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Mel Selfe

@melselfe.bsky.social

465 followers 844 following 545 posts

Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the University of Glasgow. Media history nerd. Likes archives. Not actually Eve Arden.

Posts Replies Media

Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Name a movie where the title character *isn’t* the main character.

Poster for Johnny Guitar (1954), Joan Crawford’s name and image above the title, Stirling Hayden (Johnny) smaller, below.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

It being Wisconsin, I turned them into a white lasagna with some local cheese.

A baking tray of chard lasagna. Half of it gone.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

It was in July last year. They were rainbow chard with nice dark leaves. They did need a bit of cooking.

A haul of farmers market vegetables on a kitchen work top. Lots of green.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

And that was very exportable. In the game of how long will it take me to lay my hand on a screening of BOAN in my collection of early 20th C British film society programmes, the answer is moments. Here’s Oxford University FS prog from Feb 1935. See how many of his publicised ‘firsts’ appear.

Programme for a Oxford University Film Society screening of BOAN held Electra cinema on Queen St on Sunday 24 February 1935. The feature is preceeded by two short French films From 1934 (an animation—Night on Bald Mountain—noted for it’s experimental technique and a factual—The Pacific Problem—noted fir its efficient use of diagrams to communicate complex research). The US short is a 1934 Disney Silly Symphony, Santa’s Workshop, listed with no blurb. The full programme note for BOAN is as below:

This picture was a reply to the super spectacle, the Italian ‘Quo Vadis.'
It was decided that ' The Birth of a Nation ' was to be the world's greatest film in twelve reels with many thousands of extras. Griffith is important in that he had a central theme round which he built his scenario, using selected types for the various roles, seldom using the same actor again, but rather passing them down to the smaller directors. This picture has no
star value and depends on pure cinema for its success, Lilian Gish being at this time comparatively unknown. This policy in cast
selection has since been adopted by the most advanced Soviet directors. Griffith was also far in advance of his time in his use of the close-up; till then the influence of the stage had deemed the showing of only a portion of a person on the screen as impossible. An example of the introduction of close-ups of things in order to draw attention was in the shot of the galloping hoofs of the horses cut in with shots of the riders themselves. The theme of this film was based on the result of the enfranchisement of the negro, and much was said, at the time, about it being anti-colour propaganda.

The cover of the programme, which on the front (right side dark image) has a b&w etching of a wistful looking young man smoking a cigarette and gazing to the right, in strong white linework. His head rests on a hand indicating a smart attire (shirt and suit cuff) and his facial bone structure similarly indicates class. The background consists if lightly etched film strips running top right to bottom left. I can identify one (running behind his eyes) as a two shot from Pandora’s Box.

The left side pale image is the back of the programme and carries an advert for Kallmann pianos available from a local retailer.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

The BBC will be giddy to see a 4% ratings rise for Today. Below I see many fellow ex-listeners. And those still listening with duty and horror because of the ‘agenda setting’ place it’s long held in the news day. Well it’s Musk & co’s agenda now, ‘centre’-washed and amplified.

‘Speech stations performed strongly during a quarter dominated by major news stories and live sport. BBC Radio 4
increased quarter-on-quarter to 9.15 million listeners, while the Today programme grew four per cent to 5.79 million listeners.’

From a Radio Today (14/526) report on RAJAR Q1 ratings.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

This American Cinematheque venue turned out to be my favourite cinema, for my stay. And the fact you could get delicious tacos and watch the world go by from a seat in the shade, before or after your film, struck me as the height of civilisation.

Los Feliz art deco cinema frontage in LA, with a yellow and turquoise taco shop at the bottom left.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Top SciFi mum moment? It’s gotta be this.

Medium close-up of a seated Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce), head thrown back in anguish, psychically experiencing the death of her gestating clone children, having just blown up the installation incubating them. Blake’s 7 (3:7) Children of Auron.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

I see you and I raise you.

Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (J
von Sternberg, Paramount, 1932), on a train, having the most glamorous sneaky fag ever.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Do moral ‘crimes’ count? Although she returns to the stage (and her stage door admirer) to finance her husband’s operation, not her child’s.

Poster for Blonde Venus, B&W, but with the blonde afro wig from Dietrich’s stage costume picked out in yellow.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

There’s also a whole Stetson song, which contains the first sequential close ups of the chorines—and their hats. Stetson were so pleased with it, they took out a full page ad in Variety!

Full page advert for the Stetson Whoopee number. Behind a generic head and shoulders a man in a hat is a production still, captioned ‘Rehearsing the Stetson number in Whoopee”’, of Berkeley positioning a group of four Goldwyn Girls hats on set.

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Post some product placement. Busby Berkeley’s first screen gig (Whoopee! 1930) was a spectacular product placement for Stetson!

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Mel Selfe @melselfe.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Delighted to be accepted for #HWC25 at USC in July. And the timing works for a longer archive trip too. Planning UA records at Wisconsin, followed by more Goldwyn research at the Herrick.

Screenshot from email:
On behalf of the 2025 Hollywood Conference Program Committee, I am pleased to inform you that your paper proposal was accepted. Congratulations!

Title: Regulation and its Unintended Consequences: the MPPDA Advertising Code and the growth of product placement in 1930s Hollywood

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