MINNIE’S BOYS (1970) – HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! This year Balladeer’s Blog looks at the musical comedy Minnie’s Boys, about Minnie Marx, the mother – and show-biz manager – of the five Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo and Gummo). Actors portraying her sons co-starred and conjured up the kind of hilarious chaos you’d expect.
If you removed all the songs, the show would still hold up as a show business biopic done in the style of a 1930s Marx Brothers movie. Some snobbish critics seemed bothered by the lack of a straightforward approach, but I think they were being silly.
Let’s face it, trying to do a straight drama about the most anarchic comedians since Edward Lear and Eugene Ionesco would have been foolish, even if their mother is the lead character, not them. The storyline in Minnie’s Boys takes Minnie and her sons from their teenage years in vaudeville to their achievement of stardom.
The broad strokes of the story are reasonably close to reality but obviously to keep the boys in character enormous liberties are taken along the way. Groucho Marx’s son Arthur was a co-writer and his father served as a consultant. Sadly, when it came down to a choice between Totie Fields and Shelley Winters, Groucho rejected Fields and pushed for the big-name star Winters. Continue reading
FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #158 (May 1975) 
The pair fight it out, fueled largely by their former romantic rivalry for Crystal. The Thing (Ben Grimm) and his girlfriend – the blind sculptress Alicia Masters – arrive back from a night at the Metropolitan Opera and the Thing joins the Human Torch in attacking Quicksilver. Mr. Fantastic calls a halt to the fighting and asks Quicksilver why he invaded the Baxter Building. 
Some readers have been asking what I mean by my frequently used term “Psychotronic movies”. It’s a nice reminder that not everyone is as immersed as people like me are in Bad and Weird Movie Culture. 
A TRIP TO THE MOON BY MR. MURTAGH MCDERMOT, CONTAINING OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS MADE BY HIM (1728) – The real author of this is unknown, since it was published using the pen name Murtagh McDermot. Unless, of course, the writer used their real name for the main character. 
IT’S A BIRD … IT’S A PLANE … IT’S SUPERMAN! (1975) – It’s the bomb that asks the musical question “How many Lembecks can you handle?” Even the most die-hard Superman fans would have a hard time forcing themselves to watch all of this made for tv movie version of the 1966 stage musical. 
Despite music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams and script by David Newman & Robert Benton this Superman musical was Broadway’s biggest flop in history as of the 1960s. It’s no great shakes in its televised form, either. 
For some prep as I at last get back into reviewing the surviving fragments of ancient Greek comedy every now and then, here’s my 2011 review of Demoi by Eupolis. Along with Aristophanes and Cratinus, Eupolis was one of the Big Three of Attic Old Comedy. Background info is 
THE PRISON ON DEVIL’S ISLAND – Near the mouth of the Orinoco River in French Guyana a huge deposit of diamonds has been discovered. Inmates of the notoriously hellish prison on nearby Devil’s Island have been making frenzied attempts at escape to go diamond hunting. 
TOGETHER WE STAND (1986-1987) – With the new attention being paid to Ke Huy Quan/ Short Round in recent years, I decided to take a look at the sitcom he co-starred in with Elliott Gould, Dee Wallace Stone and others. 
The first episode unrealistically dealt with a social worker leaning on the Randalls to adopt two more children, Sam (Quan) and an African American girl named Sally (Natasha Bobo). But hey, My Mother the Car and The Flying Nun proved long ago that realism isn’t necessary. 
In the middle 1980s/ Way down on Level 31 … 
SERIAL: Radar Men from the Moon was the current serial being shown. This episode of The Texas 27 Film Vault featured Chapter Nine titled Battle in the Stratosphere. During the 12-week run of this serial one of the behind-the-scenes crew (no one remembers who at this point) would dress as Commando Cody, the hero of the serial, and occasionally interact with Randy and Richard during the comedy sketches. 
FILM VAULT LORE: This was supposedly the favorite episode of the Film Vault Corp’s effects man Joe Riley, which is why he used the title The Hypnotic Eye for his post-T27FV television show, episodes of which are online.
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