I hadn't meant to spend a lot of blogging room on Top Banana, the Broadway show and movie starring Phil Silvers but the e-mail was just too interesting. Take this one from James H. Burns…
It's fun to note that both Top Banana and Some Like It Hot feature Grace Lee Whitney, who actually made her Broadway debut in the former (and is in the band, in the latter). This is only of interest, perhaps, because folks are always stunned to find out that the actress who played Yeoman Janice Rand on Star Trek had been around that long! Happily, last time I saw her, Grace still looks like a million bucks, and more importantly, is still a swell gal.
Or take this one from Robert Holmen about the 3-D trailer I linked you all to. I got a number of these…
If your red-blue glasses are like almost all red-blue 3-D glasses, you will have to flip them so the red lens is on the right in order to properly view the Top Banana trailer. Whoever did the modern red-blue conversion got it backwards (1950's 3-D movies were not released in red-blue). There is a certain percentage of the population that won't be able to tell the difference no matter how their glasses are flipped.
And lastly, here's one from Doug Dinger, who's the fellow who posted the video to which I linked…
As a long time reader and fan of your site, it was quite a suprise and thrill to see the trailer I posted to YouTube linked on your blog. Thanks.
A word of background; the trailer for Top Banana was never released in 3-D. They did, however, use the negative from the Left Eye camera. The feature release, however, used the Right Eye negative. Someone more clever than I noticed this, and was able to combine the two into anaglyph 3-D (which is why not every scene in the trailer is in 3-D – I guess they didn't consistently use the Left neg on the trailer.) At any rate, the trailer wouldn't have been Blue/Red 3-D anyway, since all 3-D films were released for polarized glasses.
But I guess we'll take what we can; I'm sure the original 3-D version is sitting in a can somewhere next to London After Midnight and Humorisk.
With Laurel & Hardy's Hats Off as the opening short. By the way, the Three Stooges made two 3-D shorts and you can download one of them from this site. And this Saturday out in Glendale, CA, the Alex Theater is running that same short (plus four 2-D Stooges shorts with Curly) as part of the 12th Annual Three Stooges Big Screen Event. I will not be there. I love the Stooges but (a) I'm not sure I could take five shorts in one sitting, (b) 3-D movies have a hypnotic effect on me that induces slumber and (c) I'm a little afraid of being in a room with that many Stooge fans.
This would conclude our little symposium on Top Banana except that I remembered and must share one anecdote that Phil Silvers told me during the one time I got to meet him. The show toured America and did fairly well everywhere…except opening night in Salt Lake City. Silvers said, "We lost the audience during the opening number. People even started walking out and I didn't understand why until a stage manager explained it during intermission."
There's an old burlesque catch-phrase that was quoted in that opening number. The lyric goes…
You gotta roll your eyes and make a funny face
Then do a take and holler, "This must be da place!"
The problem? It is written that Salt Lake City was founded when Mormon leader Brigham Young came upon the land and announced, "This is the place." The lyric would be changed for the second night and all performances thereafter…but the first-nighters thought Silvers was making fun of their religious heritage.