Category Archives: Video Links

Many things make Keith Olbermann happy lately but nothing makes him happier than Rush Limbaugh making a total ass of himself…

Big deal. I did this the first time I ever played pool…

Now available on DVD! The Warner Video Archive project (or whatever they call it) is offering a 3-DVD set of all the classic Robert Benchley shorts. There were thirty of 'em and you can get 'em all for $25.00 in this new, no-frills collection. If you're not familiar with Mr. Benchley's wit, you're in for a delightful surprise. Here's the link. And here's a sample…

Impressionist Rick Miller has a go at "Bohemian Rhapsody." Thanks to Dave Cook for suggesting this linkage…

Doug Molitor (hi, Doug!) tells us the twelve worst things you can say in a Hollywood pitch meeting. I am proud to report I've never said some of these…

All-around silly person Barry Mitchell wrote and performed a tribute song that was performed at a Soupy Sales birthday dinner at the Friars Club in New York. Here's the video version…

This runs four minutes. If you care one way or the other about equality for gays in this country, you oughta see it. And keep in mind how difficult it was for this gentleman to get up in front of a crowd and how much he must have cared about this issue to prompt him to do it…

Back in the forties, producer George Pal gave us a series of shorts featuring stop-motion animation under the umbrella title of Puppetoons. Here's one of my favorites, in part because it features the non-animated but equally unreal Duke Ellington…

Here's an early sixties commercial for Dr Pepper — and by the way, that's how you spell it. They apparently took away the period after "Dr" the same time they revoked his medical license because he'd caused so many people to get cavities and diabetes.

Here's another one of those quickie Dayton Allen "filler" TV shorts. Am I the only one who looks at these and is reminded of a lot of the characters that George Carlin did in his act, especially when he was starting out as a stand-up comedian?

This is a photo from the original Broadway production (which I, alas, never saw) of my favorite musical comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The gent at right is — of course — its star, Zero Mostel. The gent making faces at left is David Burns, who originated the role of Senex. Mr. Burns had just as glorious a career on the stage as Mostel or any actor you could name. One of his other triumphs came in 1964 when a show debuted called Hello, Dolly!, with Carol Channing as Dolly and Davy Burns as Horace Vandergelder. He was also the original Mayor Shinn in The Music Man and…well, he appeared in a lot of famous plays.

Though loved by the critics and adored by his fellow actors, Burns is not all that well known by the general public. He spent most of his career on the stage, not in front of cameras. A lot of what I know about him is because my pal Jim Brochu — the fellow I mention here often for his stunning one-man show as Zero Mostel — was his unofficial nephew. There was no blood relationship but they were that close. That's how come Jimmy got to hang around backstage at Forum and how he got to know the amazing Zero. Every time I'm with Jim and his "uncle's" name pops up, I hear a wonderful anecdote or two about the man.

The other morning in an e-mail from Jim, I learned something of vital importance. As a kid, I must have viewed the classic animated commercial for Maypo cereal no less than one billion times. Channel 5 locally seemed to have a rule that you couldn't run two consecutive cartoons without running the Maypo commercial between them. Ergo, I know this commercial better than I know anything I might have ever learned in school. What I didn't know was who did the voice of Uncle Ralph. Turns out, it was Uncle Davy!

About twenty of you wrote to say that our alert to the Wheeler and Woolsey festival on TCM led to you becoming fans of the world's most obscure movie comedy team. Here's a "politically incorrect" clip from a film they made in 1933 called So This is Africa. If the number reminds you of Groucho's "Hooray for Captain Spaulding"…well, maybe that's because it was written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, the same guys who wrote the Marx tune.

Robert Woolsey is the one in the loud suit. Bert Wheeler is the other guy.

Did you catch the Monty Python guys on Live With Regis and Kelly this morning? It was odd seeing Regis challenging Larry King for the title of Least Prepared Interview of the Year. He didn't seem to be aware that the five of them hadn't been appearing together continually for the last forty years. I suspect that Mssrs. Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones and Palin have come to learn that they're in for a rocky interrogation when the opening question is about where the name "Monty Python" came from. The night before, Jimmy Fallon led off with the same query and they didn't answer him, either.

But last night, they had the much-ballyhooed reunion in New York. IFC did a live stream of the event on their website and I've embedded the video here. It's not too clear and the video will cut in and out and freeze up on you now and then, plus the first minute or so is the tail end of something else with low audio. But if you have patience, you might enjoy some of what you can make out. I assume it was also recorded via more professional means and that that video will turn up in some future Python project — maybe the next documentary on the history of the group or the documentary after that about the history of the group or the one after that…

Three of the Python guys, on Countdown with Keith Olbermann yesterday…

Considering that she had one of the worst names of any actor ever, ZaSu Pitts had a pretty good career doing character roles in movies from around 1920 until 1963. One of her last jobs was a brief cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Her unique first name was an amalgam of Eliza and Susan, and she pronounced it "zay-soo" while everyone else seems to have pronounced it "zaz-ooh." In about 95% of her roles, she played a panicky, nervous lady. Here she is in a commercial, being panicky and nervous over a paucity of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Fortunately, she has stock footage to come to her rescue…