#m: for me and my gal (1942)

[musicalfilm]

musical films leading men [pt. 1]

christopher plummer, the sound of music fred astaire, you were never lovelier danny kaye, on the riviera gene kelly, for me and my gal donald o’connor, call me madam bing crosby, here is my heart

[philsmeatylegss]

Decided to do the Abu Ghraib prison as a project for one of my history classes. Not too big of a project; I have to do three a semester and they have to be detailed, but not like a final. Knew of Abu Ghraib, knew it was bad and a war crime and all that. I’ve skimmed only a few articles and yall,,,, I have never felt more like an ignorant dumb American than I have right now. Dark shit doesn’t affect me. I’m really interested in it. This is really one of the first times I’ve researched something and I’ve had to look away. I love history so much and I am so happy I am studying it and choosing to go into the field for a job, but sometimes you stumble upon something and you realize why ignorance is bliss.

[vietlad]

Gene Kelly & Judy Garland as Harry Palmer & Jo Hayden in For Me and My Gal (1942) dir. Busby Berkeley

[mostlydaydreaming]

Gene Kelly & Judy Garland in “For Me and My Gal” (1942)

[hayscodeviolation]

JUDY GARLAND in FOR ME AND MY GAL (1942) dir. Busby Berkeley

[anotherfanofhers]

Judy Garland with Gene Kelly, George Murphy and a visitor between scenes of For Me and My Gal (1942).

[cinemaocd]

Jenny's ongoing list of films watched 2024

January

RRR (2023)*

Peter's Friends (1992)*

The Lady Eve (1941)

How to Get a Head in Advertising (1988)*

High Fidelity (2000)

Frieda (1947)*

Oh...Rosalinda! (1955)

The Quick and the Dead (1995)*

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)*

The Life and Death of Col. Blimp (1943) Commentary Track (2012)*

Rhubarb (1951)*

The Birds (1963)*

House of Yes (1997)*

Cassandra Cat (1963)*

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Night of the Comet (1984)

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)*

For Me and My Gal (1942)*

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The Small, Back Room (1949)

House of Games (1987)

Water (1985)*

The Ballad of John and Yoko (2023)*

The Meaning of Life (1983)

Track 29 (1988)*

*New to me

Thoughts on the New to Me films:

New Year's Eve we watched RRR, a lot of fun, energetic, bright and action-packed. I enjoyed the way that little attention was given to the British characters. They were straight up villains in ill fitting ahistorical costumes, kind of like the way Indian/Asian characters are treated in Western films most of the time...$$$

New Year's Day we watched Peter's Friends, a drama/comedy from the early 90s starring all of the famous Cambridge Footlights. Big Chill-ish film set in a country house over the Christmas holidays. $$$

How to Get a Head in Advertising was weird and also really good. Had a similar vibe to Withnail and I (possibly because of Richard E. Grant, but also possibly the mixture of the surreal with the realistic). Quite stage-y in some ways but clever and savage in it's satire of life in the 80s. $$$

Frieda: Oh I loved this! Weird World War II melodrama about a German girl marrying a British boy and all the trouble it causes with his complex family situation. Such a stellar cast including the late, great Glynnis Johns. $$$$

The Quick and the Dead: I set my expectations quite low for this and was pleasantly surprised. I liked Sam Raimi's comic book-y take on gunfighters and esp. loved Sharon Stone's character. We love to see a female action hero with no love interest. A nice twist on the Man with no Name trope. Excellent cast as well with Russell Crowe, Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider and Woody Stroud in his final film. $$$

The Barefoot Contessa: Joseph Mankewitcz is one of the geniuses of old Hollywood but this ain't it, chief. Just kind of all of the place melodrama that makes no sense and relies too much on Ava Gardner looking amazing in technicolor in the South of France. A bit of a commentary on Grace Kelly who a few years earlier married minor royalty on the Riviera. Even Rossano Brazzi can't save this mess for me. $

Rhubarb: Two genres I usually kind of hate (family-friendly animal centered film, sports film) combined into one and it's actually a lot of fun. Ray Milland and a bunch of classic character actors as the baseball team (also Leonard Nemoy has a tiny part as a mobster) in this slight/ predictable romp. $$

The Birds: Woah, shit this was good. I should have known. Amazing tension created and Hitchcock just sells the surreal horror with lots of rear projection...so. much. rear. projection. $$$

House of Yes: How about House of NOPE. Ugh what a mess this was. Some good performances and intriguing story, but it was very stagey and I don't know why the 90s couldn't make a story about adult children and their parents without reducing everyone to cliches and stereotypes but this and Six Degrees of Separation are definitely guilty of that, but the latter is just a better film. $

Cassandra Cat: Takes a long time to get to the cat which given that this was a family film from the 60s might be a problem for some viewers, expecting a more cat-centric movie. Interesting riff on fairy tales from the Czech New Wave. Beautiful Demy-esque technicolor and settings make this 60s nonsense fly by. $$

The Day the Earth Caught Fire: 60s nuclear panic disaster film that really just shows the earth as it is now in the throws of global warming. Yikes. Thoughtfully written and well acted by a bunch of folks I'd never heard of. $$

For Me and My Gal: Directed by Busby Berkley and starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland and set in the 1920s on the Vaudeville circuit, I was expecting a lot more fun, dancing, color, costumes etc. This is actually more of a black and white war time melodrama with some music shoved into it and the dancing is very rudimentary. (I think this is probably because Garland esp. at this stage wasn't in the same league with Gene Kelly and I think it would have been too noticable...). Filmed at the entry of America into WW2 this was quite a deliberate propaganda piece. $$

TLADOCB Commentary: I've watched this movie 20 times at least but the commentary really made me think about a bunch of things differently. Can't say I recommend unless you are fanatic though as it's obviously pieced together from interviews Michael Powell and Martin Scorcese $$

Water (1985): If you smoke the exact right strain of sativa and ignore some of the more dated aspects of this 80s comedy, that reads as if Local Hero were a Cheech and Chong film--this is a total classic. Irreverent Michael Caine just straight up breaking character the minute he turns into a guerilla fighter in the jungle and being far too competent and cool, and then snapping back to sweetly shy, inept British Civil Servant, finding he actually loves his hated backwater post (the invent Casara part Caribbean, part Devon Jurassic Coast) while having to actually do his job. Political satire and fully both barrels to Maggie Thatcher and Reagan. Good on em. Filmed in St. Lucia, the movie has a zany heart and little taste, hoovering up vast quantities of competent TV players from my youth: Herman Munster and Reginald Perrin to name but two. Awkward love story and some uneven acting from Valerie Perrin and Brenda Vaccaro. I enjoyed myself, heartily, anyway. $$$

The Ballad of John and Yoko: Technically a video essay with amazing production values (the licensing alone was epic) dragging together disparate topics around the central theme of women being blamed for bad things happening to infantalized male geniuses. Is it the most coherent argument? No. Does it absolutely tap into many unexpressed or implied ideas that have been floating around since me too? Absolutely. $$

Track 29: This was some of the worst casting I've ever seen in a film. When I think of Texas nurse who is into trains and spanking, I don't automatically think of comedian Sandra Bernhardt. When I think of an actress of that era who was old enough to play Gary Oldman's mother, I don't think of Theresa Russell who is the same age as Oldman and looked every bit as young as he did in the film. Maybe that was the point? I'm not sure. The story was weird, like a Southern Gothic melodrama/black comedy ala Flannery O'Connor, but there was something off about the whole thing.

[johnschneiderblog]

Kalamazoo, that mellifluous town

The Credence Clearwater Revival song "Down on the Corner" includes this line: "Poor Boy twangs the rhythm out on his Kalamazoo ..."

Huh ...? As one who likes things to make sense (even in the murky realm of rock music lyrics), the line always mystified me ... until a singer/guitarist/songwriter friend of mine enlightened me:

It's a reference to the fact that, until 1984, Gibson guitars were made in the southwest Michigan city of Kalamazoo.

I feel much better now.

And while doing a little research to confirm my pal's analysis, I learned - thanks to the "Gander," a Michigan news site - that the Credence song is one of at least a dozen popular songs that mention Kalamazoo. They include:

“(I’ve Got A Gal in) Kalamazoo” by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra (1942)

“I’ve Been Everywhere” , Hank Snow (1962)

“Turnpike Tom”, Steve Goodman (1971)

“Mary Lou”, Bob Seger (1976)

“Della and the Dealer”, Hoyt Axton (1979)

“Jumbo Go Away”, Frank Zappa (1981)

“Kalamazoo”, Primus (1997)

“Kalamazoo”, Ben Folds (2004)

“I Can’t Stand L.A.”, Bowling for Soup (2009)

“Gotta Get Away” , The Black Keys (2014)

“Kalamazoo”, The Show Ponies (2017)

[costumeloverz71]

Jo Hayden (Judy Garland) Checkered skirt farm girl outfit.. For Me And My Gal (1942).. Costume by (Robert Kalloch)

[aimmyarrowshigh]

Hello! Dropping into your inbox to ask you about your research for

"Lent From Tomorrow (today was too small for us)." You must have done a ton of historical research for it to get so many of those details. I think that sort of thing is a lot of fun, and I'm very curious to know if you came across anything especially cool/fascinating/weird during your writing research.

Ooh, thank you for the ask! How fun!

There's SO MUCH research in this fic, from the codebreaking to the science of how to defrost a supersoldier to what was on the radio on specific days in 1943. I've got a whole folder of just Lent From Tomorrow research, and the back half of my WIP document is just copy-pastes of quotes from soldiers, scientists, codebreakers, radio hosts, etc.

But, to be fair, I've been reading nonfiction about WWII codebreakers for like 20 years. It's one of my special interests~ and something that I just love learning about. WWII *battles*, I don't care about at all, but everything else about the time period is fascinating to me -- probably because of Molly McIntire, haha.

My FAVORITE little tidbit actually comes up in this coming week's chapter, so I'm not going to spoil it, but it's my favorite recollection in Code Girls by Liza Mundy. That was definitely the book that I used the most for this fic, since the main characters are basically all "code girls," or code omegas, whatever. I also used a lot from PBS Nova's The Mind of a Codebreaker, which I watched when it first came out in 1999 and it rewired my entire brain. I immediately did a report on the women of Bletchley Park in 7th grade (and another on the WASP/WAVE/WAC pilots, so I was really excited to be able to have Carol Danvers make a cameo in Lent!).

But I also looked up specifics for just about every scene -- the snippet of Quiz Kids that's on the wireless radio when Steve and the Asset are listening to the wireless is a quote and actually aired that day. The Torah portion that Steve hears when he goes to shul with the gals and Scott is the Torah portion from that particular Shabbat service in December 1942. The movie scene is the actual movie, newsreel, and cartoon that were shown together at a theater in Washington, DC, on that Friday in March 1943.

I leaned on a former-scientist friend of mine to point me in the right direction to find out how they would have frozen and defrosted the Asset, and also how The Arm might work in a way that isn't just "::shrug:: it's Superhero Science." Her husband is a mathematician, and she suggested some avenues that Steve might have written his big 1929 math paper about, too. And then I read a bunch of math papers from the 1920s and tried to understand them and it was. a lot.

I also did a lot of research into Steve's various disabilities and ailments and the treatments available by the early 1940s, particularly asthma and his childhood polio. (I'm forgetting whether the backstory of his polio experience has actually shown up in the fic yet or if it's coming up soon in a chapter? If it hasn't been posted yet, then spoiler, I guess, Steve had polio as a kid [although I *think* that's canon?]). Steve's experience of being disabled is really important to me, and I wanted it to matter and be a part of his life in this story (and any story I write about Steve).

There's a lot more specific stuff coming up in the back half of the fic, now that we've reached the midway point... Bucky's backstory requires a lot of research into things that I don't know as much about, just because I don't tend to look into actual battle/military histories, and because [redacted for spoilers].

[olafsings]

Music History Today: June 10, 2023

June 10, 1922: Actress and singer Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. With her two older sisters, Garland soon began performing as part of the Gumm Sisters. The Gumm sisters became the Garland sisters at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1934. The following year, she would become a solo act, signing a movie contract with MGM at 13.

In 1939, Garland scored one of her greatest on-screen successes with The Wizard of Oz. She received a special Academy Award for portraying Dorothy, the girl from Kansas transported to Oz. She soon made several more musicals, including Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes of Broadway (1942) with Rooney, and For Me and My Gal (1943), with Gene Kelly.

Garland also tried her hand at series television. From 1963 to 1964, she starred in The Judy Garland Show. For her work on the show, she earned an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program in 1964. On June 22, 1969, she died in London of what was reported to be an accidental overdose.

[musicalfilm]

judy garland & gene kelly in for me and my gal (1942)

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2024:

For Me and My Gal (Busby Berkeley), 1942

[gatutor]

Gene Kelly-Judy Garland "Por mi chica y por mí" (For me and my gal) 1942, de Busby Berkeley.

[mostlydaydreaming]

For Me & My Gal (1942)

Gene (Kelly) & Judy (Garland) are judging you :)

[chantalstacys]

Hi! Do you have any romance movie recs? I’ve been been trying to watch more of them but I just don’t know where to start anymore. Can it be a mix of cute rom coms and some more dramatic romance movies please? and hopefully some ones that you think are underrated as well bc i feel like I’ve been through all of the letterboxd lists lol. Thanks so much!!💗

here’s a bunch! hopefully some of these are new to you ☺️

romcoms

♡ two weeks with love (1950) ((my favorite movie, the movie made just for me))

♡ roman holiday (1953)

♡ sabrina (1954)

♡ how to steal a million (1966)

♡ how to marry a millionaire (1953)

♡ the reluctant debutante (1958)

♡ pillow talk (1959)

♡ romance on the high seas (1948)

♡ hands across the table (1935)

♡ easy living (1937)

♡ my favorite wife (1940) ((my bf loves this one lol))

♡ holiday (1938)

♡ the philadelphia story (1940)

♡ swing time (1936)

♡ one touch of venus (1948)

♡ state fair (1945)

♡ vivacious lady (1938)

♡ the shop around the corner (1940)

romdrams

♡ camille (1936)

♡ casablanca (1942)

♡ love affair (1939) // an affair to remember (1957)

♡ notorious (1946)

♡ a summer place (1959) ((this one is WILD))

♡ all that heaven allows (1955)

♡ west side story (1961)

♡ for me and my gal (1942)

♡ now, voyager (1942)