I saw this wonderful gem recently for the first time.
I can’t say enough about this masterpiece.
The sexual tension between Mae West and Tom Selleck.
The intercalary expository old footage.
Raquel Welch teaching a strapping youth about “strapping on.”
Raquel Welch taking Farrah Fawcett on an implied romp in the secret garden.
But here is my question:
Mae West does her rousing musical number, which includes a line something like “Hey, babe, let me light your candle, 'cause you know I’m so hard to handle.”
I’ve heard that song many, many times, but didn’t realize it was that old.
Just how old is this song, and who recorded it?
Also, what is the Shirley Temple movie that pops up? She is talking to a Chinese chap, doing some musical numbers like some of the contemporary entertainers (like Jolson, Astaire & Rogers (sp?))?
If you haven’t seen this movie, you’re in for a real treat, and I would highly recommend it.
“Hard to Handle”…first heard this in the Grateful Dead cover version, with Pigpen on the lead vocal. It’s been recorded by, among others, the Black Crowes, Toots and the Maytals, the Commitments.
The album BEFORE THE COMMITMENTS, which supposedly includes the original recordings of songs covered by that band, has the version by Otis Redding. But a search on CDNow shows that Magic Slim also recorded it, and he predates Redding by at least ten years.
When I hear about the movie Myra Breckinridge, or the real-life transsexual Christine Jorgensen, I remember a cartoon by the recently departed Don Martin.
A man in an ordinary suit goes up to a machine marked “Change” in a bus terminal and slips a dollar bill in the slot. The machine gives off a brilliant flash of light–and in the last panel the man has been “changed” into a woman!
