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Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, Knebworth 1975
07.17.2011
06:34 pm
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Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band perform at the Knebworth Festival, England, 1975-07-05.

Headlining was Pink Floyd, with the Steve Miller Band and Captain Beefheart in support. The festival also had Roy Harper with Trigger, Linda Lewis, John Peel and Monty Python‘s Graham Chapman and Friends.

Ben Waters at Captain Beefheart Radar Station writes:

Beefheart was introduced by John Peel with the words “Here he is, the guv’ner, Captain Beefheart!” The drums beat a couple of times, and they launched into a gloriously lurching, cacophonous version of “Moonlight on Vermont”. There were two distinct reactions from the audience. The Pink Floyd fans put their hands over their ears and looked at each other as if to say “What is this shit?!”. The Beefheart fans lunged forward, electrified by the sound. It was so off kilter; so alien; so “other” to what we’d been hearing all day, yet so much better, deeper; so RIGHT.

The line up was a strange one: Winged Eel Fingerling and Ella Guru Davidson (who he?) on guitars; Drumbo on guitar and drums; Jimmy Carl Black (introduced as Indian Ink) also on drums; and, instead of a bassist, Bruce “fossil” Fowler on trombone, or air bass as Beefheart called it. You couldn’t really say they were tight; one or two songs sort of slowed down halfway through, and the trombone made the rhythm kinda slurry; but it was a great sound; like a load of drunks trying to play impossibly complex music, and threatening to collapse into chaos at any moment, but always just avoiding it.

Captain Beefheart Don Van Vliet vocals, saxophone, harmonica
Indian Ink Jimmy Carl Black drums, percussion
Greg Ella Guru Davidson guitar, slide guitar
Bruce Fossil Fowler air bass, trombone
Drumbo John French drums, percussion
Winged Eel Fingerling Elliot Ingber guitar, slide guitar

Here’s the whole show, track-by-track - sound quality isn’t perfect, but it’s Beefheart.
 

01. “Moonlight On Vermont”

02. “Abba Zabba”

03. “Band Introductions”  04. “Orange Claw Hammer”
 
Full concert performance plus bonus TV clip, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.17.2011
06:34 pm
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‘Elemental Child’: Amazing live performance by Marc Bolan and T.Rex
07.13.2011
07:30 pm
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Just watch and listen to this: An amazing live performance of “Elemental Child” by Marc Bolan and T.Rex, from 1971.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Born to Boogie: Marc Bolan, Elton John and Ringo Starr, what’s not to like?


Early Marc Bolan: Tyrannosaurus Rex perform ‘Seal of the Seasons’


 
With thanks to I Will Not Return Your Records
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.13.2011
07:30 pm
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The Aging of Mark E Smith: Various interviews through the Years
07.05.2011
06:56 pm
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I wonder if somewhere in Mark E. Smith’s attic there’s a beautiful painting of him as a Salford adonis?

Here is Manchester’s finest talking about music, art, this and that from the 1980s to 2010.
 

 

 
More from the mighty MES, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.05.2011
06:56 pm
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Listen to the Psychedelic Folk Music of The Deep Six: The whole album from 1966
06.30.2011
06:50 pm
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The Deep Six were a 6-piece (5m 1f) psychedelic folk band from San Diego, who achieved minor success in the mid-sixties with one single and their first and last, eponymous album:

Between late 1965 and early 1966 Deep Six were riding the crest of a wave and when their first single came out, “Rising Sun”, it was a huge hit - but it was a hit in Southern California and almost nowhere else. They toured relentlessly and got lots of good press and good crowds. But when their first (and only) album came out, it failed to show up anywhere on the charts and The Deep Six, badly bruised by the lack of enthusiasm, soldiered on a bit more before calling it a day and splintering into different careers.

Such is the fickle nature of pop, but listening to the album today, there are a few fab jewels tucked away in this album and some interesting things going on here, from the arrangements (some by David Gates), to the stellar list of session musicians (Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, Mike Deasy, Al Casey, Larry Knechtel, Ray Pohlman, and Barney Kessel) that makes The Deep Six an album well worth re-visiting.

Opening with an amazing cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black”, which sets a standard the album tries to maintain. While songs such as “When Morning Breaks”, and covers of “A Groovy Kind of Love” and “Solitary Man” make the mark, there are others, including the single “Rising Sun” - which isn’t as good as one would expect - and the cheesy “Somewhere My Love” (aka “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago) that hint at why The Deep Six didn’t make it beyond 1967. A shame, for the potential was certainly there.

Here is the whole album as it was originally relased, upload EarpJohn, who has a damn fine channel on YouTube.
 

01.  “Paint it Black”  2:42
 
More from The Deep Six, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.30.2011
06:50 pm
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Rock Stars and their Mustaches
06.29.2011
07:13 pm
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In no particular order, a fine selection of mustachioed rock stars.
 
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Nick Cave - I wonder if he dyes his collar and cuffs to match his ‘tache?
 
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Biffy Clyro auditioning for Jesus Christ Superstar.
 
More hirsute musos, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.29.2011
07:13 pm
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Gillian Hills: Keeping time with the Beat Girl
06.28.2011
07:20 pm
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You will have seen the beautiful Gillian Hills before - in A Clockwork Orange with Barbara Scott, sucking on an ice lolly, getting chatted-up by Malcom McDowall’s Alex in the Melodia Diskbootik; or perhaps in Blow-Up posing, wrestling and getting intimate with Jane Birkin and David Hemmings; or maybe looking like a teenage Brigitte Bardot doing the hippy-hippy-shake with Oliver Reed in Beat Girl.

Born in Egypt, raised in France, daughter of a writer and adventurer, grand-daughter of a poet, Gillian Hills was discovered by Roger Vadim, who thought he’d found his next Bardot, he gave her a small part in his film version of Les liaisons dangereuses, (1959) with Jeanne Moreau. It wa senough to attract interest and led to the teenage Hills starring, alongside Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed in Beat Girl (1960).

An auspicious start, which should have brought bigger and better, but Hills switched direction and signed a recording deal with Barclay Records, who released her first EP “Allo Brigitte..ne coupez pas!”. Over the next 5 years Hills concentrated on her singing career, which saw her headlining at the Olympia Theater with the legendary, Johnny Hallyday, and working with the brilliant Serge Gainsbourg.

Even with such A-list names, Hills jolly toe-tapping tunes had mixed success and she was eventually dropped by Barclay in 1965. Hills then signed for AZ Records and released a cover of The Zombies hit “Leave Me Be”, she also returned to films with appearances in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, the film of John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence, Three and the Kubrick classic A Clockwork Orange. Her acting career never took off, and after a final leading role in the Hammer horror Demons of the Mind, Hill retired and moved to New York, where she started her career as an artist and illustrator.

Now Gillian Hills lives in England (with apparently the manager of AC/DC), but thanks to the wonders of YouTube, we do have some of her hit Euro-songs and career highlights to look back on. Bliss.
 

 

Gillian Hills - “Zou Bisou bisou”
 

Gillian Hills - “Les jolis coeur”
 

Gillian Hills - “Mon coeur est prêt”
 
Bonus clips of Gillian Hills with Oliver Reed and Serge Gainsbourg, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.28.2011
07:20 pm
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Paul Newman and James Dean screen test for ‘East of Eden’
06.26.2011
12:03 pm
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A star paring that never was - James Dean pouts as Paul Newman jokes in their screen test for East of Eden.
 

 
With thanks to Eurico de Barros
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.26.2011
12:03 pm
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Bruce Conner: The Artist Who Shaped Our World
06.25.2011
04:37 pm
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I find it difficult to watch Adam Curtis‘s various acclaimed documentaries without thinking: how much has he taken from Bruce Conner?

Indeed without Conner, would Curtis have developed his magpie, collagist-style of documentary making?

I doubt it, but you (and Curtis) may disagree.

The late Bruce Conner is the real talent here - an artist and film-maker whose work devised new ways of working and presciently anticipated techniques which are now ubiquitously found on the web, television and film-making.

Conner was “a heroic oppositional artist, whose career went against the staid and artificially created stasis of the art world”. Which is academic poohbah for saying Conner kept to his own vision: a Beat life, which channeled his energies into art - with a hint of Dada, Surrealism and Duchamp.

Conner was cantankerous and one-of-a-kind. He would wear an American flag pin. When asked why, he said, “I’m not going to let those bastards take it away from me.”

He kicked against fame and celebrity, seeing art as something separate from individual who created it.

“I’ve always been uneasy about being identified with the art I’ve made. Art takes on a power all its own and it’s frightening to have things floating around the world with my name on them that people are free to interpret and use however they choose.”

Born in McPherson, Kansas, Conner attended Witchita University, before receiving his degree in Fine Art from Nebraska University. At university he met and married Jean Sandstedt in 1957. He won a scholarship to art school in Brooklyn, but quickly moved to University of Colorado, where he spent one semester studying art. The couple then moved to San Francisco and became part of the Beat scene. Here Conner began to produce sculptures and ready-mades that critiqued the consumerist society of late 1950’s. His work anticipated Pop Art, but Conner never focussed solely on one discipline, refusing to be pigeon-holed, and quickly moved on to to film-making.

Having been advised to make films by Stan Brakhage, Conner made A MOVIE in 1958, by editing together found footage from newsreels- B-movies, porn reels and short films. This single film changed the whole language of cinema and underground film-making with its collagist technique and editing.

The Conners moved to Mexico (“it was cheap”), where he discovered magic mushrooms and formed a life-long friendship with a still to be turned-on, Timothy Leary. When the money ran out, they returned to San Francisco and the life of film-maker and artist.

In 1961, Conner made COSMIC RAY, a 4-minute film of 2,000 images (A-bombs, Mickey Mouse, nudes, fireworks) to Ray Charles’ song “What I Say”. With a grant from the Ford Foundation, Conner produced a series of films that were “precursors, for better or worse, of the pop video and MTV,” as his obituary reported:

EASTER MORNING RAGA (1966) was designed to be run forward or backward at any speed, or even in a loop to a background of sitar music. Breakaway (1966) showed a dancer, Antonia Christina Basilotta, in rapid rhythmic montage. REPORT (1967) dwells on the assassination of John F Kennedy. The found footage exists of repetitions, jump cuts and broken images of the motorcade, and disintegrates at the crucial moment while we hear a frenzied television commentator saying that “something has happened”. The fatal gun shots are intercut with other shots: TV commercials, clips from James Whale’s Frankenstein and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. The film has both a kinetic and emotional effect.

REPORT revealed “Kennedy as a commercial product”, to be sold and re-packaged for arbitrary political purposes.

REPORT “perfectly captures Conner’s anger over the commercialization of Kennedy’s death” while also examining the media’s mythic construction of JFK and Jackie — a hunger for images that “guaranteed that they would be transformed into idols, myths, Gods.”

Conner’s work is almost a visual counterpart to J G Ballard’s writing, using the same cultural references that inspired Ballard’s books - Kennedy, Monroe, the atom bomb. His film CROSSROADS presented the 1952 atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll in extreme slow motion from twenty-seven different angles.

His editing techniques influenced Dennis Hopper in making Easy Rider, and said:

“much of the editing of Easy Rider came directly from watching Bruce’s films”

The pair became friends and Hopper famously photographed Conner alongside Toni Basil, Teri Garr and Ann Mitchell.

Always moving, always progressing, having “no half way house in which to rest”, Conner became part of the San Francisco Punk scene, after Toni Basil told Conner to go check out the band Devo in 1977. He became so inspired when he saw the band at the Mabuhay Gardens that he started going there four night a week, taking photographs of Punk bands, which eventually led to his job as staff photographer with Search ‘n’ Destroy magazine. It was a career change that came at some personal cost.

“I lost a lot of brain cells at the Mabuhay. What are you gonna do listening to hours of incomprehensible rock’n’roll but drink? I became an alcoholic, and it took me a few years to deal with that.”

Conner continued with his art work and films, even making short films for Devo, David Byrne and Brian Eno. In his later years, Conner returned to the many themes of his early life and work, but still kept himself once removed from greater success and fame. He died in 2008.

Towards the end of his life he withdrew his films from circulation, as he was “disgusted” when he saw badly pixelated films bootlegged and uploaded on YouTube. Conner was prescriptive in how his work should be displayed and screened. All of which is frustrating for those who want to see Conner’s films outside of the gallery, museum or film festival, and especially now, when so much of his originality and vision as a film-maker and artist has been copied by others.
 

‘Mea Culpa’ - David Byrne and Brian Eno.  Directed by Bruce Conner
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘The Loving Trap’: brilliant Adam Curtis parody


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.25.2011
04:37 pm
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Julien Temple’s ‘Mantrap’ starring Martin Fry and ABC
06.20.2011
07:16 pm
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Julien Temple directed Mantrap, an under-rated and often considered “lost” featurette starring 1980’s New Romantic group ABC. Like a lot of Temple’s work it’s full of quirky originality and style, which compensates for the lack of script. Mantrap can be best summed-up by its Wikipedia entry:

Martin Fry is asked to join [a] band as they embark on tour heading east through Europe. But at the height of their popularity the band tries to secretly replace Fry with a Russian spy in order to sneak him back behind the iron curtain. It is then up to Martin to battle his doppelganger and make the world safe for New Romantic Synth Pop.

Temple is a true maverick, who has more than a touch of genius about him. His films always deliver great visual imagination as disguise for a weak script (Absolute Beginners), but when Temple has a good script, like Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Pandaemonium, or is working with straight non-fiction narrative Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, the superb documentary on Dr Feelfgood, Oil City Confidential, or The Filth and the Fury, his talents soar.

Though slight, Mantrap is well worth watching for 101 reasons, from its classic soundtrack by ABC, its style, its visuals, its concert footage, Martin Fry’s good looks, its silliness, its joie de vivre….etc.

Seminal New Romantics ABC and punk filmmaker Julien Temple pay homage to 50s espionage flicks in this hour long folly from 1983. Martin Fry has the look of a Hitchcock protagonist, but by his own admission, his acting was a little “mahogany”. Temple captures the isolation and paranoia of the former Communist Bloc, but forgets to tell a story in the process.

Nonetheless, this curiosity from the naive dawn of pop-video has enough to keep fans and casual viewers entertained. The 6th form script about some Cold War double dealing will occasionally make you wince, but is padded out with some wonderful footage of ABC’s (sadly never repeated) World Tour.

B-Movie regulars and wannabes try their best amidst the ensuing nonsense - but it’s pretty much in vain, so don’t expect John le Carré! But do delight in a soundtrack taken from arguably the greatest debut album of all time - “The Lexicon of Love”.

 

 
See the rest of ‘Mantrap’, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.20.2011
07:16 pm
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Debbie Harry talks and models Stephen Sprouse, from 1979
06.18.2011
08:01 pm
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The always beautiful Debbie Harry talks fashion, clothes and style, before modeling a selection of Stephen Sprouse’s designs, in this interview from 1979.

Interviewer:  Did you grow up around fashion?

Debbie Harry : No, not really. I grew up in New Jersey.

 

 
Previously on DM

Blondie’s ‘Autoamerican’: A Lost Classic

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.18.2011
08:01 pm
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Cutting a new disc
06.17.2011
11:44 am
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45 rpm Deli byAlvaro Arteaga.
 
Via Bitchville
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.17.2011
11:44 am
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For Sale: Thunderbirds’ Lady Penelope
06.16.2011
06:34 pm
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A “super-rare” puppet of Thunderbirds’ Lady Penelope comes up for auction at the end of the month, when it is expected to fetch around $16,000.

Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward was the posh London agent for International Rescue, who held her own with the Tracy boys and their selection of incredible vehicles in the Thunderbird series. Lady P was also, if the Guardian is to be believed:

...the subject of many a schoolboy crush in the late sixties and seventies.

Personally, I preferred Wilma from The Flintstones and Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched, but each to their own.

The puppet or marionette is 20 inches high with a head full of electronics, which made the mouth to move. Lady Penelope’s face was based on a model from a shampoo advert, and her voice was supplied by Sylvia Anderson, co-creator with Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds.

As Stephanie Connell an auctioneer at Bonhams explained:

“This puppet came from the collection of Christine Glanville, who died in 1999.

“She was the puppet maker for the series and this is super-rare and important. It was an important piece of TV history and although it was first shown in 1965 it has been repeated ever since and all generations are aware of it.

“This is an original Lady Penelope and there can be few, if any, left. She is wearing a 60s-style A-line dress and a cardigan. She has pink lipstick on and blue eyes and her hair is in a bob style.

“There are lots of genuine Thunderbirds fans and there will be lots of people who would love to have her.”

Bonhams are also selling Lady Penelope’s miniature writing desk, chair and bookcase from the original set, which is reckoned to fetch around $8,000.  The auction takes place on June 29 in London.

Here is “Parker - Well Done!” - a ‘Fab’ disc from 1965, which featured Lady Penelope (Sylvia Anderson), Parker (David Graham) and Jeff Tracy (Peter Dyneley).
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.16.2011
06:34 pm
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The Butthole Surfers: Live in Concert 1996
06.13.2011
07:18 pm
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The Butthole Surfers live in concert, Mesa Arizona, July 1, 1996.

Tracks:

“Birds”
“Cough Syrup”
“Thermador”
“Pepper”
“Ulcer Breakout”
“Jingle of a Dog’s Collar”
“TV Star”
“Ah Ha”
“1401”
“Cherub”
“Cowby Bob”
“X-Ray”
“Out of Vogue”
“Hey”
“Space”
“L.A.”
“The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave”
“Creep in the Cellar”
“Let’s Talk about Cars”
“Goofy’s Concern”
“Watlo”
“Who Was in My Room Last Night”
 

 
Elsewhere on DM

The Butthole Surfers: ‘The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave’


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.13.2011
07:18 pm
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Jonas Mekas: Beautiful home-movies of Andy Warhol and George Maciunas, 1971
06.12.2011
05:43 pm
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DM pal, Alessandro Cima wrote a post on this short film, about Andy Warhol and George Maciunas by Jonas Mekas, on his excellent Candelight Stories site.

The film consists of three home movies: Warhol at the Whitney, May 1, 1971, George’s Dumpling Party, June 29 1971 and Warhol revisited, May 1971 which show scenes from the opening of a Warhol retrospective, followed by footage of Warhol, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and founder of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas at what looks like a fondue party in 80 Wooster St., Soho, before returning back to the Whitney.

The narration is by Mekas, who talks about the relationship between Warhol and Maciunas, Pop Art and Fluxus, which he says are the same, as both dealt with nothingness - “both took life as a game and laughed at it.” Warhol standing on the side, never a part of it, with George “laughing, laughing all the time.”

These beautiful short films are like water-colored moments from pop history, which as Cima points out:

Home movies become an artform in Mekas’ hands.

 

 
With thanks to Alessandro Cima 
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.12.2011
05:43 pm
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Sean Connery gave TV its first male-to-male kiss
06.06.2011
09:42 am
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Here’s a small piece of TV history as Sir Sean Connery kisses Richard Pasco in a BBC production of Jean Anouilh’s play Colombe from 1960.

This is the first ever male-to-male kiss aired on television. It would take the BBC another twenty-seven years to show two men kissing on-screen again, in an episode of the soap opera EastEnders. For fact-fans, the first man-to-man kiss in a major movie is claimed by Raf Valone in the 1962 feature Vu du Pont.

While this is a TV first, the kissing couple were not lovers but brothers. Connery’s character Julien believes his brother Paul (Pasco) is having an affair with his wife Colombe (Dorothy Tutin), and kisses Pasco to find out what makes him such a good lover. Hm, that old excuse?

This might seem like nothing to us today, but we should appreciate that homosexuality was outlawed in the UK,  a criminal offense punishable by gaol, until 1967, when the law was repealed. Therefore, it was more than hugely controversial to have two grown men kissing on TV (whether brothers or not) for it could have finished the careers of both Connery and Pasco, as they would have been seen as “corrupting viewers’ morals” and open to attack from those hateful right-wing moral evangelists, like Mary Whitehouse, who wielded such frightening and dangerous power back then. So, three cheers for Sir Sean and Mr Pasco.

The play Colombe was believed to have been lost or deleted, but copies of the drama turned up in the U.S. last year, after a reseracher found copies that had been sent to broadcaster National Education Television. The programs have now been returned to the British Film Institute in London, where Colombe will screened today.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Sean Connery - The Musical


 
Via the Daily Mail
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.06.2011
09:42 am
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