Bruce Kimmel is a multi-talented performer, director, writer, composer, producer, you-name-it. A few years ago, he wrote and staged a little musical revue called What If, which explored what some of the great musicals might have been like if they'd been written by…well, you'll get the premise in a jif. The performers in this clip are Alet Taylor, Susanne Blakeslee, Paul Haber, Ryan Raftery, and Tammy Minoff. Pretty funny stuff.
Category Archives: Video Links
Today's Video Link
Here again, in honor of the day, is Jerky Turkey, a Tex Avery cartoon that was released by MGM on April 7, 1945. Tex did a number of cartoons like this, trying to create a new Bugs Bunny by whipping up some annoying character who gets chased around for seven minutes, forever turning the tables on his pursuer. This isn't the best but it's also not the worst.
Most references say that Daws Butler supplied the voice of the turkey and that Bill Thompson played the Pilgrim, and I'm pretty sure they're wrong on both. Not only does the turkey not sound like Daws's Durante impression but Daws didn't even get into the animation business until several years after this cartoon was in theaters. The doughy pilgrim has a voice not unlike Thompson's Droopy/Wallace Wimple sound but without its distinctive texture. So who are we listening to? Beats me. It might be Harry E. Lang, who was in most of the cartoons Tex was making around this time, though the voice coming out of that turkey call sounds like Frank Graham and it would be odd to hire him just to do that one line. Enjoy…
Today's Bonus Video Link
Here it is…your favorite online video of the week! And probably next week, as well. And the week after that and the week after that…
Today's Video Link
As I mentioned recently here, some friends of mine and I went to see Lewis Black perform down in Cerritos. He tours constantly and if he gets anywhere near you, go. I've seen him live about five times now. Once, the sound system was so dreadful that I didn't enjoy it all that much…but the other visits were wonderful. Every time, he had new and topical material.
Recently, he did a concert film called Stark Raving Black which I believe included much of what he did down in Cerritos last week. The movie played briefly in theaters and can now be viewed (for $) at an online viewing site called epix. Early in 2010, the film's supposed to be on Comedy Central (probably with lots of bleeps) and there'll be an unbleeped DVD release, we hear. Below is a short trailer…
Today's Video Link
This will primarily be of interest to folks who lived in Los Angeles in the sixties and seventies…
Like all of America back then, we always had at least one radio team trying to be Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. In every town, two guys at some station would pair up (most of the time, a disc jockey and a news guy) and they'd do a show — usually a morning show — with bogus interviews, recurring characters and (always) a fake ongoing soap opera. Some of these Bob & Ray simulators shamelessly ripped off actual Bob & Ray material. Others just took the idea of two guys being funny between records and ran with it.
We had many such teams in L.A., some of which lasted for weeks, others of which lasted seemingly forever. Hudson & Landry were probably the second longest-running act and the first, inarguably, was Lohman & Barkley. Al Lohman and Roger Barkley were a duo for about 25 years, starting at KLAC and then moving to KFWB and then to KFI. Barkley was the straight man and Lohman did the silly voices and while they sometimes came perilously close to doing Bob & Ray bits, I never heard them actually do one. At times, they were very funny, especially when something would happen to knock them off their semi-prepared material.
I wrote some things for them at KFI, more for fun than money since they paid less than what it cost in gas to drive my little jokes down to the studio. They were nice, genial guys but my lasting impression of them — derived from spending a bit of time there and also following their careers — was a deep frustration that they'd become successful in what they knew was a declining industry…and they were unable to parlay that success into anything else. They tried hosting game shows, acting in movies, doing two-person stand-up, recording comedy albums…and nothing worked out but the radio gig. In the early seventies, the local NBC affiliate had them host a late night comedy talk show that was as hilarious and clever as anything I've ever seen on TV. It was basically a talk show where so many things went wrong that they never got around to asking any of their guests a single question. My friends and I were deeply disappointed when it was cancelled after not-very-many episodes. I wish I had copies of them but I've never heard of anyone having more than a few brief clips. I fear those shows no longer exist.
The partnership ended abruptly in May of 1986. Right in the middle of a broadcast one day, Barkley suddenly decided he'd had enough of it. He got up during a commercial, walked out of the studio and that was the end of the act. They reportedly never spoke again. Barkley became a solo radio personality at another station. Lohman tried a couple of different partners but it wasn't the same. Both men have since passed away.
I recently found this little profile piece on them from, it says, 1980. It gives a little taste of who they were and what they did. And much to my surprise, there's a joke in there about self-deprecating humor that I believe they got from me. Or maybe I got it from them. Anyway, it's a line I've been using since high school and I think I came up with it on my own…but who knows? Maybe I heard it one day listening to Lohman & Barkley. I sure wouldn't have been the only person to steal from them. Or Bob & Ray.
Today's Video Link
Here's a comedy classic. Red Skelton with the short version of the "Guzzler's Gin" routine that made him famous. This is from the 1945 movie, The Ziegfeld Follies and boy, is it smoooooth…
Today's Video Link
As I've mentioned here, Frank Welker is the current voice of Garfield the Cat, replacing our dear friend Lorenzo Music, who passed away in 2001. Lorenzo was so identified with the role that a lot of people didn't know he wasn't the first voice of the character. When Garfield was first animated, it was for a short segment in a special on newspaper comic strips, and the character's voice was supplied by an actor and radio personality in San Francisco named Scott Beach. Soon after, the first animated Garfield special was sold and that's when the character's creator, Jim Davis, decided he wanted a different voice. They auditioned every actor in L.A. about nine times before they found Lorenzo.
Between the time Lorenzo died and the time Frank got the gig, a few other actors did Garfield for little-seen commercials and public service announcements…and of course, Bill Murray spoke for The Cat in the live-action Garfield movies. But the lasagna-guzzling feline had one more voice during the time Lorenzo was still voicing the character.
For a number of years, Garfield adorned the labels of Alpo Cat Food and did the commercials, and Lorenzo did the voice for those commercials. But in the midst of those campaigns, there was one batch that somehow triggered a money dispute. Lorenzo wanted a certain amount. The sponsor wanted to pay a different amount. You can guess which was higher.
98% of the time in show business, one side comes down enough and the other side goes up enough to make the deal. This time was in the 2% and another actor wound up supplying the voice, at least when the commercials debuted. I think Lorenzo may have later redubbed the voice after everything finally got settled…but this clip has the fill-in voice, which you may recognize…
Wanna guess who it is? It's someone rather famous…someone you've probably seen and heard. See if you can figure it out. Whether you can or can't, you'll want to click here to get the answer.
Today's Video Link
In 1951, the great Phil Silvers starred on Broadway in a musical comedy called Top Banana. It was all about a high-pressure comedian who made the shift from vaudeville to the (then) new medium of television. At the time, Milton Berle was the most prominent star who'd made that transition…and there were aspects of the character that certainly seemed to be based on Uncle Miltie. When Berle found out about the project, he insisted on investing in it, and thereafter did little to discourage the notion that it was based on him, even though the role Silvers played was a pretty unpleasant guy.
Hy Kraft wrote the book and the legendary Johnny Mercer penned the songs. Rose Marie and Jack Albertson were in the cast and the whole thing got pretty good reviews…so good that many were surprised it didn't do more business. It ran a little less than a year in New York and then toured to modest success. It has rarely been revived since then. No one has ever been interested in seeing it if it doesn't have Phil Silvers in it. (There have been occasional rumors that it will be resurrected with Nathan Lane in the lead but there are rumors of every show that ever played Broadway being revived with Nathan Lane in the lead. Me, I'm waiting to see him play Annie…and don't think he won't.)
All the major movie studios passed on committing Top Banana to film. Then, when the touring version was in Los Angeles, Silvers was approached directly by producer Alfred Zugsmith, who was then (and excepting the later Touch of Evil, still is) known primarily for cheapo horror and sex films. Zugsmith proposed a deal to, in essence, film the touring show with most of the same cast, sets, costumes, arrangements, etc. The idea was to do it low-budget and quick in 3-D and rush the film to market while there was still a big demand out there for 3-D movies. Silvers and his producers agreed and Top Banana was photographed in just a few weeks, essentially by restaging the Broadway show in a movie studio and pointing cameras at it.
But as fast as they got it done, it wasn't fast enough. The film was shot in July of '53 but by September when editing was completed, its tentative distributor dropped it, citing a plunging marketplace for 3-D movies. Zugsmith and his crew eventually got a distribution deal the following February for a "flat" version that seemed cheap, even for an Alfred Zugsmith movie. They'd been counting on the three-dimensional gimmick to make up for the shoddy production values…and now they were all there on the screen in two dimensions. A murky conversion from the 3-D negatives didn't help, either.
Mr. Silvers was embarrassed by the film at the time and he'd be really humiliated by the versions around today which are blurry and missing around fifteen minutes. The movie was never exhibited in 3-D and apparently never will be, as no 3-D print is known to exist. But a copy of the trailer in that format has survived and has been restored…and guess what today's video link is! If you have a pair of red/green 3-D glasses around, run and get 'em 'cause here it is…
Today's Video Link
Sing. Sing a song. Sing out loud. Sing out strong. Sing of good things, not bad. Sing of happy, not sad. Sing. Sing a song. Make it simple. To last your whole life long. Don't worry that it's not good enough. For anyone else to hear. Sing. Sing a song. La la la la la la la la la la la. La la la la la la la. La la la la la la la la la la la. La la la la la la la.
Today's Video Link
Twin baby pandas. Nothing cuter…
Today's Video Link
You may hate me for this, not because you won't like it but because you may have to use an explosive device to get this tune out of your head. It's "Hallelujah," as performed by singer Gali Atari with the group, Milk and Honey. This song won many awards in Europe but never made it big in America, despite a nice, heavily-promoted recording of it by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. (Steve and Eydie didn't put their names on the original U.S. release, figuring that Top 40 disc jockeys just might play it if they didn't know it was by them. But it was the worst-kept secret in the business, possibly because Lawrence and Gorme kept going on The Tonight Show and singing it.)
And in case you're interested, here are the same folks performing it in Hebrew…
Today's Video Link
A moment from Pat Paulsen's Half a Comedy Hour, which ran briefly on ABC in 1970. Brace yourself for a cameo appearance by Tiny Tim and his Miss Vicky…
Today's Video Link
As noted here, my pal Sergio Aragonés had an exhibit of his work for several months up at a museum in Ojai. The folks there were smart enough to ask him to do it and also to let him draw on the walls.
In conjunction with the showing, Sergio did some lectures there about his work. We have here a long (about an hour) video of a talk he gave there on August 30. The video isn't the greatest and you may not understand everything he says…but that's okay. He's been my best friend for over 25 years and I don't understand everything he says. Still, if you're an aspiring cartoonist, you couldn't spend a better hour of your life than trying to figure it out…
Today's Video Link
A few weeks ago here, the surviving Monty Python guys gathered in New York for, among other activities, a half-hour Q-and-A session. I embedded a video here at the time but it was fuzzy and not altogether in sync. Here's a clearer version…
Today's Video Link
The other day, I posted a link to the great folk singing trio, The Limeliters, on The Ed Sullivan Show. The clip was promptly taken down by the company that controls the rights to the Sullivan show…which is, of course, their absolute right. So let's instead give you this clip to one of the group's first TV appearances, which occurred on The Dinah Shore Show…