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Newark Folks

Hang on: Longtime cult hit The Uncle Floyd Show was shot in Newark (at least for awhile); check out the two-volume Best of The Uncle Floyd Show at $19.99 each! Too bad we didn't know Bruce Springsteen's drummer Max Weinberg was born in Newark back when Blood Brothers was still out...
Welcome to the Dollhouse was set in Livingston and shot in Caldwell, but its director was from Newark originally - now $19.99!
New Find: Savion Glover, Broadway megastar of Da Noise/Da Funk, is mentioned as being from Newark in one newspaper and Upper Montclair in another. What they hey, he's a cool guy, and he starred as a mere child in Tap with Gregory Hines, still on tape for $14.99!

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Vivian Blaine

Viv was born in Newark in 1921, then made it to Hollywood by way of B'way. Her best known title should still be Guys & Dolls, not - let's hope - Parasite.

Fanny Brice

You may be so used to thinking of Barbra Streisand as Fanny, in Funny Girl and its sequel, but the funny lady herself made a few movies, during the tail end of her successful vaudeville career.

Everybody Sing
(1938) Fanny is third-billed, behind Judy Garland and Allan Jones, in this musical about a raucous family and their show-biz dreams.
91 min., B/W, Closed-captioned, Hi-Fi, NO LONGER AVAILABLE

The Great Ziegfeld
(1936) Best Picture of the Year. Also, Luise Rainer won the first of those back-to-back Oscars which purportedly hexed her career, in this bio-pic with Brice and lots of other co-stars, like Myrna Loy, Ray Bolger, and William Powell in the title role.
177 min., B/W, Hi-Fi, VHS $29.99 Laser $39.98

Little Nellie Kelly
(1940) Brice has a small role in this George M. Cohan vehicle for Judy Garland, who plays a young girl singing her way through a feud between her father and grandfather.
99 min., B/W, Closed-captioned, $19.98

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Allen Ginsberg

Fried Shoes, Cooked Diamonds
(1978) Ginsberg narrates a nostalgic reunion of Beat poets at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Colorado, filmed by Costanzo Allione.
55 min., Color, $29.95

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The Houstons

A respondent from Rutgers in Newark just reminded us that Cissy and Whitney Houston still sing in church there. Cissy has only one video appearance we can locate, and Whitney still has two music videos and a film out.

The Vernon Johns Story
(1994)"The Road to Freedom" depicts the early 50s forerunner of Martin Luther King. James Earl Jones plays the Montgomery pastor whose motto was "You should be ashamed to die until you've made some contribution to mankind." Cissy Houston is third on the bill in this biopic.
91 min., Color, Rated PG, $89.98 on VHS

The Bodyguard
(1992) Mick Jackson directed Lawrence Kasdan's script, with Whitney and Kevin Costner as romantic leads. Whitney plays a rock star and sings top hits recorded for the film.
130 min., Color, Rated R, Closed Captioned, $19.98 VHS, CLV letterbox laser $39.98
Also look for: "Grammy's Greatest Moments, Vol. 2," a 60-minute compilation with Whitney and others made in 1994, on tape for $19.99; and a "cassingle" of the famed Houston rendition of The American National Anthem (1991) for $7.99 on tape.

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Ice-T

In Johnny Mnemonic metal rapper Ice-T leads a gang of terrorists to, in the words of critic Stewart Klein, "that hotbed of international intrigue... Newark." Well, there is a Newark, California and a Newark, Delaware and a Newark, Ohio, but something about this guy says "NJ Attitude" all over. The Ice Man has played solid roles in a string of action pictures, but his most interesting appearance was in a work by the former leader of Jane's Addiction:

The Gift
(1993) A stylized long-form music video directed by Perry Farrell spotlights Ice-T amid the tragedy, comedy, love, drugs and music.
80 min., Hi-Fi, NR, $19.98

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Jerry Lewis

Well, ok, he did move to Irvington later, but we just like the idea of being able to say, "Jerry is a home-boy."

Right now, a series of documentaries on Jerry and the team of Martin & Lewis can be had on VHS for $14.98 apiece:

The Birth of the Team
The early years...
69 min., Color, $14.98

Kings of Comedy
TV and the movies break the boys into bigtime success.
70 min., Color, $14.98

Jerry - Alone at the Top
After the split...
56 min., Color, $14.98

Other titles have been reissued at $14.95 apiece on VHS. Three of them, Jumping Jacks, My Friend Irma and Scared Stiff are out in a box set, for $44.85.

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Melba Moore

Rumor has it this bright musical performer went to Arts High School when its address was still High Street and not Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. She first gained attention in Purlie, a musical adaptation of the Ossie Davis play, which is unfortunately out of circulation on video.

Adventures of a Two Minute Werewolf
(1992) Moore is second-billed to Lanie Kazan in this ABC Kidtime special, about a 13-year-old horror buff who becomes a werewolf whenever scared by a movie.
60 min., Color, $12.98

All Dogs Go To Heaven
(1989) Moore provides one of the character voices for this Don Bluth animated feature, a musical version of Heaven Can Wait, only with a dog in the Warren Beatty/Don Ameche role.
85 min., Color, Laser: $34.98, VHS: $14.95

Half Slave Half Free, Part II
(1985) Also called Charlotte Forten's Mission, this public television drama was penned by Samm-Art Williams and based on a true story. A Northerner, played by Moore, hides off the coast of Georgia during the Civil War, to teach runaway slaves basic skills.
120 min., Color, $19.95 (Part I, AKA Solomon Northrop's Odyssey starring Avery "Commander Sisko" Brooks, is also still available for $19.98)

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Franklin Pangborn

You'll surely recognize the face of this great character actor, from 30s and 40s comedies. Though he died fairly young (65) in 1958, Pangborn was a war hero (at WWI's Battle of Argonne) and a busy stage actor, who founded his own company in Los Angeles before starting off in silent films. Aside from the following oddballs, Pangborn was also a team player in great Hollywood comedies & musicals during his heyday.

All Over Town
(1937) Comedians Olsen & Johnson of Hellzapoppin' fame announce on radio that they know the identity of a murderer - but they really have no idea! All they want to do is clear the name of the chief suspect - their pet seal Sally. Pangborn has a supporting role in this zany chase film.
52 min., B/W, $24.95

Chasing Those Depression Blues
(1933-8) Four shorts long on comic starpower: Money On Your Life has Danny Kaye as a Russian agent who takes out an insurance policy while being chased by two assassins; Dental Follies uses a Pinky Lee floor show rather than laughing gas on patients; Any Day In Hollywood puts Ben Turpin in a mockumentary; Art in the Raw pairs Franklin P. with Edgar Kennedy, cutting up in a Greenwich Village loft.
58 min., B/W, $24.95

Young Bing Crosby
(1932-3) In Crooner's Holiday, Bing follows his girl to Tinsel Town and winds up in Jolson blackface; Mack Sennett produced Blue of the Night; Sing, Bing, Sing has the crooner betting 50-1 that he can elope with a girl - and her dad takes those odds! Pangborn and Sir Charles the Gorilla co-star in these three short subjects.
39 min., B/W, $19.95

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Philip Roth

The controversial novelist has only had one work brought to the screen:

Portnoy's Complaint
(1972) Richard Benjamin is the nebbish, and ingenue Ali MacGraw his untouchable vision. Director Lehman was previously a screenwriter.
101 min., Color, $19.98

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Rod Steiger

Sarah Vaughan

The Divine Sarah, not to be confused with The Divine Miss M, was a high priestess of jazz who went to Arts High School. She came back for a visit when first diagnosed with cancer. She sang for the students despite her pain, and they crowded around her car to say goodbye and thank you...

Ladies Sing The Blues
(1988) Vaughan, Billie Holliday, Bessie Smith and Lena Horne and others from the big band and early blues eras strut their stuff in musical numbers contextualized with narration.
59 min., Hi-Fi, $29.98

The Divine One
(1992) A solo performance in concert.
60 min., $29.98

South Pacific: The London Sessions
(1986) An unprecedented mix of singing styles are brought together in the form of Kiri Te Kanawa, Jose Carreras, Mandy Patinkin and the Divine One herself, under the direction of Jonathan Tunick. The London Symphony Orchestra and Ambrosian Singers offer impressive backup for this evening of Rodgers & Hammerstein.
60 min., $19.98

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Flip Wilson

Wilson made history as the first African American man to have his own hour-long prime-time network TV show, and he has not been forgotten by locals like East Orange's Queen Latifah, who featured him in an episode of Living Single.

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
(1979) Julius Erving, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Meadowlark Lemon mix it up with comics like Flip, Jonathan Winters and Stockard Channing in this farrago of b-ball, astrology and disco music.
102 min., Color, Rated PG, $19.98

Milton Berle's Mad World Of Comedy
(1974) Mr. Television leads a tour of the best of 70s standup, including Albert Brooks and Flip - with performances.
70 min., Hi-Fi, $9.95

Uptown Saturday Night
(1974) Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier pair up for the first of three good-natured "con" comedies, with Harry Belafonte in the Marlon Brando "Godfather" role. Wilson is part of the repertory company along with Richard Pryor and Roscoe Lee Browne.
104 min., Color, Rated PG, $19.98

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B & W in B/W

(1994) Relative unknowns Nick Furris and Kim Delgado star in a low-budget auteur spin by Stephen Vittoria. Not only is this a period piece, it covers the 40s through the 80s. It wasn't just shot in New Jersey, but used the state to stand in for areas up and down the East Coast.
You keep waiting for the telltale signs of a small, indie outfit taken through its paces: that wavering of the camera at the end of a shot that tells you someone didn't know when to cut... It never happens.
Two young boys, one white and one black, become fast friends when they don't know any better. As they grow they learn the hard way why their world has no place for such a relationship -- and then the hardest way of all.
If there's one reason why every household in the state should buy their own copy of this video, it's the unerring idiom: "6 o'clock in the a.m. and they're out throwing rocks? I'll kick their ass!" Man, you only hear *that* in Jersey.

85 min., B/W, Unrated (adult situations and language), $29.95