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Hello, Everybody!
(1933) Starring Kate
Smith and Randolph Scott | |
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Beautiful print and will
play in all DVD players. | |
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Reported to have cost a whopping $2 million, this
musical was actually made for far less. But unlike She Done Him Wrong
(1932), filmed simultaneously next door, Hello, Everybody! made nary a
nickel. Both films starred newcomers, but unlike the irrepressible Mae
West, hefty Kate Smith, of radio fame, was given very little opportunity
to shine. Awarded script and casting approval, the radio star had chosen
a Fannie Hurst tearjerker about a goodhearted but plump farm girl who
finds solace in music while her boyfriend takes off with her svelte
sister. Paramount, however, made the fatal mistake of casting Smith's
real-life manager Ted Collins as her on-screen agent as well, and
Collins' overbearing presence was of no help whatsoever to the nervous
songbird. Adding insult to injury, Sally Blane, the nearly emaciated
sister of equally svelte Loretta Young, played Smith's sibling, insuring
that Kate's ungainly girth remained steadfastly in focus. A wardrobe
consisting of matronly housedresses and an especially atrocious
production number entitled "Pickanninnies' Heaven" put the
final nail in the coffin. In the end, Hello, Everybody! proved enough of
a loser for Kate Smith to stay away from feature films entirely until a
brief cameo in the all-star wartime extravaganza This is the Army (1943).
Mae West, meanwhile, considered the phrase "Hello, Everybody!"
such a jinx that she reportedly prohibited anyone from using it in her
presence!
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Director: William A. Seiter
Writers: Lawrence Hazard, Fannie Hurst, Dorothy Yost
Stars: Kate Smith, Randolph Scott, Sally Blane, Charley Grapewin, George
Barbier, Wade Boteler, Julia Swayne Gordon, Ted Collins, Frank Jenks
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Songs include:
Moon Song (That Wasn't Meant For Me)
Words by Sam Coslow
Music by Arthur Johnston
Sung by Kate Smith
Out In The Great Open Spaces
Lyrics by Sam Coslow
Music by Arthur Johnston
Sung by Kate Smith
Twenty Million People
Lyrics by Sam Coslow
Music by Arthur Johnston
Sung by Kate Smith
Pickaninnies' Heaven
Lyrics by Sam Coslow
Music by Arthur Johnston
Sung by Kate Smith
My Queen Of Lullaby Land
Lyrics by Sam Coslow
Music by Arthur Johnston | |
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This film's working title was Queen of the Air. The
title of Fannie Hurst's original story was "Nice Girl." As the
film's opening credits roll, Kate Smith sings "When the Moon Comes
Over the Mountain," which was her radio signature song. In the New
York nightclub scene, Smith performs her famous "hotcha" dance.
A montage within the film, which shows Kate Smith's rise to fame,
includes RKO marquees. | |
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On the basis on this, her only starring vehicle, it's
easy to see why Kate Smith never made it as a film star and also why she
was a tremendous star on radio. On film she makes minimal impact, seeming
cheery but not being able to convey much other emotion. It doesn't help
that the story surrounding her is hopelessly corny. However when she
sings her warm beautifully inflected voice projects all the nuance that
is missing in her acting performance. | |
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Probably no film studio had a closer relationship with
the medium of radio than Paramount. With their Big Broadcast series that
featured the radio stars of the day and the fact that one of the biggest
of them all, Bing Crosby, was signed and their biggest moneymaking star,
Adolph Zukor and those who succeeded him knew the value of that symbiotic
relationship as a publicity outlet for their films. With that in mind
they signed Kate Smith to appear in Hello Everybody which was her
greeting to her radio audience for decades. | |
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The two things that most people know about Kate Smith
today was that she sang God Bless America and the fact that the woman was
overweight. It was for that reason that she did not pursue a career in
the theater even with one of the most beautiful voices ever given a human
being. Radio coming along as it did made her career and made her a
household name. | |
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The film written for her was a Capra type populist
story of a small town farm girl named Kate Smith who becomes an overnight
radio sensation and uses her new found celebrity to help the folks back
home. A power company is coming through to build a dam that will flood
out a lot of people including Kate and her family. | |
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Aiding and abetting Kate is Jimmy Stewart type hero,
young Randolph Scott who woos and weds Kate's younger sister Sally Blane.
Of course Kate kind of likes Randy too and she's brokenhearted to see his
attention paid to Blane. It gives her an opportunity to sing Moon Song, a
touching and sentimental torch ballad written for the film by Arthur
Johnston and Sam Coslow who also wrote the scores for a few of Bing
Crosby's early Paramount films. | |
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Order this rarely-seen and hard-to-find
classic today for the low price of $5.99.
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Blondie Takes A Vacation
(1939)
Stars: Penny Singleton, Arthur
Lake, Larry Simms
This third entry in Columbia's "Blondie" series retains the
freshness and laugh quotient of the first two, which is more than can be
said for the series' later offerings. Taking a well-deserved rest, the
Bumstead family-Dagwood (Arthur Lake), Blondie (Penny Singleton), Baby
Dumpling (Larry Simms) and Daisy the dog-head to a financially strapped
mountain resort. Here the family champions the cause of the lodge's
owners, who are being victimized by crooked real estate man Harvey Morton
(Donald MacBride). Salvation comes from an unexpected corner in the form
of cherub pyromaniac Jonathan Gillis (Donald Meek). Though there are
slapstick and farcical situations aplenty, Blondie Takes a Vacation has a
relaxed, easygoing quality, due in no small part to the warm rapport
among the leading players.
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The Delightful Rogue (1929)
Stars: Rod La Rocque,
Rita La Roy, Charles Byer
In this drama, a notorious
pirate meets a Yankee dance-hall girl in the port of Tapit. He also meets
her jealous lover whom he kidnaps. He tells the girl that he will only release
her lover if she spends a night in his cabin with him. She reluctantly
agrees to his terms. After one night, she finds herself in love. She sets
sail with the pirate without a backward glance at her lover.
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Jazz Heaven
(1929)
Stars: Sally O'Neil,
Johnny Mack Brown, Clyde Cook
In this drama, an impoverished songwriter from the South travels to Tin
Pan Alley with his trusty piano. He stays at a boarding house where he
falls in love with a pretty young woman. When the two are discovered
trysting in the same room, the landlady tosses them out on their ears. To
help pay for his back rent, the vindictive landlady keeps his piano. Her
husband attempts to steal it away, but accidentally drops it down the
stairs and smashes it into a jillion pieces. Fortunately, his new love
works for two zany music publishers who begin selling the writer's songs
which become hits.
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Blood And Black Lace (1964)
Stars: Cameron Mitchell,
Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner
Director Mario Bava's second
thriller revolves around a fashion salon owned by wealthy Cristina (Eva
Bartok) and her greedy lover Max (Cameron Mitchell). The salon is a front
for cocaine-trafficking and blackmail, so when model Isabella (Lea
Kruger) is viciously strangled, leaving a detailed diary behind, many of
the people connected with the salon become very nervous. Isabella's
roommate Nicole (Arianna Gorini) finds the diary and soon has her throat
clawed out with a piece of medieval armor. Peggy (Mary Arden), who
borrowed abortion money from Isabella, is tortured and has her face
pressed into a red-hot iron. The bodies continue to pile up until a
conspiracy is exposed and the perpetrators start getting their just
desserts. Luciano Pigozzi, Massimo Righi, and Claude Dantes are among the
cast.
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Blood And Roses
(1960)
Stars: Walter Ringham,
Johnston Forbes-Robertson, S.A. Cookson
Previously filmed in 1932 as
Vampyr, Sheridan LeFanu's classic psychological horror tale was given a
second go round in 1961 as Blood & Roses (Et Mourir de Plaisir).
While Carl Theodor Dreyer concentrated on mood and suspense in Vampyr,
Blood & Roses director Roger Vadim goes directly to the jugular, so
to speak, with generous doses of eerie eroticism. Annette Vadim plays
Carmilla, who upon learning that she had a vampire ancestor becomes
obsessed with finding out even more. Soon Carmilla has succumbed to the
siren song of vampirism, and cannot quench her insatiable thirst for
human blood. The lesbian subtext in the LeFanu original is played out con
brio by Vadim-though not in the heavily bowderlized version made
available to American audiences in 1962. Blood & Roses was
subsequently remade as The Vampire Lovers and The Blood-Spattered Bride.
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Blood And Steel (1959)
Stars: John Lupton, James
Edwards, Brett Halsey
In
this wartime adventure, four courageous Seabees infiltrate a
Japanese-controlled island to find a place to build an air-strip. A
beautiful jungle lass helps them navigate the dense forest and blow up an
enemy transmitter. The flight back to their boat is not without
casualties.
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