Tag Archives: Academy Awards

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor

On November 27 1936, the movie ‘Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor’ was released. The movie has brought me quite a bit of childhood trauma. It was used to facilitate a lie. I was told that if I would follow the diet of Popeye I too would get his superhuman powers. But I never did .

Ok, joking aside who wasn’t told that if you would eat spinach you’d become as strong as Popeye?

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor is a 1936 two-reel animated cartoon short subject film in the Popeye Color Feature series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on November 27, 1936 by Paramount Pictures.[3] It was produced by Max Fleischer for Fleischer Studios, Inc. and directed by Dave Fleischer, with the title song by Sammy Timberg. The voice cast includes Jack Mercer as Popeye and J. Wellington Wimpy, Mae Questel as Olive Oyl and Gus Wickie as Sindbad the Sailor.

In 2004, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

This short was the first of the three Popeye Color Specials, which, at over sixteen minutes each, were billed as “A Popeye Feature.” It was also the first Popeye color cartoon in general. Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor was nominated for the 1936 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, but lost to Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony The Country Cousin. Footage from this short was later used in the 1952 Famous Studios Popeye cartoon Big Bad Sindbad, in which Popeye relates the story of his encounter with Sindbad to his 3 nephews.

The Popeye Color Specials, also including Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves, and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (both of which were also adapted from a story featured in One Thousand and One Nights) are in the public domain, and are widely available on home video and DVD, often transferred from poor quality, old, faded prints. A fully restored version with the original Paramount mountain logo opening and closing titles is available on the Popeye the Sailor: 1933-1938, Volume 1 DVD set from Warner Bros.

Producer and special effects artist Ray Harryhausen stated in his Fantasy Film Scrapbook that Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor was a major influence on his production of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

In 1994, the film was voted #17 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field, making it the highest ranked Fleischer Studios cartoon in the book.

sources

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/PopeyeTheSailorMeetsSindbadTheSailor

https://www.loc.gov/item/mbrs00068306/

The Assassination of Fake Krist

On 25 October 1944, Fake Krist, a fanatic employee of the German Sicherheitsdienst, was shot dead by the Haarlem resistance, in the Netherlands Initially, the attack was attributed to Hannie Schaft’s resistance group, but later it turned out that a police squad with members from Halfweg, resistance group had liquidated Fake Krist. To this end, a rifle had been set up in a piano in a school gymnasium the day before. When the resistance wanted to enter the school, it was interrupted by a janitor who had to be tied up. Then, with a few gunshots, on his bicycle, anxious Krist was liquidated.

The book The Assault by Harry Mulisch is based on the attack.

Fake Krist was a member of the NSB and a police officer. He was very active in the persecution of resistance members, people in hiding, and Jews. Nico Sikkel gave the order to liquidate him. The plan was to shoot him from the school on Westergracht, across the street from where Krist was staying. This required a sniper. Gommert Krijger and Jan Overzet were approached for this. Hannie Schaft and Truus Oversteegen had also been instructed to liquidate Fake Krist; they happened to be present in Haarlem on the same day to see the liquidation take place before their own eyes. Reprisals followed immediately.

The Nazis retaliated the attack on Fake Krist by first selecting ten men from the prison of the Weteringschans in Amsterdam and bringing them to Haarlem. Secondly, they executed the ten men in public at the park behind the Cathedral Basilica of St. Bavo.

In addition, the Nazis also set fire to a block of four houses on the Westergracht.

One day after the attack, two German military trucks stopped early in the morning at the park behind the Bavo. The civil servant Johan van Rijn saw it happen from his bedroom window.

Passers-by were forced to watch the Germans retaliate. The resistance fighter Truus Oversteegen was there. With others, she was stopped when she happened to pass by. Five men jumped handcuffed from one of the trucks. They were set up in front of the gate of the park. When the guns were put to the shoulders, an old man hesitantly began to sing the Wilhelmus, the Dutch National anthem. A machine gun volley sounded and the men were killed. Immediately afterwards, five other men suffered the same fate. As an additional measure of reprisal, four houses on the corner Leidsezijstraat-Westergracht were destroyed. They had to be evacuated within 45 minutes and went up in flames. The inhabitants couldn’t take much more than a few clothes they’d hastily snatched from the coat rack.

The Dutch author Harry Mulisch wrote the book The Assault in 1982, based on the events of 25-26 October 1944. In 1986 Dutch Film Director Fons Rademakers made a movie based on the book. It was also called The Assault and received the Oscar in 1987 for best film in a foreign language.

sources

Haarlem – the assault on Fake Krist
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/bron/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beeldbank.noord-hollandsarchief.nl%2Fmemorix%2F7a55e338-2a53-f1aa-463a-5f429e5c54a7
https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/detail/e287bd52-0259-11e7-904b-d89d6717b464/media/2ac00a30-2a1e-c37a-c6fa-64702cdfff79?mode=detail&view=horizontal&q=Fake%20Krist&rows=1&page=1

And the winner is?…..

The highlight of the year for the movie industry is without a doubt, or at least it used to be. But when did it all start?

In 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) was established by Louis B. Mayer, the founder of the Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation, which then would be joined into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Mayer’s purpose in creating the award was to unite the five branches of the film industry, actors, directors, producers, technicians, and writers. However it would take until 1929 before the first ceremony was held.

The first Academy Awards ceremony, held on May 16, 1929, was more like a corporate banquet than the star-studded spectacular we expect today. (It merited only a tiny, two-paragraph notice in The Times.) The location was the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, with roughly 270 people plunking down $5 per ticket. “It was just a family affair,” Janet Gaynor, winner of the first Academy Award for best actress, told The Times in 1982.

“I remember there was an orchestra, and as you danced, you saw most of the important people in Hollywood whirling past you on the dance floor. It was more like a private party than a big public ceremony.”

Douglas Fairbanks, the M.C. of the evening, handed out all 15 statues. Only five performers were nominated, and just two of them — Gaynor and Louise Dresser — were in attendance, as Gloria Swanson and Richard Barthelmess were traveling. Emil Jannings, the best actor winner, had returned to his native Germany, though he asked for, and received, his award before he left.

At the time of the first Oscar ceremony, sound had just been introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer—one of the first “talkies”—was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because the Academy decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent films.

The distribution of the awards, by most accounts, clocked in at about 15 minutes.

The first official Best Picture winner was Wings, directed by William Wellman. The most expensive movie of its time, with a budget of $2 million, the movie told the story of two World War I pilots who fall for the same woman. Another film, F.W. Murnau’s epic Sunrise, was considered a dual winner for the best film of the year. German actor Emil Jannings won the Best Actor honor for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while 22-year-old Janet Gaynor was the only female winner. After receiving three out of the five Best Actress nods, she won for all three roles, in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise.Back then, actors and actresses could win for more than one performance.

The Academy officially adopted the name “Oscar” for the trophies in 1939. However, the origin of the nickname is disputed.

One biography of Bette Davis, who was a president of the Academy in 1941, claims she named the award after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson. A frequently mentioned originator is Margaret Herrick, the Academy executive director, who, when she first saw the award in 1931, said the statuette reminded her of “Uncle Oscar”, a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce.

sources

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-academy-awards-ceremony

https://www.oscars.org/videos-photos/academy-originals

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Miloš Forman’s extraordinary life..

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Amadeus, Goya’s Ghosts; Man on he Moon, these are some of my favourite movies. They were all directed by Miloš Forman. For two of them he received an academy award aka Oscar. That on its own is extraordinary, but it is nothing compared to Miloš’s story of his young life.

Miloš was born on February 18, 1932 in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) to Anna Švábová Forman who ran a summer hotel. Miloš grew up believing his biological father was professor Rudolf Forman. During the Nazi occupation, Rudolf Forman, a protestant teacher and activist, was arrested for distributing banned books. He died in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in May 1944, either from typhus or during interrogation. Miloš’s mother had been murdered in Auschwitz in March the previous year, he had been witness to her arrest by the Gestapo. Forman said that he did not fully understand what had happened to them until he saw footage of the concentration camps when he was 16.

Miloš’ was raised by two uncles and by family friends after the murder of his parents . His older brother Pavel was a painter 12 years his senior and he emigrated to Australia after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Miloš discovered in 1964 that his biological father was in fact the Jewish architect Otto Kohn, who had emigrated with his family to Equador after the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. This meant Miloš had a half-brother, the mathematician Joseph J. Kohn.

Miloš died on April 19,2018 aged 86.However if the Nazis had found out his biological Father was Jewish, he more then likely not have survived the Holocaust.

I am not sure if the story of that part of Miloš ‘s life has ever been turned into a movie, it would make a fascinating film.

sources

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001232/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

https://www.timesofisrael.com/milos-forman-from-orphan-of-nazi-camps-to-oscar-winning-director/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Milo-Forman

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/15/milos-forman-obituary

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Happy Birthday Henry Mancini-Legendary composer and WWII Hero

American composer and conductor Enrico Nicola “Henry” Mancini was born in Cleveland on April 16 in 1924.But he grew up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute flute with his father in an Italian immigrant music group called “Sons of Italy”,

At age eight, Mancini started to learn to play the piccolo.

He later studied piano and orchestral arrangement under Pittsburgh concert pianist and Stanley Theatre, currently called Benedum Center, conductor Max Adkins. Adkins also introduced Mancini to the up and coming bandleader Benny Goodman. So additionally to producing arrangements for the Stanley Theatre bands, Mancini also wrote one for Benny Goodman.

In 1942 Mancini went to the Juilliard School of Music in New York after a year at Carnegie Tech, but he never finished his studies. He was drafted to fight in World War II, in 1943 when he turned 18, and served in both the Army air forces and the infantry. During the war, he got to know some musicians who played in Glenn Miller’s Army Air Corps Band.

Mancini was first assigned to the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France. In 1945 he ,participated in the liberation of the Austrian Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.

After the war, Mancini arranged music and played piano for Miller’s band.

He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won four; in addition, he won 20 Grammys and 2 Emmys, made over 50 albums and had 500 works published. Mancini worked extensively together with Blake Edwards ,initially on TV’s Peter Gunn (1958), then on Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), which won him two Oscars; he won further Oscars for the titles song for Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and the score for Victor Victoria (1982); he will be best-remembered for the theme tune for The Pink Panther.

Mancini died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles on June 14, 1994. He was working at the time on the Broadway stage version of Victor/Victoria, which he never saw on stage. Mancini was survived by his wife of 43 years, singer Virginia “Ginny” O’Connor, with whom he had three children.

Finishing the blog with the theme for the Pink Panther and Moon River of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The song I have often sung for my daughter as a lullaby.

sources

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000049/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/06/15/henry-mancini-1924-1994-his-work-was-music-for-the-ear-and-the-eye/

https://www.theglassfiles.com/images/1099

https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/Henry_Mancini

https://biography.yourdictionary.com/henry-mancini

In Old Arizona- The innovative movie that nearly didn’t get made due to a Jackrabbit.

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In Old Arizona is a 1928 American Western film directed by Irving Cummings and Raoul Walsh, nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film, which was based on the character of the Cisco Kid in the story “The Caballero’s Way” by O. Henry, was a major innovation in Hollywood. It was the first major Western to use the new technology of sound and the first talkie to be filmed outdoors. It made extensive use of authentic locations, filming in Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park in Utah, and the Mission San Juan Capistrano and the Mojave Desert in California. The film premiered in Los Angeles on December 25, 1928 and went into general release on January 20, 1929.

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Raoul Walsh was cast as the Cisco Kid, as well as being the director; but during a return drive to Los Angeles from Utah, a jackrabbit jumped through the windshield of Walsh’s car, with both the rabbit and the broken glass hitting Walsh in the face. (Safety glass was added to cars the following year.) The damage to Walsh’s right eye necessitated replacing him in the lead role, re-writing the script and re-shooting some scenes with a different director while Walsh recuperated; Walsh thereafter wore the eye patch for which he was known, and eventually lost the eye entirely. Some footage of Walsh, in chase scenes and long shots, remains in the film.

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In Old Arizona contributed to creating the image of the singing cowboy, as its star, Warner Baxter, does some incidental singing. Baxter went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

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Other nominations included Best Director for Irving Cummings, Best Writing for Tom Barry, Best Cinematography for Arthur Edeson, and Best Picture.

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Education for Death- and other WWII propaganda movies.

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During WWII Hollywood did not sit still, it actively contributed to the US propaganda machine.

These propaganda movies were not done by unknown or obscure movie makers. They were done by some of the biggest studios in Tinseltown.One of the more surprising was no other then Walt Disney.

Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi is an animated propaganda short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released on January 15, 1943, by RKO Radio Pictures, directed by Clyde Geronimi and principally animated by Ward Kimball. The short is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by American author Gregor Ziemer.

A propaganda look into the mind of Hans, a boy born into a German family. Watch as his attitude about the value of human life degrades as he is exposed to Hitler Youth and other Nazi organizations and attitudes.In the end, Hans and the rest of the German soldiers march off to war only to fade into rows of identical graves, with nothing on them except a swastika and a helmet perched on top. Thus Hans’s education is complete – “his education… for death.”

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Der Fuehrer’s Face (originally titled Donald Duck in Nutzi Land) is a 1942 American animated anti-Nazi propaganda short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released in 1943 by RKO Radio Pictures.

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In World War II, a marching band playing “Der Fuehrer’s Face” passes by Donald Duck’s house. He awakes, has a poor breakfast with stale bread. Then he goes to an army factory where he works in the production of ammunition brainwashed by the Nazi propaganda. Donald Duck has a nervous breakdown with the stressed situation but when he awakes, he finds that he had a nightmare and he actually lives in United States of America.

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Der Fuehrer’s Face won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 15th Academy Awards. It was the only Donald Duck film to receive the honor.

Given the fact that Adolf Hitler actually had been a great fan of Disney movies,Snow White was his favourite movie, this surely would have antagonized him.

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Gregor Ziemer’s book Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi was also used for another 1943 movie”Hitler’s Children”.

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Hitler’s Children is a 1943 American black-and-white propaganda film made by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by the Canadian-American director, Edward Dmytryk, from an adaptation by Emmet Lavery of Gregor Ziemer’s book Education For Death.

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This propaganda piece starts in 1933. Prof. Nichols’ American school in Berlin is next door to a school for the Hitler Youth. Karl, from the latter, is attracted to German-American Anna, but events lead to their separation. Six years later, near the outbreak of war in Europe, Anna is removed from Nichols’ school on presumption of German citizenship. Nichols becomes obsessed with finding her, as Anna undergoes a rather lurid odyssey through the Nazi nightmare.

Hitler – Dead or Alive is a 1942 American war film directed by Nick Grinde.

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The plot of this film was inspired by true events. During the early stages of World War II a prominent American businessman offered a reward of one million dollars to bring Adolf Hitler to justice, dead or alive. Russell Hicks plays the part of the American businessman in this film who hires three gangster ex-convicts released from Alcatraz prison. The gangsters are played by Ward Bond, Warren Hymer and Paul Fix.

The quasi-comic tone of the film turns dead serious at the end, when a desperate Hitler makes a break for it and is shot by the SS officer in charge, who states disdainfully (and ironically): “To think that Germany could produce a piece of filth like you”, and Bond makes a long patriotic speech while facing a firing squad.

In November 2012, while being interviewed by Playboy magazine, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino admitted the inspiration for his film Inglourious Basterds came from Hitler – Dead or Alive.

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The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler is a US-american film,directed by James P. Hogan. It’s probably more of a War movie then Propaganda film. The film follows a man who plans to murder Adolf Hitler and steal his identity.

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A clerk in 1942 Vienna who has a gift for mimicry, is arrested for doing a Hitler impression. The Gestapo decide to give him plastic surgery to look like Hitler so he can take his place in public, acting as a decoy for assassination attempts.

The Hitler Gang is a 1944 American pseudo-documentary film directed by John Farrow, which traces the political rise of Adolf Hitler.

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Described as a “documentary-propaganda” film by its studio, Paramount Pictures, the historical drama is based on documented fact and marks the first serious effort to portray Hitler in film. The filmmakers chose to avoid casting stars in the lead roles, assembling instead a remarkable company of lookalikes to play Hitler, Goebbels, Hess and other leading Nazis.

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This movie shows us the rise of Adolf Hitler from a small radical political adventurer to the dictator of Germany in the way of a gangster film. Except for some minor inaccuracies the historical facts are given in a correct way.

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Herbert Brenon-Forgotten Irish Oscar nominated Movie Director

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I pride myself to be a bit of a movie buff, but to my amazement I had never heard of this Oscar nominated and ‘Photo Play-Medal of Honor’ winner.

Today marks his 140th birthday. He has been credited for directing at least 124 movies and shorts, which is an amazing feat by any measure.

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Herbert Brenon (13 January 1880 – 21 June 1958) born Alexander Herbert Reginald St. John Brenon was an Irish film director, actor and screenwriter during the era of silent movies through the 1930s.

He was born at 25 Crosthwaite Park, in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, to journalist, poet and politician Edward St John Brenon and Francis Harries.

In 1882, the family moved to London, where Herbert was educated at St Paul’s School and at King’s College London.

 

 

Before becoming a director, he performed in vaudeville acts with his wife, Helen Oberg. Started as a stagehand in New York. By 1909 he operated a small picture theatre in Pennsylvania. Two years later he was hired as a writer by Carl Laemmle, directing his first short the next year. Signed by William Fox in 1915, graduating to feature films.

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Some of his more noteworthy films were the first movie adaptations of Peter Pan (1924) and Beau Geste (1926),and Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928) with Lon Chaney.

 

For the 1927 movie “Sorrell and Son” about a a decorated war hero, who raises his son Kit alone after Kit’s mother deserts husband and child in the boy’s infancy, he was nominated for the Academy Award for best director ,dramatic pictures, at the First ever Oscars(Academy Awards) in 1929.

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Unfortunately he lost out to Frank Borzage for his picture “7th Heaven”

 

Regarded sound pictures with a measure of apprehension. Returned to Britain in 1934, but his career was well on the decline and he retired in 1940.His last movie “The Flying Squad”  he shot in London in 1940. It was based on a novel by Edgar Wallace in which the officers of the Flying Squad attempt to tackle a drug-smuggling organisation. The novel had previously been filmed in 1929 and 1932.

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He died in Los Angeles, California and was interred in a private mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY. Survived by a son, Dr. Herbert Cyril Brenon.

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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