REBECCA!

                                        My little granddaughter is 5 years old today!
                                                          Happy Birthday, Rebecca!

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)

I suppose I'm really showing my age when I say Halloween is not officially Halloween for me until I watch the 1944 Cary Grant film "ARSENIC AND OLD LACE".

In the age of Google, where you can find out everything about any movie, it's a bit useless and redundant to give some background info about this film, but anyway, all I can say is that Cary Grant gives the funniest performance of his career here and that Josephine Hull and Jean Adair are just perfect to play Mortimer Brewster's purported aunts Abby and Martha. 

                              

The rest of the cast is excellent, from Raymond Massey's mentally deranged Jonathan Brewster and his assistant Dr. Einstein, played with his usual creepiness by Peter Lorre, to the supporting players, who were familiar and beloved faces from the movies of that time, like Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton, James Gleason, John Alexander as "Teddy Roosevelt", Ed McNamara, John Ridgely, and Garry Owen among many others.

                                    

And of course, beautiful, young Priscilla Lane as Mortimer's fiancee Elaine Harper is the very picture of innocent beauty, charm and bewilderment at the unexplainable shenanigans unfolding before her.

It is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly who walks away with the picture, since all the performances hit the mark right on the button, but let's just say that Cary Grant especially runs the gamut from romantic boyfriend, to horrified nephew at his aunts' hobby of doing away with lonely old men, to befuddled playwright trying to distract policeman Jack Carson from the crimes around him and terrified victim of his "brother" Jonathan's intentions of getting rid of him by way of torture before murder, for a veritable tour de force of comedic acting.

But of course, it would be unfair to single him out here since the film is more of an ensemble work than a one-man show. 

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE ranks as one of director Frank Capra's better achievements and is regarded as a true classic from the Golden Era of motion pictures.  

So, be glad you're not a Brewster and have a Happy Halloween!

                                  

Enjoy the trailer here:

THE ADDAMS FAMILY

Being October the Halloween dominated month, I'm posting a few of my favorite Halloween-themed things!
First off, here's a big Trick-or-Treat type of entertainment: Charles Addams' comic creation: THE ADDAMS FAMILY, which has undergone many versions, reboots and transformations.

                                                                                                                                                                               

My favorite, (after the original series published in the pages of the NEW YORKER magazine, from 1938 to 1988, the year of Charles Addams' death), is the 1964 TV series starring Carolyn Jones and John Astin which featured Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester and Ted Cassidy as Lurch.

There were several other versions, including an animated series in 1973 and a computer-animated film in 2019...but none of those could capture the zaniness and surreal humor of the original series.

Anyway, here we have some memories from the many Addams Families!

 

THE ADDAMS FAMILY THEME SONG

Vic Mizzy

They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're altogether ooky,
The Addams Family.

Their house is a museum
When people come to see 'em
They really are a scream
The Addams Family.

[snap twice]
(Neat)
[snap twice]
(Sweet)
[snap twice]
(Petite)

So get a witch's shawl on
A broomstick you can crawl on
We're gonna pay a call on
The Addams Family.

source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/theaddamsfamilylyrics.html

Halloween Music!

Halloween is best enjoyed with some appropriate eerie music to set the mood for going out trick-or-treating at night. These are my favorite Halloween music CDs: 

Apparently, Halloween music can be anything that sounds creepy, frightful or which has any mysterious or ominous sounding word on the title, judging from the Halloween playlists on Spotify, iTunes and every other Halloween Hits list.  All in all, Halloween music is always fun and welcome.

DON MARTIN looks at Monsters!

I have always admired the work of cartoonist Don Martin, who worked at MAD magazine from 1956 to 1988, which, of course, were the golden years of that publication. His cartoon style was unlike anything I had seen before, and it completely blew my mind. His grotesquely designed characters and his ridiculously exaggerated sound effects always made me laugh out loud!

I was really sorry when he departed MAD over royalty disagreements with Mad's publisher, William Gaines but I loyally followed him over to Cracked magazine, where he stayed six years before branching out with his own magazine which unfortunately, didn't do well.
Don Martin kept working on other projects until his death on January 6, 2000 in Coconut Grove, Florida at age 68, from cancer.

In memory of this extraordinary artist, here we have a few monster inspired cartoons, to celebrate the impending Halloween season.