What if the Beach Boys had done a James Bond title song?

I'll never listen to the the title track of Pet Sounds quite the same way, ever again. It turns out that Brian Wilson had originally titled the song ("Pet Sounds") "Run James Run" and had intended for it to be used as a James Bond film title track. Pet Sounds was released in 1966, so the next possible Bond flick would have been You Only Live Twice, released in 1967. If this is true, there must have been lyrics, but I've never seen them. It's nowhere near as cool as the actual, Nancy Sinatra sung title track, but it's interesting to think how different the opening credits sequence would have been. I can definitely imagine "Pet Sounds" being used, especially after seeing this. All the dramatic guitar chords make a lot more sense now:

The Key to Reserva (La Clave Reserva)

"...he would make it now as if he made it back then."
Did you see this over at Ain't It Cool News? It's a wine commercial Martin Scorsese directed recently in Spain, an homage to Alfred Hitchcock. It's pretty cool. The "plot" involves Scorsese somehow getting his hands on three and a half, delicate, plastic enveloped pages to a script Hitchcock developed into something he would direct, but never did (called The Key to Reserva). Scorsese feels a "duty" to make the film, doing it as if Hitchcock did in fact film it. Problem is, there's a page of the script missing.

"The Birth of the Blues"

"The Birth of the Blues" was written by Ray Henderson, with lyrics by Buddy G. DeSylva and Lew Brown. The song was published in 1926, and recorded by Cab Calloway. The song was later a moderate, late-Columbia records period (1952) hit for Frank Sinatra and was often performed by Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Jr., Keely Smith, and Jack Teagarden.

This is Sinatra and Louie Armstrong performing it on an episode of Sinatra's TV show, around 1957:


Here are Frank, Dean, Sammy, and........Johnny Carson (he was a last minute replacement for Joey Bishop who was unable to attend) at a 1965 benefit for the St. Louis Dismas House. "The Birth of the Blues" was the closing number. Carson was given the difficult bridge section to sing. Makes sense.


So "they" pushed this through a horn til it was born into a new note??

a whippoorwill's song
And all this time, here I am thinking it emerged in African-American communities of the southern U.S. from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed English and Scots-Irish narrative ballads.

Sunset Blvd. locations

Note that some screencaps are out of order in terms of plot chronology and sequence.

Sunset Blvd. is the classic Billy Wilder film from 1950. It starred William Holden and '20s and '30s era starlet Gloria Swanson. A 2003 BBC review of the restored film described it as "the finest movie ever made about the narcissistic hellhole that is Hollywood."

Filmed in 1949, I see it in a way as a melancholy, occasionally disturbing, tribute to the physical remnants of Hollywood - the way it was during the Silent Era. Many of the locations used would have been pretty old (by California standards) at the time of the film's production, most having been constructed in the 1920s. Some are still around today; some are long gone.



The Mediterranean-style apartments where Joe Gillis (William Holden) lives opened in 1930 in the center of Hollywood, on North Ivar St. Elizabeth Short (the "Black Dahlia") is thought to have lived there. The Alto Nido apartment complex is still open, and that neon sign remains.


It was a great big, white elephant of a place, the kind crazy movie people built in the crazy twenties. --Joe Gillis (William Holden)

The "Desmond mansion" was built by a William Jenkins in 1924 at a cost of $250,000. Its second owner was Jean Paul Getty, who purchased it for his second wife. It was she who rented it to Paramount for the filming. Actually on Wilshire, and not Sunset Blvd., the place was torn down in 1957 and replaced with a gas station.

Schwab's Pharmacy, on Sunset and Crescent, was not just an ordinary drugstore, selling top-quality cosmetics and ice-cream sodas.

Despite the stories, Lana Turner was not discovered at its lunch counter. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a heart attack there in 1940 while buying a pack of smokes. Marlene Dietrich, the Marx Brothers, Charles Laughton, James Dean, and Dick Powell were regulars.

Depending on source of information, composer Harold Arlen wrote "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" either at a booth, or under its glowing neon sign. I prefer to believe the neon sign story.

Right up until it closed in 1986, Shelley Winters held court every morning. To have been a fly on that wall! It was torn down in 1988. Today a Virgin megastore sits there. Universal Studios theme parks in Florida and Hollywood each have authentic replicas.

The antique car used as Norma Desmond's (Gloria Swanson) limousine is an Isotta-Fraschini, and once belonged to 1920s socialite Peggy Hopkins Joyce. It was a gift from automobile magnate Walter Chrysler.

I love the brief glimpses of vintage neon, not to mention the glowing Schwab's sign, that can be seen as Desmond and Gillis ride in it at night:

The famed gate of Paramount Pictures is known as the Bronson Gate, and was built in 1926. Paramount is the only major film studio still operating in Hollywood.

Grand Theft Auto IV box art video

I love the buildup, and pre-release excitement, revolving around these games! It's to the point that the actual release is a bit of a comedown. A new trailer called "Move up, ladies" premieres next Thursday (Devember 6) at the official site.

Canton, Texas

"Love Is a Song"

Despite the fact that the majority of males in East Texas are passionate about deer hunting, I simply can not do it, in large part because of (I've had deer in my site and could not squeeze the trigger):



Judy Marsh and Donald Novis
Music: Frank Churchill
Lyrics: Larry Morey
Performed by: Donald Novis
From: Walt Disney's Bambi (1942)