Boomerang

Just when you think that the Internet holds all the answers, it fails you. My search for information about Boomerang, a ’70s kids’ TV show from my native Seattle, has turned up nearly bupkes.

I did learn something very interesting… I had no idea that Marni, the host of Boomerang, was none other than Marni Nixon.

Nixon is the reason Julie Andrews won her Oscar for Mary Poppins. Well, that’s not fair — that was a well-earned Oscar. (Those who already know this story can skip ahead a couple of paragraphs.) Julie Andrews had starred on Broadway in the hit musical My Fair Lady, and won a Tony award. But when My Fair Lady was turned into a Hollywood film, Julie Andrews was not yet a name movie-goers would recognize, and Warner Brothers cast Audrey Hepburn in what really should have been Julie Andrews’ role. Walt Disney knew better, and cast Andrews that same year in Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins, and Julie Andrews, became a smash sensation.

When the press started to dig a bit, and learned that Audrey Hepburn didn’t actually sing her parts — that the beautiful voice behind “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “I Could Have Danced All Night” was actually Marni Nixon… well, Jack Warner started to look like a fool for having ditched Julie Andrews. In Julie Andrews’ Oscar acceptance speech for Mary Poppins, she thanked “the man who made this all possible… Jack Warner,” which makes me love Julie Andrews even more.

Marni actually has a brief role in Mary Poppins, as one of the animated geese, but didn’t meet Andrews while working on that film. When Nixon and Andrews later worked together on The Sound of Music (Nixon played one of the nuns), Andrews introduced herself with a hearty handshake, and exclaimed “I really love your work!,” probably with a cheeky look in her eye. Marni also was the singing voice for Maria in West Side Story, and she did some vocal work for a Mr. Magoo album, “Magoo in Hi-Fi” and provided “ethereal voice effects” for some Esquivel albums. She was a very, very successful session singer in Hollywood.

I’m still having trouble reconciling the host of Boomerang with this Hollywood figure, but it comes together a bit when I hear the Boomerang theme song again — the song’s not exactly a winner, but it sure brings back memories, and that voice is loverly:

This still leaves plenty of holes about Boomerang the show, though. I can fill in a little bit more from my own memories: It aired on channel 4, KOMO, which was Seattle’s ABC affiliate. It was filmed during the late ’70s into the early ’80s, and continued on in reruns for a while. Marni’s co-star was a yellow puppet boy, who looked like a cross between Bert from Sesame Street and Terrence from South Park. I can’t remember his name, and I couldn’t find it online. His name was Norbert. (Thanks melberoo!) There’s one episode in particular that I remember, where Marni was hired to do a commercial for some silver polish, but she tries the polish and it doesn’t work very well, and she decides to not do the commercial. It was a lesson about not whoring oneself out, and whenever I’m faced with similar scenarios, I always think of Marni’s frustration with the silver polish. Overall, the show was on the schmaltzy side, and if we’d had the variety of cable back then, I probably would never have watched it.

So anywhere, there you go. That’s all I could find about the Seattle show Boomerang. Maybe someday something more will show up.

We’ve got Mr. Bali Hai to blame for this one:

German singing sensation duo Cindy und Bert sing a song about the Shelock Holmes story “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” in German, to the tune of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid.” German youth dance, morosely. An utterly un-houndlike dog yawns. Cindy und Bert sing with all the fiery passion that might go into ordering a bowl of potato soup. The camera tries, valiantly but unsuccesfully, to perk the scene up with some violent zooms in and out of the “Hits-a-Go-Go” logo.

I’d never heard of Cindy und Bert, but apparently they were all the rage in Germany and the Netherlands in the ’70s. Just so you don’t think they were all doom & gloom, here’s a much perkier Cindy und Bert, in 1973.

Today, I would like to discuss one of the true classics of the Disney live action canon: Monkeys, Go Home! This 1967 film has it all… monkeys* — four of them, and they’re <dramatic echo>SPACE MONKEYS</dramatic echo> … Dean Jones … ’60s protests … Love, Frenchy Style … and as if that weren’t enough (no, stop! no, really!) … Maurice! Chevalier! And! The! Title! Ends! In! An! Exclamation! Point! Can you feel the hilarity?! So zany!!!

*phew* … I’ll take it down a notch or two now, before someone reaches through the screen to throttle me.

Dean Jones puts his chimps to work, in Disney’s "Monkeys Go Home!"

Alright now, where was I? Oh yes. Monkeys, Go Home. I mean, Monkeys, Go Home!. In this delightful, fun for the whole family maybe some of the family film, Dean Jones plays Henry Dussard, an American who has just inherited an olive farm he has never seen, in the south of France. Ooh la la! Being an American, he’s got some nutty ideas about how to turn this olive farm into a profitable venture — by hiring chimps instead of people to work the farm. Luckily, he previously was a chimp trainer for NASA, so he’s got a team of recently-retired space chimps at his disposal. So wacky!

In the ’60s, even the chimps were protesting

The little French town doesn’t like the idea of having to compete against a chimp-run farm, and they mount an underground resistance against Dussard. The chimps strike back by mounting a protest of their own, fighting for their right to work just as humans do. At the same time, a boozy French broad shows up claiming to be Dussard’s long-lost cousin (and she is truly fabulous, played by Yvonne Constant), staking claim to half of Dussard’s farm, and threatening Dussard’s budding relationship with a barely-legal French tartlet, played by Yvette Mimieux.

Maurice Chevalier, with the French corner of It’s a Small World

And just for good measure, Maurice Chevalier plays the town priest, who shows up now and then to impart some heavily-accented wisdom, and sing a song or two.

This is quite possibly the slapstickiest, monkeyest, wacknuttiest of all the Disney films. The hilarity, it ensues. This film… well, it’s sort of the Disney version of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I can’t help but wonder why they’ve released it on DVD, but I’m so glad they did. I kind of love it.

Oh! The music! The music is the best part, and I’m not kidding around here — I would sincerely buy Robert F. Brunner’s soundtrack/score. It’s great ’60s light-quirk-funk-pop stuff.

* Technically, chimps aren’t monkeys, but for the sake of simplicity, today we’ll say they are. It’s Topsy-Turvy day! Shrimp are fish! Tomatoes are vegetables! Mama’s Family was funny!

Easter is coming! There’s a lot of great art out there …

[Via A Sampler Of Things]

In a comment on the Bobby Darin post, I was prompted by the always-on-it-like-a-bonnet Mr. Bali Hai to ask my friend Jim Cherry about his cars-of-the-future book project, Cartopia.

Predicta, the Personal Car With a Hint of Tomorrow

Science and Mechanics magazine cover

A funny coincidence — it just so happens that Jim Cherry met with Taschen this afternoon to sign the deal for the book. It turned out the agreement paperwork needed a little work, so it’s not actually a signed deal yet, but it’s “definitely on.” Taschen has turned out some real beauts over the years, so it’s great to see them taking this one on. They want Jim to expand the book to include futuristic prototype cars from throughout the 20th century, so it’s going to be an even bigger book than he thought, and he gets to make some field trips to Detroit to hit the manufacturers’ archives. No word yet on a release date, but a rough draft is scheduled to be done by August, so maybe early 2008? Congratulations, Jim!

To tide you over until Cartopia the book arrives, spend some time at Cartopia the website — there’s a trunkload of great midcentury images of futuristic cars, including advertisements, magazine covers and even toy models.

I adore some of the signage used on apartment buildings during the ’50s and ’60s. Here are some great signs I saw just today in Mountain View, CA:

I was doing a lot of “this one’s my favorite! no, wait, this one’s my favorite! oh, wait, this one….” etc, etc today… but this one might really be my favorite. Today. Of the ones on that block. On that side of the street. I think. No matter — it’s clearly fantastic. It was also one of the better-maintained buildings, and looked fresh as a daisy. The lettering is just gorgeous — I especially love the combination of the scripty “Elena” with the staid “the” and “apts”. Tres elegant. But of course the real standout here are those lovely poodle bushes. I do so love poodle bushes.

I love it when the lettering is really and truly unique. I think that great big fat pancake of a dot hovering over the “i” is great, and I really like the added touch of the flag-points at the end of the letters. Very regal.

The lettering on this one is relatively common — don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous, and head & shoulders over dull modern signage. But I really grabbed this picture because I love the dramatic entryway, and that beautiful scrollwork globe light fixture. The whole look together is very fancy.

This one gets a B+ on the sign, and a C- on the building — I’ve seen military installations that were more inviting. Maybe it’s nicer once you’re past the fort-like exterior.

This is my other favorite of today’s apartments. Spanish-inspired architecture is still novel and exotic for me, and probably always will be — you don’t see a lot of it in Seattle. You can’t see the detail on those doors, but you can probably imagine it, and those light fixtures! Oh, I am a sucker for amber glass and ironwork. This is the kind of place I can see myself living in; it’s the kind of place I think of when I think of California. And I adore California. Completely.

If you’d like to see more and bigger pictures of these buildings, I’ve got a whole mess of them up at Humuhumu’s Life in Photos.

Bobby Darin’s house, photo by Jim Cherry

Dale Sizer pretends he’s Bobby

My friend Jim Cherry just went on a tour of Bobby Darin’s midcentury Hollywood Hills home, and he wrote up the tour with photos in a recent blog post on his MySpace. Dale Sizer, who happened to be mentioned in my post earlier today, was also there to check out the digs.

The house is at 1411 Rising Glen Road, and has 5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths. Jim reports that it’s relatively un-mucked with. It’s being offered for just shy of 3.7M. Here’s the property’s website, with a full photo tour.

Vintage plaster fish, from Bowling Trophy

These are just some of the lovely vintage plaster wall fish that have been posted on the new blog, Bowling Trophy. There’s no name attached to the blog, but if it is who I think it is, then his one-two punch of excellent photography skills matched with uncanny thrifting ability should combine into a really swell blog.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

I think these fish are great; they often have really great shaded paint jobs that make them look almost like sugar candy or marzipan. Their happy and alluring demeanor always reminds me of the underwater sequence in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Fishing for a Compliment, by Dale Sizer

My friend Dale Sizer did this cool painting of plaster wall fish on a slice of a log a few years ago.

Humu’s last post about Floratina’s Funny Face cup reminded me of Way Out Junk‘s post about Goofy Grape Sings. After all these years it’s so great to finally match a voice to that Funny face … and it sounds like Boris Badinov. Yes, all the voices are done by Paul Frees. The songs are available for download, but personally I just like the album cover.

No celebration of cheesy Irishness is complete without Lucky the Leprechaun:

This is the very first commercial for Lucky Charms. This was done by Bill Melendez — before he started his own studio to produce the Peanuts specials, he did a lot of work on animated commercials. This commercial is from about 1964.

I love this one because it reminds me of Kites Are Fun, by the Free Design: