Hey – that’s where I live!

I just had to share this, a video shot by a dad of his 8-month-old son at the moment that his deaf boy’s cochlear implant was switched on and little Jonathan hears sound for the very first time. Priceless!

Oh brother…

More and more of these Mitch Miller shows are showing up these days; here’s another from 1964 featuring Shirley Temple, singing and dancing. She was 36 years old at this point – she’ll be 82 this year!

We had the 78 rpm record of this when I was a kid (I think it was my mom’s), but there was a chunk chipped out of the lead-in groove, so I’ve never heard the beginning of the song. Now, not only can I hear how it begins, but I can watch this great lipsync by the mad men themselves – Spike Jones and his City Slickers!

One of our favorite Christmas albums when we were kids was Mitch Miller’s ‘Christmas Sing Along With Mitch’. Here’s an episode of ‘Sing Along With Mitch’ that features many of the old-time holiday favorites.

I noted something a little strange on the fifth clip featuring Leslie Uggams – when the camera zooms down on her, a strange fuzzy glow seems to encompass her from the neck down. Maybe a little camera trick to shield vulnerable viewers in 1966 from seeing an overexposed decolletage that may have gone unnoticed when the scene was shot – and they didn’t have time to shoot it again, so they ‘fixed’ it in post-production. Interesting.

Classic Television Showbiz: Sing Along with Mitch – Christmas Episode 1966.

Way back in 1962 I was hunkered down in front of the black-and-white TV in the family ‘front room’ to get my very first exposure to Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ at the hands of an adaptation featuring none other than Quincy Magoo himself.

I remembered it so clearly – that famous cartoon character Mr. Magoo, voiced by the fantastic Jim ‘Thurston Howell III’ Backus, fumbling his way into a Broadway theater to take up the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. I remembered the songs, the scenery, everything. And I’ve been longing to see it again ever since, some 47 years (yikes!) later.

Today, it showed up as a multi-part post on one of my favorite blogs, Classic Television Showbiz, which is always posting clips from the Golden Age Of Television (the post about Mitch Miller a year or so ago came from there). I was very enthused, but a little wary – what if Mr. Magoo wasn’t quite as good as I remembered?

There was nothing to fear – it’s still fantastic, and well worth your 45 minutes or so to watch. Just click on the picture and hop on the Way Back Machine!

My RP Rhonda and I had the good fortune to join a sold-out crowd at the Hollywood Bowl for the Sing-A-Long Sound Of Music on Saturday Sept. 26. I have some pictures to share with you of this fantastic event. Read more…

Well, not exactly video, but an amazing computer-generated visualization synced to the conversation between Sully and departure control.

Check it out!