Category Archives: Video Links

How to play dirty at Scrabble®…

Here's the sillier side of Craig Ferguson. He and his crew opened the show one night by performing to a tune from the group, They Might Be Giants…

I mentioned this some time ago but couldn't embed it then. We had a week or two in this country when all talk of Iraq and terrorism and bank failures and even Health Care Reform paled in comparison to interest in the life of alleged drunk mom Brittney Spears. All the talk show hosts had many good laughs at her expense. All but one.

Craig Ferguson went out one night and did an extraordinary monologue on the topic of alcoholism — a topic he knows only too well. It ran 12.5 minutes and all 12.5 are well worth watching.

Drinking is one of those few problems I do not have in my life. I have never, literally, touched a drop of the stuff…not even beer or wine. I can't really tell you why that was up to the age of around eighteen. Then when I was that age, an extremely drunk person killed someone I cared about a lot…and what was worse, this person was utterly divorced from the notion that one is responsible for one's actions. I mean, it would be bad enough if they had to say, "Gee, I'm sorry your friend died because I was drunk." In this particular case, it was more like, "Gee, I'm sorry your friend died but it wasn't my fault. I was drunk and didn't know what I was doing."

I'd never had an urge or even curiosity about alcohol up 'til then but that kind of sealed the deal. I've needed no reminding since then but, alas, about every five years I have to see some friend commit involuntary suicide via booze and usually, they also manage to do a lot of harm to those around them. I am not for temperance or bans or anything of the sort, and I don't even criticize those who can handle it. I just believe, as Mr. Ferguson explains in this video, that there are some people who simply cannot drink without bad things resulting.

Here's the clip. It's long but I remember watching it when it first aired and thinking, "You know…somewhere out there, there's someone who's being helped by hearing this." I don't think that often about things I see on TV.

You don't see great acts like the Ross Sisters these days. This is from the 1944 movie, Broadway Rhythm and you can thank Gordon Kent for recommending the clip to me. The opening's a little run-of-the-mill but stick with it. About a minute in, it gets…uh, interesting…

If you haven't seen this, you should…

Yesterday's video link was, as I mentioned, a kinescope. Just as folks were writing to ask me what the heck a "kinescope" is, my buddy Jerry Beck dropped me a note to tell me about this wonderful short film from 1949 that explains about the process with examples. I think the footage of Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra was done in Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, which is where they now do Saturday Night Live.

We have a solid gold nugget for you today, fun seekers — a slightly-abridged episode of This is Show Business, a panel show that ran on CBS from 1949 'til 1954. It was an odd affair. Performers would come on and seek help in dealing with some silly problem they had. Sometimes, they would perform…and I suspect some performing was edited from this kinescope. But the main part of the show was when they sat down next to host Clifton Fadiman to solicit advice from a panel of show biz experts.

The panel consisted of two regulars and a guest who changed each week. At the time of this broadcast, the two regulars were Sam Levenson and the great playwright, George S. Kaufman. (Levenson's seat was filled for a long time by Abe Burrows.) The guest panelist is Betty Furness…and the performers who come on with lame, phony problems are Larry Storch, Mel Tormé and the dance team of Bud and Cece Robinson.

The treasure here, of course, is the chance to see Kaufman, who reportedly relished his brief forays into television — mostly here and on Jack Paar's show. He's awkward in posture and gestures…and like the host, he keeps forgetting to talk towards the microphone. But he's George S. Kaufman and this is an unusual view of the man who was hailed as one of the great wits of his century. You even get to hear him plug his upcoming play, The Solid Gold Cadillac. (He says it's opening in Hartford on October 1st. That would be October 1st, 1953 so that helps us roughly peg the date of this broadcast. The tryout in Hartford, by the way, was a disaster…but Kaufman and his co-author Howard Teichmann managed to rewrite it into a solid gold hit by the time it opened in New York a month later.)

At the end, you'll hear host Fadiman mention that the following week's guest panelist would be the actress, Jackie Susann. This is the same Jackie Susann who later wrote best-selling potboiler novels like Valley of the Dolls. She was a frequent guest on This is Show Business, not because anyone knew who she was or cared but because she was married to the show's producer, Irving Mansfield.

One week on the show — perhaps the very next week — she told an anecdote about auditioning for a play Kaufman directed and being treated unprofessionally. The point of the story was apparently to embarrass Kaufman…but Susann wound up being the one who was embarrassed. Kaufman responded to her tale by saying it was "…entirely spurious." And in the ensuing discussion, it became apparent to all that Miss Susann had no idea what the word "spurious" meant.

Mr. Kaufman isn't all that witty in this clip but hey. How often do you get to see and hear George S. Kaufman?

What do we have here? Hmm…looks like seven and a half minutes from the original Tonight with Steve Allen. It wasn't called The Tonight Show back then — a fact that absolutely every single person who ever writes about TV history overlooks…and probably should. But as far as I know, it wasn't called The Tonight Show until the Monday after Jack Paar left. That first non-Paar show was guest-hosted by Art Linkletter…so if you want to get real nit-picky annoying about things, the answer to the question, "Who was the first person to ever host an episode of The Tonight Show?" is Art Linkletter.

Note: If you're ever on Jeopardy! and you're in Final Jeopardy! and everything is riding on your response to "The first host of The Tonight Show," don't answer Art Linkletter. Say Steve Allen.

Anyway, gang — as Mr. Allen used to say — footage of any pre-Carson Tonight is very rare and Johnny's early years are about 98% lost, as well. So this clip is nice to see, even if not a lot happens in it. It's mostly Steverino playing with a doll and then singing a forgettable song with Skitch Henderson at the piano…

When I was a kid, I loved Danny Kaye. My parents once took me to see him do "An Evening With…" at the Hollywood Bowl and he was just enchanting. He sang all his famous numbers…and he had a lot of famous numbers. This was before the Bowl had the big jumbotron video screens so if you were sitting in the cheap seats, as we were, you couldn't see the face of a performer on the stage…but with him, it almost didn't matter. Even from row ZZZ in the eleventh mezzanine or wherever we were, you could sense the sheer joy in his performance.

I still love Danny Kaye, I guess, but it got harder as a couple of books came out that said, in effect, that he was not a very nice human being. And it became even harder to love him when I started meeting performers who'd worked with the man and did not have good things to say. This kind of thing shouldn't make a difference with your enjoyment of a performer but I'm afraid that with me, it does.

Still, I can enjoy what he does…like this clip from his 1963-1967 variety show on CBS. Harvey Korman is the interviewer in the sketch. Mr. Korman was a regular on the series and when it was cancelled, he was hired by Carol Burnett for her new variety show, which taped in the same studio. So Harvey didn't even have to change parking spaces…

I used to be a big wallower in Watergate, devouring every book ever written on the scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency and eagerly pouncing on each new revelation. It's been a while since we had many in which to wallow…but we do seem to get one new Watergate revelation every decade or so.

For some time now, we've been teased about the biggie. Technicians keep popping up to say that "new technology" might make it possible to restore the audio in the infamous 18.5 minute gap in the Nixon tape where he and Bob Haldeman first discussed the break-in at the Watergate Hotel. I'm not holding my breath. But we may have a new breakthrough on the second biggest mystery: What exactly were the Watergate burglars seeking that night?

Conventional wisdom has generally been that they either had no specific goal — just trying to see if they could find any dirt to use against Democrats — or were trying to see if Democratic Chairman Larry O'Brien had info on financial improprieties between Richard Nixon and Howard Hughes. There were some shenanigans there and Nixon was known to be concerned that O'Brien, who'd worked for Hughes, had certain information about their dealings.

Those theories were just that — theories based on speculation. Now, John Dean is claiming to have uncovered documentary evidence of the specific mission. It had to do with the fact that Nixon's Justice Department was being accused of having settled a high-profile anti-trust case against the I.T.T. Corporation in exchange for a bribe. Says Dean, Nixon had received a tip about a supposed kickback scheme involving the Democratic Convention. He wanted to ferret out dirt about that so he could use it to counter accusations about the I.T.T. case.

That's what Mr. Dean says and he claims to have solid documentation to prove it. He discussed it last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Here's that segment…

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is a documentary that's now in limited release around the country. It's all about actress-writer Gertrude Berg, who was in some ways, the first TV situation comedy star. She was also a huge star on radio and even on the Broadway stage, but seems to have been largely forgotten. I haven't seen this new film about her but I hear good things about it from friends who have. Here's a look at the trailer…

Today, we watch the trailer for the 1959 movie musical, Li'l Abner. Years ago, I researched and wrote about the Broadway show and about the movie version so if you're interested in either, you might want to check out those links. One thing everyone told me was that Al Capp didn't have that much to do with the dramatization of his comic strip. He turns up in this trailer and it was probably one of the few times he was on the set. He was asked to make a cameo appearance in the film but he declined.

I really like this movie…and since from all accounts, it was pretty faithful to the Broadway show (even to the point of employing most of that cast), I probably would have liked it, too. But we have to settle for the film — and this trailer…

Here are two memorable kid-oriented commercials from (apparently) 1969-1970. In the first, they're selling Funny Face drink mix via the classic vocal tones of Mr. Paul Frees. I think I only tried Funny Face once or twice because though I liked their ads, I thought the product itself was worse than Kool-Aid…and I didn't care all that much for Kool-Aid. I always thought that anyone who did had kinda, you know, drunk the Kool-Aid…

Then comes a Crackerjack spot with the great Jack Gilford. Do you know how Jack Gilford got his first big break in show business? He was working as a counterman in a little diner-like soda fountain in a New York drugstore. Just down the block, there was a big theater where Milton Berle was headlining, and Berle would sometimes turn up at the counter between shows to grab a quick sandwich. That was when Jacob Gellman (that was his name then) would do his jokes and impressions for Berle. 999 times out a thousand, you "audition" for a star like that and he instantly pegs you as a pushy, untalented amateur. But Berle liked what he saw and gave Gellman a place on his show on the condition that he do everything he was told…which included taking a new name. So Gellman became Gilford…and before long, Gilford became a star. Here he is with that wonderful rubbery face of his. But first comes the Funny Face commercial…

This is going to make some of you very happy. In the past, I've linked to short clips of the great clown George Carl performing truncated versions of his wonderful act. This video, which runs around eighteen minutes, appears to be his complete routine as he was performing it at the time this was shot, which I'm guessing is around 1992 or so. It's from a stage show done at an Australian casino.

George passed away in 2000. He did versions of this act for over fifty years, honing every second of it to perfection. I feel very fortunate that I got to see him do it live, which made it at least three times funnier. He was in a show in Vegas serving as a respite between dance routines by beautiful shirtless ladies. Do you know how hard it is to steal a show from beautiful shirtless ladies? George Carl did it, performing a set that went pretty much like this, minus the silly intro…

Time for another selection from Big Daddy, the musical group that takes the music of today and arranges it like the music of yesterday. The theme from Star Wars isn't exactly the music of today but I guess they couldn't resist recording it in the style of The Ventures. I like it better that way…don't you?