“Forgotten Hollywood”- The Pink Lady Radio Interview…

December 5th, 2013

Manny P. here…

   As you may know, each Saturday at 3p (PST), I host the Forgotten Hollywood Radio Show. Each hour-long program on the Financial News and Talk Network features Standards from the Great American Songbook, movie music, vocal snipits from cinematic classics, and occasionally, memorable interviews. Previously, we’ve chatted with Debbie Reynolds and Art Laboe, among others. Joe Lyons provides an On the Backlot segment, with current news and notes regarding Hollywood’s golden past.

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   On December 28th, we’ve secured a conversation with Jackie Goldberg, The Pink Lady. Her immense vitality belies the fact that she is 81-years young. As I reported in a previous blog, Goldberg is the energy behind Senior Star Power, an official 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charity organization committed to providing a year-round theatrical arts complex in the Hollywood area that will feature performers who are at least 60 years of age. As Jackie puts it:

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It’s our goal to offer active Seniors performance opportunities, and enhanced by workshops, mentoring programs, and master classes. Your tax deductible donations, contributions, and sponsorship can make the dream of a theatrical performing arts complex that will engage the entire Southern California senior community into becoming a reality!

Visit our website for more informationon how to contribute: www.seniorstarpower.org/donate

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   I invite you to listen to a most entertaining hour of radio with our very special guest… The Pink Lady. Her journey resembles the Forgotten Hollywood franchise trek (including a Book Series, Blog, weekly Radio Show, and Documentary currently in Production).

Until next time>                               “never forget”

“Forgotten Hollywood”- Visually Impaired Tactile Experience

December 4th, 2013

Manny P. here…

   The Penn Museum, an archaeology and anthropology center, proudly offers touch tours for the blind and the visually impaired. The institution, part of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, began offering the tours last year in an effort to make their extensive collections more accessible.

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   Most major US metro areas have at least one museum that offers some type of hands-on experience, from touching objects with bare hands or gloves to feeling replicas, according to Art Beyond Sight, a group that makes visual culture accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Such accommodations began well before the Americans with Disabilities Act. Museums that don’t offer tactile tours often have personal or audio guides for the blind.

   The free tours include a classroom lesson on how Egyptians prepared a body for burial. Students jiggle a gelatin mold of the brain — which is removed during the mummification process — and handle facsimiles of relics found in tombs. They also feel ancient linen, smell scented oils, and touch a reproduction of a mummy. Educators are already planning next season’s curriculum on ancient Rome.

   The Penn Museum has held hands-on tours twice each Monday — when the building is otherwise closed — for the past two Fall seasons. Overall, it’s engaged nearly 250 blind or visually impaired people, up about 32 percent from last year.

   I’m encouraged by this wonderfully sensible approach to education…

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   My wife Laurie will be spending this Saturday at the Howe-Waffle House, located at 120 Civic Center Dr. in Santa Ana, CA. Laurie will carry personally autographed copies of Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History and Son of Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History, unique literary gifts for family and friends. She also will be offering her quilted wares, handbags and blankets…  Great shopping ideas in time for the Holidays!    LAURIE PACHECO –>

  Holiday Open House and Boutique

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Howe-Waffle House and Medical Museum

Saturday, December 7th, from 11 am to 4 pm

Until next time>                               “never forget”

“Forgotten Hollywood”- Academy Library Adds Silent Strains

December 3rd, 2013

Manny P. here…

keystone cops   Throughout the silent era, sheet music for cinematic-inspired tunes brought together the public’s fascination with the silver screen, and their love of popular music. Written by Tin Pan Alley songwriter Charles McCarron in 1915, Those Keystone Comedy Cops capitalized on the popularity of bumbling policemen who had been introduced by Mack Sennett just a few years earlier, but had already become audience favorites.

   Illustrated by Hungarian-born artist André De Takacs, this beautiful sheet music cover makes subtle reference to the world of moving pictures. The focal point includes a photo from the film In the Clutches of the Gang, featuring Ford Sterling and Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle. This tinted image mimics a movie screen, while the Keystone company logo glows behind dramatic silhouettes of stylized policemen. The silhouettes are also depicted on the two oversized billy clubs adorned with tassels that frame the image like theater curtains, evoking the elegant movie palaces of the era.

   This item is one of hundreds of pieces of silent-era sheet music donated to the Margaret Herrick Library by Robert Cushman, and archived in Special Collections. Other examples of silent-era sheet music may be viewed in the library’s Digital Collections. The library is also home to the Mack Sennett papers featuring scenarios, production materials, and photographs relating to the career of this prolific producer. While In the Clutches of the Gang is believed lost, the Academy Film Archive preserved a fragment of the production, recently discovered at the New Zealand Film Archive, as part of the New Zealand Project.

museum_logo2   This iconic music score is one the treasured artifacts to be featured in the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, scheduled to open in 2017.

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   Give the Holiday gift of a classic film Musical… and one of my favorites!  Just sayin…

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Until next time>                               “never forget”

“Forgotten Hollywood”- Afternoon With the Authors…

December 2nd, 2013

Manny P. here…

   The Forgotten Hollywood Book Series enters its 2013 ride through the Holidays…

HollywoodHeritage

2100 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood, CA

DECEMBER 7th
12:00 NOON – 4:00 PM

Afternoon With the Authors

Hollywood Heritage Museum sponsors their second Afternoon With the Authors… An  opportunity to hear authors speaking about their books, and to buy a book as a holiday gift for that special person who loves Hollywood History. You can also have your book signed by the author, and then have it gift wrapped FREE!

img8Robert S. Birchard

Tom Mix: King of the Cowboys  Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood

Stanley Dyrector

Shedding Light Hollywood Blacklist

Chuck Harter

Little Elf

Rosemary Lord

Los Angeles Then and Now  Hollywood Then and Now  

Mary Mallory

Hollywoodland

Manny Pacheco 

Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History   Son of Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History

Darrell Rooney

Harlow in Hollywood

Marc Wanamaker

Early Paramount Studios

Donald Seligman

Los Feliz and the Silent Film Era

Charles Ziarko

MGM: Saving the Best for Last

Brian Taves

Thomas Ince: Hollywood’s Independent Pioneer

   Come on down and pick up a copy of your favorite Golden Age of Hollywood literary work.

Until next time>                               “never forget”

“Forgotten Hollywood”- Too Much Orson…

December 1st, 2013

Manny P. here…

   Based on the overwhelming response to the sold-out World and American premieres of Too Much Johnson, the George Eastman House hosted a one-night-only screening of the movie in New York City. It was shown last Monday at the Directors Guild of America Theater.

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   Thought to be destroyed in a fire, the George Eastman House, along with the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), Cineteca del Friuli, and Cinemazero, announced in August the recovery of Mercury Theatre’s long-lost Too Much Johnson, directed by Orson Welles in 1938. The piece was produced the same year Welles directed The War of the Worlds radio broadcast. The nitrate work print of the film – left unfinished by the Mercury Theatre and never shown in public – was found in a warehouse by a staff member of Cinemazero, an art house in Pordenone, Italy. It was transferred to the George Eastman House in order to be preserved with a grant from NFPF.

   Too Much Johnson was originally intended to be used in conjunction with a stage adaptation of an 1894 play by William Gillette. The Mercury Theatre planned to show the three short films as prologues to each act of the play. The three-part comedy was meant to be presented with the accompaniment of music and live sound effects, but was never finished. Joseph Cotten was cast in the lead role, with supporting roles going to other  Mercury Theatre actors, including Arlene Francis, Mary Wickes, Orson Welles, and his wife Virginia Nicholson. The play ultimately opened without the visual aid on August 16th, 1938. The cinematic work provides a unique insight to the immense talent Welles had as a filmmaker.

   Too Much Johnson had a world premiere on October 9th, at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy; and its North American premiere on October 16th at the Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman House.

   We, in Hollywood, are looking forward to a West Coast premiere…

Until next time>                               “never forget”