Mama Cass 1969 Special

Before chubby songbird Grammy-sensation Adele , there was Cass Elliott.

Look at her backup singers- The blonde on right is Edna Wright (later of "The Honey Cone" and Darlene Love's kid sister). Yes! Cass opens the show with backup vocalists Clydie King, Carol Willis and Edna Wright. Both Willis and Wright were in Honey Cone a few years later.

I betcha 1969 audiences had never seen a female singer as "HEAVY SET" on television before
-- little did they know what Americans would look like 40 years later.

If you had your first TV special - wouldn't you have Buddy Hackett and Martin Landau as your guests?


Watch Cass, Edna and Buddy shine  despite the lackluster CBS Television City audience who seem to be looking for Cher or  The Smothers Brothers.   LINK is HERE 

Taking Off In The Movies

These guys from 'Reefer Madness' were just greedy and in too much of a hurry to have a good time.

But the cats from 'Alice in Acidland' knew that (with a little effort and planning) drugs could positively enhance your personal and social life -




Eventually, even the squares decided to get a piece of the action -


"How to smoke a joint" from 'Taking Off'.

Skidoo screengrabs

Jackie (Tony Banks) trips in jail


Groucho as mob boss "God"


Carol Channing as Flo ("I don't care how many guys you've slept with!")


Cesar Romero (and Peter Lawford's floating head)


Mickey Rooney as "Blue Chips"*


Wow - Lawford is a floating berating head in TWO bad sixties films!


Jackie's coming down

TOOMORROW! Olivia Newton-John takes off on a wild rock & roll trip 1970 style!

I've been obsessed with this film for ages...it's like a bizarre Partridge Family on acid with a happy sorta Wild In The Streets meets Star Trek vibe if that makes any sense. It's called Toomorrow & was released in 1970. Here's some info from an olivia newton-John fan site:

In 1970 Olivia made her second movie entitled Toomorrow. Don Kirshner, who had created the Monkees in 1965, wanted to repeat this success and manufacture another pop group. He teamed up with Harry Saltzman maker of the popular James Bond movies. The group Toomorrow was to be launched via the cinema and via an album and single.

The group consisted of Australian 21 year old Olivia; English keyboard player Vic Cooper 25, American drummer Karl Chambers 22 and Ben Thomas American 24 year old singer. Originally Chirs Slade (who went onto ACDC fame) was to be a member - but before the movie was made he left and was replaced by Karl Chambers (Karl sadly died Feb 2002 from cancer).

There is a record as well, great odd music! Someone put the whole film in 11 parts on Youtube! here's one clip:

Don't freak out!

ps. 4/2008: oh no! it's gone ... but don't fear, the slammer team bought the film!

Skidoo! Skiday!

This is one of Mark and my favorite movies. Actually, I think Mavis and I first saw it at the Film Forum years ago! How on earth can I describe it? Otto Preminger made a film about LSD that stars Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Groucho Marx (as crime kingpin "God,"), Mickey Rooney; several of the Batman villians - of which Preminger was one: Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, and Cesar Romero; Arnold Stang (!), Michael Constantine as Gleason's cellmate who proudly declares, "I'm a rapist!" ... Carol Channing doing a striptease on Frankie Avalon's swinger bed while hubby Gleason trips on acid for for the first time, demanding, "Give me a flower!" Watching it demands a group experience: you can't help but blurt out "Norton!" after almost every one of Gleason's lines, such as his grilling of daughter's boyfriend John Philip Law: "What is he, a faggot?" Not only that, Slim Pickens and Harry Nilsson (who sings the film's credits!) are the prison guards. Imagine Slim Pickens on acid.

Here's Nilsson on "Playboy After Dark" promoting the film. Otto Preminger is already there on Hef's couch:


The great thing is that TCM is now showing it, so I don't have to resort to my badly bootlegged copy to show people this unbelievable film.

'Acid does what Eterna-27 cannot'

We watched this the other nite and I can't get this woman out of my head! She's fascinating ... I wish there was another documentary just about her friends. There's even a woman named "Francine" in it. Rent it now if you haven't seen it: