Category Archives: Video Links

In 1968, the eminent songwriter-math teacher Tom Lehrer did a live show of his tunes in Copenhagen. Why did he do this? I don't know and apparently neither did he but here it is. It runs 51 minutes and is quite wonderful…

And here we have six minutes of Henny Youngman doing what he did so well and for so long. This is from 1960 and one of his jokes will only make sense if you know that at the time, there was a big scare in the news: People were said to getting ill and maybe dying from pesticides then used on cranberries. That's about as close as Henny ever got to topical material and I'm sure that years later when there was a similar scare about apples, he just switched one word and used the same line.

I kinda "worked with" Henny once and got to spend a little time with him. You can read about it in this article I wrote many moons ago. But first, here he is on an old Steve Allen Show…

And was there ever a better match of singer and song than this guy and that tune?

The sound on this isn't great but heck, it's thirteen minutes of Ethel Merman singing hits she got to sing on Broadway stages. She's a little infatuated with her own wonderfulness when she talks but not so much that you can't enjoy the performance, which was on a 1982 TV show hosted by Jack Jones…

We miss the late, great comic actor Carl Ballantine, better known as The Amazing Ballantine. I had the pleasure to work with him and to dine with him and really, there was no one funnier. We miss him on-stage where he did his hilarious magic act where the tricks never worked. We miss him off-stage where he shared a lifetime of great show biz anecdotes.

Before he left us, he recorded the voice track so that his act could "live on" in marionette form. Scott Land is one of the world's great puppeteers and he spent a very long time sculpting and routining his Amazing Ballantine puppet. Here's a little bit of what it does…

I have known Scott Shaw! (he spells it with the punctuation mark) for well more than half my life. Among our many points of bonding is a love not just for cartoons and comics but for bizarre cartoons and comics. There are few things we like better than to look at some inexplicable, strange comic book and wonder aloud, "What the hell were they thinking when they did that?"

Scott has actively collected such items and some years back, he began shaping them into his Oddball Comics Show, which he has presented at many a comic convention. He's been doing it so long, he started with a prehistoric device called a — let me look this up to make sure I get the name right — yes, it's a "slide projector." That was a thing some people used in the era before PowerPoint to project "slides." Don't ask me what "slides" were. I barely remember. I think they had something to do with something called "film."

Anyway, Scott would do these shows at cons and a packed hall would laugh its collective ass off…and every so often now, he gets his act together and takes it on the road. Starting April 7 and for several Saturdays thereafter, he'll be doing it at the Oh My Ribs Theater (hey, I didn't name it) in Hollywood. If you're close enough to go, you should. Here's a little trailer for the event…

Goldie Hawn recalls an unpleasant encounter with a famous cartoonist. And no, I don't understand why she's done that to her lips, either…

We've been talking here lately about Johnny Carson and also about Jerry Lewis. Here's Mr. Lewis on his 1977 telethon, welcoming Mr. Carson. It's a rare opportunity to see Johnny trying to work on his feet but without prepared material or cue cards…

Here's a short clip, date unknown, of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Johnny does a great, Carsonesque "take" when he notices that Tommy Newsom is filling in as bandleader for Doc Severinsen. He says he was unaware Doc was off…but then he segues into prepared material (which he, of course, approved) that makes fun of Tommy. Kinda makes you think he did know Doc was off, doesn't it?

For a long time on Johnny's show, the line of succession worked like this: Ed McMahon was, of course, the announcer. Doc was Musical Director. Tommy was a band member and Doc's assistant, and he also supervised most of the band's arrangements. If Doc had the night off, Tommy would lead the band. If Ed had the night off, Doc would rotate over to serve as announcer and Tommy would lead the band. There was also a third-position band member named Shelly Cohen who occasionally led the band if Doc and Tommy were out at the same time…and there was at least one night when Ed and Doc were away so Tommy served as announcer and Shelley led the band.

One day, Johnny decided to change this. Ed was often off doing Star Search or those sweepstakes commercials or hosting corporate events for Budweiser or other extra-curricular activities so he was frequently absent when Johnny hosted. He was finally told he had to rearrange things and always be there for Mr. Carson. Ed, who knew darn well why he had a career, immediately complied.

Doc was apparently told the same thing and he also began canceling outside gigs with a band he had called Xebron. At the same time, Johnny decided to stop featuring Tommy Newsom on the show, either as a bandleader or as he'd occasionally been used, as a sketch player. Tommy was relegated back to his musician function and thereafter, he only led the band if Doc had to be away due to some personal emergency. I'm not sure there was one for the rest of Johnny's run. Ed still did some outside jobs but only when Leno hosted and on those nights, Doc would serve as bandleader and announcer.

As a devout Carson fan/expert, I was always curious about what triggered the new policy…why suddenly, Johnny decided his crew had to show up for work. And was there some incident that soured him on Mr. Newsom to the point where he didn't even want him fronting the band on Leno nights? Years later, I asked a few folks who'd worked then at The Tonight Show, including Fred DeCordova, and got a lot of shrugs and comments like "That's how Johnny operated." He would suddenly decide something had to be changed and he'd change it.

The end to Ed's and Doc's nights off was probably just because Johnny felt he should have his "A" Team around. Perhaps Tommy's exile had something to do with Johnny's fears that his audience was skewing too old. I can't imagine that he decided Tommy wasn't a good foil to bounce jokes off of. Take a look at this clip…

This is from The Rachel Maddow Show and it runs almost 15 minutes. It's a pretty damning segment on Mitt Romney's tendency to say a lot of things which are untrue and/or in direct conflict with what he said not long before. I offer it here not because I think it'll change anyone's mind but because you might enjoy a preview of the upcoming election…assuming Romney heads up the G.O.P. ticket. Heck, it'll also be the theme of the remaining attempts to deny him that honor.

The thing I find most interesting here is that Romney is only now starting to get the image of a truth mangler. Prior to this, he's been a flip-flopper, which is not quite the same thing. I mean, if a guy previously held a view contrary to yours and now he agrees with you, you can kind of think, "Well, at least he's seen the light." At some point though, folks start to perceive a total disconnect between what a candidate says and reality. Not that I think it'll cost him the nomination but I think Romney's there…and boy, do I wish I owned stock in Etch-a-Sketch because we're going to be hearing a lot about that product, aka The Original iPad.

I've been watching episodes of this PBS show — InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse — on YouTube. He's a pretty good interrogator and gets pretty good guests and lets them talk. Here's a half hour with Lewis Black…

Jack Benny and Mel Blanc not doing the "See? Si!" routine…

I've posted a number of Liza Minnelli impressions here. Here's the real thing at one of those hourly Sondheim tribute concerts…

Got 27 minutes? If so, you might want to put it to good use and watch an interview with Gene Wilder. I have never heard Mr. Wilder speak without saying something important about acting…