Category Archives: Video Links

Rubber Duckie, you're the one…

Gee, what would have happened if instead of writing Guys and Dolls, Frank Loesser had penned The King and I? What might that have been like? Hmm?

You may have seen this before. It's a "blooper reel" for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and I thought I'd embed it here and tell you two things about it. One is that you'll get a glimpse of two fine comedy writers who died too young. You'll see David Lloyd introduce Stan Daniels for a stirring rendition of "Old Man River."

The other thing is that throughout the reel, you'll see them cut to Ted Knight, Gavin MacLeod and Ed Asner singing a song parody about Mary Tyler Moore. Want to know where that song came from? It came from MAD magazine. My favorite writer of funny verse and silly lyrics, Frank Jacobs, wrote it for an issue of MAD and several of the stars The Mary Tyler Moore Show decided to serenade her with it on the set. Have a look…

Maybe if I spent some time on it, I could come up with an answer…but right this minute, I can't think of a living cartoonist whose work is more respected by his peers than is Mort Drucker. His caricatures for MAD have been nothing short of amazing and I doubt there's a person drawing likenesses anywhere who hasn't been influenced by his work. What's especially impressive about his MAD work is that most of it has been for multi-page parodies of movies and TV shows. It's one thing to draw a good rendition of a celebrity once…but to do four or five views of the person per page for five pages? There are a lot of good caricaturists out there who'd just wind up repeating one or two angles over and over. Not Mort.

Coming any day now — and you can order a copy over at this site — is a two-hour documentary/tutorial that I gather is like a video correspondence course. Here's a preview that runs a little less than eight minutes…

Here's composer-director Bruce Kimmel and a fine cast (Alet Taylor, Susanne Blakeslee, Paul Haber, Ryan Raftery, and Tammy Minoff) with a mash-up of The Sound of Music and Assassins…

Here's a semi-famous clip of Steve Allen on some TV show laughing his fool head off. One of the many assets that Mr. Allen had going for himself was that he was a great audience for the many great comedians who appeared on his programs…and as you can see in this, he was even a great audience for himself. Once in a while, you'd see Johnny Carson break up like this…and of course, Red Skelton would laugh if a fly got into the studio or Harvey Korman would lose it if the fly was Tim Conway. But for the most part, you don't see today's TV performers ever laughing much on the air. Just an observation.

Dozens of photographers turn as the San Diego Zoo's five-month-old giant panda cub, Yun Zi, makes his official public debut.There were almost as many people taking pictures of me when I was that age and that cute. Here's a minute and a half of news footage complete with a punchline at the end…

So I've been sitting here all evening wondering what would have happened if instead of writing the score for Company, Stephen Sondheim had penned the tunes for Bye Bye Birdie. And by an amazing coincidence, I found a YouTube video that answers my question. What are the odds?

Hey, let's embed one of my favorite musical moments from the world of motion pictures. It's Danny Kaye and Louis Armstrong in a song from The Five Pennies…

Hey, let's drive around L.A. with Jay Leno. You'll probably enjoy the ride more if you take this one full-screen…

Much to the frustration of professional voiceover actors, a lot of the high-paying jobs these days are going to folks who are celebrities for their on-camera efforts. Here's a little quiz to see if you can identify twelve of them…

I've always liked Paul Shaffer. Matter of fact, one of the things I miss about the Letterman show is when they used to let Paul be funny for more than one quick interjection every other night or so. Whoever thought of him to be Dave's sidekick and bandleader had a darn good idea, if only because of the clever play-ons he invents for guests. It's also kinda nice watching this guy, who literally wallows in show biz schmaltz and history, become a pillar of it. He's worked with everyone in music and it shows.

That said, I was a bit disappointed in his recent autobiography, We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives. It reminded in a semi-distant way of Ed McMahon's autobiography and his other books, all of which were rendered shallow by Ed's stubborn insistence that everyone he'd ever met in show business was the greatest, most talented human being alive — except, of course, for Johnny Carson and Frank Sinatra, who were much, much better than that. The difference is that with Paul Shaffer, you kinda get the idea that the guy really feels that way about everyone.

Ed's books also read like he had a dread fear of saying anything — anything! — that might by the wildest stretch of the imagination not delight his employer, Mr. Carson. You wouldn't expect him to trash the guy but it's almost as if Ed (or the person who ghosted his books for him) said, "Okay…Johnny told that story on the air once so it's okay to include it in the book." It was disconcerting that Ed McMahon, who worked side-by-side with Johnny Carson for 35 years, didn't have any anecdotes about the guy that we didn't already know from watching The Tonight Show.

Paul Shaffer doesn't have much to tell you about David Letterman that you couldn't pick up as a steady viewer. The best parts of the book are about Paul's early days working in Canada with folks like Gilda Radner, and being around for the formative years of Saturday Night Live. And you might well enjoy the sheer excitement he radiates as a guy who worships various superstars of music and comedy gets to meet and work with most of his heroes. Here's an Amazon link if you'd like to order a copy.

You can also learn a lot (and a lot more) about Mr. Shaffer if you feel like watching the three-and-a-half hour interview he did for the Archive of American Television. It's online and in the parts I've sampled, he's a bit more candid…though he still loves just about everyone he's ever met in show biz. And I still believe he's almost sincere. Here's a brief clip that was taped at the same time of him ad-libbing a little musical commercial for his book…

If I'd been in New York the beginning of December, I would have absolutely gone to the Gypsy of the Year show, an annual event staged on behalf of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. All year long, BC/EFA holds wonderful events to raise cash for its most worthy cause but the best one is probably the Gypsy show, which runs only two performances — matinees on days when no regular shows have matinees. The timing is because that's when a regular Broadway theater is available to them and also because most of the performers and much of the audience is working in shows those evenings.

More or less all the Broadway shows (and a few off-Broadway) contribute something — a sketch, a musical number, a performance of some sort. Some shows parody others. Some parody themselves. Many of the dance productions are particularly amazing…Broadway dancers showing off for each other but in a good way. Many celebrities attend but the "stars" are the gypsies — the dancers and chorus folks who usually don't get enough of the spotlight.

I was sorry I missed this year's. Here's a quick peek at some of what I didn't get to see. My friend Christine Pedi is in there performing and I'm sure she was only one of many treasures…

Did you watch the Kennedy Centers Honors telecast the other night? This year, they honored Dave Brubeck, Robert DeNiro, Grace Bumbry, Mel Brooks and Bruce Springsteen. The Springsteen segment was probably the biggie (great speech by Jon Stewart, great musical performances by John Mellencamp, Jennifer Nettles, Melissa Ethridge and Sting) but the whole show was good.

The Mel Brooks tribute was hosted by Carl Reiner and then there were musical numbers from various Brooks efforts by Frank Langella, Harry Connick Jr., Richard Kind, Martin Short, Gary Beach and others. If you saw the show on CBS, you saw its editors do a fancy bit of scissoring, presumably due to length, on what was taped December 5th. Cut from the broadcast was a number from the Broadway version of Young Frankenstein performed by Roger Bart, Shuler Hensley and Cory English (who, ironically enough, are currently doing that show at the Kennedy Center). Also excised was Jane Krakowski singing "If You've Got It, Flaunt It" from the musical of The Producers, and they removed the entire finale, which had everyone on stage together. The ending was therefore rather disjointed as they cut to shots of some performers taking the bows that everyone was cheering and applauding…but couldn't use the full master shot because it contained Bart, Krakowski and the others who'd been trimmed.

There were probably other cuts in every part of the show. It's a shame they can't put the thing uncut somewhere…on PBS or maybe just a DVD. Here's a small part of what they did air…

This runs close to 24 minutes so you may not want to watch it, now or ever. It's a silent comedy starring one of my favorite comedians of the era, Charley Chase. Chase (real name: Charles Parrott) was either a director who performed or a performer who directed…and once in a while, he even directed himself. His films were generally quite funny. He tended to emphasize character over slapstick and to be very, very good at the comedy of embarrassment. His silent two-reelers (done for the Hal Roach Studio, beginning in 1923) were popular and then when sound came in, he was one of the few comics to seamlessly make the transition to talkies.

What did him in was when Roach abandoned two-reelers and shifted over to features. Chase shifted over to Columbia in 1937 where he continued making short films and also directed some of the Three Stooges' better shorts. He died in 1940 at the age of 46, whereupon his films were largely and unjustly forgotten. Among old comedy film buffs though, he is much loved and collected. This film may show you why.

It's Crazy Like a Fox, made in 1926. It was written by Chase (with title cards by H.M. "Beanie" Walker) and directed by Leo McCarey, who would later become a pretty important director. If you look fast, you may spot Oliver Hardy in a small part done shortly before he teamed up with that Laurel guy. This was the first Charley Chase film I ever saw…many moons ago at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax here in Los Angeles. It made me an instant fan of his. Maybe it'll have the same effect on you.