#Bill Radner

[scottwellsmagic]

867: John Cox - What's New With Houdini?

As we end our “Month of Boo'“ on The Magic Word Podcast, we close it out on the 98th anniversary of the death of Harry Houdini who passed on Halloween (October 31st), 1926. It is fitting that we have a chat with the internationally noted expert on “all things Houdini,” John Cox. John is the blogger of “Wild About Houdini” which is a daily blog about the master of escapes. He always seems to find some interesting nugget about Houdini’s life that has been long overlooked or “escaped” his attention.

This week, John Cox talks about the many variations of the “Houdini Seance” since the first one by Bess Houdini first held on the year following Harry’s death. These modern day seances includes the current “Official” one hosted by Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz and the “Original” one hosted by Tom Boldt and Bill Radner. John also tells us some details about Houdini’s trial in Germany, plus he updates us on the books he is writing including the elucidation on Houdini’s diary from his early years before he rose to his legendary status.

Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. You can download or listen to the podcast through Pandora and SiriusXM (formerly Stitcher) by Clicking Here or through FeedPress by Clicking Here or through Tunein.com by Clicking Here or through iHeart Radio by Clicking Here. If you have a Spotify account, then you can also hear us through that app, too. You can also listen through your Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices. Remember, you can download it through the iTunes store, too. See the preview page by Clicking Here.

[citizenscreen]

Gilda Radner and Bill Murray enjoying the ‘I Love New York’ party at Studio 54 in 1978.

[oldshowbiz]

Recording the National Lampoon Radio Hour with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Gilda Radner

[histonics]

[aiiaiiiyo]

[coeurdeverre82]

so my library has lost the first 4 discs of snl s3 (that's eps 3.1-3.12).. if anyone could help me out with a drive link or something i would be so so grateful <3

[hearts4andysamberg]

AWWWW

snl auditions (x)

[sansthespectrumdeux]

[girlactionfigure]

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A post shared by Kveller (@kvellercom)

In this clip from season 3 of the show that had recently changed its name to ‘Saturday Night Live’, Jewish comedian Gilda Radner lights the menorah — and gets a little emotional. At the link in our bio read more and find the link to the whole sketch, featuring Radner, John Belushi, Mary Kay Place and Bill Murray. (clip via the Internet Archive)

kvellercom

[nerds-yearbook]

In Marvel Team-Up 74 (cover date October, 1978) TV Producer Lorne Michaels and the cast of Saturday Night Live (Dan Akroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Bill Murray, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner) made guest appearances. ("Live From New York, It's Saturday Night", Marvel Team-Up 74#, Marvel Comic Event)

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week (#182):

3 tap-dancing Bojangles-related musicals:

🍿 The Band Wagon is maybe not the "very best" of Vincente Minnelli's musicals, but some of its numbers are classics (It introduced the tune 'That's Entertainment' and the opening dance with a real-life, black shoe-shine man was unique.) But all this melted away at exactly mid-point, when Fred Astaire first falls for Cyd Charisse, as they take a stroll through Central Park, and start dancing together in the dark - that scene was transcendental. Even the Steve Martin and Gilda Radner Joke recreation 30 years later was nice...

Bojangles didn't appear in this movie, but his name 'Bill Robinson' kept being compared to 'Bill Shakespeare' throughout. (Screenshots Above).

🍿 Besides 'Carmen Jones', I haven't seen many of the so-called 'Race Films' before, 'Segregated Cinema' produced to black audiences, with an all-black cast. Stormy Weather is one, a plot-less musical starring the wonderful Lena Horne, Bojangles, Cab Calloway, The Nicholas Brothers, Fats Waller and 'Play it again, Sam' Dooley Wilson...

(Of the many versions of ‘Stormy Weather’, my favourite is by Ben Webster).

🍿 First watch: That's Entertainment! is a terrific compilation film, released by MGM in 1974 to celebrate the studio's 50's anniversary. It includes highlights from about 100 song and dance numbers performed by MGM enormous stable of stars and appearances by many, many of the stars from these 50 years. Since I'm getting more and more into musicals, I watched it with a giant smile on my face. 9/10.

2 (actually 3) sequels were released later, and I'm going to watch them as well. I'm also going to visit the movies of some of the famous performers (Esther Williams!) I haven't seen before.

Note; Fred Astaire is by now one of my all-time favorite actors, bar none. He has 50 screen credits on IMDb, and I've only seen about 15 of them, but I'm going to plough through the rest.

🍿

Something’s Got to Give (1962) is Marilyn Monroe's very last film, and the only one showing her butt-gloriously-naked. It's a remake of the 1940 Cary Grant screwball comedy 'My favorite wife'. It was made by George Cukor, with Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. But it's mostly remembered because it was unfinished, due to Marilyn Monroe's death.

🍿

Finally, Miyazaki's last film The boy and the heron became available. Auto-biographical, philosophical, full of pathos and whimsy, it is not the best Ghibli, but it's important as the (surely) last film from Miyazaki.

It tells of a conflicted war-time world and the flight of fancy of an orphan boy looking for his mother. Waruwaru creatures replace the Sooth-spirits from the previous films.

🍿

Another Japanese romance film, Haru from 1996. A young man and a young woman meet via the first generation online chats, two years before 'You've got mail'. Like a boring Éric Rohmer, I couldn't get into it, and quit after 30 minutes. (^ ─ ^)

🍿

Re-watch: I've been bored with much mediocrity, so I had to go back to Tati’s debut feature, the masterpiece Jour de fête (The original 1949 B&W version). Magical joy and simple physical comedy of the purest type (Fighting a bee! Raising a flag post!). I can't remember the last film with so many spontaneous belly laughs one after the other. And the innocent, idealized rusticity of a French village as it may, or may have not, have existed 100 years ago, with geese in the alleys, goat on a string, hay, rooster crows, and friendly pubs. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes. 10/10. ♻️. Extra: How Tati Directs Beautiful Comedy, an interesting YouTube essay from ‘This Beautiful Fraud’.

🍿

2 by Pixar’s Kelsey Mann:

🍿 I loved the first ‘Inside Out’ and saw it many times, with Adora, and, later, without. I was excited to wait for the new Inside out 2. But it’s clearly a product of lesser qualities. The 13 year-old hockey-loving Reily enter “Puberty”. This is depicted with genuine fondness, and is a joy to behold. But the manufactured world of her inner thoughts, which worked before, when they were few and clearly defined, is now muddled, loud and artificial. It suffers from being a sequel, a financial construct which rarely works. 4/10.

🍿 His first short, Party central (2013) was a Monster University appendage, a zero-calories suck-fest. 1/10.

🍿

2 by French Guillaume Canet, both with François Cluzet:

🍿  "User name: Concert. Password: Olympia."

My 3rd or 4th re-watch of the tense nail-biter Tell no one. A modern slow-built Hitchockian thriller about an innocent doctor accused in the murder of his wife. The director, good-looking actor Guillaume Canet, decided for some reason to play the role of the sadistic rapist

The first time I saw it, I awarded it 7/10. But now I give it a 9/10. The final explanation ties the many twists too tightly and nicely together perhaps, but It's still a terrific 'Guilty Pleasure'. Highly recommended! ♻️.

🍿  His Little white lies is an ensemble drama, a bit like 'The big Chill', with many current French stars: François Cluzet, Marion Cotillard, Benoît Magimel, Jean Dujardin... A group of about 15 close friends deal with small personal problems, after one of them, the 'Glue' that held them together, is gravely injured in an accident. In the opening of the film, he rides his bike drunk in the empty streets of Paris, and a van suddenly crashes into him (All in one shot, just like the beginning of Erin Brockovich.)

It's semi-interesting, meandering drama, especially as they spend leisure time on 'les grandes vacances' at a beach house, boating, eating fresh oysters, playing the guitar, and enjoying the pretty locales. But at 2.5 hours long, it lost its focus halfway in. 3/10.

🍿  

Sean Penn is a decent director. He's also driven to get involved with large-scale disasters around the world, in Sudan, Haiti, New Orleans after Katrina, Etc. Superpower is the 4th of his 8 movies directed by him that I've seen. It's a semi-personal documentary about the war in Ukraine and the special relationship he managed to develop with Volodymyr Zelensky (He interviewed him on the day before the invasion, and again on the night of the invasion). It's not too insightful, but he did put himself at harm's way to make it. This war is too tragic and historically-significant to be ignored.

(I was going to follow that up with the other doc., '20 Days in Mariupol', but didn't).

🍿 '

“The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel, but I didn’t move.”

Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles is a 1988 documentary, narrated by Richard Widmark. It tells of a fascinating British writer living in a mythical and dark city. And specifically about the 'The Clifton bombing' affair of 1938. Corruption at City Hall and crooked Police Force, the real-life morbid inspiration to the much sunnier 'Chinatown'. But the doc. itself is not very good.

How come nobody ever made a movie about the gambling ships out in the water outside long beach and Santa Monica, f. ex. 'The Rex'?

🍿

A random Vimeo short, Caroline, was not what I expected from the poster! A mother to 3 small kids, is under a lot of stress, and leaves them in a parked car while she goes of for a quick job interview. It's so raw, and tense, and harrowing, it's really hard to sit through. Amazingly realistic, I don't ever want to see it again. Celine Held, the director, who also plays the mother, is a force to be reckoned with. 9/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿

2 silent Buster Keaton 2-reelers:

🍿 The Paleface (1922) is filled with very out-dated racial trops. Villainous oil barons are murdering Indians with impunity, stealing the deed to their land, and banishing them from said lands. The 'Redfaces' are bumbling, scalping 'savages' who burn palefaces at the stake. There's even a nod to good ol' asbestos. But there are some outrageously daring stunts here, as he falls a few times from great heights.

🍿 Obviously, Keaton was not a golfer. He tried, but soon found himself in prison, mistaken for Convict 13 (2020), and sentenced to be hanged.

🍿

Throw-back to the Adora Art project:  

Buster Keaton Adora.

Adora in Los Angeles.

Inside out Adora.

🍿  

(My complete movie list is here).

[gregarnott]

Bill Murray and Gilda Radner

[oldshowbiz]

Gilda Radner as Lucille Ball and Alan Zweibel as Gary Morton

[kwebtv]

Gilda Radner: It's Always Something - ABC - April 29, 2002

Biography

Running Time: 120 minutes

Stars:

Jami Gertz as Gilda Radner

Tom Rooney as Gene Wilder

George Wyner as Herman Radner

Eric Siegel as John Belushi

John Viener as Chevy Chase

Patrick Fischler as Eugene Levy

Marcia Bennett as Mrs. Elizabeth Clementine "Dibby" Gilles

Dixie Seatle as Joanna Bull

Danilo Di Julio as Dan Aykroyd

Maureen Ross Neilson as Laraine Newman

Jennifer Irwin as Jane Curtin

Kathryn Winslow as Judy

Ari Cohen as Lorne Michaels

Mather Zickel as Bill Murray

[aiiaiiiyo]

[misforgotten2]

Playbill from the very last performance of The National Lampoon Show, July 1975. Belushi and Radner went right into Saturday Night Live from here. Bill Murray didn’t join SNL until the next season.

I was there.