This is a little circuitous but you may enjoy it. The video below is a "roast" of Jack Benny that appeared on NBC — on The Kraft Music Hall for January 21, 1970. You can just watch it and see some of the greats of comedy from that era but you may want to dig deeper a bit. Join me on the other side of the video embed and I'll tell you how. You can watch the video before or after.
Okay now, here I am on the other side of the video embed. I remembered watching this episode for years after and I also remembered watching an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson that was taped in the same building on the same evening…but which did not "star" Johnny Carson. He was off that night so he could tape The Kraft Music Hall and function as the Roastmaster. David Steinberg filled in for Carson on The Tonight Show that evening.
This weird memory of mine remembered watching both shows and in December of 2001 — more than thirty years later! — I wrote about it on this blog. Here's a link to that post. Take a moment, go read it, then come back here.
Okay, you back? Fine. Now, a few years later, my pal Paul Harris had David Steinberg as a guest on his radio program and, recalling what I had posted in the above-linked post, he asked Mr. Steinberg about that evening. This was 2015 and Steinberg was on to promote his TV series, Inside Comedy, which was running then. This is a link to that radio interview and you may want to listen to the first five minutes or so.
I was delighted that Steinberg — a comedian I've admired much over the years — remembered the incident and was glad that Paul had brought it up. A few weeks later, I was lunching in a restaurant with my friend Brinke Stevens and we noticed Mr. Steinberg sitting at a nearby table. I would usually never approach someone like that — someone I'd never met — but I couldn't resist. Brinke and I went over and I introduced myself and we talked about the interview on Paul's show. I thanked him for validating my recollection. He thanked me for having that recollection of a long lost — and as far as I know, lost forever — bit of TV history. If it ever does turn up, I hope it turns out to be as hilarious as we both recalled.
Inside Comedy, by the way, was a pretty good show. It was rerunning for a while on Paramount-Plus for a while but I don't think it's there anymore. Like everything else, it will probably turn up streaming somewhere sometime.