Transylvania Colony

For better or for worse, YouTube seems to be taking over the universe. Both this blog and the Creeps Records blog have relied heavily on its treasure trove of obscure goodness, while the Catclaw Theatre Company has had its own channel for quite awhile now (though it's sorely neglected). And now, our pals at the uber-stupid Moist Doorknob Comics have their own channel, and the Old Order of Transylvania Gentlemen now have their very YouTube channel entitled Transylvania Colony, chock full of that good pre-war public-domain grist that stays crunchy even in milk.

Bettie Page's Harem Dance

Dancer/stripper/model Bettie Page dons a belly-dancer's outfit for this "harem dance" set against a musical backdrop of faux-Arabian music pillaged from somewhere between "Streets of Cairo" and Juan Tizol's "Caravan".

View: Bettie Page's Harem Dance

Kipling's "Mark of the Beast"

Live from the Blue Room in Chico, CA, it's Dylan Hillerman's deliciously Grand Guignol-inspired production of Rudyard Kipling's "Mark of the Beast", which is an oft-overlooked classic in the genre of werewolf fiction.

View: Le Grand Guignol: Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling (1997)

The Kentucky Singers

Here's an oddball clip found on YouTube, of Russian bandleader Lud Gluskin performing "Dinah" with the Kentucky Singers. Of these Kentucky Singers we know precious little, but they may be a spin-off of the original Kentucky Jubilee Singers and/or Forbes Randolph's Kentucky Jubilee Choir.

And then there's this from the British Pathe archives.

We don't even know if the Kentucky Singers were really Kentuckians, and the odds are actually against it, since it was apparently the fashion at the time to adopt a faux-Kentuckian image - witness Henny Hendrickson's Louisville Serenaders, a bunch of Jersey guys who probably never set foot in Louisville in their lives. And Johnny Hamp's Kentucky Serenaders, based out of Pennsylvania.


Listen: Lud Gluskin and the Kentucky Singers

Whirl, Twirl and a Girl

In this rare television clip filmed in 1950, we see the rollerskating Vaudeville act "Whirl, Twirl and a Girl" (aka Jerry Berke, Art Wall and Eva Hasty) skating in circles while performing stunts and tricks.

View: Whirl, Twirl and a Girl (1950)

The Cherry Sisters Revisited

The Cherry Sisters, a favorite vaudeville act of ours, have been immortalized in a play by Dan O'Brien, The Cherry Sisters Revisited, now playing at Actors Theatre Louisville as part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Read Jeffrey Scott Holland's review of it on Louisville Mojo by clicking here.

Oscar Hammerstein, desperate for something new to rile the rubes in his jaded Broadway audiences, deliberately booked the Cherry Sisters - who were already infamous for their inept lack of (consensus) talent. He knew the spectacle of their failure would make for some good - if cruel - entertainment at the expense of the women's dignity. In other words, Hammerstein was doing a sort of Cabaret of the Nameless routine even before the Germans.

The Actors

Max Beckmann, The Actors, 1941.