New Private Life of Peg Lynch ep today! Link here, embed at the bottom.
It’s Halloween, of course, and so we need some retro stuff because that is what we do here. Time to hit the old newspaper archives!
Huh: hardly anything. In the 20s and 30s, society notes of parties. In 1953, the movie page had a few items:
I didn’t know that Halloween Corsages were necessary. Perhaps no one else did, either.
The Claco Drive-in, in Liberty MO, had quite a program for the evening. Looks like I cut it off - can't tell what it said. "It's no trick" is obvious but what could the rest possibly be
That’s a big bill. Fighting Fools was a Bowery Boys picture. The last two were shorts. Some of the other movies were mid-length, an hour and fifteen minutes. You can in the middle of something no matter when you showed up, I guess. Not very Halloweenie; you’d think they would run monster movies. But no one did.
CALLING ALL HEP CATS
They were still saying Hep Cats in 1953? I guess so.
Donuts had a much larger role in Halloween than we might think today.
Halloween Mystery, rushed into theaters!
It has a cat, must be scary! No. Nothing supernatural about it.
A whole page, in 1933: a rather tedious accounting.
A festival of boilerplate:
Throngs of masqueraders crowd sidewalks and dance floors. Small boys stick pins in doorbells and carry off movable porch furniture.
I’d be damned peeved if I had to roam the neighborhood looking for my porch furniture.
Boys push away automobiles, tie ropes across streets, break milk bottles and deposit gates in nearby treetops.
The din of blaring horns, banging bells and shrill whistles fills the air. Confetti and paper streamers are everywhere, while professional purveyors of good cheer and fun rejoice in extra-heavy business on Halloween.
It’s changed, a lot. And one might say “for the better.”
One of the Halloween Traditions: it probably died out because no one ever saw the likeness of their future hubby.
Ah well see she was spearing apple chunks that's the problem you have to hold it and eat it
Okay, B.L. Zeebub.
It will be a short one here, I think - early, with the kids coming out to get it over before they freeze to death. Monday night saw snow. It's starting early. Too early. But I'm not going to fight it. It's here and that's fine. The world has changed and there's naught we can do about it.
To be honest I can't tell you the last time I saw something on TV that was frightening. Unnerving, perhaps. Unsettling. But once there was something on TV that set the standard for genuinely frightening, as in "chills and a visceral reaction to the images for years, if not decades, to come."
But first, the setting of the stage. Daughter asked me if I'd seen The Cowboy and the Frenchman by Lynch. I hadn't!
Automatic subtitles need to get better, is all I'm saying.
That, of course, is the peerless Harry Dean Stanton. He is a cowboy among other cowboys, and they encounter a Frenchman.
I actually wonder if Lynch wrote the subtitles, just for fun.
Not sure I can argue with this:
You'll note Jack Nance -
Pete from Twin Peaks on the left, part of Lynch's stable. The guy on the right: Tracey Walter, the Joker's lead hench in the 1989 Batman.
Now we're talkin':
The machines completely lose the ability to understand the broad cowboy accent:
I mean, you can't even reconstruct anyting from that.
It's ridiculous and fun, a festival of cliches. There's an Indian, played by Micheal Horse, who was of course Deputy Hawk in Twin Peaks.
But here's the thing that made me say Oh. Oh my gosh.
Two people from the crew. They knew each other before. And neither had any idea how famous they would become, or why.
Shouldn't have to explain! SHOULD BE OBVIOUS TO ALL! Says the man with the niche interests.
Anyone want to help out in the comments?
It’s 1924, and we’re in Bakersfield.
Redlick’s! The store you know.
In fact, you know it so well we don’t even have to tell you where it is.
I found the locations, but there’s nothing there. Let’s explore the ad and see the variety of styles and images they used.
Our old store, which you know well, was a place of bargains and fine merchandise!
Celebrating that oh-so-special 28th anniversary:
From little acorns, you know!
Dame fashion says big muff-cuffs are in:
The copy says “$75 would be a reasonable price on many of these suits.” Holy crow, even $55 was a lot of hay, no? That’s almost a thousand clams today.
Some homey domestic clip-art to herald the Wear-Ever pots & pans demonstration. The 20s loved their homey story-book ad cuts.
We were assured that Miss Viola Anderson would be on hand.
It was a civic calling, running a dry-goods store.
Football uniforms were different in those days. They included big reflective areas that blinded the opposition when the sun’s rays struck them just right.
Laline, a pretty young woman, falls in love with Dion, a young sculptor, but her mother wants her to marry a wealthy Englishman. Laline and Dion are visiting the gravesite of Laline's brother with a priest, and a cave-in traps the three in some long-abandoned underground barracks.
The film no longer exists.
Hell, you’re surprised when anything of this era does.
