Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Musical Career of Tracey Ullman


The British comic and singer achieved big success with her eighties albums, and in particular, one retro-sounding hit single.
by Rich Watson 


Many Americans know Tracey Ullman as the one whose Fox television show gave birth to The Simpsons. She has had a prosperous career in TV and film, on both sides of the Atlantic.

A start in musical theater eventually led to the release of two albums from her in the eighties. An international smash single from her made her a star.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Imogene Coca Recovered From a Car Crash to Get Tony Nod for “On the Twentieth Century”


This early television star survived a car crash to appear on Broadway in a hit musical.
by Rich Watson 


Imogene Coca achieved her fame as an early television star. As a cast member of Sid Caesar’s Your Show of  Shows, she earned five of her six Emmy nominations and helped pave the way for future TV comediennes such as Mary Tyler Moore, Bea Arthur, and Carol Burnett.

Coca also had a prosperous career in vaudeville and theater. Later in life she came back from a car crash to score a Tony-nominated role in a Broadway musical.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Madeline Kahn Was an Alien Freak in “Slapstick of Another Kind,” with Jerry Lewis


She was a comedy film queen throughout the seventies, but in the eighties she misfired with this sci-fi adaptation.
by Rich Watson 


This post is part of the So Bad It’s Good Blogathon, a blog event for bad movies with cult followings. At the end I’ll tell you where you can find more posts like this.

Madeline Kahn was a hilarious comic and a talented singer, who died too early, at age fifty-seven. Before that, though, she appeared in some of the funniest films of the seventies: Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety and History of the World Part I by Mel Brooks, and Paper Moon and What’s Up Doc? by Peter Bogdanovich.

Unfortunately, she also made a few stinkers. One of them was a sci-fi movie with Jerry Lewis called Slapstick of Another Kind, based on a Kurt Vonnegut novel.