Google's Chaplin; Brothers in Color and Sound; Arthur Marx

Three things:

First, today is the 122nd birthday of Charlie Chaplin, and the adorable people at Google have marked the occasion by putting this tribute video on the Google homepage:




Secondly, a YouTube user who calls himself Bansaraba has cleverly taken the well-known color test footage of the Marx Brothers on the set of Animal Crackers (originally included in the 1930 Paramount promotional film Wonderland of California, and also featured in my own Marx tribute, The Brothers) and matched it to the soundtrack of the finished film Animal Crackers. Unsurprisingly, it matches up perfectly, and the result is that we can now see the Marx Brothers in color and hear what they sounded like in color, too. Brilliant!





And finally, on a sadder note: Arthur Marx, who would probably rather have been known as a tennis pro, playwright, novelist, and biographer than as the son of Groucho, died at home in Los Angeles this week, of natural causes, at the age of 89. He was the author of Son of Groucho.

More thoughts, on this and other subjects, anon.