Happy Joi Lansing Day!

Joi Lansing Day starts one day early this year—April 6 is Lansing's birthday, but I want to give you plenty of time to see this year's sample of Joi: the quirky Orson Welles 1958 TV pilot "The Fountain of Youth." Produced around the same time that Rod Serling pitched The Twilight Zone and Welles made his movie Touch of Evil, "The Fountain of Youth" constituted a leading role for Lansing, who played a bit part in the opening of Touch of Evil. Also appearing in "The Fountain of Youth" is Nancy Kulp, best known for her role in The Beverly Hillbillies, in which Lansing would make five appearances as Lester Flatt's wife.

Previous Joi Lansing Day coverage featured Lansing's Scopitones: "The Web of Love," "The Silencer," and "The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else."

And now, without further ado, "The Fountain of Youth."



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HAPPY HAPPY JOY! JOI LANSING DAY IS HERE!! To celebrate the third annual Joi Lansing Day at Blog About Town, we complete our presentation of Joi Lansing's Scopitones with "The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else." (The other two Scopitones starring Lansing are "The Web of Love" and "The Silencer.")

How about those nifty costume changes?



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HAPPY HAPPY JOY! JOI LANSING DAY IS HERE!! Last year Blog About Town celebrated with the unforgettable Scopitone "The Web of Love."

This year it's another Scopitone: Lansing's cover of "The Silencer."



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And now it's time to compare and contrast: Here Cyd Charisse--with Vicki Carr's voice--performs the same song (music by Elmer Bernstein and Mack David) in the opening credits to The Silencers, the Matt Helm film that will be on a Film Forum double bill with Our Man Flint on Thursday, May 3, 2007.



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For a more complete version of the opening credits, click here.

HAPPY HAPPY JOY! JOI LANSING DAY IS HERE!! Today marks the birthday of Joi Lansing, a model and entertainer who appeared in movies and on television but whose real claim to fame turned out to be her performances in Scopitones.

Scopitones were musical shorts that could be seen on jukebox-like machines starting around 1960. They fizzled out over the course of the decade but still survive, largely due to the efforts of enthusiasts. In the process, Joi Lansing has developed something of a following.

Lansing, who died of cancer in 1972, inspired the book Comfort and Joi by Joseph Dougherty. I would have loved to see her nightclub act.

Here is Joi Lansing in a decent copy of her best-known Scopitone, The Web of Love.



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NOTE: VIDEO LINKS REPLACED AND SUPERSIZE LINK DELETED ON 14 JUNE 2006.

FILMS FOR THE FALL. It's an awesome autumn at New York's Film Forum. The revival of the 1974 Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds may be long gone, but there's still time to catch Tarnation, the most impressive new film I've seen this year. (But beware if you have problems with film memoirs about very dysfunctional families.) Also playing is the newly restored version of Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One. (But beware if you have problems with long, jarring, autobiographical war movies.)

Coming up is an excellent "Essential Noir" festival. Some of my favorites are missing (where's The Big Combo?), but it's still a great opportunity to choose among 17 double features representing a world populated by tough guys, tougher gals, and screeching getaways, all captured with snappy black-and-white photography (and often conceived by top-notch writers). Some recommendations follow. (If you plan to see a lot of these movies, consider Film Forum membership.)

November 26-28
MILDRED PIERCE. James Cain's sordid soaper, featuring a devastating performance by Joan Crawford, shares a double bill with another James Cain story: DOUBLE INDEMNITY.

December 1
GUN CRAZY. Crafty B-movie director Joseph H. Lewis paired Peggy Cummins and John Dall in this still-fresh Bonnie and Clyde prototype, on the same bill as THEY LIVE BY NIGHT.

December 7-8
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET. Samuel Fuller's crackling Cold War crime drama stars Richard Widmark, who made his debut six years earlier in KISS OF DEATH.

December 8
THE MALTESE FALCON. Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Sidney Greenstreet made noir history in this version of the Dashiell Hammett story, programmed with THIS GUN FOR HIRE, based on a Graham Greene story.

December 10-11
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. Another James Cain adaptation, paired with the stunningly shot LADY FROM SHANGHAI.

December 12-13
GILDA. Probably the best tungsten-related movie ever, it stars a radiant Rita Hayworth. Then comes Ava Gardner in the Ernest Hemingway adaptation THE KILLERS.

December 14
THE BIG SLEEP and MURDER, MY SWEET. A great Raymond Chandler double-feature. Go ahead and try to figure out who's a better Philip Marlowe: hard-boiled Bogart or former choirboy Dick Powell. (Just don't sprain your brain trying to figure out The Big Sleep!)

December 17-18
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and TOUCH OF EVIL. Noir hits the PR world in Sweet Smell (starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis), then travels to the Tex-Mex border for the creepy corruption drama Touch of Evil (featuring Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, and Akim Tamiroff plus Scopitone queen Joi Lansing).

December 19-20
SHADOW OF A DOUBT and OUT OF THE PAST. Shadow is one of Alfred Hitchcock's best; Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum go chin-to-chin and chest-to-chest in Past.

Also coming to the Film Forum (on December 22) is In the Realms of the Unreal, Jessica Yu's new documentary about outsider artist Henry Darger.

On the lighter side of repertory cinema, the American Museum of the Moving Image (AMMI) in Astoria will run a Preston Sturges festival in December, screening eight great American comedies. All are worth seeing, but if you had to pick just one double feature, consider traveling to AMMI on the early winter afternoon of Sunday, December 28 to see The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story. (If you can take three movies in one day, stay for Il Posto, one of the best first-job movies ever.) If you think you'll return to AMMI several times over the coming year, membership may be advisable.