Fwd: Gus in the movies.

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have that movie. Stewart is pretty funny hunched up behind that 
plant, the bashful gus who just can't contain himself.

There's another quite different move from a coupleof years earlier. 
it has two names, either St. Martin's Lane (the British title) or 
Sidewalks of London (the U.S. title). It stars Vivien Leigh (Scarlett 
o'Hara in Gone with the Wind, which was made a few months after this 
picture), Charles Laughton (Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mutiny on the 
Bounty), Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady, Dr. Dootlittle) and - Larry 
Adler, who has a role where he speaks only through his harmonica. 
There is actually a second harmonica-playing character in the film, 
one of Laughton's street musician buddies played, I think, by Tyrone 
Guthrie. (Laughton plays a guy who bellows out declamatory poetry on 
the street for spare change and lives in a boarding house with other 
such characters; Leigh is a pickpocket whom he gets out of a jam and 
takes in and helps, then develops a crush on. She turns out to be a 
marvelous dancer and joins his troupe but then runs off with rich-boy 
Rex Harrison whose pocket she once picked. She tries to help Laughton 
out but he chokes at the audition).

Winslow

- --- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Samuel Gravina 
<sgravina@xxxx> wrote:

I just signed up for http://www.movieflix.com.  They have a bunch of 
poor
resolution old movies and TV shows that you can watch for $6 a month.

I typed "harmonica" in the search and came up with "Pot O' Gold" 
staring
Jimmy Stewart & Paulette Goddard.  Steward plays a music store owner 
who
needs money so he works for his rich music hating uncle.  He meets the
beautiful girl next door who happens to own the house the the rich 
uncle
wants for his business.  Not to ruin the story but he gets the girl 
and
everyone is happy in the end.

In the first scene a girl comes in to practice piano, she's actually 
playing
and playing at the highest level.  Then a boy comes in and starts 
practicing
trombone, he is amazing too, then some teenagers start dancing to a 
record.
Meanwhile the owner notices that a harmonica in the display window 
doesn't
sound right, he plays it several times verifying that something is 
wrong.
He puts some oil in a few holes and fixes it right up!  Then he plays 
it
again!  Good thing he wasn't actually playing it cause he would have 
gotten
a mouth full of oil.

Stewart doesn't actually play in this movie but he sure looks like he 
is
playing.  It's been mentioned here before that Jerry Adler did the 
playing.

In one scene the hero is so impressed by a swing band that he hears
practicing that he goes and hides behind a big plant and starts 
playing
along.  He's playing really loud and they all hear him.  They all stop
playing but he doesn't notice and keeps playing.  They like his 
playing so
much that they give him the score and ask him to play along.

Stewart does a great job in this scene.

So Gus has been around since at least 1941.

Sam






- --- End forwarded message ---


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