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Post by Rufus-T on Apr 22, 2023 19:55:21 GMT
James Taylor in Two-Lane Blacktop  |
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Post by Rufus-T on Apr 22, 2023 20:04:57 GMT
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Post by Rufus-T on Apr 22, 2023 20:08:43 GMT
The King of Rock 'n' Roll  |
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Post by Rufus-T on Apr 22, 2023 20:11:02 GMT
The King of Pop and Diana Ross in The Wiz  |
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Post by petrolino on Apr 22, 2023 20:24:05 GMT
Hilda Simms & Neil Sedaka : 'Last Orders'
Pianist Neil Sedaka was born on March 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. He's one of the most prolific songwriters of the 20th century.
"Neil Sedaka is an American singer-songwriter who has written dozens of hit songs. Many of them he sang himself. Others are better known in cover versions by artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Ariana Grande. Sedaka’s wholesome image and infectious cheerfulness are easy to slight and have too often belied an extraordinary career. His song “The Immigrant” was a Top 30 hit when he released it in 1975, but today it seems even more relevant, as debates rage in the United States over immigration, repatriation and racism.
Recent events along the U.S.-Mexican border have revealed how easy it still is for restrictionists and xenophobes to gain the upper hand, and to enact hard-line policies that inflict misery on people drawn to the U.S. in hopes of a better life. Sedaka dedicated “The Immigrant” to John Lennon, who at the time was mired in a bitter dispute with U.S. authorities over his application for permanent residence in America. “I thought the song was beautiful,” Lennon told Sedaka after watching him perform it on TV. “Yoko and I were watching and we loved it.”
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939, Sedaka was only eight-years-old when he began to attend the Juilliard School of Music on a piano scholarship. By the time he was thirteen, though, his interests had shifted decisively from classical to popular music, and after teaming up with his neighbour, the 16-year-old lyricist Howie Greenfield, they found work in the fabled Brill Building on Broadway, where professional hit-makers wrote rock ‘n’ roll songs for an exploding teenage market.
Sedaka composed songs for some of the great Black female singers of the late 1950s, including LaVern Baker (“I Waited Too Long”) and Dinah Washington (“Never Again”), but he scored his biggest success with Connie Francis, for whom he and Greenfield penned the trivial “Stupid Cupid.” Their range and growth as a songwriting team, however, was evident by 1960, when they wrote the lush ballad “Where the Boys Are,” which Francis recorded for the “spring break” movie of the same title, and which many artists have since covered."
- Robert Morrison, Professor of English Language and Literature at Queen's University, Ontario, writing for The Conversation
“I started life as a concert pianist, and then discovered I could write songs. I’ve been writing now for over 60 years. I’m very proud of the body of work, and I’m thrilled to get emails from all over the world from people who’ve enjoyed my work. I started as a child prodigy, with a piano scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York. I went to the Prep School from age nine to 17, and then onto the college level. I studied with some great teachers, such as Rosina Lhevinne. I had every intention of becoming a concert pianist, but I had to make a decision in 1958, and I decided to travel the world as a singer-songwriter, and I started recording for RCA Records. I was one of the original American rock-and-rollers, with Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly.
But I still have a great love of classical music, and my current British tour begins at the Royal Albert Hall, where they’ll be performing my symphonic piece Joie de Vivre, and I’ll be performing my Piano Concerto, Manhattan Intermezzo. So I’ve started to go back to my roots, and the Intermezzo was recorded on my last CD, The Real Neil, in the UK with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I’m very excited about that. It’s a 20-minute piece in four movements, and is a combination of all the ethnic groups of Manhattan. Being a New Yorker I wanted musically to express all of the nationalities, and the melting-pot of New York city – Chinese, Latin, Russian, German, Italian.
Yes! I was submitted (to the Tchaikovsky Competition), and they accepted me to come over to Moscow. But a few weeks before the audition was to take place they had linked my name with American capitalistic rock and roll, so I was disqualified and never got there. The Prokofiev Third Piano Sonata, Chopin’s G minor Ballade, Debussy’s Reflets dans l’Eau, and some Bach Preludes and Fugues. I won a piano competition in New York in 1956, playing that music. Artur Rubinstein was the judge, and I have a rare tape of it. I was chosen as the best New York City high school pianist, and I got to play on our classical radio station here in New York.”
- Neil Sedaka, Symphony Hall
Here he is in 'Playgirl Killer' (1968) ...
Hilda Simms (née Moses) was born on April 15, 1918 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was raised Catholic and attended the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis; the site has become the venue for the annual Basilica Block Party Music Festival, which has been described by officials as "summertime's hottest church party".
Simms knew Neil Sedaka when he was a struggling young musician in New York. Sedaka had been studying parallels between Yiddish musical forms, like Klezmer music, diverse forms of African music, and American rhythm & blues. 'The play Anna Lucasta was a breakthrough for writer Philip Yordan, who went on to a prolific career as a screenwriter. The story of a prostitute who struggles for respectability is similar to that of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie. Originally titled Anna Lukaska, Yordan's three-act drama was conceived as being about a Polish-American woman and her predatory family. When he was unable to find a Broadway producer for the play, Yordan offered it to the American Negro Theatre. Company founder Abram Hill obtained the rights and adapted it for an African-American cast. First produced in Harlem, it went on to become the first Broadway play with an all-black cast in a drama unrelated to race. The play ran for more than two years — a rare achievement at that time — and it was adapted twice for film. Anna Lucasta cast member Alice Childress was inspired to write the Obie Award-winning drama, Trouble in Mind (1955), based on her experiences in the production.'
- Wikipedia
Canada Lee, Hilda Simms, Alice Childress & Alvin Childress in 'Anna Lucasta' on Broadway [New York Public Library]
'Silent Movies'
In the 1940s, Simms performed the title role in a production of Philip Yordan's play 'Anna Lucasta' (1944) that was staged by the American Negro Theater company. The production was a success and moved from Harlem to Broadway for an extended run in the mid-1940s. Paulette Goddard later played the role of Anna Lucasta on stage, in Paris and in Irving Rapper's stately noir romance 'Anna Lucasta' (1949).
Simms is excellent in Nunnally Johnson's mystery noir 'Black Widow' (1954). 'In the 1950s, Hilda Simms was a victim of the Hollywood blacklist. The United States Department of Justice denied her passport in 1955 and canceled her scheduled 14-week USO tour of the Armed Forces in Europe, even though she had entertained troops and made War Bond tours during World War II. The Defense Department decision was based on speculation about her affiliation with the Communist Party in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The decision caused her dozens of lost opportunities and any chance of a film career evaporated. In 1960, she penned an article titled "I'm No Benedict Arnold", which told her side of the story.'
- Wikipedia
'The Negro Theatre Project was started as part of the Federal Theatre Project in 1935. It established units located in different cities and regions throughout the country. These unit sites included Seattle, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Hartford, Philadelphia, Newark, Raleigh, Durham, Birmingham, Chicago, Peoria, and Cleveland. The project provided much-needed job opportunities to African American theatre professionals and facilitated many contributions to African American arts and cultural history.
Of the Negro Theatre Project units, the New York unit, located in the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, was perhaps the most active and well known. A number of Harlem Renaissance writers, like Countee Cullen, and Arna Bontemps, found funding and new audiences for their productions through the program. White playwrights depicting African American life also staged productions through the New York unit with casts of black actors and black production teams.'
- Excerpt from 'The Show Must Go On! American Theater In The Great Depression'
'Our Last Song Together'
Notable graduates of the American Negro Theater, founded in Harlem, New York on June 5, 1940 by playwright Abram Hill & actor Frederick O'Neal (source : Wikipedia)
* Sidney Poitier
* Harry Belafonte
* Ruby Dee
* Ossie Davis
* Alice Childress
* Maxwell Granville
* Hilda Simms
* Earle Hyman
* Clarice Taylor
* Gordon Heath
* Isabel Sanford
* Roger Furman
* Rosetta LeNoire
* William Greaves
Ricardo Montalban, Daisy Bates, Lena Horne & the 'Little Rock Nine' |
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Post by Teleadm on Apr 22, 2023 20:25:51 GMT
Returning to trumpeter Harry James he did play a sheriff in forgettable b-western Outlaw Queen 1957, the titular queen was played by Andrea King.  |
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Post by Rufus-T on Apr 22, 2023 20:27:12 GMT
Olivia Newton-John in Grease
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Post by spiderwort on Apr 22, 2023 20:34:31 GMT
Peggy Lee's beautiful song, which she sang in Pete Kelley's Blues (for which she received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress). I don't know for sure if it's the track from the film, but it's close enough, almost identical. I remember it well.
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Post by Teleadm on Apr 22, 2023 20:43:10 GMT
Rhythm 'n' blues and blues legends, directed by John Landis. Bo Diddley as a pawnbroker in Trading Places 1983  B.B. King as Ace Tomato Agent (or thug) in Spies Like Us 1985.  |
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Post by petrolino on Apr 22, 2023 20:48:34 GMT
Rhythm 'n' blues and blues legends, directed by John Landis. Bo Diddley as a pawnbroker in Trading Places 1983 B.B. King as Ace Tomato Agent (or thug) in Spies Like Us 1985.
There's a lot of musicians, as well as writers and directors, who appear in John Landis movies. 'The Blues Brothers' (1980) leaps out when it comes to musicians.
Here's Carl Perkins getting heavy with Jeff Goldblum in 'Into The Night' (1985) which features a title track performed by B.B. King ...
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Post by Teleadm on Apr 22, 2023 21:02:40 GMT
The King of Swing Benny Goodman played a character in A Song Is Born 1948, many famous big band leaders and musicians also appeared but they played more or less themselves. Benny played Professor Magenbruch.
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Post by Rufus-T on Apr 22, 2023 22:17:05 GMT
Prince  |
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Post by petrolino on May 28, 2023 3:31:12 GMT
Cher in Moonstruck (1987)
Cher lost a dear friend recently in Tina Turner who hit it out the park in the 'Mad Max' series, both as actress and song performer.
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Post by Power Ranger on May 28, 2023 21:06:35 GMT
Donnie Fritts in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. I was sure that he must be an experienced actor who did a lot of theatre. He played a comical role so well. He played Beaver, who appears to be a dumb, affable guy who often repeats the last sentence of what other characters say but sometimes gets it wrong.
Anyway he’s not an experienced actor. He is a musician in Kris Kristofferson’s band and most of his film credits are in films that Kris Kristofferson appears in, and Pat Garrett was his first film.
He’s in this excellent scene
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on May 30, 2023 2:55:57 GMT
Gene Simmons, bass player and tongue extraordinaire, made a Sci-Fi movie with Tom Sellick and Kirstie Alley called Runaway. Needless to say, Simmons played the bad guy. Been a long time since I've seen it but I remember Simmons being very good in he film. It beat the hell out of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Opera but 99.9% of all movies did.
Mick Jagger was good in Ned Kelly, but, again, been forever since I've watched that.
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