This clip is from a 1958 B-Movie, ‘High School Confidential’, which features the fascinating and mysterious Phillipa Fallon as a beat poet. Apparently, the guy playing piano is Uncle Fester from The Addams Family. One of the best things about it is the audience reaction. Look at those faces: the laughter, bewilderment, boredom and fizzing jealousy.
5 comments:
Wow, well discovered, Rob. Curiously convincing, though, isn't she? A touch of the Lee Strabergs or the actress is the real deal. And the poem manages to avoid Mad magazine parody. Only the jaunty small combo swing backing lets it down.
I thought Uncle Fester - in the TV series that is - was played by Jackie Coogan, the one-time child actor. Was that him? Definitely different from the UK poetry 'n jazz scene of the early 1960s.
Far out.
ABJ
Yes, she is good, isn't she? That finger-snapping. Must try that. She is incredibly beautiful too, which makes me wonder why she didn't get more parts.
It is Jackie Coogan, Colin - one and the same.
That post had me looking out my recordings of the Beat poets again, so thanks Rob. My favourites are Corso, Rexroth and Ferlinghetti on 'Howls, Raps and Roars'. Ferlinghetti's 'Autobiography' has a little combo doing twiddly bits between verses. Mmmmmmm, Nice, as one might say.
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