Dwie lewe nogi, ale oh, tak zgrabny ma Sweet Georgia Brown

Alongside a cornucopia of "names" including John Inman, Richard Rodgers, Peter Paul Rubens, Gilda Radner, King Henry VIII, Kathy Bates, John Wesley, A. A. Gill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sir Harold Evans, Willy Whitelaw and - erm - Elon Musk...

...it's the one-hundredth birthday today of the peerless Mel Brooks!

Always one of my favourite film-makers way back to when I was a child, his Blazing Saddles, The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie and History of the World: Part I remain among my most cherished films, and I particularly adored his classic entourage of regular actors (Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLouise, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman among them).

He also has an unerring eye for camp - I suppose being married to Anne Bancroft for all those years must have helped!

Speaking of camp...

Madeline Kahn as "Empress Nympho" [History of the World: Part I]

[and again:]

Mel Brooks in "Inquisition - the musical" [History of the World: Part I]

"The French Mistake" [Blazing Saddles]

Men in Tights

"Puttin' on the Ritz" [Young Frankenstein]

Madeline Kahn as "Lili Von Shtupp" - I'm Tired [Blazing Saddles (1974)]

Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft - Sweet Georgia Brown IN POLISH

All hail, Mel Brooks (born Melvin James Kaminsky, 28th June 1926)!

Of zoos, spider-divas, Southbank, salamanders, Cloris, dead beef, He-Man and 4 Non Blondes

A new Banksy artwork appeared overnight this week in the middle of St. James' in Mayfair, depicting a flag-bearing man, blinded by its material, about to fall off the edge of the plinth. [click any pic to embiggen]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• "Z" is for..? news: It was the 200th anniversary of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) - from where the word "zoo" originated - yesterday! Childhood memories [admittedly of its "sister" institution Bristol Zoo] abound...
• Does whatever a spider can? news: In the wake of the big-screen adaptation starring J-Lo that was a cinematic flop, a revival of the Kander and Ebb [with book by Terence McNally] musical Kiss of the Spider Woman is on a limited tour (Leicester, Bristol and Southampton), starring Anna-Jane Casey. Not London, dammit! Here, Miss Casey gives us a glimpse of her stage costumes:

Kiss of the Spider Woman revival - Anna-Jane Casey costume tour

• Makes you proud to be British news: It's the 75th anniversary of The Festival of Britain on 3rd May - and the Southbank Centre is launching a whole season of events to celebrate, involving some of the UK's greatest artistic talents such as Danny Boyle, Gareth Pugh, Anish Kapoor, Max Richter, Jacqueline Wilson and Quentin Blake, and international artists including Angelique Kidjo, Yuja Wang, and a West-Indian Steel Band Weekender!
• "You say Axolotl, I say what the fuck?" news: A critically endangered amphibian [that lives only in Lake Xochimilco near Mexico City in the wild], an axolotl salamander about the size of a domestic cat(!) was discovered by a young girl - living in a brook at Merthyr Mawr near Bridgend, South Wales! I wonder what the Welsh translation of "bloody enormous exotic amphibian" might sound like?

• Frau Blücher news: It's the centenary today of the birth of the faboo Cloris Leachman. All hail!
• Nostalgic dining news: And, so farewell Beefeater, the spiritual home of the steak & chips dinner, and Brewers Fayre, famous for its "Sunday Carvery". Owners Whitbread have announced the closure of their restaurant chains (with the loss of 3800 jobs) and plan instead to focus on their main Premier Inn hotels business.

• And finally: RIP Roger Sweet, creator of "He-Man" for Mattel [before the animated series]. That gives me the perfect excuse to revisit THIS:

He-Man - What's Up?

And I say, hey yeah yeah, hey yeah yeah
I said hey, what's going on?

Indeed. It's a mindfuck...

And the weather? Utterly glorious!

If you're blue, and you don't know where to go to

Had a lovely afternoon/evening en famille for another of our "Film Club" viewings, at The Perseverance pub in the fabulously twee "hidden London village" of Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury [above] - this time entirely centred on the films of the legendary Mel Brooks, and we managed to get through The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. I haven't laughed so much in ages...

Time for this, methinks:

Young Frankenstein - Puttin' on the Ritz

Genius.

We do routines and chorus scenes, with footwork impecc-able

"Our gang" congregated again in the salubrious surroundings of the Hoop & Grapes pub in Farringdon Road for one of our irregular "film club" afternoons today [late celebrations for History Boy's birthday] - which (obviously) stretched well into the evening...

Among the delights on show were this:

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Camelot (Knights of the Round Table)

...and this:

Young Frankenstein - Puttin' on the Ritz

Simply faboo, my dears!

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STOP PRESS: The evidence...



Hats!