This is the trailer to the Beatles movie HELP! as posted on YouTube™.
Here it is as done by yours truly, taken (of course) from a 20-year-old LaserDisc. Better, yes? This is why I avoid YouTube when I can, although I must say the new, interactive Flash player is slick.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/SEP07/HELPtrailer.flv 400 300]
The narrator is Mason Adams. Didn’t have to look him up, I recognize his voice. Remember him on Lou Grant?
Here’s my father, George Pratt, scanned from a photo sent by his cousin Lawrie. It’s either from 1941, when he was 13, or 1945, when he was 17 and about to join the Navy. Both dates are written on the back! Which is it, Dad?
I could have sworn I made a comment elsewhere about sneaking a peek at a movie my parents were watching one night, after I’d gone to bed, but now I can’t find it. But anyway, I have a vivid memory of the image that I’ve put in the preview frame of the video player.
That sneaked peek was around 1967. I was a year or more into comic book collecting, making the transition from the lighter DC Comics to the heavier Marvel Comics. I loved the whole feeling of the opening minutes of Sunset Boulevard. I thought it was just like a comic book, with William Holden floating face down in the pool, narrating his own story from beyond the grave.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/SEP07/SunsetBlvd.flv 400 300]
Note: Petula Clark played Norma Desmond on Broadway in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard.
