We have a solid gold nugget for you today, fun seekers — a slightly-abridged episode of This is Show Business, a panel show that ran on CBS from 1949 'til 1954. It was an odd affair. Performers would come on and seek help in dealing with some silly problem they had. Sometimes, they would perform…and I suspect some performing was edited from this kinescope. But the main part of the show was when they sat down next to host Clifton Fadiman to solicit advice from a panel of show biz experts.
The panel consisted of two regulars and a guest who changed each week. At the time of this broadcast, the two regulars were Sam Levenson and the great playwright, George S. Kaufman. (Levenson's seat was filled for a long time by Abe Burrows.) The guest panelist is Betty Furness…and the performers who come on with lame, phony problems are Larry Storch, Mel Tormé and the dance team of Bud and Cece Robinson.
The treasure here, of course, is the chance to see Kaufman, who reportedly relished his brief forays into television — mostly here and on Jack Paar's show. He's awkward in posture and gestures…and like the host, he keeps forgetting to talk towards the microphone. But he's George S. Kaufman and this is an unusual view of the man who was hailed as one of the great wits of his century. You even get to hear him plug his upcoming play, The Solid Gold Cadillac. (He says it's opening in Hartford on October 1st. That would be October 1st, 1953 so that helps us roughly peg the date of this broadcast. The tryout in Hartford, by the way, was a disaster…but Kaufman and his co-author Howard Teichmann managed to rewrite it into a solid gold hit by the time it opened in New York a month later.)
At the end, you'll hear host Fadiman mention that the following week's guest panelist would be the actress, Jackie Susann. This is the same Jackie Susann who later wrote best-selling potboiler novels like Valley of the Dolls. She was a frequent guest on This is Show Business, not because anyone knew who she was or cared but because she was married to the show's producer, Irving Mansfield.
One week on the show — perhaps the very next week — she told an anecdote about auditioning for a play Kaufman directed and being treated unprofessionally. The point of the story was apparently to embarrass Kaufman…but Susann wound up being the one who was embarrassed. Kaufman responded to her tale by saying it was "…entirely spurious." And in the ensuing discussion, it became apparent to all that Miss Susann had no idea what the word "spurious" meant.
Mr. Kaufman isn't all that witty in this clip but hey. How often do you get to see and hear George S. Kaufman?
