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The I Don't Care Girl

This semi-film within a film opens in the office of producer George Jessel, who never saw a camera he couldn't get in front of, who is holding a story conference to determine the screen treatment for the life of Eva Tanguay, and Jessel is unhappy with what the writers present him.He tells them to look up Eddie McCoy, Eva's one-time partner, for the real inside story on the lusty and vital Eva. Eddie's version is that he discovered her working as a waitress in an Indianapolis restaurant in 1912, wherein singer Larry Woods and his partner Charles Bennett get into a fight over her and both land in the hospital, and McCoy convinces the manager to put Eva on as a single to fill their spot. She flopped, but McCoy arranges for Bennett to be her accompanist, and she went out of his life. The writers look up Bennett, now head of a music publishing company, who says McCoy's story is phony, and it was Flo Zigfeld who discovered Eva for his Follies.

The I Don't Care Girl

7.3 1953
Abstronic

A pioneer of visual music and electronic art, Mary Ellen Bute produced over a dozen short abstract animations between the 1930s and the 1950s. Set to classical music by the likes of Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Shoshtakovich, and replete with rapidly mutating geometries, Bute’s filmmaking is at once formally rigorous and energetically high-spirited, like a marriage of high modernism and Merrie Melodies. In the late 1940s, Lewis Jacobs observed that Bute’s films were “composed upon mathematical formulae depicting in ever-changing lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, deepening colors and tones, the tumbling, racing impressions evoked by the musical accompaniment.” Bute herself wrote that she sought to “bring to the eyes a combination of visual forms unfolding along with the thematic development and rhythmic cadences of music.”

Abstronic

7.0 1952
Insan

The same year Shaw’s Malay Film Productions released P. Ramlee’s Penarek Becha, they also produced this melodrama centred around another humble trishaw driver. Like Ramlee’s film it was co-written by young literary upstart Jamil Sulong (who later became a director). Similar issues around class, wealth and modernity are explored through the tale of a kindly older trishaw driver (Omar Rojik) who adopts Jamilah, an orphan and marries her guardian, offering her a simple but better life (including a very, very long visit the circus). As the years pass Jamilah pulls away from her impoverished kampong life towards a world of motor cars and monied families, while kind Omar’s health is failing. A classic slice of social-realist melodrama.

Insan

NR 1955
The Gene Krupa Story

The story of legendary jazz drummer, Gene Krupa. Since his youth, all Gene ever wanted to do is play the drums and make music. This is something his parents would not approve of- they want him to be a priest. When Gene's father dies he promises to enter the priesthood. He soon realizes that he doesn't belong there and leaves to join his friend, Eddie's band. Ethel, Eddie's girlfriend, convinces Gene to go to New York and make it big. The 3 of them head to New York. Here Ethel and Gene soon fall in love and Gene makes a name for himself. Gene starts to live in the fast lane, with drugs, alcohol, women and parties. Ethel, unhappy with Gene's lifestyle, leaves him. Gene soon "hits rock bottom" where he has to face reality and choose where to take his life.

The Gene Krupa Story

7.1 1959
Don't Knock The Rock

Rock-and-roller Arnie Haynes returns to his hometown as a hero to the teenagers. However, the mayor and other concerned adults have banned him from performing in his hometown because they consider him and his music a negative influence on the youth. But with the help of disc jockey/publicist Alan Freed and fellow artists (including Bill Haley and the Comets and Little Richard), they hope to convince everyone that rock and roll is not as dangerous as the adults think.

Don't Knock The Rock

5.8 1956
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

Grainbelt University has one attraction for Dobie Gillis - women, especially Pansy Hammer. Pansy's father, even though and maybe because she says she's in dreamville, does not share her affection for Dobie. An English essay which almost revolutionizes English instruction, and Dobie's role in a chemistry lab explosion convinces Mr. Hammer he is right. Pansy is sent off broken-hearted to an Eastern school, but with the help of Happy Stella Kolawski's all-girl band, several hundred students and an enraged police force, Dobie secures Pansy's return to Grainbelt.

The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

6.1 1953
They also sing of pain

The movie starts with Braulio Peláez (Pedro Infante), a schoolteacher, having just fallen off his horse, representing the situation he and his family are in. The next scenes introduce the viewer to his family and their poor financial and social situation. As Braulio stumbles around looking for his glasses, he causes a famous film star, Alfonso de Madrazo (Rafael Alcaide) to crash his car. Braulio offers him to eat at his house as an apology. Braulio's sister and mother, big film fans, immediately recognise Alfonso and attempt to get him to bring the girl, Luisa Peláez (Irma Dolores) to Mexico City to become a film star. Alfonso agrees and tells them to come to the capital.

They also sing of pain

7.3 1950
Gobs of Fun

The captain of a ship's crew, a mouse, goes to the bar to pick up his men. After forcing the initially reluctant sailors onboard, they set sail and hit the (literal) high seas. Spots gags abound such as a cook dumping the garbage overboard into a clam's mouth, the clam getting his revenge by climbing onboard and spraying the garbage back at the cook, and a running gag involving a bear who is splashed by his bucket of water each time he throws it overboard. Finally, we are invited to sing along to the old sea tune, "Strike Up the Band".

Gobs of Fun

5.5 1950
Singing in the Dark

Leo, a holocaust survivor who suffers from total amnesia, comes to the U.S. and works as a hotel desk clerk. One night while a comedian who owns a bar in the hotel gives him a drink, he breaks out in song and discovers a great voice. Under a psychiatrist's treatment, and because of a blow to the head by some hoodlums, he realizes his name is David and that he was the son of a great Jewish Cantor, and gradually recovers his memory of losing his parents. He gives up a promising career singing in nightclubs to return to the synagogue.

Singing in the Dark

8.0 1956
The Girl of the Neighbourhood

Spyros, an honest young man from a poor neighborhood, owns a small coffee shop. His only friends are the shoe shiner Tsichlas and the drunkard Barba-Stamos. One day, he decides that the time has come to ask for Pitsa's hand in marriage. The poor neighborhood and its people pressure Pitsa, who can't take it anymore and runs away from home during the engagement. She runs into Didi, a playboy who, in an effort to pay off his debts, supplies beautiful girls to a rich old man.

The Girl of the Neighbourhood

4.6 1954