You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see "Springtime for Hitler" performed in a high school production. Wouldn't you? Of course you would…but where would we find such a thing?
Oh, wait. Thanks to Ardsely High School in Hudson Valley, New York, I think we can see it if we click below…
You know what I'd like to hear? I'd like to hear "Springtime for Hitler" played on a really old, classic Wurlitzer organ. Wouldn't you? Of course you would…but where would we find such a thing?
Oh, wait. Thanks to a tip from Scott Marinoff, I think we can hear it if we click below…
This is another one of those video links that's really an audio link. It's a nine-minute interview of Stan Laurel conducted in January of 1959…
The Glenn Miller Modernaires favor us with "Jukebox Saturday Night." I'm guessing 1944.
Five minutes of Shelley Berman discussing why he wanted to be a performer…
A couple of times on this here blog, I've raved about a close-up magician named Johnny Ace Palmer…and I even snuck his name into the Spirit comic book back when I was doing the dialogue for it. Well, Johnny did a smidgen on his amazing act last night on David Letterman's show. Here's the segment. See what I mean?
Here's the January 17, 1954 installment of…well, it may be The Jack Benny Show (as it says on-screen) or it may be The Jack Benny Program (as announcer Don Wilson says) but either way, it has special guest star Liberace. You may also notice Bea Benaderet in there, playing a telephone operator and wearing a wig that makes her look like Betty Rubble…
If you've learned nothing else from this blog, you should have figured out that I know a lot of very talented people. One of them is my longtime pal, Valerie Perri. She can often be found touring the country, singing show tunes and starring in musical comedies. Here's a link to her website so you can check and see when she might be coming to sing in your neck of the woods and here's a little sample of what she might be doing when she gets there…
You may have seen this the other night on The Daily Show but if you didn't, you should. A lot of folks are cheering Lewis Black for his evisceration of Glenn Beck's incessant likening of everything he opposes to Nazis. And actually, credit here should go primarily to the writers and producers of The Daily Show because I don't believe Mr. Black writes his own segments for them and he certainly didn't find all those clips.
What I've seen of Glenn Beck reminds me oddly of my brief time working with wrestlers who were in what was then called the World Wrestling Federation.The thing I learned about pro wrestling was that it was not mainly about making money. It was solely about making money. You might think that some other factor would be a close or even a remote second — fame, honor, sportsmanship (good or bad), settling personal grudges, pride of showmanship, the thrill of victory, any of those. But no.The wrestlers and those who controlled the industry were only about money and they would say and do whatever they thought would yield the most.That didn't make them bad people. Some of them were great guys. But they functioned in a field where there simply were no non-monetary rewards to be reaped and it was kinda startling to me to realize that that's all it was about.
I don't think it's exactly that way in our punditry today but it's close. I think "celebrity" functions as a distant second and the prospect of changing the world for what you think will be better is an even more distant third. But the cash is way out in front as the prime motivator. Beck strikes me as the most obvious example of this principle. I don't think he cares if he warps history, spouts nonsense, contradicts his own views or incites the small-minded. He's so transparent in this regard that I can't understand why anyone listens to the guy apart from, well, maybe it's funny to some to hear the crazy guy rant. I understand, I think, why people go Conservative or Libertarian. I just don't understand why they pick some of the people they pick to follow. (In the same sense: I understand, I think, why some people believe in E.S.P. and communicating with the dead. What I don't get is why any of them listen to Sylvia Browne.)
Anyway, here's Lewis Black deconstructing the inanity that is Glenn Beck…
Actually, it's more like an Audio Link. From the November 24, 1943 episode of Mail Call, a radio program that aired on the Armed Forces Radio Network, we have a sketch featuring Mr. Stan Laurel and Mr. Oliver Hardy. And yes, that's Miss Lucille Ball introducing it…
I'm sure I've linked to this before but there are some things you just can't see too many times. It's the parody that Your Show of Shows did of the TV program, This is Your Life. It features Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Howie Morris, Louis Nye and a couple of other folks no one seems to be able to identify. (The gentleman sitting next to Caesar in the audience is NBC executive David Tebet, who Johnny Carson used to occasionally mention on the air.)This sketch originally aired on April 3, 1953.
Howie Morris, of course, steals the very funny sketch in his role as Uncle Goopy.They showed this at Howie's funeral and I was sitting two rows behind Carl Reiner, who was laughing as hard as anyone, mostly at the physical interplay between Sid and Howie. According to all, what happened on the broadcast (live, remember) went way beyond what had been planned at rehearsal.
By the way: Last evening at the opening of How to Succeed (see previous post), I was sitting three rows behind Carl Reiner, who seemed to be enjoying the heck outta the show. Even more important, he seemed to be in darn good shape. It just makes me happy to see him and to be able to report that. Here he is in one of the funniest sketches ever done on television…
Your old pal Grover teaches you the difference between near and far. Pay attention, now…
Okay, pay attention now.Today, we have an excerpt from one of the funniest things I ever saw on television. You'll laugh at this but you have to trust me: If you could see the whole thing, you'd truly laugh yourself sick.
It occurred on The Tonight Show in 1973 or maybe 1974. Joey Bishop was the Guest Host…and because of that fact alone, the full tape of this may be lost forever. You all know how the early years of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show were lost. Someone at NBC decided to reuse the tapes or to not waste the storage space…or something. Whatever the reason, those years weren't preserved. At some point, Johnny and others realized this and they began to save his episodes…but even then, they were still negligent for a while about preserving the one with guest hosts.The shows with Mr. Carson had rerun value in the near future. When Johnny took a week off, as he did often, they'd sometimes slap in a week of recycled shows…and there was also a weekend Best of Carson broadcast of an old program. So they saved the ones Johnny hosted.The ones without him were apt to get lost forever since they didn't rerun shows with anyone else behind the desk.
I remember watching this, laughing so hard I couldn't catch my breath and then thinking, "Geez…I'm never going to get to see that again. I can't show it to anyone. It's gone forever." (And by the way: Don't get your expectations up. All we have here is an excerpt which doesn't even include the funniest parts.)
All right. I'm going to try to describe what's missing…and remember, I'm doing this from memory based on one viewing 37 years ago. If a tape of the full thing ever surfaces and it doesn't match exactly, don't flog me.
Joey Bishop is guest hosting. I don't know about you but I never felt Mr. Bishop had many more qualifications to be in show business beyond the fact that Mr. Sinatra found him amusing. His 60's sitcom was great but that was the writing, not the star. As a talk show host, on his program or subbing for Johnny, I thought he had a tendency to suck all the humor right off the stage.
He introduces Brooks with one of those "don't blame me if this guy bombs" intros. I don't recall the words but it was something like, "Here's a young man I'm told is very funny." He didn't seem to know what was coming…or maybe he did and was just plain afraid of it.
A curtain comes up and there's Albert Brooks sitting in a small living room set which, he explains, he brought from home. He says he has something important to talk to the audience about and he felt that he should do it in comfortable, familiar surroundings. His mood is serious and I'm not sure there's a single real laugh — only nervous audience titters — for about the first minute. He explains, seemingly deadpan serious, that he has nothing to perform for us this evening.
The audience, which at first wasn't sure what to make of this earnest heart-to-heart, is starting to figure out it's a bit and starting to laugh as this clip begins…
But despite the way the above clip ends, it goes on. Right after he says, "This…this isn't me," he hauls out an eight-by-ten theatrical-style photo of himself and proclaims, "This is me!"
And then, in seeming earnest, he announces his retirement from show business.The band starts to play a flowery song — it may have been "My Way" — and the curtain comes up behind him on a dark area illuminated by three spotlights.
Years earlier, Jimmy Durante would close his TV shows with a similar exit. He'd walk into the first spotlight, turn and wave goodbye to the audience…walk into the second, turn and wave goodbye to the audience…then walk into the third, turn and wave goodbye to the audience…then walk off into the darkness.
Now, Albert Brooks attempts to do the same exit. With dramatic farewell music swelling, he heads for the first spotlight — but remember, he has his pants around his ankles. So he doesn't walk…he kind of waddles. He waddles into the first spotlight, turns and waves goodbye to the audience.Then he waddles into the second spotlight, turns and waves goodbye to the audience.Then he waddles into the third and by now, I'm laughing so hard that I miss what's going on. I have a vague idea that he trips, falls on his face in the third spotlight and the curtain comes down on that but maybe not. Maybe he just waddles into the darkness. Whatever it is, it is explosive.
The audience goes insane. Screaming. Clapping. Yelling. Cheering.
And then the camera cuts back to Joey Bishop looking utterly mystified, sputtering a few puzzled words before throwing to commercial.That was the funniest thing about it to me. Joey Bishop had no idea what had just happened. He didn't get the joke.
At least, that's how I remember it.
I do recall that moment of despair, thinking "I'm never going to see that again." Apparently, the entire show is lost.The above clip reportedly exists only because Albert Brooks pointed a 16mm movie camera at the TV screen that night and shot a homemade kinescope for himself. He ran the film or parts thereof in a few places. Whoever put the clip on YouTube probably got it from a VHS or Laserdisc of an obscure show that Milton Berle did a few years later. I'm not sure if it was a series or a couple of pilots but it was a thing called Milton Berle's Mad Mad Mad World of Comedy — kind of a cross between a talk show and a comedy history program.
Each week, Berle and a guest comedian would look at clips of great funny performances — theirs and work by others — and discuss the fine art of evoking laughter. Brooks was a guest on one of the episodes and if you ever get a chance to see a copy, watch it. He completely upstaged Berle and Uncle Miltie didn't like it. If ever there was one piece of videotape that summarized the passing of the torch, a new generation of comedians driving out the old, it was Albert Brooks topping Milton Berle at every turn.The sight of Joey Bishop not understanding the routine on The Tonight Show, — even though the studio audience sure did — was another such moment.
Anyway, I think that's everything I have to offer about this clip. I wish you could see the whole thing. Heck, I wish I could see the whole thing. Just a few years later, Andy Kaufman would rise to fame expanding on this kind of thing. Intermittently, there was something kind of charming about Kaufman but often there was not. And even when he was at his best, I never thought he was half as good as Albert Brooks.
In honor of Mother's Day, our friend — Chanteuse Extraordinaire Shelly Goldstein — favors us with an appropriate song from the Broadway show, Minnie's Boys. I knew Shelly's mother, who is no longer with us, and I know how proud she was of her kid: About as proud as you could be. That's Scott Harlan at the piano.
Here's a short commercial for Hellman's mayonnaise followed by a longer commercial for Oscar Mayer weiners. And yes, that's Thurl Ravenscroft voicing the short guy.