This runs around 14 minutes and the opening's a little dull…but wait. It gets better.
Back in the eighties, there were these odd TV specials to benefit the Actors Fund. They were called Night of 100 Stars and they all had more than a hundred stars on them. In fact, they featured so many stars that all a good percentage of them could do was to walk out, get applauded and walk off. In this number, which is from the 1982 special, a bevy of Broadway stars actually each sing a few bars from showtunes with which they were associated. (There are exceptions, though. Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin, who were then starring in the non-musical Same Time Next Year just walk through. Tell me when you've ever seen a man look more awkward than Mr. Grodin does in this clip.)
There are some great performers in there and it's wonderful to see them though frustrating that their performances are so brief. Still, take a look. This is in two parts which should play one right after the other, probably with a slight overlap, in the player below. Like I said, it starts slow but it gets to be quite remarkable.
Through the miracle that is TiVo, I've been catching up with Conan O'Brien's final week on Late Night. Some of it seems a little overdone, not because he doesn't deserve a big send-off but because he's not leaving. He's just moving to a better time slot. Still, I enjoyed this little ditty warbled by Nathan Lane…
Someone made this homemade, unauthorized commercial for the Trader Joe's market chain. The company could do a lot worse than to hire this guy to make ad spots for them…especially if they bought him a rhyming dictionary.
I like Trader Joe's but with reservations. One problem I have is how crowded it often seems, usually at the checkout counters but always just trying to get down the aisles. They always have so many new items that shoppers have to keep stopping to study labels, which makes it hard to navigate. I also don't like the Trader Joe's policy of discontinuing any item that I purchase twice.
They'll probably be surprised to hear that I've figured it out…but it's getting kinda obvious. Every time I find something I like, it's gone. That's why they no longer have those little 100 calorie packets of cheese crackers shaped like toucans. They were great and every time I went in to buy them, I either bought them out or was told they were already out. Well, of course then, they had to stop making them. That's apparently their master business plan: Get rid of whatever Evanier will buy. I've never purchased eggs at Trader Joe's but if I did, they'd stop carrying eggs.
My new favorite Trader Joe's item is a little microwavable meal that they just introduced. It's a 270 calorie package of whole wheat penne pasta and meatballs, and since I like it, it'll be gone by April.
Here's a song about some of the stuff they do have…
Last October, I linked to a couple of videos featuring the team of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, two very funny Britishers who wrote and often performed silly tunes. From the response I received, I gather a lot of you were unfamiliar with Flanders and Swann, and were quite happy to discover them.
Here's another ditty from the boys…a song about Charles de Gaulle. This is from 1967 when de Gaulle was still president of France and very much in the news. Flanders and Swann decided the time had come to end their 11 year career so they did a final tour, then performed the show for a last TV special. This clip is from that special.
Here's a great one, especially if you grew up in Los Angeles when I did. Once upon a time, we had a line-up of great kid show hosts on television in L.A. By the seventies, they were all off the air…all except Tom Hatten, who from 1956 'til 1964 hosted Popeye cartoons on KTLA, Channel 5. Tom did other things for KTLA after he got out of the Popeye business and on one show he did in 1976, he brought in a group of local kids' show superstars. This is the closing of that broadcast. Hatten is the one acting as host. The people he says goodbye to are, in order…
Skipper Frank — Frank Herman was a magician, ventriloquist and a very nice, non-condescending kids' show host who mainly showed early Warner Brothers cartoons on his late afternoon show on KTLA. For a while, he also had a morning program that he'd do from a truck at some remote location. I watched it every day while getting ready for school. I wish there was more video around of the Skipper. He had a great way of talking to kids, addressing us as equals and actually giving out useful tips about how to get through life. I learned a lot from that man, including my first card trick.
Walker Edmiston — Walker, seen here with his puppet R. Crag Ravenswood, was a veteran of Bob Clampett's early puppet shows, including Time for Beany. (He was Beany for a time after Daws Butler quit.) Walker hosted a brilliant series for KTLA called The Walker Edmiston Show that had pretty much the same format as The Muppet Show did years later. It was just as creative and crowded with fun characters…but Walker did it all by himself. He also had quite a career as an on-camera actor and voiced a lot of the Krofft puppet shows. Lovely man. Here's a link to an obit I wrote when he left us.
Engineer Bill — Bill Stulla was over on KHJ Channel 9 with his Cartoon Express. He showed the worst cartoons — a lot of Colonel Bleep and Q.T. Hush and Davey & Goliath — but there was something so friendly about his show that I watched anyway. For a time, KHJ had him hosting an afternoon series that each day ran one of the great Laurel and Hardy shorts, and that's where I first saw most of them. So Engineer Bill will always hold a special place in my heart. Also, I made my "TV debut" on an earlier kids' show he had, as discussed here and here. Here's a link to the obit I wrote about him.
Sheriff John — John Rovick was over on KTTV Channel 11 with Sheriff John's Lunch Brigade, a noontime show that ran really early Looney Tunes and things like Tom & Jerry (not the cat and mouse but the earlier, human versions.) Mr. Rovick was otherwise a staff announcer at KTTV and he was still doing that in '76 when this reunion took place, which explains his reference to coming over from across the street. KTTV was literally across the street from KTLA.
Bozo the Clown — Vance Colvig was our local Bozo, which was his way of carrying on the family tradition. His father, Vance "Pinto" Colvig was the first Bozo…on records and then on local TV. Before that, of course, Pinto was a cartoon voice actor and storyman — the voice of Mr. Disney's Goofy, among many others. As is explained in the video, the son also did cartoon voices, most notably Chopper the Bulldog in the Yakky Doodle cartoons. Then lastly, we have…
Uncle Jimmy Weldon — Jimmy Weldon and his puppet Webster Webfoot hosted old MGM cartoons and Felix the Cat adventures over on KCOP Channel 13. As noted, Weldon did the voice of Yakky Doodle…and at one point, the Yogi Bear Show (and therefore, the Yakky cartoons) were on KTTV opposite Webster Webfoot on KCOP and Vance Colvig as Bozo on KTLA. I actually was aware of this when I was nine and watching all these shows, channel-flipping madly because they were on opposite each other and no one had been smart enough yet to invent the VCR.
And once more, I've made you spend more time reading my notes on a clip than it'll take you to just watch the clip. But I have a special fondness for these guys so I wanted you to know all about them. The only major omission for me is Chuck Jones the Magic Man (no relation to the cartoon director of the same name) who took over on Channel 13 when Webster Webfoot flew South. A skillful magician, this Chuck Jones performed tricks and taught me a few. He was one of the few hosts who was more interesting than the cartoons he introduced.
We have someone named imashowbizbaby to thank for putting this clip on YouTube. He (I think it's a he) was nice enough to configure this so I could embed it here for you. In return, I'd like to suggest you subscribe to or at least browse imashowbizbaby's YouTube channel. There's a lot of great stuff there and you won't have to wade through my long introductions to get to it.
Here's another comedy that Oliver "Babe" Hardy made when he was teamed with a comic named Bobby Ray. This is Hop To It, Bellhop, made in 1925 a year before Hardy changed companies and teamed up with Stan Laurel. There are traces of the unique timing and rhythm that Hardy would bring to the new team but it's pretty much a typical comedy of the era. It wasn't until he'd begun working with Stan that he was encouraged to slow down a bit and bring more personality to his movements.
This runs a bit over nineteen minutes. You may have to watch a short silly ad before the film will start in the player below.
Here's a bit of Stooge History. In 1955, the Three Stooges consisted of Larry Fine, Moe Howard and Moe's brother, Shemp Howard. At the time, they were making shorts for Columbia on the lowest-possible budgets. This was usually accomplished by simple chicanery. More than half of the footage in one of these shorts would be lifted from an earlier Stooges film. They'd shoot some new scenes to splice in with the old and create the impression of a new film.
On 11/22/55, Shemp died from a sudden heart attack. After the mourning period, Columbia and the remaining Stooges had to decide how to carry on. At the time, there were four shorts yet to be filmed under the current contract. It would be awkward to bring in a new Stooge for what might be their last four films…and of course, it would be difficult to intersperse old footage that way since Shemp was in most of the old footage. They'd already mapped out the next few films using Shemp clips…so they decided to go ahead and make them anyway.
So four "Shemp" Stooge shorts were filmed after Shemp passed away. Most consisted of old footage and the new scenes were configured so that Shemp didn't do much in them and could keep his face away from the camera. A stand-in named Joe Palma did the honors…and it must have been rough on Moe to have to act with someone playing his recently-deceased brother. The bogus Shemp didn't speak much in the new material. Sometimes, Palma tried to imitate him. Sometimes, old Shemp audio was dubbed in.
The four films were completed and released. When the decision was made to make another batch of Stooges shorts on a new contract, they went ahead and cast a new Third Stooge…Joe Besser. He was later replaced by Joe DeRita.
Ah, but what of Joe Palma, the Unknown Stooge? Mr. Palma actually had a nice career in Hollywood. Soon after his brief turn at Stooging, he hooked up with Jack Lemmon, who was making films for Columbia at the time. For years after, Palma was Lemmon's personal assistant and occasional stand-in, and he usually played a bit part in whatever film Lemmon was making. In Good Neighbor, Sam, Joe Palma is the mailman…who's actually addressed in the film as Mr. Palma. In The Odd Couple, he's the butcher who Felix (Lemmon) pesters to grind him some fresh ground sirloin from which to make meat loaf. He seems to have retired shortly after The Odd Couple and passed away in 1994.
Someone assembled a three minute sampler of Palma's career as a Stooge — scenes from his four films. Since this material was intercut with footage of the real Shemp, the substitution wasn't easy to notice. Take a gander…
I'm not a huge fan of most horror movies but I used to watch them often on TV, largely for the hosts. There are few, if any, these days but we used to have "horror hosts" in this country…men (and occasionally, women) who'd dress up to introduce monster movies and macabre films on local channels, usually late at night.
There were an awful lot of them. Sometimes, they were devout fans of such flicks. Sometimes, the station manager would order one of the local newsmen or announcers to dress up as a ghoul and go introduce movies. Some of them came up with some very creative ways to get you to tune in for the umpteenth rerunning of Man-Made Monster with Lon Chaney Jr.
As I wrote in this article, my favorite in Los Angeles was a gent named Larry Vincent whose screen character was called Seymour. Ever since I posted that on this site, I get one or two e-mails a month from someone who wants to know where they can find video of the Seymour. I have to write back to them and report that if any still exists, it's pretty well hidden. I haven't seen a frame of Seymour footage anywhere since he was on KHJ and KTLA back in the early seventies.
But you can see a lot of other horror hosts in a new documentary that's debuting on DVD this week. It's called American Scary and it was assembled with great love and dedication by John Hudgens and Sandy Clark. I don't think they located any Seymour footage but they did find tons of clips of hosts from across the land, and they tracked down an awful lot of them for interviews, along with folks who were enthusiastic watchers. You can find out more about this great work at this site and you can watch a trailer for it by clicking your mouse a few inches below this paragraph…
I suppose it's a tribute to Andy Kaufman that even now, close to a quarter-century after his death, folks are still talking about whether this bit or that bit of his was staged or real. Yesterday, I pointed out how Time magazine didn't seem sure if the incident on David Letterman's show — the one in which pro wrestler Jerry Lawler slapped Kaufman — was legit. I brought this up because it amazed me that even after so many sources (including Lawler's autobiography) have said it was planned, Time is still hedging its certainty. This is one of the magazines we depend upon to tell us what's really happening in Washington and they aren't sure about this silly, obvious thing.
Here, if you want to see it again, I'll embed the clip. It runs a little over seven minutes and the slap seems about as obvious with its execution and timing (just as Dave was going to commercial) as…oh, I don't know. Maybe Soupy Sales getting hit with a pie at the end of a sketch. Still, people ask, "Was that planned? Did Kaufman know it was coming?" Here's the clip…
I mean, if you were going to stage such a thing, when do you do it? When they're going to commercial, right? That's so the home audience won't have to watch the immediate aftermath of people caring for the fallen Kaufman…but they sure will stay tuned for the next chapter. Andy was good at that kind of thing, so much so that he fooled a lot of people for a while. Here's an e-mail I received from Steve Viner, who was one of Dave's writers at the time…
Concerning the infamous Andy Kaufman segment: I was there, and I can tell you that, whatever it looks like, none of us on the show knew it was coming and there was quite a debate at the time as to whether it was faked or not. Granted, that was our first assumption, but the actual event was even more dramatic than it appears. We had to stop tape during that commercial break while Andy ran up and down the halls yelling for somebody to arrest Lawler for assault. After the show finally ended, Bob Morton, who produced the segment, went back to Andy's dressing room. Bob said that Andy's cheek was quite red, but that Andy was laughing and said to him, "Wasn't that great?" That's the closest to a definite answer we ever got.
I also remember a group of us gathering around a monitor after the show and watching the segment over and over again, looking for clues. My then writing partner, who had studied fake fighting, noted that Andy shifted his chair slightly just before he got hit, and that he was actually positioning himself to fall more easily.
History has decided that the segment was a put-on, and I wouldn't quarrel with that, but it is worth noting that in the heat of the moment, we ultimately didn't know what the hell was going on.
Then of course, there was the time Tony Clifton came up to rehearse in our offices — but that's another, even more frightening, story.
I understand how at the time, folks might have been unsure…though Dave sure didn't seem to react like one of his guests might have just assaulted another of his guests. A good magician can make you wonder, just for an instant, if maybe he didn't somehow figure out a way to levitate. But then, hours later in the cold light of day, you realize that at best, all he figured out was a better way to hide the wires. That's kind of what I respect about Andy Kaufman.
But — again, with hindsight — I have to say that that may be about all I respect. I saw him live a few times on stage, plus I occasionally found him bussing my table in a restaurant. I rarely found him funny and there were times when the desired audience response — that is to say, what he wanted of us — was just to be annoyed. I suspect I would have liked the guy offstage. My pal Mel Sherer, who wrote for him, loved him like a brother. But the onstage Kaufman isn't remembered for a lot more than keeping us guessing.
We had three different opening themes to Garfield and Friends over the years. In the second one, there were some Spanish words like rhyming "La Bamba" with "Ai, Caramba" and "siesta" with "fiesta." I don't know why but I thought it was funny that they kept those in when someone translated the opening for Spanish-speaking audiences…
Conan O'Brien is wrapping up his stint on Late Night and preparing to move to L.A. where he will take over The Tonight Show on June 1. If you never attended a taping of his show in New York, you probably never will since devout Conan fans have scarfed up all the tickets for the remaining episodes there.
That means you'll never be able to go and hear Mr. O'Brien sing, as he apparently does after every broadcast, something called "The End of the Show Song." But you can hear it here…
In 1949, The Three Stooges did a pilot for a weekly TV series that was to be called either The Three Stooges Show or Jerks of All Trades. The premise was that each week, they'd screw up in a different profession, which seems like a stretch to me. I mean, the Stooges being incompetent? Come on.
The pilot was done live in front of an audience and then the kinescope was shopped around to buyers. (Do I need to explain what a kinescope was? Basically, it was a way to record a live TV show in the days before tape. They'd point a 16mm camera at a TV monitor and film the show off the screen.)
There were no takers for the Stooges' project, which seems odd. In '49, most of television was a lot worse than this. Take a look and see what you think. It runs a little less than twenty minutes.
In 1978, someone at CBS decided it was the network's 50th anniversary — the birth year is arguable — and that it needed a big, splashy self-congratulatory special. They gathered together every major CBS star they could get…though Merv Griffin claimed that because he had outfoxed the network on a deal once, he was deliberately excluded. Since the Smothers Brothers were included, it's doubtful anyone placed holding a grudge over packing the show with celebs. The notable absences (like Jackie Gleason and Desi Arnaz, to name two biggies) were probably just a matter of unavailability. Given how many others they got, no one was really missed.
Here from that special are two clips which will delight those of you who just want to see familiar faces. This first is the end credits where they got everyone who was willing to stay late (not everyone was) out to ring the walkways of the CBS building at Beverly and Fairfax so the camera could pan them. If you want to try to identify them all, it may help you to note that with a few exceptions, they're all in alphabetical order, starting at the end of the alphabet with Demond Wilson and working their way towards "A," which appropriately enough puts Steve Allen in first position. Mary Tyler Moore and Walter Cronkite are out of sequence, apparently because they were the hosts of the special. Anyway, give it a look…
Earlier in the day, they taped a spot where every CBS star they could find walked out for a group shot. There are a few folks who were in the other clip who aren't in here and a lot who are in here but not in the above pan. Oh — and remember how yesterday I told you about the great announcer, Dick Tufeld? Well, the voice you'll hear is Dick Tufeld. (Dick's nickname, by the way, is Dick Tufeld Speaking. He did so many shows where at the end, he'd say, "This is Dick Tufeld speaking" that it became a running joke to address him as Mr. Speaking. When we had him in to do a voice on Garfield, I asked him if it was okay if we put him in the credits as Dick Tufeld Speaking. He loved the idea so we did.)
Anyway, here's the big walk-on, which runs close to eight minutes. Don't I find the best clips?
Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 12:59 AM
In 1978, when the movie Grease was a smash hit, Sid and Marty Krofft's company sold CBS on maybe doing a weekly comedy-variety show with a similar theme. Bobby Vinton was selected as host and the idea was to have each week's episode feature some stars from his era and some contemporary stars.
There would also be a troupe of comedy players to anchor the sketches, and there'd be a squad of dancers…or in this case, dancer-skaters. Roller disco was big at the time and since that fad was a throwback (sorta) to the fifties, the dancers would often be on wheels. The whole thing was to be called Bobby Vinton's Rock 'n' Rollers, and we taped a special that would serve as a pilot.
That's right. I said "we." I was the Head Writer. The other two writers were Lorne Frohman and Rowby Goren, plus we brought in the brilliant Billy Barnes to compose special musical material. Bonny Dore was the producer, Jack Regas was the director and we had quite a cast: In addition to Mr. Vinton, the guests were Fabian, Eve Arden, Gale Gordon, Stockard Channing, Penny Marshall and Erik Estrada. The sketch players were Susan Buckner, Louise DuArt, Paul Gale, David Levy and Frank Welker. The whole thing wound up being, at the time, one of the most expensive variety specials ever produced for television.
The special aired on a Monday night in a time slot that was then occupied by a then-new series called White Shadow. This was, we were told, because CBS was ready to cancel White Shadow and stick us in there if our show did well. Our show did well, and The Hollywood Reporter announced that we'd be a mid-season replacement for White Shadow.
I'm still not sure why that didn't happen. The rumor was that there was a high-level CBS exec who loved White Shadow and reacted badly upon hearing that his underlings were cancelling it…so they didn't. In fact, it lasted out the entire season and two more after that. Meanwhile, we were assured that CBS would find the perfect time slot for Bobby Vinton's Rock 'n' Rollers and would then pick it up as a series. I guess they're still looking. If they don't find one in the next five or six years, I may lose hope.
Shortly before we taped, a fellow who worked in the promo department at CBS came by to chat with me about what "exploitable" elements we had that he could use in its commercials. He was excited about Penny Marshall and Erik Estrada (they had hit shows in '78) and really excited about the fact that we had a beach party sketch, which meant attractive ladies in swimwear. Somehow, it came up in the conversation that a couple of the female dancer-skaters we'd hired were former members of The Golddiggers and/or The Ding-a-Ling Sisters on The Dean Martin Show. One of these was a lady after whom the Promo Guy lusted from afar. He said to me — and this is darn near a direct quote — "If she's in a bikini and I can come to the taping, I'll get you 50% more on-air promos."
She'd already been fitted for the bikini and of course the guy supervising the promos could come to the taping. Still, we made the "deal" and the show did seem to get a lot of on-air promotion. The clip below is a 20 second one with a voiceover by Dick Tufeld, who was then heard on about half the promo spots done in this city…and as it happens, he was also the announcer of our show. Some of you will also recognize him as the voice of the robot on Lost in Space. Also notice the subtle way in which the Promo Guy, who wrote the copy, managed to tip the fact that our show resembled the movie, Grease.
