Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Girl Can't Help It

From the 1956 Frank Tashlin-directed comedy, here's paralytically sexy Julie London driving Tom Ewell to drink with the fiercely erotic ballad "Cry Me a River".



"Told me love was too plebeian...told me you were through with me and..."

We can debate all we want about what, historically, constitutes the first music video in the contemporary sense. But I think it's pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that this little fantasy sequence is the first indisputably great one.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey,

Just watched that on the local PBS station last weekend! Swell flick.

Julie London. (sigh...)

TMink said...

What a guitar intro! Who is it? Joe Pass? Barney Kessell? Killer.

Trey

TMink said...

OK, I looked it up, it was Barney Kessell. Man that redneck from Oklahoma could play guitar. There he is as cool as the north wind, in other stuff he would play wild as his hero and mentor Charlie Christian. Great song, and that was from her debut!

Trey

steve simels said...

I think that's an all but perfect record, actually. Great song, brilliant arrangement, amazing vocal performance, and who ever produced it really knew what they were doing...the fadeout (which was still a fairly radical thing to do on a mainstream pop record back then) is so wonderfully spooky, which of course Tashlin picked up on for the film.

Anonymous said...

I know I'm showing my age but I would not mind halucinating Julie London in my bed!

Anonymous said...

H.

O.

T.

She was married to Jack "Dragnet" Webb for a few years. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Btw, Edmond O'Brien is the greatest.