Category Archives: Video Links

From The Graham Norton Show on the BBC, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe favors us with a ditty by Tom Lehrer. Thank you, Bruce Reznick, for the referral.

Here's a Monty Python clip you may not have seen. It's from a special episode they did for Dutch TV in the early seventies — a slapstick sketch that Mssrs. Jones and Palin performed in their pre-Python days and which the Python's resurrected for this special and some stage shows.

It ostensibly teaches about hitting someone in the puss with a pie but breaks a cardinal rule, which is that you never put the pie filling in a paper plate…or worse, a tin one. A throwing pie should be put inside an actual pie shell that is brittle enough that it will break apart when it comes into contact with a face. That way, you don't have the pie plate hanging there on the person's head. You'd think people would know important stuff like this.

On her show last night, Rachel Maddow did a long interview with Jon Stewart. It was edited a bit for broadcast and, of course, chopped up for the insertion of commercials.This is the uncut version which runs almost 50 minutes. I'm going to watch this later today or whenever I have the time but my impression of last night was that Mr. Stewart, perhaps because he was under the weather, didn't do the best job defending his position. At points, he seems to think that any comparison of what he does on his program to what he criticizes in others is unfair merely because he defines his show as being in a different category. Or criticisms of his rally are unfair because as far as he's concerned, he did what he set out to do…and I'm still a little fuzzy on just what that was.

Maybe this uncut version of their chat will change my opinion but I don't have time to watch it right now. If you do, here it is…

Since we were talking here about S. Sondheim the other day, here's Dame Judi Dench with his (probably) most famous composition…

Here we have a "lost" (meaning, "found") bit of TV history. In January of 1967, both CBS and NBC unveiled mid-season replacement sitcoms with the same premise: A nerdy guy becomes a super-hero. The NBC one was called Captain Nice and starred William Daniels. The CBS one was called Mr. Terrific and starred Stephen Strimpell. You can watch an entire episode of the latter at this link.

And below, you can watch the pilot for an earlier, unaired version of Mr. Terrific starring Alan Young. After his Mr. Ed went off, the network shoved him into this thing, which I actually prefer in every way to the version that replaced it. Mr. Young is very good and it also stars Edward Andrews, who was the funniest thing in an awful lot of sixties movies and TV shows.

I don't know why CBS rejected this pilot but they did. They kept the name and a rough premise and a few more other details and they had the whole thing rewritten and recast and reshot…and the Alan Young performance has gone largely unseen 'til now. Take a peek. Like I said, I like it better than the version they bought…

This runs an hour so you probably won't want to watch all of it…but if you do click, don't blame me if you get hooked and sit through much of it. It's an episode of The Danny Kaye Show, a mostly-forgotten series that ran on CBS from 1963 to 1967. (The person who generously uploaded it to YouTube seems to have identified it as a 1962 episode…but the show debuted on September 25, 1963 and the copyright at the end of this one says '64.) Angela Lansbury is the main guest star and Mr. Kaye is supported in sketches by Harvey Korman, who was a regular on the show. In a stroke of luck, when Mr. Kaye stopped doing his show in '67, Carol Burnett was just starting hers in the same building and was able to snag Korman to serve the same function on her series. Harvey didn't even have to change his parking space.

I remember this show being quite wonderful and this episode does not disappoint. Danny Kaye is amazing. He sings, he dances, he does characters, he tells jokes…he's absolutely perfect to star in a weekly variety show. I love him on screen enough to be troubled and conflicted by something. Years later when I got into the business of writing — sometimes writing variety shows, in fact — I got to work with and/or know an awful lot of people who worked on this show including all but one of its writers.They all hated Danny Kaye. I was very close with Howard Morris who was a recurring sketch player on this show. He hated Danny Kaye. I did a show one time with Vincent Price, who was one of the sweetest, gentlest men you could ever hope to meet. Over lunch, someone remarked how the actors who played the worst villains were always like that in real life and Mr. Price remarked, "Yes, it amuses me how many people thought I was like the monster in the Edgar Allan Poe movies and thought Danny Kaye was a nice man."

I never met Danny Kaye…and of course, one meeting would have proven little. But when I was a kid, my parents took me — and I think we went several times — to see him perform at the Hollywood Bowl and/or the Greek Theater. It was like spending time with an enchanted pixie. He exuded so much joy and happiness…and he stayed on stage forever, doing song after song, giving the audience 150% or more of what they'd paid to see. Gene Wilder used to say that when he was a kid, he wanted to grow up to be whatever Danny Kaye was…and every time I see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I think of that. Because that was Gene Wilder playing a role Danny Kaye could have played. In fact, not that Wilder wasn't stupendous in the part, but I kinda wish someone had thought to cast Danny Kaye, instead. Wouldn't he have been amazing?

So on the one hand, I see Danny Kaye and I think what a wonderful person he was on stage or screen. And on the other hand, I hear all these people I like tell me how nasty he was to them…or to anyone else on stage with him who dared get a laugh…and I don't know what to think. I've probably done some of you a great disservice by planting in your brain the information that people who were around Danny Kaye really didn't like him. Maybe that's okay because the people who didn't know him all loved him…and I'm one of them. Here he is being Danny Kaye…

Some people think Ethel Merman's greatest performance was in Gypsy. Others think it was in Annie, Get Your Gun. I used to think it was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Well, we were all wrong. It's this. Thanks to Barry Mitchell for preserving and sharing this bit of musical history…

And now, a number from Sam the Eagle…

Last Friday evening, as I reported here, I visited Teatro ZinZanni in San Francisco and enjoyed it tremendously. I struggled a bit to describe just what the experience is like and could have saved myself some wordage if I'd found this video then. The shows and casts change there from time to time and I believe this is a composite of a couple shows, none of them the one I saw…though you'll catch glimpses of our pal Frank Ferrante in there playing his character, Caesar. (He's the one with the mustache, the ever-growing spot on his cheek and the wardrobe that makes him look like a pimp making a tasteful fashion statement.) Anyway, this should give you a sense of the energy in the room and the way the performers and servers interact with the patrons and with each other. It really was as much fun as this looks…

In honor of the day…or night…or however you want to phrase it. Just don't give me any candy corn.

Speaking of which, here it is…

Here, from last night's Rachel Maddow Show, is one of those clips that makes you realize why some elections go the way they go…

I just received the new DVD of Evening Primrose…the first-ever legal, Kosher and visually watchable copy of the 1966 musical-for-TV by James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim. I always thought it was kind of a creepy story made creepier by the presence of Anthony Perkins in the lead role…and while I'm glad someone finally issued it for all, I don't think it's a DVD I'll be watching over and over.There's a reaction I have occasionally near the beginning of a play or movie that goes something like this: "Gee, this is well done but I don't think I really want to spend the next hour or two of my life watching the story of these people." (The last time I had it in the Broadway area was at a musical called The Life.)

There is much to admire in Evening Primrose in terms of craft, particularly in Mr. Sondheim's lyrics…and it's an important bit of television and theatrical history. So I'm glad to have this DVD and if you haven't ordered one yet, I suggest you click on this link and get a copy. It's certainly the best musical ever videotaped inside a department store. Here's the keystone (and maybe the best) number in the show…

As a kid, one of my favorite magicians was a gent named Don Alan (1926-1999), who was one of the first sleight-of-hand guys to work regularly on television. His tricks weren't all that remarkable but he always "sold" them so well with smooth 'n' funny patter. An awful lot of kids took up magic because of Don Alan and a fair percentage of them took up his routines, often verbatim. I worked with him on a show in the early eighties and it was a joy to watch how well he did what he did. Here he is on some show around 1960, leading off with one of his signature feats…

In the late sixties/early seventies, there were comedic treats for those of us who lived in L.A. and were smart enough to find our respective ways to KRLA on the local radio dial. Today, that station is a mess of second-string Limbaugh wanna-bes but back then, it was a solid Top 40-style station that didn't limit itself to the Top 40. And in-between the hits, one could often hear comedic brilliance from a group called The Credibility Gap that produced little segments and drop-ins. The membership of the troupe changed from time to time but the four main guys I recall were Harry Shearer, Richard Beebe, David L. Lander and Michael McKean. They did very smart, funny comedy that is still being ripped-off now and then by others.

This is Shearer, McKean and Lander from a 1975 episode of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show with Shearer doing his spot-on impression of Mr. Snyder, which I always found superior to the Aykroyd version. The group disbanded soon after this, though they occasionally reassembled or worked together in other ways. McKean and Lander were Lenny and Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley, McKean and Shearer were members of Spinal Tap, etc. Here's a ten minute clip that shows you the kind of thing they were doing back then…