Category Archives: Video Links

Here's a five minute episode of The Funny Company — and I'll bet most of you don't make it all the way through. This was a 1963 syndicated cartoon, each episode of which was produced for around a buck-eighty. They had a long theme song and a long closing, which cut down on the amount of animation to be produced for each installment. And then most of each installment featured some science film or travelogue or promotional film that they got for little or no money. I didn't even like these when I was eleven years old and Engineer Bill was running them on Channel 9 locally.

That's Dick Beals doing the lead voice and the villain is performed by Hal Smith, who seems to have been in every cartoon show produced in Los Angeles during the sixties with a budget under a hundred dollars. Robie Lester and Nancy Wible are in there, too. See how long you last watching this…

This may be my favorite Buster Keaton short. It's Cops, filmed in 1922. Some have suggested that this was Keaton's answer to the then-current scandal involving his friend, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The suggesters see an analogy in the idea of a guy who's done nothing wrong but is pursued relentlessly by the law for no real reason. Well, okay. If you want to view it that way, be my guest. I don't quite see it. I just think it's a clever, funny film.

Some of that clever, funny film, by the way, was filmed on the streets of Hollywood. 15 minutes and 30 seconds in, there's a scene where Buster runs out of an alley and grabs onto a passing car. That alley was (and still is) on Cahuenga Boulevard, just south of Hollywood Boulevard. It's right next to the big newsstand there…and it doesn't look all that different these days.

In 1941, after Bud Abbott and Lou Costello made a smash in Buck Privates, every movie studio had to try and copy the formula, which was a team of wacky new servicemen in the Army, a romantic subplot and maybe some flashy musical numbers. Buck Privates was made for Universal. Over at Twentieth-Century Fox, they signed up Laurel and Hardy and filmed Great Guns. Warner Brothers, meanwhile, tried to create their own comedy team. They took Jimmy Durante, who hadn't clicked as Buster Keaton's partner years before, and paired him with newcomer Phil Silvers for You're in the Army Now. You can see the results on Turner Classic Movies on January 4 at, in most time zones, 12:30 PM.

How good is it? Not very, I'm afraid. It's always fun to watch Durante and Silvers but they have no particular chemistry and the jokes feel like the kind of stuff Bud and Lou threw away. Still, it may well be where Nat Hiken got the idea to cast Mr. Silvers in an army comedy…and it may be the reason Mr. Silvers resisted the whole idea.

In his autobiography, Silvers told how he made a deal with CBS to do a situation comedy and Hiken was signed to create it. Hiken's first idea was to make him a sergeant and Silvers rejected it, thinking it would all be "Abbott and Costello nonsense," with soldiers bumping into each other and losing their pants. Obviously, he had at least in the back of his mind that it would turn out like You're in the Army Now. Anyway, Hiken then spent the next few months suggesting other ideas for a series and neither he nor Phil liked any of them. Finally one day, Silvers said, approximately, "Hey, let's go back to that army idea." And that's how M/Sgt. Ernie T. Bilko was born.

Below is the trailer for You're in the Army Now and it's obviously from a reissue. How do we know this? Well, it says so on the trailer but even if it didn't, they mention Mr. Silvers being in Top Banana, which didn't even come along until 1951, ten years after this movie was made. On the other hand, they don't mention Sgt. Bilko, which went on in 1955 so that helps us narrow down the dates of the re-release.

And speaking of Top Banana, which we've done a lot of here in previous posts, the movie version of it follows You're in the Army Now on TCM that morning. It's a sloppily-produced version of the Broadway hit but Phil Silvers gives an irresistible performance. You might want to set your VCR or TiVo. As flawed as it is, it's still better than this movie…

The entire staff of newsfromme.com (i.e., me) is a huge fan of bandleader Spike Jones. Comedy in music has been too often done by folks who weren't good enough musicians to play it straight. Mr. Jones was…and one of the many reasons his records worked so well was that they're musically-sound. A member of his troupe, Earl Bennett, once told me that Spike had such a good ear that he could listen to a shot from a starter's pistol and say, "That's an F Sharp. I need an F Flat for this number."

You'll see Earl in our video clip today. I knew him a little from the days when he worked as a film editor at Hanna-Barbera. And you'll also see Eddie Brandt in the video. Eddie was a writer for Spike and later for Hanna-Barbera before he opened up a book/memorabilia store I used to frequent out in North Hollywood. I'm glad someone had the sense to interview these guys about Spike and capture some of their great anecdotes.

You can hear more of them and see video of Spike's work on television in a new DVD set, The Best of Spike Jones. I can't get enough of this stuff and you probably can't either, even if you don't know it yet. But in addition to being a great musician, Spike Jones was genuinely funny and he was surrounded by funny people. Here's an Amazon link so you can order, but first watch this little preview…

Yesterday, we linked to Jimmy Fallon's re-creation of a number from the old John Denver/Muppets Christmas special. Here's what they were aping…the original from 1979. If I'm correct, there's only one person who was playing the same role in both versions — my pal Dave Goelz performed Gonzo (a role he originated) in the '79 version and he's still Gonzo after all these years. All the other Muppeteers are second generation.

Of course, it's probable that there's one other person who was in both versions. In the original, there are twelve Muppets who sing. Three are characters performed (back then) by Jim Henson, three were Frank Oz, two were Jerry Nelson, three were Richard Hunt and one was Dave Goelz. But there are nine or ten Muppeteers on that stage working the characters.

As a viewer, one can't be precise because, for example, I think Statler and Waldorf are on the two hands of one person. Janice and Floyd may have one operator…and I think whoever's working Scooter is also manipulating Zoot, who snuck in there. I'm assuming the shots of Rowlf, who requires two performers, were shot separately…but the least they could have needed for this number was nine Muppeteers. Presuming Henson, Oz, Nelson, Hunt and Goelz are five of them, there were four or maybe five others.

Steve Whitmire, who now plays Kermit, joined the Henson organization in '78 and was one of the other credited performers on the special…so he was probably one of the four or five. It's possible there was someone else in both the 1979 and 2009 performances but unlikely; not unless they got Jerry Nelson in, which I doubt. So Goelz and Whitmire are probably the only two folks to span those thirty years. Here's the clip…

Here's a charming bit from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon…and I think it points up what's wrong with the show. Observe how little Mr. Fallon brings to the number. Granted, anyone appearing on TV surrounded by Muppets is by definition going to be the least-interesting person on the screen. But he doesn't react. He doesn't interact. All he does is stand there and look like a nice guy…which from all reports, he is. Every time I've tried watching his program, that's what I see…Jimmy Fallon being pleasant without giving his guests anything to play off of. I really want to like him but he sure doesn't make it easy.

From a 1962 special on ABC which aired not long before he took over The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson introduces Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. They then perform one of those routines that no one remembers was also on their first 2,000 Year Old Man record…

Jack Benny and Mel Blanc. You know how this works but it's still fun to watch…

Some time ago, I linked you to a few videos of the songwriting (and occasionally, performing) team of Flanders and Swann. Those postings brought a lot of e-mails from folks who'd never heard of them and who wrote me things like, "Where have these two wonderful men been all my life?" Well, here's ten more minutes — three whole songs — with Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. This is from their farewell (more or less) performance in 1967. It may help to keep the date in mind when you watch the first number…

You got 22 minutes? If not, come back here when you do and watch One Week, a wonderful comedy made in 1920 by that grinning fool, Buster Keaton.

It was his first solo comedy to be released. For several years, he made films in support of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, turning down offers to go off on his own. When he finally did, he first made a movie called The High Sign. As the story is told, when The High Sign was completed, Keaton decided it wasn't good enough and that it should be shelved. But once that decision was made, Keaton — being a compulsive perfectionist — went back and did rewrites, reshoots and re-editing on The High Sign and then, once he was convinced he'd made it as good as it could be, then he shelved it. The film would be released a few years later when Keaton injured himself and had to take some time off to recover. Only then did he agree to its distribution so that audiences, eager for the next Buster Keaton comedy, would not be disappointed.

In any case, after The High Sign was squirreled away, Keaton made One Week…a remarkable comedy and one that was recently selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. When you watch, you might keep in mind that no miniatures or camera tricks were used to make things happen. Obviously, Keaton's crew knew how to rig things up with wires and breakaway materials…but the big clunky mobile house was actually the size it appears to be, and they made it do all the things it does in the film. That credibility was one of the things that made Keaton's silent films wonderful. Even better was the fact that they were just plain funny.

Jon Stewart on Sesame Street…

This only runs ten seconds but folks who lived on the West Coast in the sixties will have their memories jogged. We had an airline out here called Western Airlines. It went away in 1986 when Delta absorbed it and did away with the name, which has since been adopted by an unrelated carrier. The old Western had low cost fares all around this half of the United States…and if the two or three times I flew it were indicative, a pretty terrible on-time record. They were especially good at overselling flights and not offering compensation or alternatives if you got bumped.

What kept them solvent for a while was a very friendly ad campaign. They blanketed the airwaves with short spots featuring a bird character reclining on the tail of one of their planes. The character's voice was not done by Jim Backus, as was occasionally reported. It was supplied by an actor named Shepard Menken, whose name for some reasons is often spelled "Menkin." Shep was heard on a ridiculous number of radio and TV commercials and also dabbled in TV animation, most notably speaking for that great inventor, Clyde Crashcup of The Alvin Show.

He was also a cast member on the greatest comedy album ever made, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume One. I hired him once for Garfield and Friends and at the session, he told me he was prouder of being part of that record than he was of anything else he'd done in a very full career. In 1995 when I helped Stan assemble Volume Two, he wanted to bring back everyone who was on the first album who was still alive…and I tried but was unable to locate Shep. His agent couldn't find him. The Screen Actors Guild couldn't find him. It finally turned out he'd dropped out of sight due to illness. He passed away in 1995.

Obits noted he'd voiced some of the most-heard commercials of all time and one cited some staggering sum he'd made voicing the Western Airlines bird. He probably did make a lot off them. These spots ran for years and there were an awful lot of them of varying lengths. Here's one that's just long enough to let you hear Shep's voice as he delivers the Western Airlines catch-phrase…one of the most successful in the history of advertising…

This runs twenty minutes but it's one of my favorite Stan Laurel comedies from the days before he paired off with that Hardy guy. Mr. Laurel had modest success as a solo comic…never quite a star, perhaps because he had no particular personality in his films. Many, like this one, were spoofs of other movies and while the gags were quite good, he didn't really have a defined character and that made him somewhat forgettable to audiences.

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride was made in 1925 for an independent producer named Joe Rock. Around 1970, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Rock briefly and I recall little of our conversation except that he claimed he wanted to use Oliver Hardy in the Stan Laurel films he produced, not as a co-star but as a villain. But Stan, he said, thought Hardy was too good a comic to play a good villain…or something like that. It is said that this film was shot on the Universal lot (where Rock had offices) using many of the same sets and props from the 1920 version made there of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring John Barrymore. The Laurel version is a pretty faithful, albeit sillier, telling of the same story.

This was a "lost" film for many years but a print finally turned up in France and someone did a full restoration, including recreating the title cards in English. If you enjoy what you see, I highly recommend that you buy The Stan Laurel Collection, a DVD set put out by the folks at Kino Video. It's full of films like this one. In fact, it contains this one. And then, after you enjoy those, buy The Stan Laurel Collection 2 from the same folks…and then investigate their series on Oliver Hardy's pre-Stan work, as well. Good stuff.

Another favorite Christmas video…

Hey, here's another Tom Lehrer treasure. In 1967, he was hired to appear in an industrial film, commissioned by folks who were making Dodge automobiles to be shown to those who were selling them. Let's watch an excerpt…