Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1944 Plain Daffy , directed by Frank Tashlin. (Hang on, Daffy appears about three-and-a-half minutes into the cartoon.)
Several of the names of the pigeons listed on the blackboard are named after Warner Bros. staff members: Warren Foster, Melvin Millar, Richard Bickenbach, Leon Schlesinger, Ray Katz, A.C. Gamer, and Cal Dalton.
Before the start of our feature presentation, in case you are getting overwhelmed by the thought of your holiday meal, please join us in watching two of our favorite human beings discuss preparing a meal that you could make without stroking out -
I could watch Julia and Jacques all day long.
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the classic 1961 musical, West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, written by Ernest Lehman, and starring Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, and George Chakiris. Unlike many of the films on this list, West Side Story received high praise from critics and viewers at the time, and became the second highest-grossing film of 1961 in the United States. The Broadway show was innovative on many levels, as it featured Jerome Robbins' mixing of contemporary popular dance with classical styles and integrated the dance sequences seamlessly into the songs and action of the story. The gritty, urban tenement setting, the use of street language and the serious exploration of societal problems such as bigotry and juvenile delinquency were a marked change from the standard musical of the time.
Although Robbins and Wise are listed as co-directors onscreen, Robbins was asked to leave the production early during the shooting. The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour would like you to join us in watching the exciting West Side Story. So push away from the table, get comfortable and enjoy the film.
Even though dubbing Natalie Wood was Marni Nixon's chief assignment, Nixon also did one number for Rita Moreno, which required a relatively high vocal register. Having dubbed Wood as well as Moreno, Nixon felt she deserved a cut of the movie-album royalties. Neither the movie or the record producers would bow to her demands. Leonard Bernstein broke the stalemate by volunteering a percentage of his income, a gesture of loyalty-royalty since Nixon had been a performer-colleague of his at New York Philharmonic concerts. He ceded one-quarter of one percent of his royalties to her (a generous amount).
Demand Euphoria!
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