The Cat and The Canary (1939) - Cat Ballyhoo!

Where there’s life, there’s Hope—Bob Hope!  Okay, so I borrowed that from an ad line from another one of Hope’s comedies, but the point is, Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard were a delightful team in their first film together, Paramount’s The Cat and The Canary (TC&TC).  Produced by Arthur Hornblow of Witness for the Prosecution fame, and based on John Willard’s original 1922 stage play, the popular thriller was eventually adapted for both stage and screen in 1927 and 1930.  Director Elliott Nugent (My Favorite Brunette, Up in Arms) joined forces with Hope and Goddard for this 1939 version of the story, adding more witty, playful comedy and romance to Willard’s thriller. This version worked so well that Hope and Goddard made two more films together: The Ghost Breakers (1940), and Nothing But the Truth (1941).  For the record, there was also a 1979 version.  I never saw it, but the stars sound promising:  Yanks Carol Lynley and Michael Callan, and Brits Honor Blackman, Wendy Hiller, Edward Fox, Olivia Hussey, Daniel Massey, Peter McEnery, and Wilfrid Hyde-White. But I digress….

 Here's looking at you, kids!

Universal actually owned the rights to Willard’s play, but sold them to Paramount. Fun Fact: the film, along with the 1940 film The Ghost Breakers (which I’ll discuss next time), was an inspiration to Walt Disney for his Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland!   Focusing on the funny, The New York Times’ film critic Frank S. Nugent describes Bob Hope not as the thing with feathers a la Emily Dickenson, but as having “a chin like a forehead and a gag line for every occasion… (This version of the story) is more hair-brained than hair-raising, which is as it should be.”  I agree: with this cast, fun and suspense make a swell team, including the delightful Nydia Westman (the 1933 version of Little Women; The Remarkable Andrew; The Ghost and Mr. Chicken) as Cousin Cicily, a charmingly daft flibbertigibbet among the late Cyrus Norman’s relatives.  The supporting cast weren’t small potatoes, either, with George Zucco (The Mummy; After the Thin Man; The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and Gale Sondergaard (Anna and the King of Siam; The Letter; and Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winner for Anthony Adverse).  I especially enjoyed Sondergaard as Miss Lu; she’s kinda like a sophisticated Bayou Mrs. Danvers played for straight-faced laughs, blending mystery, menace, and mirth. Both Zucco and Sondergaard  playfully spoof the more ominous roles they were known for, while still being spooky enough to keep viewers on their toes, blending suspense and comedy into a sparkling cocktail. As Lawyer Crosby (no relation to Hope’s future screen co-star Bing Crosby), George Zucco’s foreboding presence adds the right touch of menace.   

Meet the lady known as Lu!

Hope’s movie career had begun with The Big Broadcast of 1938, and Goddard started her career as a child model, debuting in The Ziegfeld Follies at the tender age of 13!  Goddard’s fame as the Follies’ girl on the crescent moon put her on the map.  She was married to a a millionaire at the age of 16—and divorced not long after that.  After dissolving her marriage in 1931, Goddard went to Hollywood, where her natural talent and beauty sent her stardom soaring, bewitching Hollywood’s elite.  She earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination in the 1943 war drama So Proudly We Hail!  She attracted some pretty remarkable fellas as husbands, too:  Charlie Chaplin; Team Bartilucci fave Burgess Meredith; and author Erich Maria Remarque of All Quiet on the Western Front fame. Goddard also did her bit for higher education, leaving over $20 million to New York University when she died in 1990.  What a gal!

Hello, I’m Mrs. Trumbull! Mrs. Ricardo
recommended me. Anyone need a
babysitter for spectral spooks?

The plot involves a gaggle of distant cousins who’ve come together after 10 years for the reading of Cyrus Norman’s will.  In the great comedy-thriller tradition, the prettiest and most generally winsome gal, Joyce Norman (Goddard) finds herself the designated Lady in Distress, while the affable, quip-slinging actor Wally Campbell (Hope) has noticed how little Joyce has grown up quite nicely.  Attraction is in the air, and no wonder, with the delightful chemistry between Hope and Goddard!  I especially liked the way Wally manages to be brave for Joyce in spite of his nervousness. 

Joyce and Wally ain’t afraid of no ghosts!
That comes later, in The Ghost Breakers!

In addition to Joyce and Wally, the prospective victims, er, heirs include Fred Blythe (John Beal of Double Wedding; My Six Convicts; The Firm); Charlie Wilder (Douglass Montgomery, another 1933 Little Women cast member); and Aunt Susan (Elizabeth Patterson, whose long career included Intruder in the Dust; Lady on a Train; TV’s I Love Lucy as babysitter Mrs. Trumball).  Wally tries to put the others at ease with quips: “I hear old Uncle Cyrus’s ghost is holding bank night.”  What’s more, thanks to Wally’s theatrical background, he can’t help predicting each new spooky suspense cliché, keeping the others’ heads turning suspiciously, prompting Wally to suggest to Joyce, “I’ll recommend a nice quiet bomb-proof cellar to you for the next 30 days.”  Sorry, guys, everybody’s gotta stay overnight whether they want to or not.  As Wally wryly explains, “The members of Local Number 2 of the Bayou Canoe Paddlers and Putt-Putt Pushers Union fold putt after midnight.” Well, that’s OK; Wally and Joyce and company can always while away the time looking for a diamond necklace worth a fortune while trying to avoid being bumped off.

Oops, Joyce grabbed the wrong book.
She was looking for Bazooka Joe’s
bubble gum bio, The Psychology of Fleer!  

On top of the creepy goings-on at ol’ Blue Bayou, the local authorities announce that there’s a fugitive psychopath on the loose from Fairview, the local asylum. “That’s all we needed,” Wally says. “Well, anyway, he’ll feel right at home.”  The killer is known as “The Cat,” but this “Cat” sure isn’t the suave Cary Grant/To Catch A Thief kind of cat burglar!  Soon Wally and Joyce are up to their ears in danger and romance, with more secret panels than The Game Show Network as Miss Lu stirs the pot with ominous warnings and whatnot!  Can Wally and Joyce live happily ever after, “live” being the operative word?  One thing’s for sure: with Hope and Goddard, it’ll sure be fun finding out! 

Hey, Joyce, give a guy a hand!

Fun Facts: 

• According to Wikipedia, Universal owned the rights to Willard’s play and sold them to Paramount Pictures.  Indeed, it inspired Walt Disney to create the original beloved Haunted Mansion at Disneyland!
• Don’t blink during the first scene, or you’ll miss Chief Thundercloud (Hudson’s Bay) as an Indian guide!

If you like The Cat and The Canary, check out other reviews of this fun film by other swell bloggers!

1.) Yvette Banek from her stupendous blog IN SO MANY WORDS from March 2012!

2.) John Greco’s Twenty-Four Frames review from May 2011! 

Also, don't miss an uncredited Charles Lane (Ball of Fire; I Wake Up Screaming, etc.) in the final scene!  I admit it, I'm a sucker for a happy ending, especially a funny one!

HIS KIND OF WOMAN: Face the Music!

Ever see a movie that seems like a typical genre flick, but as you watch it, you realize it’s got a mind of its own, and it’s so wild and crazy and all-but-off-the rails that you can’t help loving it? Well, the 1951 RKO comedy-noir His Kind of Woman is my kind of movie! John Farrow (The Big Clock, Wake Island, and Hondo, among many others) gets the directing credit, though Richard Fleischer was responsible for considerable tweaking—re-shoots, even! Lots of writers involved, too, including Frank Fenton and Jack Leonard, with Gerald Drayson Adams’ original story getting credit as well. Seems like everyone gets a little credit here!
 
In His Kind of Woman, Robert Mitchum is at his ",So-hot-he’s-cool, so, so cool he's hot, with his hot bedroom-eyed best as Dan Milner, a rambler and a gambler, literally. Dan’s easy to like; how can you not trust a guy who sticks with milk or ginger ale instead of booze? (Of course, it’s implied that Dan has gotten in trouble with liquor in the past, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.) Dan is the kind of likable lug who really should get in the habit of looking before leaping. He seems to have been pretty successful at making a living from gambling (wish Dan was a real guy who could’ve given my late dad pointers), but Lady Luck hasn’t been returning his calls lately (dames—sheesh!). Dan has a funny feeling there’s more to his recent string of nigh-Kafkaesque mishaps than cold dice, especially when he’s accosted by a couple of smooth-talking, suit-clad jaspers: Corley (the uncredited Paul Frees, whose voice is well known to Team Bartilucci from both animated and live-action films, including another RKO classic, The Thing from Another World) and Thompson (Charles McGraw from The Narrow Margin and The Killers, who also narrates the film in early scenes). Corley and Thompson offer Dan a cool fifty grand to go to The Morros Lodge, a fabulous Mexican resort (filmed in Baja California) and await further instructions, no questions asked (well, few questions, anyway). Dan’s not entirely comfortable with the arrangement, but he sure can use the dough. Wonder if Dan’s ever heard a little story about a Trojan horse….?

Dan rubs Lenore the right way!

While waiting for his plane to Mexico, tough guy Dan is smitten in spite of himself when he meets the lovely, sassy, ostensibly rich Lenore Brent (Jane Russell). She’s waiting, too, passing the time by displaying her great pipes, among her other charms (producer Howard Hughes never missed an opportunity to showcase the ravishing Russell’s pulchritude). I always enjoy hearing Jane Russell sing; she has a nice snappy way with a song, and she’s both sultry and jaunty as she sings “Five Little Miles from San Berdoo” and the torchy “You’ll Know.” Despite their characters’ mutual cat-and-mouse routine, you can see the electricity crackling between Russell and Mitchum. There they are, sexy and playful as all get-out, and nobody’s naked (though they sometimes come close, at least by late 1940s/early 1950s standards)! By all accounts, Mitchum and Russell were good friends offscreen, and only friends. (In fact, after Mitchum’s death in 1997, Russell and Mitchum’s wife Dorothy scattered his ashes at sea.)

With that hat, Lenore can't help bewitching Dan!

Back at the ranch, er, lodge, the fun in the sun apparently includes role-playing games as well, because each vacationer Dan meets at this gorgeous resort seems to be trying to be someone else! Lenore may or may not be an heiress, and her real name may or may not be Liz Brady; Bill Lusk (Tim Holt of The Magnificent Ambersons and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) might be a drunken tourist, or he might be a wily Fed. Myron Winton (Jim Backus, whose many roles included Rebel Without A Cause and TV’s Gilligan’s Island, not to mention the voice of Mr. Magoo) is a businessman who turns out to be a card sharp, or maybe just a plain old cheater. Then there’s mysterious author Martin Kraft (John Mylong) who only seems interested in playing chess with himself (“Maybe he hates to lose,” Dan suggests).

"Who's the rat saying I look like David O. Selznick?"

I also like that Dan is basically a decent guy with a kind heart underneath his sleepy-eyed shrewdness, like when he helps the young newlywed couple win their money back from sneaky so-and-so Winton. Maybe that’s why Lusk finally ditches his lush routine and reveals to Dan that he’s an immigration officer pursuing underworld kingpin Nick Ferraro (Raymond Burr in one of his juiciest over-the-top bad-guy roles before Perry Mason made him a TV star). Turns out the only thing Kraft writes is prescriptions: he’s really a plastic surgeon who was himself deported, like Nick. Seems Dan’s role in all this is the ultimate face-off: the doc’s supposed to put Dan’s face on the evil Nick so he can sneak back into the U.S., after which Nick and his boys will bump Dan off so Nick can keep his secret! Yikes!
  

Dan's snooping has the blinds leading the blinds!

I’ll admit the mix of film noir suspense and zany comedy gets a bit lopsided at times, but I was so caught up in HKoW that it seemed churlish to quibble! I liked the nice background details, too, like the sarcastic radio announcer ragging on Ferraro. Lots of our favorite uncredited supporting players and bit players are in HKoW, too, such as Mamie Van Doren, Robert Cornthwaite (clean-shaven and almost unrecognizable from his role as the exhausted, going-mad scientist in The Thing from Another World), and Anthony Caruso (The Asphalt Jungle, among others) as one of Nick’s vicious strong-arm boys. On a related note, it’s interesting to see the difference between early 1950s and 21st-century beefcake. As I said in my I Wake up Screaming post, today’s muscular hunks are so ridiculously ripped, you'd cut yourself if you touched them!

Dan and Mark saved Lenore the balcony seats!

Ironically, one of the most sincere characters in HKoW is Vincent Price’s character, the flamboyant movie star Mark Cardigan. He thinks he’s gonna run off with his mistress Lenore. Surprise! Wifey Helen (Marjorie Reynolds of Ministry of Fear) shows up, with her attorney in tow. Price is clearly having a blast, and I don’t just mean with his hunting rifle! Even with Mark’s goofy airs, he saves the day, bless him (with a few hilarious fits and starts along the way). Every cast member is great fun to watch, though there’s no denying that Price steals the show as Mark. He basks in the spotlight and he’s a big ham, but a tasty one. Even better, Mark truly puts his money where his Shakespeare-trained mouth is when Dan’s in danger. The scene where Mark tries to squeeze every volunteer at the resort into the boat to rescue Dan is laugh-out-loud funny!

Got a gambling problem? Don't call these guys!

Over at the TCM Web site, Price wrote that Mitchum was “heaven to work with...one of those diamond in the rough types in whose character you can’t find any sort of holes because he’s so open and honest...He’s a complete anachronism. He claims he doesn’t care about acting, but he’s an extraordinary actor. He’s one of that group of people in Hollywood who are such extraordinary personalities that people forget they’re marvelous actors.” Moreover, Mitchum was generous on the set, treating about twenty members of the cast and crew to lunch in his bungalow every day, and “on several occasions when he realized his stand-in had had a rough night, he stood in for the stand-in.” Don’t you love it when actors you like turn out to be decent folks, too?

"Don't you picturesquely pass out on me when I'm trying to torment you, young man!"

"Here's looking at you, Dan!"

"I'll pass, Nick, thanks anyway."

Profiles in hotness!

Dan and Lenore have their love to keep them warm! (Artificial fur optional.)

Our own Ivan G. Shreve of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear also did a wonderful blog post earlier this year about His Kind of Woman, with special emphasis on Vincent Price; by all means, read it and enjoy!

http://thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2011/05/alas-why-must-i-be-plagued-by-yammering.html

More fun and clips from TCM here:
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/336625/His-Kind-Of-Woman-Movie-Clip-You-re-Being-Paged.html

"I tell you, Dan, I was THISCLOSE to having that Sierra Madre treasure...."

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT: The Continuing Adventures of Annabelle's Husband

Here’s a high concept for you: “Damon Runyon Kicks Nazi Heinie in NYC.” That’s the clever premise of first-time “A” picture director Vincent Sherman’s 1941 Warner Bros. wartime comedy-thriller All Through the Night (ATtN). Don’t you love it already? And what a cast — it’s Character Actor Central, and all in their prime! The good guys’ corner includes a dazzling array of funny, colorful sidekicks and associates in addition to Humphrey Bogart himself: William Demarest; Jackie Gleason (then billed as Jackie C. Gleason); Phil Silvers as a nearsighted but patriotic waiter; the lovely Kaaren Verne (Kings Row, The Seventh Cross); Barton MacLane (whose many films with Bogart included The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, though TV fans may remember him best as General Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie); Edward Brophy (who Team Bartilucci knows best as Joe Morelli in The Thin Man, and who the young Disney fans in our lives know best as the voice of Timothy Mouse in Dumbo); Wallace Ford (billed as “Wally” here) and Charles Cane from Dead Reckoning; Frank McHugh, in the role that endeared him to Team Bartilucci and earned him the affectionate nickname “Annabelle’s Husband” (more on that shortly); and of all people, The Grapes of Wrath Oscar-winner Jane Darwell as Bogart’s mom (doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does, trust me!). The bad guys they’re up against are no slouches, either: Conrad Veidt; Dame Judith Anderson, Martin Kosleck, and Peter Lorre (who ended up married to co-star Verne for several years, ironically enough). There’s gonna be a rumble in Manhattan tonight!

Sunshine explains how to catch
the Nazis with their Panzers down.

This fast, funny, suspenseful adventure gives Bogart one of his most entertaining roles as Alfred “Gloves” Donahue, a dapper New York City “sports promoter.” Translation: gambler and bookie. I should know; that was what my dear old dad did when he wasn’t managing his Italian restaurant in the Bronx when I was a little tyke. My favorite euphemism for Gloves’ line of work comes from a radio bulletin when he’s wrongly accused of murder, describing him as a “man about town and well-known figure in the sporting world.” But I’m getting ahead of myself! The film opens with Gloves’ “boys,” Sunshine (Demarest), Starchy (Gleason), and waiter Louie (Silvers) using toy soldiers and such to map out a campaign against the Nazis. Our guy Gloves joins Sunshine and their cohort Barney (McHugh) at the restaurant. Gloves is a rough-and-tumble but essentially decent guy who’s good to his lovable mother (Darwell). He’s more interested in the sports page than the war news on the front page, until Mom seeks out Gloves for help. Mr. Miller (Ludwig Stossel) is missing. This is a crisis, as Mrs. Miller (Irene Seidner) is Mom Donahue’s BFF, plus Mr. M. is Gloves’ favorite cheesecake maker! We viewers had just seen Pepi (Lorre), a pianist (no, not Adrien Brody) and generally slimy so-and-so, slinking around Miller’s store, eating candy he hasn’t paid for and making veiled threats — not a good sign! Well, Mom Donahue has even sharper “women’s intuition” than Grace Kelly did in Rear Window, and her never-wrong “funny feeling” is once again on the money, alas; Mr. Miller is found murdered in his basement.

Gloves picked a fine time to
accidentally leave his calling card!

Speaking of cheesecake, the lovely German-accented singer Leda Hamilton (Verne) drops by wearing a picture hat and a worried look. Turns out Pepi is Leda’s accompanist. Now Gloves is the one with the funny feeling, first with his attraction to the mysterious yet endearing Leda, then the growing realization that Pepi and Leda are involved with a bunch of mugs even tougher than Gloves and his cronies. When Mom tries to get info out of Leda at The Duchess Club, the nightspot run by Gloves’ rival Marty Callahan (MacLane), Gloves steps in, and before he knows it, shots are fired and he’s framed for the murder of the obnoxious Joe Denning (Brophy). Joe only gives Gloves one clue before dying: he lifts his hand. The chase is on, and soon Gloves and Company realize they’re dealing with “Fivers”— Fifth Columnists, headed by smooth antiques dealer Franz Ebbing (Veidt)! Leda seems to run hot and cold, first knocking Gloves out, then helping him and Sunshine escape. Turns out there’s a terrible hold over her: her father’s in the Dachau concentration camp, and Ebbing and company have been keeping Papa’s death from “natural causes” from her so she’d keep working with them. (I wonder what those Nazi creeps defined as “natural causes”?) Now that Gloves and Leda are joining forces, they’ve got to find out what those Nazi scum are up to over at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Will Gloves get himself and Leda out of this mess? Will Barney and his brand-new bride Annabelle (Jean Ames) get to enjoy any action on their wedding night that doesn’t involve chases and clobbering? You bet — with a little help from their cronies, of course! Native New Yorkers rule!

Congrats & good luck to Barney & Annabelle,
married to the mob!

George Raft, notorious for turning down roles that wound up turning his replacements into stars, was offered the role of Gloves Donahue first. Thank goodness Humphrey Bogart landed the role instead, because Bogie was a tough guy with a knack for comedy! As wonderful as the whole cast is, McHugh is our favorite among the supporting cast. Indeed, we affectionately call him “Annabelle’s Husband.” He gets lots of the best lines, too, like these:

Drake on the move! Perry Mason’s
William Hopper in his first film role.

Barney: “Annabelle’s waiting for me…after all, I’m a married man. I got obligations.”

Gloves: “All right, send her flowers.”

Barney: “Well…that wasn’t my idea.”

Talking to Madame (Anderson) at the auction house after Gloves and Sunshine are knocked out and tied up:

Barney: “Lookit, lady, when we started out tonight, there were three of us. Twenty minutes later, there was only two. Now there’s only one. One of us isn’t enough to leave here alone!”

A portrait's worth 1000 words: fiendish Fivers afoot!

The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass and Edwin Gilbert (story by Spigelgass), and Leo Rosten writing as Leonard Q. Ross is fast and funny, blending comedy, action, and suspense effortlessly. I especially got a kick out of the breezy, sometimes punny dialogue (like Gleason’s “The first one of those (Nazi) guys I tag, I’m gonna kick him right in the swastika!” and Bogart’s “Hey, there’s more here than meets the FBI!”). I was also tickled when I spotted Hedda Hopper’s son DeWolfe Hopper in an uncredited role as a reporter in the background of the film’s last scene; of course, we Perry Mason fans know him better as William Hopper, who played Perry’s private investigator Paul Drake, as well as starring in the films 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Deadly Mantis, and The Bad Seed, among others!

Considering ATtN ends with Gloves’ Mom rushing to him in the middle of a press conference to tell him that now the milkman is MIA, it would have been so cool if Warners had made a sequel, and/or maybe even a new movie series! But alas, at that time, the attack on Pearl Harbor was still too fresh in 1941 audiences’ minds for them to embrace a quasi-realistic World War 2 spy thriller with broadly humorous overtones. Happily, ATtN is available on DVD and TCM (as it was during Conrad Veidt Day recently on TCM’s Summer Under the Stars) so we modern movie lovers can enjoy this entertaining genre blend guilt-free!

Hmm, wonder which cheesecake Peter Lorre liked best? Miller's cheesecake?

Or then-wife Kaaren Verne? ;-)

It’s double jeopardy for Gloves and Leda as
they unravel the evil Fifth Columnists' plot.

 Poor little pooch! It’s not the dog’s fault his owner is Nazi scum!

High Anxiety, You Win…Me Over! My Multimedia Review

For those of you who’ve asked about my DorianTB avatar photo since this mug of mine began turning up on Facebook and in this blog, the answer is directly related to this week’s blog post about Mel Brooks’ smart, affectionate, deliriously funny 1977 Alfred Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety! You see, during my senior year at Fordham University in 1985, our beloved Theater professor Sister Francesca Thompson, the coolest and most sophisticated nun ever, assigned our class to lip-synch to a recording of our choice; the more inventive the performance, the better. I decided to salute two of my favorites with one stone, so to speak.
I wore a black fedora from my dear mom's vast hat wardrobe, a black tuxedo-style blazer, and black slacks—that is, until I innocently strode up to my pal and classmate Kypro (“Kyp” for short), nonchalantly removed my slacks, and asked him to keep an eye on them during my number. Considering that Kyp looked rather like a young 1980s version of Victor Mature, the look on his face was especially priceless, bless him! I went up to the front of the classroom, looking as much like Judy Garland in Summer Stock as I could. (Luckily, I had a cute figure then, if I do say so myself!) I opened my mouth to lip-synch—and out came the boisterous voice of Mel Brooks singing “High Anxiety” from the soundtrack album! If I do say so myself, I brought down the house, getting an A+, and it was a heck of a lot of fun, as well as a confidence boost for a shy kid like me (don’t let my gregarious writing style fool you!).

Off to Sr. Francesca's Theater class, 1985

High Anxiety (HA — even the initials are funny!) is great fun even if you're not already an Alfred Hitchcock fan — but if you are, you'll love it all the more as you nail specific spoofs of and references to Hitchcock’s classic suspense films. The key is that Brooks’ best movie genre parodies would still be solid genre films if you took out all the jokes and sight gags. That’s why his biggest hits are so good and have been so dearly loved, such as 1974’s Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. HA is a comedy piñata stuffed with outrageous yet affectionate spoofs of Hitchcock’s best films—a far cry from many other genre parodies who try to do what Brooks and his writers do when they’re at their best, except that all too many of the wannabes’ attempts come off as puerile and mean-spirited.

I should explain to those who might be new to Mel Brooks’ work (so many young movie fans to inspire!) that aside from Brooks’ solo screenplays for his 1968 Oscar-winner The Producers, and 1970’s The Twelve Chairs, his best scripts have often been collaborations between himself and other writers, as they did with Your Show of Shows. Of course, there’s wit in Hitchcock’s thrillers, too. The difference is that Hitchcock’s humor was sleek and sly, while Brooks and his co-writers Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca, and future Oscar-winner Barry Levinson are boisterously cheeky; as Brooks himself might say, “they kid because they love.”

Flying the friendly skies? Richard begs to differ!

Herrmann-like  traveling music from John Morris!

Madeline Kahn as Victoria Brisbane - so cute!

Montague & Diesel unwind after a day of evildoing

The plot plays delightfully like Hitchcock’s Greatest Hits, or as our friend and fellow blogger Nathanael Hood of Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear said in his own superb in-depth High Anxiety blog post from 2009: “The Master of Comedy takes on The Master of Suspense!...I find that this film is more than just a collection of satirical set pieces. It shows an endearing love of Hitchcock. Not only are his movies parodied; Hitchcock’s camera movements are mimicked, his musical scores quoted, and even the actors’ performances are modeled after prominent characters from his movies. Many of the references are subtle. So subtle that they can be missed, or even outright ignored by audiences.” The story is a delightful blend of every Hitchcock trope as seen through a funhouse mirror. Our hero, Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke (Brooks), arrives as the new head man of the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous; it’s like Green Manors in Spellbound (1945). Of course, the P-NIftV,VN is goofier than Green Manors ever was, with patients like Charlie Callas as the man who thinks he’s a cocker spaniel, and who Richard is led to believe is Arthur Brisbane, Industrialist. (The real Brisbane is played by the dapper, gentlemanly F/X expert Albert Whitlock, who worked on several Hitchcock movies.)

Meanwhile, poor Richard is fighting a vertigo-like malady, the titular High Anxiety. “If left unchecked, it can cost you your life!” declares his old friend and mentor Professor Lillolman (Howard Morris)—whereupon Lillolman and Richard are startled by an ominous musical sting, courtesy of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra’s touring bus! Soon Richard becomes the man who knew too much as he falls in love with Brisbane’s beautiful, soignee daughter Victoria (Madeline Kahn), or as Richard and others say, “You’re the cocker’s daughter?” Before you can say “Que sera sera,” Richard’s making like Frank Sinatra crooning the title song for Vicki in the hotel’s Art Deco-ish piano bar (for me, that’s HA’s highlight), and getting framed by evil P-NIftV,VN personnel Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman) and her love slave Dr. Montague (Harvey Korman) for a murder he didn’t commit, running hither and yon to clear himself through all kinds of picturesque locations while the Hitchcock gags (and even a few that aren’t Hitchcock-centric but are still funny anyway) fly thick and fast and fabulous—and so much more!

Don't you feel less neurotic already?

While I’ve always thought Brooks’ former co-star and co-writer Gene Wilder would've been perfect casting as acrophobic psychiatrist Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke (click here for the psychiatrist panel and the HA musical number to find out what “H” is short for), Brooks is nevertheless as irresistible as he is irrepressible, with Kahn a fine match for him as the flakiest mysterious blonde this side of Kim Novak. When you’ve seen as many Mel Brooks comedies as Vinnie and I have, you notice the genuine emotions behind the laughter. Sure enough, HA’s approach is as affectionate as it is hilarious. Not to overstate the case, but there’s palpable tenderness in the almost father-son relationship between Richard and Professor Lillolman, as well as the budding romance between Richard and Victoria. Ah, but there’s plenty of funny packed between the tender moments and Hitchcockian suspense! For example...

Dick Van Patten is caught in a web of evil, beyond the shadow of a doubt!

Could Vicki Brisbane be the future Mrs. Dr. Victoria Harpo Thorndyke?

It's not heights little Richard was afraid of, it's parents—or Pablum!

• Professor Lillolman, who reminds me of Spellbound Oscar-nominee Michael Chekhov, is mistakenly addressed as “Professor Little-Old-Man.”
  
• As Victoria, Kahn’s a knockout in her Vertigo gray suit and picture hat and Notorious-style black gown (not to mention her Louis Vuitton jumpsuit and matching car!). Vicki’s ditzy moments crack me up, too, like her hotel room scene while Richard’s in a phone booth trying not to be strangled by Diesel and Montague’s henchman “Braces” (co-writer Rudy DeLuca). First she tries to pretend she’s not turned on by what she thinks is an obscene phone call, then she tosses away her Vuitton teddy bear and backpedals like mad when she realizes it’s Richard: “I knew it was you! I laughed. Did you laugh?”
  
• As Dr. Montague, Harvey Korman dresses like Charles Gray in the 1968 Hammer thriller/period piece The Devil Rides Out. As Nurse Diesel, Cloris Leachman looks like a scarily hilarious cross between Rebecca’s Mrs. Danvers and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.! They play uproariously outrageous bondage-and-discipline games when they’re not keeping rich patients prisoner. Dominatrix Nurse Diesel: “I know you better than you know yourself. You live for bondage and discipline!” Submissive Dr. Montague: “Too much bondage! Not enough discipline!”
  
• Like any self-respecting Hitchcock-style hero, Richard has what The New York Times reviewer described as “an elegant flaw,” namely his High Anxiety. The Times went on to say, “He has the cowardly man’s restless glance as he keeps track of the terrain and of all the ways to make a quick exit.” My kind of guy! I’m also tickled that Richard’s name is clearly a nice tip of the hat to debonair but beleaguered hero Roger O. Thornhill from North by Northwest. Those who’ve been following TotED for a while may recall that North by Northwest is not only my favorite Hitchcock film, it’s my absolute favorite film of all time, period. 
  

Now when I love a movie, I go out of my way to learn everything I can about it, including buying novelizations of that film if there is one. High Anxiety was no exception. The author of the High Anxiety paperback was Robert H. Pilpel, who wrote a great many articles for Harper’s Magazine, as well as a number of his own books, including the 1979 historical novel To the Honor of the Fleet; Between Eternities; Churchill in America, and a title that particularly intrigued me, Understanding your Therapist, or Why is This Taking So Long? I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that last title got Pilpel the High Anxiety novelization gig! Pilpel has a real gift for humorous writing with a sting in the tail, blending comedy, suspense, and romance nicely. For example, here’s our height-hating hero’s first-person account of his feelings as his airline prepares to land:

Omigod, we’re losing altitude! No, the ground is gaining altitude! “Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the No Smoking sign. Please extinguish all smoking materials. Make sure your seat belts are fastened and your seats in the full upright position for our arrival in Los Angeles.” Omigod! Too fast, too fast! We’re dropping like a stone….Oh, Lord, why does the landing gear coming down always sound like the landing gear breaking off?

And here’s Richard insisting on meeting Arthur Brisbane, and Montague reluctantly phoning Nurse Diesel to set up a meet-and-greet:

“Hello? Nurse Diesel? Dr. Montague here. Dr. Thorndyke would like to visit Arthur Brisbane this afternoon…Good…Oo-yay oh-knay ut-way oo-tay oo-day. Et it gay?”

He hung up with a little flourish of his wrist, as if Pig Latin were the most natural language for a licensed psychiatrist to use in speaking with a psychiatric nurse.

Richard sees the ultra-modern (for the late 1970s) Hyatt Regency Hotel for the first time:

Convention headquarters in San Francisco was a large modernistic hotel almost twenty stories high, built around a central glass-roofed courtyard. By some fiendish miracle of advanced architecture, the hotel was constructed so that each floor facing the courtyard juts out into thin air a little farther than the floor just below it. As you stand in the lobby, therefore, you are treated to the impression that the whole building is about to cave in on you. If you leave the lobby and venture upward, on the other hand, you are treated to the impression that gravity will soon bring you and the whole impudent pile of overhangs crashing ignominiously to the ground. The net impression you are treated to is that you should get the hell out of there before the building makes you dead, and that impression becomes a certainty when you see the fishbowl elevators whizzing up and down at the junctions of the walls like to many glass-enclosed coffins. It was doing my High Anxiety no good.

A beautiful stranger (who turns out to be Vicki Brisbane) bursts into Richard’s hotel room:

“Get away from me,” she snapped. “Don’t move. Be quiet. They’ll hear you. Close the drapes.”

It occurred to me that I was dealing with a beautiful victim of paranoia—a beautiful armed victim—so I went to do as she’d asked.

“Get down!” she said vehemently. “They’ll see you.”

Paranoid. Definitely. I crouched down and closed the drapes.

“Close the other one,” she commanded.

Paranoid and pushy. I obediently started across the room.

“Keep down,” she ordered.

She was so obviously scared and so much more obviously pretty that I really didn’t mind being bossed around by her. Her gun impressed me, too…Suddenly there was the sound of the doorknob turning…. “Quick,” she said. “Make believe you know me.” And with that, she pulled me to her and kissed me as no paranoid had ever kissed me before.

Our trapped hero Braces himself for mortal combat!

Braces starts strangling Richard in the phone booth as he calls Vicki:

Vicki jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Listen, fella. I don’t go for this kind of thing.”

I managed to get one hand between my throat and the wire, but almost immediately the strangling pressure of the cord trapped it, and I could feel my wrist bone being forced into my Adam’s apple. I gasped and huffed like a man with terminal asthma, which in a way was what I was.

“Who is this?” Victoria asked. “Listen, you’re crazy if you think I’m going to stay on this phone and listen to heavy breathing.”

It wasn’t working. I was making a lot of noise, but no air was coming in. Red spots started dancing in front of my eyes.

“Listen,” Victoria went on, “maybe other girls get turned on with these kinky phone calls, but I couldn’t care less. How did you get my unlisted phone number? Did someone I know give it to you?...Listen, mister, I’m not going to listen to any more of this. I’ve had just about enough!...What are you wearing?”

It was horrible. I was being strangled to death while listening to the girl I loved mistake me for a pervert. It made me wild with terror and despair. It made me want to wail and sob. The only sound I could squeeze out, however, was a squeaky “Jeeeeee…Jeeeeee….”

“Jeans?” said Victoria. “You’re wearing jeans? I bet they’re tight.”

So if you loved the movie, read the book! I’ve seen it available online. 

And if you haven't yet read all of Nate Hood's excellent High Anxiety blog post, here's a link:

http://forgottenclassicsofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2009/10/high-anxiety.html

Webb Wilder, Detective and Hillbilly Noir Roots Rocker!

Whether you call him “The Last of the Full-Grown Men,” “The Idol of Idle Youth,” or an electrifying roots-rocker with a talent for deadpan comedy, Webb Wilder is The Man! We of Team Bartilucci first discovered him in 1990; how fitting that we became his fans at the beginning of a brand new decade! It all started when I noticed a TV Guide listing for A&E’s Shortstories series, with its self-proclaimed “award-winning short films from around the world.” One of the shorts that day was a 1984 film, Webb Wilder, Private Eye, a.k.a The Saucer’s Reign, written and directed by one Stephen Mims at the University of Mississippi, from a story by Mims and Robert Field. I’d never heard of it, but since I’m a sucker for any kind of detective story, and since Vinnie and I had some free time, we watched it. We were hooked from the very first scene. A lanky, bespectacled young man looks us viewers in the eye. He wears a hat looking like a fedora and a Stetson fell in love and had a baby. As he addresses us in the audience, he’s illuminated by beams of light, camera right, looking all film noir-ish in glorious black-and-white. In a sepulchral yet hilarious deadpan Southern twang that brought to mind a thin young Southern-fried Alfred Hitchcock, he tells us viewers, “I’m like that Greek hobo with the limp. You know, the one who went from Hades to Yugo-Slovakia lookin’ for an honest man. Well, I got my own quest. What it is, is I’m lookin’ for the dishonest man. I am — Webb Wilder, Private Eye.”

“Urgent,” it said. But it wasn’t the same “Urgent” as the one on all my bills…".

After a fast-paced, rockabilly-scored credit sequence in which we see Webb’s dance moves (kind of like an amazingly cool spastic dancing the Frug) and his skills at running up and down stairs while brandishing a gun, we slide on into the case of The Saucer’s Reign. In voiceover like any noir film (parody) worth its salt, our hero is retained for “fifty bucks a day,” and opts to “drop…my current case,” after which we see Webb exiting a JC Penney in security guard garb. Webb’s off to Wakefield, Mississippi with his autographed Slim Whitman photo. His client is small-town postmaster Hiwayne Suggs (Roger Brinegar), who lives in “a one-chiropractor town that seemed peaceful enough. But an ant bed is peaceful till you step in it.”


Suggs is anxious for Webb to find his mysteriously missing wife, Pristene: “Space critters, Mr. Wilder! They abducted my Sweet Thing!” Webb studies a less-than-flattering photo of Pristene: “I didn’t think even Mars needed women that bad. Pristene Suggs was unvoluptuous.” (I’m pretty sure the photo of Pristene, listed in the credits as “Herself,” is in fact a guy in drag, but you can never be sure in this unpredictable world!) Webb enlists space buff Homer Greenspan (Jimmy Daniels) to help him unravel this caper: “Homer had ‘science fair’ written all over him.” Once Hiwayne blabs on the tiny town’s party line that a UFO might be setting up light housekeeping in Wakefield, Webb and Homer find themselves wading through a sea of reporters, deception, and trailer trash as the abduction stories and media frenzy get even wilder than Webb’s last name.

Stop! In the name of Webb!

By the time it ended, we’d formed our own little Webb Wilder mini-cult around this loopy, compact little gem. We were especially impressed to see co-writer Robert Field (a.k.a. R.S. Field) and Webb himself (formerly John Webb McMurray) composed and performed the film’s hard-rockin’ soundtrack. When A&E rebroadcast The Saucer’s Reign, Vinnie and I recorded it strictly for our own amusement, and showed it to any pals we could rope into being a captive audience, turning them into Webb Wilder fans in the process. If I recall correctly, it also turned up on The USA Network’s Night Flight.

We thought that was the last we’d ever hear of our beloved Webb Wilder until my 29^th birthday in 1992. We were celebrating with friends at the Manhattan branch of the popular Chicago restaurant Ed Debevic’s (anyone know if the NYC restaurant still exists?), including our pal Michael Gingold of Fangoria fame (there’s my name-drop for the day :-)). Our longtime pals Elayne and Steve showed us a then-recent issue of Psychotronic Video featuring a review of an album by Webb Wilder—the band! Apparently, while The Saucer’s Reign had been making the rounds of various TV anthology shows, Webb, R.S., and the rest of the band had formed a rockabilly group—or roots rock, as it’s called nowadays. In fact, they had just released their second album on the Zoo/Praxis label. However, John Webb McMurray had long since begun billing himself exclusively as Webb Wilder. Fine by me; after all, that’s how movie stars Gig Young and Anne Shirley got their stage names!

Before we went home that night, Vinnie and I popped into the Tower Records in Greenwich Village, and I left with two more birthday gifts: the Webb Wilder CDs Hybrid Vigor (1989) and DooDad (1991). Both were (and still are), the awesome, as we say at Team Bartilucci H.Q. We’re no music critics, but we know when a band can rock! Hybrid Vigor includes “Hittin’ Where it Hurts” and Team Bartilucci’s favorite, “Human Cannonball.” Even better, at the time the band had just put out DooDad, which included plenty of songs from their then-new movie, Horror Hayride (HH), whose many kick-butt tracks included “Tough it Out,” “Sittin’ Pretty,” and amazing cover versions of “Baby Please Don’t Go” and “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night.” Meanwhile, Zoo/Praxis’ video arm released Webb Wilder’s Corn Flicks on VHS (c’mon, you remember VHS!), giving us beaucoup bellylaughs for the buck with three short films, all set in the “swampadelic” South and directed by Steve Mims. Each story was framed by tongue-in-cheek advice to fans by either Webb or Ted Roddy, of Ted Roddy and the Backwoods Hipsters, as Special Agent Travis Byrd, renowned for being “the knuckle end of the long arm of the law” and “cool as an October breeze.” Need I say Vinnie and I caught up on the Webb Wilder CDs we’d missed? (During the summer, “Poolside” from WW’s album It Came From Nashville is in heavy rotation!)

Corn Flicks gives us the delicious feeling that our man Webb is in the middle of a series of his hillbilly noir adventures. My favorite among these great shorts is Horror Hayride, written by Field and Steve Mims. It’s set in Nashville—“Nash Vegas, if you will,” as Webb says in his inimitable voice-over. Mims and Field’s characters and the screenplay’s sly, slightly surreal wit won us over immediately. The film opens with an intriguingly foreboding farm scene that morphs into little Webb finding himself in a close encounter of the spaceman kind. No sooner is Webb startled awake from what turns out to be one of his recurring nightmares about flying saucers than the Governor of Tennessee (Dirk Van Allen) stops Webb’s "Economy with Dignity" tour bus, asking our hero to do him a solid. Seems the Governor’s lovely young daughter Kirsten (Cristina Cassin) has finally graduated from Peabody College, having taken eight years to earn a four-year degree (“Who’s counting?” Webb replies gallantly). Her first job out of school is supervising the state’s new Driver Ed film, also titled Horror Hayride. The Guv wants to make sure the film will be “more relevant to modern rural teens. You know, the muscle-car, street-sign-shootin’ set.” Seems that Webb, “the only man who commands the respect of both reckless teens and the highway patrol,” helped put a rubber stamp truck-driving school out of business, and the Governor owes Webb one. Now he’ll owe Webb two as he agrees to help the Governor and Kirsten. After all, as Webb voiceovers in his pleasantly twangy tones, “The Guv was okay, for an authority figure.”

"We don't do retail, do we, Billy C?"

“We’re gonna have to talk to Billy C.” *POW!*

Singin' songs, fightin' crime; all in a day's work for Webb Wilder and Ted Roddy!

Webb has too much to dream (last night) after Briley slips him an LSD Mickey!

Kirsten’s honey is the enigmatic Briley Parkway (Bodie Plecas) the aspiring film director helming the Driver Ed flick, much to the disgruntlement of Mr. Fry, the apoplectic director of the Driver Ed program (Webb is a hoot as he does double duty as the unbilled Fry). Hiwayne, Parkway, Driver Ed films—Mims and Field have cars on the brain! Judging from Briley’s previous art-house opus, Slugtrail, his vision as an auteur seems to be inspired by both Jean-Luc Godard and William Castle (including a decapitated model head). Webb likes Briley’s work, even if Travis doesn’t; as Webb says, “I gave it a thumb-up. Travis only offered a finger.” But why is Briley making secret visits to porno outfit Antebellum Skin, and why is Kirsten raiding her mama’s trust fund to give Briley $5,000 each week? And how are gospel singer Carlsbad Devereaux (Shane Caldwell) and Webb’s former flame, psychiatrist Dr. Barbara Slovine (Janette Friend-Harris), mixed up in all the “swampadelic, psychotronic” goings-on? Soon Webb and Travis are up to their drawls in trouble, fighting a murderous porno ring whose opuses include The South Will Rise Again and Backstage at The Grand Old Orgy. Along the way, Webb and Travis get to sing an ode to Elvis Presley, “If You Don’t Think Elvis was Number One, You’re Full of Number Two;” as Webb sternly reminds some punks during a party scene at Carlsbad’s palatial home, “If it wasn’t for fat dead ol’ Elvis, there wouldn’t’ve been a Jimi Hendrix or a Peter and Gabriel….” True to the “noir” part of HH’s hillbilly noir, Webb also gets slugged, drugged, and loved as he rekindles his romance with the lovely “Doctor Barbara,” who tries to help Webb with those recurring flying saucer nightmares; I guess he never got over his first case!

Webb's latest opus, Scattergun, at a Webb Fest near you!

The rockin’ rhythms of Webb Wilder the Band work with the tongue-in-cheek detective plot perfectly. Co-writer/director Mims provides lots of atmosphere on a low budget (filming in Nashville helped), and the film’s black-and-white look is like Ansel Adams acting as DP for a Coen Brothers movie (except for one nifty color sequence after Webb is slipped some LSD). The characters take some pleasantly unexpected turns, with acting ranging from sublime (including Webb himself, natch) to amateurish, but that's part of the film’s charm.

The Chicago Tribune called HH “Twin Peaks with MTV thrown in the middle,” but this crazy little caper packs enough humor, plot, and action into its 36-minute running time to give David Lynch and company a run for their money. Being Southerners themselves, writers Field and Mims treat their characters with respect and affection, but they’re not afraid to poke wryly good-natured fun at themselves, as well as pretentious art movies, film noir tropes, and the country-and-Western music biz (Webb: “In Music City, even ugly girls are good-lookin’.”). The witty dialogue sings like Webb himself, and everyone gets at least one show-stealing line, like in this scene between Webb and Travis when Webb comes to after being knocked out by Antebellem Skin henchman Ike (Charles Gunning of Miller’s Crossing and Slacker, among others):

Travis: “So who adjusted your hat size?”
Webb: “Some greasy….I fell.”
Travis: “Right. Maybe next time you’ll trip on a damn .38.”
Webb: “Happens. I’m pretty clumsy.”
Travis: “Just tell me what you want on the tombstone. ‘Rock hard, sleep hard, wear glasses if you need ’em, and die stupid?’ ”

Webb & Dr. Barbara. This case is looking up—at Elvis!

The cast of low-key comic actors does a fine job with Mims and Field’s offbeat sense of humor, and the characters are more complex than you’d expect. Webb has an amazing knack for seeming tough and geeky at the same time (in a good way!) Over the years, we’ve had the pleasure of seeing Webb Wilder live in concert in our area for Musikfest, among other venues. Even all these years later, Webb and the guys keep rocking like nobody’s business, and Webb still has those Wilder-and-wonderful dance moves and that way-cool cavern-voiced delivery. Mims and Director of Photography Brian O’Kelley prove you don’t need a big budget to create atmosphere. HH is shot in glorious black-and-white except for Webb’s LSD hallucination, in psychedelic color with hilariously, endearingly cheesy ChromaKey F/X and color-wheel lighting, accompanied by WW's awesome cover version of The Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)." If you like deadpan comedy, Dragnet, Twin Peaks, and rock ‘n’ roll Southern-style, I think you’re gonna love Horror Hayride!

Aunt Hallie vs. "old nasty disease."

After HH comes the popular festival favorite Aunt Hallie (AH). Written by Mims and Christopher Hammond, made in 1989 and getting acclaim at film festivals since 1991, AH is a comedy for today’s disease-paranoid world. Roger Brinegar of The Saucer’s Reign narrates this loopy spoof of brave disease-sufferers. The titular Aunt Hallie (Mary Gandy) finds a used condom on her lawn one day (*tsk!* Don’t people have any respect for others’ property?) Convinced that touching the condom has infected her with “Old Nasty Disease,” Aunt Hallie stoically and with dignity tries to keep from infecting her long-suffering kin by going to such daft lengths as never touching things if she can possibly avoid them (wait’ll you see what she does just to get up out of a rocking chair), and burning silverware and china cups and dishes identified as hers with Dyno labels; is that recycling, the genteel Southern way? The expressions on Aunt Hallie’s long-suffering relatives’ faces throughout the films are priceless. AH is one of the funniest stories of a self-styled martyr ever told, and well worth getting the DVD for, even if you’re not already a die-hard Webb Wilder fan!

Happily, all of these shorts and more of Steve Mims’ short films are now available on the DVD Webb Wilder’s Amazing B Picture Shorts. WW’s latest film, Scattergun, has been shown at Webb Wilder events; we live for the day it’ll be available on DVD, too. It also includes footage from Webb Fest 2006! Webb Wilder-mania starts here; won’t you help?

Heed the words of Mr. Fry, kids: "Dismemberment is not cute!"

For concert dates, DVDs, and other Webb Wilder-ness, check out the Webb site!
http://www.webbwilder.com

Vinnie Spins a Webb of his own

I have two aphorisms hanging up in my cubicle at work, Doc Savage’s Code and the Webb Wilder Credo (see above). This offers far too much insight into my mindset and philosophy.

As The Wife has said already, Horror Hayride gives you the impression that you’ve been dropped into the middle of a series of adventures, and you either pick it up as you go, or get left behind. It shares that feeling with a film about which I could (and have) go on about for hours, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension. Both films share a vibe of effortless cool, a bevy of mad characters, and a hero who can rock it with the best of them. No wonder that we tried for the longest time to write a fanfic crossover between the two.

The Saucer’s Reign is a solid laugh-fest with an amateurish air, but Horror Hayride shows what a couple years can do for a director and his actors. They had time to flesh out Webb’s history and character as well. In both stories, the cases that Webb takes on are right in line with the Nash-Vegas (if you will) mindset; Webb might be out of his league fighting Russian mobsters, but he’s right at home taking down a blue movie ring. Often, as The Three Amigos learned, it’s when you stray from the formula that things gang aft aglay.

Webb doesn’t come up North too often, but he visited our humble burg two years in a row recently, both at our big local summer event Musikfest, and at the re-opening of a local public pool and park for July Fourth. He’s still the aforementioned Electrifying Artist, and well worth your time in either live, recorded, or cinematic form. Pick up on it.