The Docking Pilot

 

Soviet space art, Google

A relic from the 70s, when I'd been doing weird late-nite radio for only a few years.  The piece at the end is Ilhan Mimaroglu's Prelude Number 16 from "Face the Windwills and Turn Left" on Finnadar Records.

 The Docking Pilot (4:39)

The F Production

Tex Avery, NW Hounded Police

This week's post is from Classic Television- The FBI, with Efrem Zimbalist, jr.   (The announcer always said it so we wouldn't confuse him with other Efrem jrs running around out there.)  And Philip Abbott, with the most obvious "credits" joke in TV history.  And special guest stars.

The F Production (1:51)

 

American Fantasy

 Here's a leftover shot from last week, "All Through the Night" (1942): Dame Judith Anderson kissing her dog.

 Aww...Even Dame Judith loves her doggy.  I happen to admire Dame Judith, for her imperturbability.

 

 

She's got as much cool as George Sanders, if not more.  But people do love their dogs.  Thomas Jefferson used to take his dog to work.

 

 

Which brings us to today's bit.  I try to stay away from political stuff, because of the expiration date (anyone want to hear this stuff about W?)  But I was thinking about politics in popular culture, and contrasting today's atmosphere with the sort of lionization our founders received in Radio's Golden Age.  What if they'd been faced with a successful Benedict Arnold?  It might have gone something like this...

 

American Fantasy (5:23)

Old TV: "All Through the Night" with Peter Lorre's personal face illuminator

 "All Through the Night" (1941) is a Humphrey Bogart film, where a gang of Runyonesque sharpies uncover a plot by Nazi saboteurs to mine New York harbor and blow up America's newest battleship, right under our noses.  (Don't ask me how it got there.)  It was made between "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca", and cast Peter Lorre as a Nazi enforcer who goes around with his own scary face light.

 

 

This effect, of course, was used all the time to enhance scariness, especially in chiaroscuro epics of the 30s and 40s, where direct light is pretty scanty.  It seems to raise the emotional heat, especially around cold-fish killers like Pepi, here.

The effect is so strong- something like that Twilight Zone episode, "The Purple Testament"- it illuminates his face when all around is normal light,

 

My guess is, the light's attached to his waist somehow, it sticks out about a foot or two, and has a little reflector, angled up, like a teeny photographer's light.

Ohh, kids, highly scary!

Uh-oh, now it's on this guy!  Maybe the Nazis are just really into mood lighting.

 

Nazi-mood lighting.

 

So, the Nazi saboteurs have a big meeting, where Pepi scopes out the crowd in his inconspicuous way (the guy with all the light up in his face)-

Bogey pretends to be one of them, and catches wise to the plot (on account of, the whole meeting being in English)-

 Which blows his cover with Pepi, and his light-

 - and they both rush upstairs to tell Conrad Veidt.

 Who has a crazy idea, even for a Nazi, of attacking the battleship with a speedboat filled with TNT.  Pepi's reaction is predictable:

 "You stupid eediot!"  

I'm not sure whether to include the ending, but I will say that Evil meets its fate in an appropriately-illuminated way.  They invented Technicolor, and chiaroscuro was wiped off the Silver Screen. 

Bye-bye, and buy bonds.  

 

 

Oceans 11 (1960), Main Titles

 

Frank Sinatra's film, Nelson Riddle's music.  Plus exploding credits by animator Saul Bass.  This has to be the 60-est movie intro of all time.  

I'm including the more-or-less complete credits for their full Saul Bass effect, but if you just want to hear them blow the roof off and keep playing on top of it, I recommend the second one.  The energy is more direct, and that clarinet is crazy. 

Saul Bassified-version (2:53)

Just the Band (1:37)

Mrs Housewife

 

(1:33) Living chemistry through better.  If I do one of these every week, maybe we'll get enough for an Old Time Cutup Radio stream.  

Play

Speed of G

 (0:45) Continuing to play out the string of old bits while trying to establish a routine that delivers fresh audio every week.  This one was up a decade ago, might have made it onto the Bandcamp collections.  Or not.  Kind of running out of this stuff.  

No picture this week because Google's started asking for special cookie access, and I'm already a little weirded-out by their map change to The United States of Bonerland-- no, that was Bart Simpson.  Anyway, changes may be coming.  But you may rest assured that Cutupsound will continue to post, if not new audio, extremely unfamiliar audio, every Sunday around noon.  (Except for Old TV Guy Day, second Sunday.)  And now, this week's bit.

Play