Category Archives: Video Links

Another classic moment from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson…

Here we have the opening to the syndicated comedy series, Fractured Flickers, produced by Jay Ward's studio in 1963. Hans Conried was the host and he introduced recut silent movies with silly dialogue added.The voices were provided by Paul Frees, June Foray and Bill Scott, and Bill was also producer and head writer. I am featuring this mainly because I like the animation and the theme music.

I can do this…

Every year at Comic-Con, a fellow named Kevin McShane makes the rounds in his other identity of Fake Stan Lee. I always find his videos amusing and this year's — which even features a cameo by Sergio Aragonés — is no exception…

Take this one full screen, folks.The images you'll see were not created in a computer.They were taken by the Cassini orbiter spacecraft sent off by the folks at NASA. A computer strung them together for animation purposes and what you get is a breathtaking fly-by of Saturn…

Here are three incredible video clips…and I have to thank Robert J. Elisberg, my friend you all read at the Huffington Post, for writing to tell me about these.They're from 1952 London production of South Pacific starring Mary Martin. Someone — and it had to have been a professional job — set up cameras and filmed a performance.These three clips will give you about 27 minutes of key scenes…and how amazing is it to be able to see that? I have them set to play one after the other in the little player I've embedded below.The first one is the opening of the show…

Here's a video link I can't embed here but you may want to go see it. It's from the Disney Legends ceremony at the recent D23 convention — the induction of Jim Henson.Tom Bergeron is the host and there are some nice speeches and a couple of performances, including Henson's son Brian re-creating one of his father's best early routines. It runs a little over twenty minutes.

It's amazing that this exists. It's footage shot live of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis performing at the Copacabana in New York in, they say, 1955. I don't guarantee the date but, hey, it's Dean and Jerry in what many said was their best venue — a nightclub. Phil Silvers once told me that he was never all that impressed with Martin & Lewis in the movies and only slightly more impressed with them on television. It was in a place like the Copa, he said, that you really see why they were so popular.

Well, I don't particularly think this video is any better than their TV or movie work but I also think Mr. Silvers was thinking about their late shows when they and the audience were somewhat inebriated. Still, it's a little more than a half hour of the kind of thing they did back then so it's worth a look. It's in four parts which should play one after the other in the little player I've configured for you.The video is intermittently bad and it jumps around.That's the video. It's not the player. Maybe if you had a few drinks, it would seem more watchable…

On March 24, 2010, the New York Public Library presented a tribute to George Carlin. The link below will show you the entire show (an hour and 44 minutes) hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. Some of it is insightful and some is a little repetitious…but I did enjoy the reading of Carlin's writings by his daughter Kelly and his biographer, Tony Hendra. Near the end, Louis C.K. gave the best speech of the night. He starts around 94 minutes in and it's worth zipping ahead to hear him…

You're probably tired of seeing me talk about my buddy Stu Shostak, the host of Stu's Show, which is now heard on this website as opposed to the now-extinct Shokus Internet Radio. Here's a segment about Stu that ran yesterday on a local Los Angeles TV station…

Here's a clip from the episode of You Bet Your Life that aired on May 11, 1961. The autobiography of Harpo Marx had just been published and he made a cameo appearance on his brother's show to promote it. Note that Groucho looks often at his off-screen prompter. Many of what seemed to be ad-libs were read off a screen not unlike the kind then used in bowling alleys to post scores. Harpo and Chico had both appeared on the show before, not in the studio but in a series of commercials for one of its sponsors, Prom. Come to think of it, I'll post that one, too…

Kickstarter, as you may know, is a site where one can kick in money to help some filmmaker complete some film. Perhaps you'd like to go there and donate to help this one reach the finish line…

If you watch Glee, you often see my pal (and occasional songwriter partner) Brad Ellis tickling them ivories. He's an amazing person and an amazing musician…and here he is, accompanying and dueting with cabaret superstar Judy Butterfield…

Hey, remember we were telling you about D23, the big Disney fan convention down in Anaheim a week or so ago? Well, among the events was an appearance by Dick Van Dyke with his a cappella musical group, Vantastix. Here they are singing a song we know and love…

Earlier this morn, I embedded a link to a talk Mel Brooks gave at the Egyptian Theater last year. It worked when I embedded it but shortly after, its uploader apparently decided to make it private…and therefore unavailable to strangers. Sorry. Here to make up for that is a video from the same film festival. They ran Ten From Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris and followed it with this conversation with Reiner and Brooks. It's poor video and not the best audio but you should be able to make most of it out. It's in four parts which should play one after the other in the player below…