Jane Russell (RIP) Stars in “Outlawed” Western

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | March 1st, 2011

Pub­lic­i­ty can be ter­ri­ble. But only if you don’t have any. - Jane Rus­sell

Jane Rus­sell learned the pow­er of noto­ri­ety at an ear­ly age. Direc­tor Howard Hugh­es (the reclu­sive bil­lion­aire) had cast the volup­tuous 19-year-old in his epic West­ern The Out­law (1943), with the full inten­tion of mak­ing her a sex sym­bol. Hugh­es essen­tial­ly made her con­sid­er­able assets the star of the film, even going so far as to design a spe­cial can­tilevered push-up bra for her to wear dur­ing shoot­ing.

Hugh­es did his job almost too well. The promi­nent dis­play of cleav­age in both the film and its trail­er unnerved cen­sors and kept The Out­law out of the­aters until near­ly 1950. (You can watch the full movie above.) The con­tro­ver­sy also launched Rus­sel­l’s career as a WWII pin-up girl, but she con­tin­ued to per­form in films, even­tu­al­ly prov­ing to be a fine actress and singer. Today she is per­haps best remem­bered  for her con­fi­dent, sexy, per­for­mance oppo­site Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe in the 1953 com­e­dy Gen­tle­man Pre­fer Blondes, and espe­cial­ly for her show­stop­ping num­ber, â€śAin’t Any­one Here For Love?”

A botched ille­gal abor­tion at the age of 19 left the actress unable to bear chil­dren, and she was a vocal anti-abor­tion activist and advo­cate for adop­tion. Also a proud Repub­li­can, she described her­self to an inter­view­er in 2003 as a “a tee­to­tal, mean-spir­it­ed, right-wing, nar­row-mind­ed, con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian big­ot — but not a racist.”

Ms. Rus­sell died yes­ter­day of a lung-relat­ed ill­ness at her home in San­ta Maria, Cal­i­for­nia. She was 89 years old.

You can see The Out­law in our free movies col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Free John Wayne West­erns

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The Big Apple in Incredible Time Lapse Video

in Video - Arts & Culture | March 1st, 2011

In this beau­ti­ful time lapse video, Josh Owens (aka Min­drel­ic) shows us New York City as we’ve nev­er seen it before. We begin with an unas­sum­ing shot of a boat in a har­bor, but then the action picks up. We pass quick­ly through icon­ic land­marks of the city – Times Square, the Brook­lyn Bridge, the Hol­land Tun­nel, and the New York Stock Exchange – right before see­ing the city from the van­tage point of a pas­sen­ger in an NYC cab.

The footage was shot over mul­ti­ple days using the Canon 5d Mark II dSLR and the fol­low­ing lens­es: Canon 14mm 2.8L, Canon 24mm 1.4L, Canon 50mm 1.2L, and Canon 70–200mm 2.8L. The video is one of the best time laps­es out there, a stun­ning trib­ute to the city that nev­er sleeps.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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The New Yorker: Finger Drumming Keith Moon

in Music | February 28th, 2011

Some­how this flew below my radar. Back in Novem­ber, James Wood, the Har­vard lit pro­fes­sor and New York­er staff writer, revis­it­ed his child­hood idol — Kei­th Moon, the long­time (though now depart­ed) drum­mer for The Who. In “The New York­er Out Loud” pod­cast, Wood demon­strates – using his fin­gers – what makes Moon’s style so dis­tinc­tive. (Lis­ten here.) And, as an added bonus, we give you Wood fin­ger drum­ming on his kitchen table at home. At least one of these clips will make your day…

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Alan Davies: How Long is a Piece of String?

in Comedy, Math, Video - Science | February 28th, 2011

Yes­ter­day’s lack­lus­ter Acad­e­my Awards cer­e­mo­ny may have afford­ed you some unex­pect­ed time for con­tem­plat­ing life’s more urgent ques­tions, such as the one British come­di­an Alan Davies pur­sues above:  How long is a piece of string? Watch Davies, who is also a fre­quent pan­elist on the pop­u­lar Stephen Fry-host­ed quiz show Quite Inter­est­ing, explore the rid­dle’s philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions and inevitable con­nec­tion to string the­o­ry with the help of physics, quan­tum mechan­ics, and final­ly a vis­it with math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus de Sautoy. Fans of the Davies/du Sautoy inter­ac­tion may also want to check out Du Sautoy’s TED talk on Sym­me­try, as well as the debates in that video’s com­ments sec­tion. More docs can be found in our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Gay Talese: Drinking at New York Times Put Mad Men to Shame

in Life, Media, Television | February 28th, 2011

Mad Men brings us back to a bygone era, the ear­ly 60s, when alco­hol flowed freely through­out the work­ing day. (Watch this mon­tage to get up to speed.) An act of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, many might think. But, appar­ent­ly not so. Accord­ing to a piece in The New York Times, the show basi­cal­ly gets it right. Alco­hol was as com­mon in offices as office sup­plies. And then we have this: Gay Talese, the best­selling author and jour­nal­ist, remem­ber­ing the Times news­room dur­ing the same era – a crew bare­ly fit to pub­lish the news that’s fit to print.

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Discovery’s Final Launch Viewed from Airplane

in Technology, Video - Science | February 26th, 2011

A rather dif­fer­ent angle on the Dis­cov­ery’s final launch. The view from 35,000 feet.…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The Art of Making Movie Sounds

in Art, Film | February 26th, 2011

Right in time for the Oscars. Gary Heck­er is what you’d call a “Foley artist,” some­one who spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing every­day sounds for movies – the sound of hors­es gal­lop­ing, swords being unsheathed, dirt crunch­ing beneath cow­boy boots. In short, the big and small sounds you hear (and take for grant­ed) when­ev­er you see a movie. Tim­ing. Cre­ativ­i­ty. They’re all part of this hid­den art…

A quick PS: This Sound­works video col­lec­tion takes you behind the scenes into the audio post-pro­duc­tion of fea­ture films, video game sound design, and orig­i­nal sound­track scor­ing. Good spot by @sheerly.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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The Facebook Obsession

in Life, Technology | February 25th, 2011

Are we obsessed with Face­book? It’s hard to argue with the num­bers pre­sent­ed visu­al­ly in this artis­tic lit­tle video by Alex Trimpe. One data point that struck me (if true): 48% of young Amer­i­cans learn about the news, about what’s hap­pen­ing in the world, through Face­book. A big shift in the way infor­ma­tion gets into peo­ple’s hands.

And that’s part of a trend we’re see­ing here too. More and more, Open Cul­ture fans are join­ing our Face­book page, let­ting our dai­ly posts trick­le into their Face­book News Feeds, then shar­ing the intel­li­gent media with friends. You can join our Face­book Page here, or also fol­low us on Twit­ter where we tweet and re-tweet extra cul­tur­al good­ies 24/7.

Thanks Ian for the heads up on the FB video…

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