We’ve got the holiday spirit here at Cladrite Radio, and if you do, too, you’ll be glad to know that we’re now sprinkling vintage recordings of classic Christmas songs into our usual mélange of toe-tapping tunes from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.
Tag: nostalgia
It’s Beginning to
Happy Thanksgiving, 1939-style!
This 1939 home movie footage of the 1939 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has everything short of a soundtrack. It features Pinocchio, Donald Duck, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, Old King Cole, Uncle Sam and much more.
Here’s wishing all Cladrite Radio readers and listeners a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving; we’re thankful for each and every one of you.
Happy 124th Birthday, Groucho Marx!
Today marks the 124th anniversary of the birth of the great Groucho Marx.
All of the movies Groucho made are available on DVD, and there are some terrific collections of his hilarious game show, You Bet Your Life, available as well.
Most, if not all, of the books he wrote are available, too.
So it’s up to you how you do it, but really, don’t you think you should spend some time with Groucho on his birthday?
We think so, too.
Just to help you out in a pinch, here are the very memorable first few minutes of Animal Crackers (1930), the Marx Brothers’ second movie, filmed at Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens:
Cagney Under the Stars!
Imagine you’re at the drive-in, watching a war picture, and James Cagney pulls up in the space next to you.
That’s what happens in this memorable scene from White Heat (1949). Cody Jarrett (Cagney), on the lam with Ma Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly) and his wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo), after shooting a police detective, eludes the cop in hot pursuit by making a quick right turn into the San-Val drive-in as the police siren recedes into the distance.
The theatre’s marquee touts a double feature of South of St. Louis (1949) and Siren of Atlantis (1949), but the movie actually seen on the screen as Cody and Co. settle in to discuss their plans is Task Force (1949), starring Gary Cooper and Jane Wyatt.
We enjoyed seeing the uniformed attendants offering peanuts and popcorn and placing the speaker just so in the passenger-side window. We couldn’t help but wonder just how many such attendants the San-Val employed on a busy Saturday night back in 1949 (if, in fact, it employed any attendants; it’s possible that was a creative touch added by the producers of the picture)
Burbank’s San-Val, the second drive-in ever built in California, opened in 1938 (the first, called The Drive-in Theatre, opened for business in 1934 at 10850 W. Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles) and was shuttered in the mid-1970s. The theatre, which originally had a capacity of 590 cars (it later accommodated more than 800 cars), was located at 2720 Winona Avenue, at the confluence of Winona, Naomi Street and San Fernando Road. An office building housing a number of movie production and effect houses now occupies the spot.
Cagney Speaks Yiddish!
In this scene from Taxi (1932), birthday boy James Cagney helps a confused cop (Robert Emmett O’Connor) deal with an agitated Jewish man speaking Yiddish.