Picture Show (A thread for interesting photos from the world of movies and TV)*

It's pretty amazing that my mum pictured here on stage in Berlin 1977 was the same woman as the one on the picture above one year earlier in the Belarus village.

 

And they didn't let the stand in wear the shoes??! Oh, the humanity!

 

From left, Miss Milwaukee Clare Koehler, Miss Chicago Margaret Leigh, Miss Los Angeles Lillian Knight and Miss Sioux City Alta Sterling, Sept. 1924.

 

Another of Hitch....:

 

This week's collection now up here: FRIDAY NIGHT BOYS: FRIDAY NIGHT COOL #479

The selected five:

 

And here's a shot from the Ponderosa set from Bonanza, right around 1968 or so. Who knew that most of that ranch was on a sound stage on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood? Whole bunch of Mole-Richardson 2K lights on the left.


[courtesy Randy West on Facebook]

 

And here's a side of the Jaws shark we never saw in the 1975 film, shot throughout the early summer and fall of 1974:


[courtesy Al McGuire on Facebook]





Famously, the shark never worked very well, which forced Spielberg and editor Verna Fields to only show the creature in very short pieces, plus a lot of atmospheric underwater "shark's-eye-view" shots, which wound up making the film more suspenseful than if we had seen a lot of the shark. I've followed the Jaws story for many years and never seen a photo this clear.

 

A new week: a new batch of photos: FRIDAY NIGHT BOYS: FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #480

Here are five from that group:

 

No phones, no lights, no motorcars, it's primitive as can be... this is the set of Gilligan's Island, circa 1963-1965 or so...






[courtesy Terry Wilkie on the Randy West Appreciation Group on Facebook]

 

Note that the old "Gilligan's Island Lagoon" is now a parking lot at CBS Television Center on Radford Avenue in Studio City. Check out the logo for the "Lagoon Building" garage, which is in the Gilligan's Island font.

 

Here's a great shot I had never seen before of noted DP Allen Daviau's early 1982 camera crew on E.T., shooting an exterior with two Panavision Panaflex cameras. That is Mr. Daviau on the far right, and Spielberg just above him holding a bullhorn. I think this is a camera car used to film the kids racing down the street on their bikes in one of the climactic scenes.



Below is another angle showing the bicycle kids moving...



I believe this is around White Oak Avenue around Northridge, California (about 20 miles north of Los Angeles proper).

 

Let's see what we have this week at FRIDAY NIGHT BOYS: FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #481
Here are five selections from the above:

 

Here's some great shots of the "classic 39" episodes of Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners, filmed from 1955-1956 at the DuMont Television Network's Adelphi Theatre at 152 West 54th Street in Manhattan. They're using DuMont's pioneering (but shortlived) "Electronicams," which were basically a TV camera with a 35mm film camera bolted to the side, capable of shooting about 10 minutes before having to change film. The process collapsed once Ampex unveiled the 2" Quadraplex videotape format in the fall of 1956.









[Amazing shots from Terry Wilkie on the Randy West Appreciation Group on Facebook.]

 

Some more: FRIDAY NIGHT BOYS: FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #482

Five from the above:

 

Steve McQueen and his buddy, movie stunt-rider and fellow motorcycle racer Bud Ekins, discussing the barbed wire fence jump between takes on The Great Escape

 

A letter Clark Gable wrote Mary Pickford just months after his wife Carole Lombard was killed in plane crash.

 

Here's several behind-the-scenes shots of Johnny Carson at the Tonight Show set at NBC Burbank's Studio 1 during the 1970s and 1980s... (I'm dating it from the RCA TK-44 cameras, but some of the color shots have TK-47's, which were the last cameras RCA made in the late 1980s -- arguably the best tube cameras ever made.)








Mmmmph! YA-ha. Ah, that was a ZING-er... a very funny jolk!

[pictures courtesy of Terry Wilkie on the Randy West Appreciation Group on Facebook]

 

oboy, Buddy Rich was on that night. John was over the moon the whole time, I bet

 

And in a departure from "old" pictures, here's a 2018 shot from the recent M. Night Shyamalan film Glass, showing the director talking to the actors in the insane asylum. Note the mic boom operator in the background wearing an all-black outfit and hood in order to eliminate any reflections on the set. The camera right behind Willis is an Arri Alexa XT, a rare case where Shyamalan embraced digital production in lieu of film because of the production's relatively-low $20 million budget. Note also the flat surface laid down on the floor to provide a smooth surface for dolly moves.



[photo courtesy of sound great Richard Van Dyke on Facebook]

 

Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland and “Edward Wain” in The Last Woman on Earth (1960)

The most well-known aspect of THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH is the involvement of a very young Robert Towne, the noted screenwriter who would go on to CHINATOWN, THE LAST DETAIL and many others. Towne was working on the script for Corman, but didn’t complete it in time, ending him up on location to play the third lead (as to not have to pay another actor), and completing it on the set. Hence Towne used the acting pseudonym “Edward Wain”​

The Roger Corman Puerto Rico Trilogy: The Last Woman on Earth, Creature from the Haunted Sea, Battle of Blood Island

 

These are incredible shots. I never realized how much of this was shot on a soundstage as opposed to exterior.

 

LOS ANGELES - JANUARY 24: Gilligan's Island cast member, at left, Dawn Wells (as Mary Ann Summers) and guest star Rudy LaRusso (as Michaels) in the episode: 'Bang! Bang! Bang!' Image dated January 24, 1967​

Rudy LaRusso - Wikipedia

Rudolph A. LaRusso (November 11, 1937 – July 9, 2004) was an American professional basketball player who was a five-time All-Star in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was nicknamed "Roughhouse Rudy."​