Tidbits for May, 2022

Richard Denning and Angela Stevens have fun before the radio-controlled atomic-powered zombies arrive in Creature with the Atom Brain (1955).

Vincent Price and Nancy Kovack in Diary of a Madman (1963) 

Aline MacMahon, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and Ginger Rogers in Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Géraldine Pailhas and Benoît Poelvoorde in Hikers (1997)

Mary Astor and Ann Harding as sisters in Holiday (1930)

Randolph Scott and Nancy Carroll in Hot Saturday (1932)

Ann Dvorak and Ruth Donnelly in Housewife (1934)

Pierre Richard in Le Distrait (1970)

Pat O'Brien is an ace reporter in Consolation Marriage (1931).

John Darrow and Daphne Pollard in The Lady Refuses (1931)

Doris Day and Jack Carson take an ocean cruise in Romance On The High Seas (1948).

Carolyn Seymour and Harry H. Corbett in Steptoe and Son (1972) 

Alberto Rabagliati lights director Frank Borzage's cigarette on the set of  Street Angel (1928).

Annabella Incontrera in The Assassination Bureau (1969)

Clive Revill and Annabella Incontrera in The Assassination Bureau (1969)

Paul Meurisse in The Black Monocle (1962)

Dom DeLuise and Doris Day in The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

Trevor Howard and Maria Schell are ill-fated lovers in The Heart of The Matter (1953).

Boys find a new way to watch movies in The House of Flickers (1925).

Catherine Spaak in The Way of the Baboons (1974)

A Town Like Alice (1956)

Black Rainbow (1989)

Charles Conklin is an ice cream man in Because of You (1952).

Edward Everett Horton

Peter Sellers sings the George Formby classic "When I'm Cleaning Windows."

Scott Adams has wisely spoken out against modern films on his Twitter feed.  He wrote on August 3, 2021: 

Movies have always been part entertainment, part brainwashing.  But now that the brainwashing part is the dominant element, movies no longer have a useful place in society.

He wrote a few months later:

Movies are no longer a viable product.  We get 2-3 hours of nothing but feeling uncomfortable and bored.

An article that I published in July, "How to Pretend to Be Drunk," spotlighted character actors who specialized in playing comic drunks.  I gave special attention to Arthur Housman and Frank McHugh.  Today, I have additional clips of both actors at work.  Here, Housman arrives thoroughly drunk at a speakeasy in Her Bodyguard (1933).

McHugh gets drunk during a long stagecoach ride in Virginia City (1940).

Fans of The Odd Couple (1968) are familiar with this classic remark from Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau):

I hate little notes on my pillow.  Like this morning. "We're all out of cornflakes.  F.U."  It took me three hours to figure out that "F.U." was Felix Unger.

A similar joke occurs during this conversation between Glenda Farrell and Mary Brian in Girl Missing (1933).  

This clip is a good addition to my "Stair Masters" article.

Billy Bevan as a copper in Rebecca (1940)

Bevan runs into trouble as a motorcycle cop in Widow From Monte Carlo (1935).

Updates

I have updated my previous Tidbits article.  I included a couple of more examples of the head through a painting gag.  I also posted one more example of a split screen joining a man and woman together in a suggestive side-by-side tableau. 

Here is an extensive update of my camera-in-the-fireplace article.

I added postscript to my "Two Guys from Texas" article.