Song Of The Day 6/26/2013: Joi Lansing - "The Web Of Love"

Scopitone Week: Joi Lansing (1928-72) was a teen model who went on to become one of the 1950s' more celebrated pin-up girls. She was also in one of cinema's most famous opening scenes: the long tracking shot that opens Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil. Joi is the blonde in the convertible who complains that she's hearing a ticking noise in her head. Spoiler alert: It's not in her head.

And she was a nightclub singer who found her way into Scopitone history with "The Web Of Love," a somewhat disorienting, feminism-free treatise on submission. Ms. Lansing, ensnared in the titular web, is assaulted by an unseen archer (though she is given body armor in the shape of a heart), stewed in a pot by a witch doctor who looks like a numbers runner for the mob in his spare time, imprisoned in a bird cage, then set upon by a human cobra (same guy) who doesn't take his eyes off the region of his quarry for which his serpentine self is most suited. It's a little creepy, is what I'm saying. Lansing sounds a bit like she was having trouble keeping up in the original recording, and I can't blame her.

This again came to my attention via Cinnamon Brunmier-Keller who again receives my deep thanks, and is therefore spared the witch doctor cobra archery cage. For now.