Never give up, never surrender.

I've come upon what I think is a good idea for this blog. Hopefully, it will rekindle my excitement for it.

To be honest, I'm probably better suited for the tumblr style blog. But tumblr stresses me out. It goes on forever. I walk away for a second and suddenly I've fallen behind. I feel lazy with tumblr because long posts seem tedious and all I really want to do is scroll and gaze at things and then like them. Lately, all I've been posting is pictures and videos. I haven't said much of anything of consequence. I like to imagine important people stumbling upon my blog, but if they did that lately, they'd find nothing terribly interesting - except for some great pictures and wonderful videos. The posts I've been most proud of are the ones where I stated a definite opinion and received responses. I am very passionate about old movies and I love to talk about them. The trouble is, movies are very personally to me, and always have been. I get very upset when people bash a movie that I'm fond of, which is one of the reasons I've stopped reading other blogs. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but I think we're all entitled to our own love for things.

All this to say, I want to keep the blog. I really want to get it going again. Part of me wants to keep posting randomly in it, but the whole thing is pretty much puttered out now. I think it needs a new haul. I have an idea for what I'd like to do with it, at least for a year - but this idea requires me to start in January. So, I'm thinking of waiting until January to bring the blog back up again. Of course, this would mean that my blog would be down until next year - which would mean no 12 Days of Christmas Movies blogathon, which is really one of my favorite things about my blog. So, I'm trying to decide what to do. Thoughts?

Hold, please.

So, clearly, I am way behind on my regular posting schedule. I've decided to claim this as being under construction. I think that the current system under which I've been working used to work when I was in school and had a regular schedule and would squeeze blog posts in between homework assignments. Now, my life is filled with long work days and spending every amount of free time relaxing as much as possible. Using that free time to devote to a blog that, frankly, continues to lose followers (unsurprisingly) is hard to do. So, I'm going to do a little brainstorming and will, hopefully, come up with a fresh approach to my blog. It may not be original but it will be new to Flying Down To Hollywood, which is good enough!

Small danger of fruit frost

I had several pictures of bathing beauties in the running for this final week in July. Maybe I should continue the theme for August - what do you think?

In the end, I decided on this one because I think she has to be one of the most unbelievably gorgeous women that ever lived: Gloria DeHaven.

from Doctor Macro

On the one hand, if you go searching for classic beauties in bathing suits, your search will be pretty easy. On the other hand, a lot of the photos were just excuses to show off nice bodies and so there's very little work in the lighting and setup that I love so much in old glamor photos. I also have a small opposition to colored photos - this isn't a sweeping and all-consuming fact; but I do love black and white photos better, typically.

P.S. The line in my title has always confused me. Is Marilyn saying that there is a danger of fruit frost, but it's small, or is she saying it's so hot there's no danger of something like fruit frost. I'd guess the latter but it's supposed to be in a weather report, which doesn't seem like the right place for sarcasm. Or maybe I'm the only one confused here.

Sun-tanned, wind-blown...

okay, well, not really wind-blown, but you get the picture. The perfect Grace Kelly in a picture from High Society.

My heart won't let my feet do things they should do

Another comparison post! I really love these! I'm afraid that I'll eventually run out of songs but when that happens, I guess I'll just think of something else to write about! Plus, after I've written a post, I'll often discover another version of the song, so that's always an option too.

Anyway, the song for today's discussion is "I Won't Dance" by Jerome Kern. Now, the obvious choice is to, yet again, compare Roberta and Lovely to Look At, which are actually the same story, so that's almost cheating. But I do like comparing remakes. And this song happens to be pretty popular in other movies too. Take a look:

from Roberta (1935), we have Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers:



then there's Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) with Lucille Bremer and, of all people, Van Johnson:



then, of course, there's Lovely to Look At (1952), with Marge and Gower Champion. I'm sure I've said this before but I do think it's a pity that this movie was a remake simply because the Champions were fantastic dancers in their own right. Obviously no one can compare to Fred and Ginger but they had their own style and spark. I really do enjoy watching them a great deal.



Now, we come to the contemporary portion of our discussion. There are several movies post-1980's that use this song. Love's Labor's Lost, Warm Springs, (both which have Kenneth Branagh, oddly enough). I wanted to show you the former one here but it's not on YouTube, so you'll have to take my word for it that it's pretty cute. The second one is a TV movie that I'd never heard of but looks way too sad for me to actually watch so I won't bother putting it in here. Now, what I will post here is a movie that I don't really have any interest in watching all the way through, but I find this dance sequence quite intriguing. Take a look:



Despite the fact that Gene Kelly never (to my knowledge) sang this song, I think it's fascinating how much this scene pays homage to him. Running through the taxi cab and dancing with trashcan lids are both used in It's Always Fair Weather and then, of course, rolling over a couch is totally Singin' in the Rain-ish. He even jumps up on a lamppost! It makes me wonder how many other musicals they're referring to throughout the scene.

Her anatomy makes the mercury rise to 93

I thought of doing the famous photo shoot with the red and white polka dot umbrella, but decided to go with this cute black and white shot from Monkey Business instead. Although, any picture of her is pretty much perfect. She's so cute!

found on Doctor Macro

They asked me how I knew my true love was true

Two "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" posts in a week might be a little much but I really do love this song. I know I'm not alone in this because there are multiple versions of it. Here are just a few examples:

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers performing it in Roberta (1935)


Gower Champion and Cyd Charisse in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)


Marge and Gower Champion in Lovely to Look At (1952)


I'd never say one is better than the other. I like them all, really. It's just cool to see so many interpretations of this beautiful song, don't you think? And each from a different decade.