical play of the 1950s on Broadway. Ewell was pleasantly surprised to be asked to lead in the film adaptation by Billy Wilder. Years later, Wilder would complain that the current Hays Codes ruined the story by not allowing Richard to actually have an affair with THE GIRL (played by a shimmering Marilyn Monroe.) The movie is special for many reasons: Marilyn and the “white dress” moment is a classic, and the original Pennsylvania Station is featured before its horrible destruction in 1963 (a blight on NYC) to name just two things. It's impossible to talk about Monroe without talking about her chaotic private life which always seemed to create havoc on movie sets. Her husband Joe DiMaggio was NOT happy about the world watching his wife getting her dress blown by a wind machine. Monroe's battle with anxiety and depression caused her to be late to set. Her legendary ability to forget her lines caused major delays to the film which caused the budget to go to $1.8 million. The movie was a hit and made money but her reputation for being a problem followed her for the rest of her career. So between the two, which did we like more? The play or the movie? In this ep the Margos discuss:The stage version and how it became a huge success.Marilyn Monroe's life and career in the 1950s.Changes to the film that critics and Wilder dislikedThe cast: Tom Ewell (Richard Sherman,) Marilyn Monroe (The Girl,) Evelyn Keyes (Helen Sherman,) Sonny Tufts (Tom MacKenzie,) Victor Moore (plumber,) Oscar Homolka (Dr. Brubaker,) Marguerite Chapman (Miss Morris,) and Carolyn Jones as Nurse Finch. Clips used:Subway grate sceneThe Seven Year Itch 1955 trailerMeet the new neighborChampagne sceneThe piano scene“My wife never gets jealous…”Music by Alfred NewmanBook Vs. Movie is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more podcasts you will love Frolic.Media/podcasts. Join our Patreon page to help support the show! https://www.patreon.com/bookversusmovie Book Vs. Movie podcast https://www.facebook.com/bookversusmovie/Twitter @bookversusmovie www.bookversusmovie.comEmail us at bookversusmoviepodcast@gmail.com Margo D. @BrooklynFitChik www.brooklynfitchick.com brooklynfitchick@gmail.comMargo P. @ShesNachoMama https://coloniabook.weebly.com/ Our logo was designed by Madeleine Gainey/Studio 39 Marketing Follow on Instagram @Studio39Marketing & @musicalmadeleine
Here's a brief teaser of one of our first exclusive unofficial commentaries we did for supporters at Patreon.com/TCBCast. This time we took a look at the 1958 rock and roll film "The Girl Can't Help It" starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell and Edmond O'Brien with appearances by Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Platters, The Treniers, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Julie London, Freddie Bell & The Bell Boys and more. We uncovered a surprising load of Elvis connections throughout! If you enjoy this teaser, please consider joining to support the show at Patreon.com/TCBCast to receive access to dozens of hours of new, exclusive and early access bonus content including film commentaries on Elvis- and early rock-related movies, topic & Song of the Week polls, Blue Suede Reviews video essay series covering all of Elvis' movies chronologically, and more! Thanks to all our current and previous patrons for their support!
Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 84, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Hello, Sports Fans 1: (Pro golfer Peter Jacobsen.) To land the ball on the green with this, also called juice, hit the ball below its equator with a lofted club. backspin. 2: (I'm Ed McCaffrey.) It was the name of my team at Stanford, and also one of the team colors. Cardinal. 3: (Yankees manager Joe Torre reads the clue.) In 1971 I led the league in average and RBIs, so I was just the home run title short of winning this. Triple Crown. 4: A sculpture of this heavyweight's fist was donated to the city of Detroit by Sports Illustrated. Joe Louis. 5: (I'm NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia.) In 2000 I became the fourth 49er to throw for 30 TDs in a season, after John Brodie and these 2 other fairly decent passers. Joe Montana and Steve Young. Round 2. Category: 1: This actor keeps parting and getting back together with Andie MacDowell in "Four Weddings And A Funeral". Hugh Grant. 2: Lucy Westenra is the first English woman to fall victim to him in Bram Stoker's novel. Count Dracula. 3: In "The Seven Year Itch", Tom Ewell says goodbye to his wife and starts flirting with this actress. Marilyn Monroe. 4: In a 1965 epic this Omar Sharif character keeps getting separated from his beloved Lara. Dr. Zhivago. 5: In "Casablanca" this Bogart character reminds Ilsa as they part, "We'll always have Paris". Rick Blaine. Round 3. Category: "V"Ariety 1: The first laws against alcohol in the Americas were passed in 1623 with the help of Gov. Francis Wyatt of this colony. Virginia. 2: In Chaucer's "Parliament of Fowls", the fowls gather to choose their mates on this day. Valentine's Day. 3: This great writer of the Enlightenment was known as "The Plato of the 18th Centuty". Voltaire. 4: In the 1860's this industrial "commodore" lost the fight for control of the Erie Railroad. Cornelius Vanderbilt. 5: From the Latin for "wide vessel", this type of drug does just that; it widens blood vessels. vasodilator. Round 4. Category: Before He Was President 1: He was "Old Rough and Ready", a hero of the Mexican War. (Zachary) Taylor. 2: He played sax in a jazz trio called The Three Blind Mice. Clinton. 3: He was captain of the debating team at Whittier College in California. Richard Nixon. 4: He practiced law in Kinderhook, New York. (Martin) Van Buren. 5: He was a judge of the Jackson County Court in Missouri. Truman. Round 5. Category: Leading Men 1: Hugo Chavez of this South American country is an admirer of Simon Bolivar. Venezuela. 2: In the early 1980s this star of "Scarface" and "Serpico" was an artistic director of the Actors Studio. Al Pacino. 3: In 1938 this prime minister returned to Britain from a meeting with Hitler saying, "I believe it is peace in our time". Chamberlain. 4: Like his father whom he succeeded, Bashar al-Assad heads the Ba'ath Party in this Middle East country. Syria. 5: He's played "Dirty Harry" Callahan in 5 films; the most recent was "The Dead Pool" in 1988. Clint Eastwood. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!
This week we are talking about the life and work of our favorite director, Billy Wilder. Listen to our stories and insights on the podcast episode above. In the meantime, here are some fun facts and some of the movies we discuss! And scroll to the bottom for the pix promised!Sunset Blvd. Wilder nailed the dreams and the cruelty of the movie business from the POV of the writer, the has-been star, and the wide-eyed newcomer. There are themes (like agism) that were rarely explored before in film. And oh the characters! Double Indemnity is one of the best Film Noir movies ever and one of the best, if not THE best femme fatale played by Barbara Stanwyck. Walter Neff is probably Fred MacMurray's best role. And let's not forget the great Edward G. RobinsonThe Lost Weekend held the top spot drunk movie, probably 'til Leaving Las Vegas. (unless you count The Days of Wine and Roses) The Apartment - Maybe the best "Rom-Com" ever. Or maybe what they'd call, today, a "dramedy." Starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray, The Apartment is funny for sure but goes to some dark places. It's also a great pick for Mad Men fans and anybody loves Fred MacMurray when he is a cad!Stalag 17 Wilder found humor in what was for him the darkest and most life-changing chapter of his life. Guess that's why Hogan's Heroes stole the idea! But it is a ruthless story too. Nazi's get no mercy. Witness For The Prosecution is a "who-done-it," a court drama, and a departure even for Wilder. Starring a director in his own right Charles Laughton, his real-life wife Elsa Lanchester, Tyrone Power, and Marlene Dietrich.The Seven Year Itch Wilder was great at creating iconic scenes and this movie features one of the most famous. It's one of Marilyn Monroe's best comedic roles, but Tom Ewell is the real star, reprising his role from the Broadway play. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine again for Irma La Douce. Some Like It Hot. Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Joe E. Brown are at the top of their comedic game, with Marilyn Monroe?
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...
This Week in Mal’s World, Mal Vincent shares the results for the winners in his Naro Classic Film Festival. Top prizes went to Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell and “The Red Shoes”. Mal also talks about his latest adventure to hear Barbara Streisand perform at Madison Square Garden.
This Week in Mal’s World – The Seven Year itch. The finale of Mal’s Movies 2019 at the Naro Expanded Cinema on Monday night, August 19th at 7:00 The star, of course, is Marilyn, and that’s all that needs to be said. Based on the Broadway play, Billy Wilder’s classic comedy is devoted to the premise that husbands reportedly get an “itch” after seven years of marriage. Such frenzy is encouraged by the fact that the wife is away for the summer, and Marilyn Monroe, playing a model, lives upstairs. It’s the perfect comedy for the summer! Tom Ewell is hilarious as the befuddled middle-aged husband who doesn’t quite know what to do with Marilyn. She is most avid about Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, and her comic gift is proven throughout! Again, this is the finale of the 16th annual movie festival, which means it is the night when we vote for the four top performances. Visit https://narocinema.com/mals-movies/ for more information.
"The Seven Year Itch" starring Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell and Evelyn Keyes. Tom Ewell stars as a husband left behind in Manhattan for the summer where he meets his enchanting upstairs neighbor, Marilyn Monroe. What could go wrong?Director: Billy WilderCostumes: TravillaStudio: 20th Century FoxYear: 1955
Als Marilyn Monroe Ersatz darf Jayne Mansfield an die Seite von Tom Ewell. In der Musikkomödie "The Girl can't help it" spielt Tom Ewell einen gescheiterten Musikagenten, der im Auftrag eines Gangsterbosses Jayne Mansfield zum Star machen soll. Getrunken wird natürlich auch. Viel Scotch, aber eben auch "Bloody Mary" Das Bloody Mary Rezept 5 cl Wodka 8 cl Tomatensaft 1 Dash Worcestersoße 1 Dash Tabasco 1 cl Zitronensaft Salz & Grober Pfeffer 1 Selleriestange Der Bloody Mary Drink kann im Glas gebaut werden: Einfach Eiswürfel in ein Longdrinkglas geben, Wodka hinein und mit Tomatensaft auffüllen. Anschließend mit Worcestersoße, Tabasco und Zitronensaft abschmecken, umrühren und mit Salz, Pfeffer und Sellerie obendrauf garnieren. Zum Wohl. Die 1. Folge Gucken & Trinken: Tom Ewell & Marilyn Monroe in "Das verflixte 7. Jahr. http://netzf.eu/gucken-trinken001 Marina über You Must Remeber This. http://meinvorgestern.de/meinlieblingspodcast-blodparade/ Podcastempfehlungen bei MeinLieblingspodcast.de: http://meinlieblingspodcast.de Danke für Deine Bewertung bei iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/gucken-trinken/id1229483130?mt=2
Frank reviews the Westminster Choir concert and Waiting for Godot from the 2017 Spoleto Festival USA. Read Full Dispatch > There are few settings in Charleston more idyllic for a concert than the Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul. Watching the late afternoon light as it slants through the windows on the west side of the sanctuary, with the stained glass behind the altar providing a dramatic backdrop to the Westminster Choir in their evening attire, you feel like you’re in for a special experience, and indeed, you are. The Westminster Choir has been the Choir in Residence at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston for many years, since the days when the ensemble was led by the legendary Joseph Flummerfelt. Upon Flummerfelt’s retirement, Joe Miller assumed the role, and he continues the tradition of presenting sublime a cappella concerts in that special hour before a late spring evening gets underway. Miller has distinguished himself by programming especially thoughtful and inventive choral performances, and the concert I attended on Memorial Day is a perfect example of his approach. Contemporary settings of sacred texts in Latin formed the bookends of the first part of the concert. “Lux surgit aurea” – “See the golden sun arise” – by Bernat Vivancos harkens back to medieval chant and Renaissance polyphony at the opening and close, but in the middle enters an ethereal, contemporary realm. On the far side of the concert program, “Laudibus in Sanctis” – “Celebrate the Lord Most High” – by Ugis Praulins had dramatic shifts in mood propelled by driving rhythms reminiscent of Carl Orff. In between there was an Abendstandschen, or Evensong, by Johannes Brahms that featured his characteristically rich choral writing, and a setting by Kile Smith of the words of the Apollo 8 astronauts on Christmas Eve of 1968 which was made otherworldly by the use of hand bells and the resonant droning of high soprano voices. There was also an infectious pair of folk hymns, sung in the distinctive, American 18 th century shape note style of singing. These were sung by a subset of the choir separating from the group and assembling in the crossing between the transepts of the cathedral; and a stirring spiritual, “Yonder Come Day,” with alto soloists Taria Mitchell and Pauline Taumalolo, as well as percussion provided by choir members using a tambourine and a broom handle. Paul Crabtree’s “Death and Resurrection” brought us back to the present day. It concludes with a haunting Shaker text: “Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live/And as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow.” The second part of the program consisted of the American folk tunes in choral arrangements that have become a signature of the Westminster Choir, including the nostalgic “Shenandoah.” I have never been to concert by this choir at the festival that hasn’t received a standing ovation at the end, and this one was no exception. In exchange, we were rewarded with two encores, one of them an apt and exquisite setting of the standard, “I’ll Be Seeing You.” The choir repeats the program on Saturday, June 3 rd . Playwright Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece Waiting for Godot has attracted legendary performers, from familiar movie character actors Tom Ewell and Burt Lahr in the first U.S. production, to comic icons Steve Martin and the late Robin Williams, and more recently distinguished knighted thespians Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. No doubt the attraction for performers is the challenge of keeping an audience engaged over two and a half hours of theater where the meaning can be elusive, though the rewards are plentiful. By turns bawdy and poetic, and frequently hilarious, in one sense the play isn’t all that mystifying when taken at face value as a rumination on existence. The cast of this production from Ireland’s Druid Theater is more than up to the challenge. In their tattered costumes, and with their distinct physical types, they have some of the pathos of silent film comedians, but with their broad physical humor, exaggerated stances, heightened gestures and manic expressions, they seem like Warner Brothers cartoon characters come to life. The team of director Garry Hynes and designer Francis O’Connnor, who worked such magic with the Festival production of the Vivaldi opera Farnace, deliver another visually rich experience with this play. To borrow a recurring bit of dialogue between Vladimir and Estragon: “Is this a good thing?” “It will pass the time.” To which I would add, “It will pass it very well.” Waiting for Godot has numerous performances through the end of the festival at the Dock Street Theatre. Check the schedule at spoletousa.org for show dates and times.
This week in Mal's World, Mal Vincent previews the final film of his 3-part festival at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. "The Seven Year Itch" stars Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. From the film's famous subway-street scene to Marilyn's saucy review of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, Mal shares what makes this classic so charming with Hollywood's legendary "blonde bombshell." For more on the MOCA festival, visit http://www.virginiamoca.org/mal-vincent-presents.
Dave and Noah break out the calamine lotion for this week's rash from the past, The Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. Ewell is a middle-aged New York publishing exec with an overactive imagination. Having just sent his wife and kid away for the Summer, he comes home to find a pinup-girl-turned-Toothpaste-model renting the space above his place. He's got the only air conditioner in existence and she's gotta lotta heat. A chance encounter involving a tomato plant brings her downstairs, with a bottle of bubbly and a hankering for a ride on his amazing baby grand piano bench. We all spend the rest of this flick watching Marilyn Monroe get blown. By air. Various, random gusts of air. Because if Tom Ewell won't make a move, nature will. Nature always finds a way. Dave talks about how Marilyn reminds him of his grandma and Noah invents a new term called "The Subway Bidet". Move over Jared!
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