Tag Archives: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

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The Bootleg Files: The Lambeth Walk

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BOOTLEG FILES 913: “The Lambeth Walk” (1939 British feature starring Lupino Lane).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the proverbial cracks.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.

Comedies that thrust earthy working-class characters into snooty high society settings might be among the most predictable pieces of entertainment, but they often produce the best results. Chaplin plumbed this concept as a disguised convict mixing with the wealthy in his 1917 classic “The Adventurer,” George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and its musical successor “My Fair Lady” uneasily turned a Cockney flower seller into a lady, Abbott and Costello were crass plumbers mistaken for well-heeled guests at a Long Island estate with “In Society,” and the Three Stooges often ran amok through the mansions of the hoity-toity, leaving the residue of pie fights along the way.
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The 10 Weirdest Honorary Oscars of All Time

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Earlier this week, Variety reported that Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, was lobbying members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to bestow an Honorary Oscar on Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company and Kennedy’s boss. This created a major conflict of interest problem, since Disney’s broadcast division ABC is the broadcast partner of the Academy Awards, and the two are now in negotiations to renew the Academy’s licensing agreement beyond 2028.
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Roast-Beef and Movies (1934)

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This dinky little two-reeler would have been lost to obscurity had it not been for the unlikely presence of Curly Howard in his only outing without fellow Stooges Moe Howard and Larry Fine. Curly and his comrades were working with Ted Healy at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early 1930s and the studio occasionally split them up for separate appearances, with Curly being dumped in “Roast-Beef and Movies” in a new comedy act featuring George Givot and Bobby Callahan.

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