Category Archives: Video Links

Jon Stewart makes the mistake of expecting Bill O'Reilly to live by his own principles…

If you couldn't get to (or get into) the New York Comic-Con, don't worry. Master designer Chip Kidd will take you there…

Here's another blast from my past. The other day here, I mentioned writing for a situation comedy that was produced by Monty Hall's company. It was The McLean Stevenson Show and it was one of those shows — there are always a couple in production — that everyone knows will be stillborn. Even before this one went on the air, the network was unhappy with it, the producers were unhappy with it..and Mr. Stevenson was wishing he really had been in that helicopter that got shot down on the way home from Korea.

Several episodes were taped and everyone involved knew the thing wasn't working so new producers and writers were brought in. My then-partner Dennis Palumbo and I were among the new arrivals, working with producers who'd been there a day or two longer than us and who admittedly weren't sure what, if anything, the show was now about. A decision had been made to try and "bury" the shows already taped…meaning that they'd reinvent the series and try to come up with something better, and the new episodes would air first. Then if those shows drew any kind of audience, they'd follow them with the ones which everyone thought were so unairable. It sounded rather lemming-like to us but we were new in the business. What did we know?

Dennis and I came up with a plot idea everyone liked…and right now, if you offered me every cent that the Federal Bailout will cost, I couldn't tell you what it was about. We then wrote the outline and everyone hated it — and I do recall that while they all thought it wouldn't do they all had different, mutually-irreconcilable reasons as to why it wouldn't do. But then they all had different ideas about how to fix the show anyway. One that I heard and liked was that they should ditch the whole premise of the home life of a guy who ran a hardware store and just videotape the meetings where McLean and Monty yelled at each other over which of them knew more about comedy.

The same week everyone hated our outline, Dennis and I were offered a staff job at Welcome Back, Kotter so we got the heck outta The McLean Stevenson Show…and as I recall, McLean wasn't far behind us. An experienced TV writer named Lloyd Garver, who I never met, turned the vaguest aspects of our premise into the script that was taped and it was chillingly selected as the first McLean Stevenson Show to be broadcast.

Since it was the first episode aired of a new series, a lot of folks wrongly assumed it was the pilot. And since we received screen credit and were mentioned in many reviews, a few of those people also wrongly assumed that Evanier and Palumbo had been involved in the show's creation. Not at all the case. It was the sixth or seventh installment taped (of thirteen) and almost nothing of our outline made it to air. Still, that was our first credit, which is kind of like your first kiss. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to happen. Then the night after, we got our second screen credit on an episode of Kotter. It was a good week for family members who like to see a relative's name on the screen.

I do not have a copy of that installment of The McLean Stevenson Show but someone who does posted an edited version of it to YouTube…and they did something which probably improved it an awful lot. They cut out the episode. It's just the opening titles, commercials and closing titles, totaling about five minutes. I have no idea why they did this but I'm grateful because I get to see my first screen credit for the first time since 1976 and don't have to watch the show it adorned. If you click below (and I'm not suggesting you do), forget that and enjoy the too-bouncy theme song by Paul Williams, plus somewhere in there, there's a pretty good Doritos commercial with Avery Schreiber. The series should have been half that funny.

Groucho Marx and Alfred Hitchcock were among those honored at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. This clip shows a little less than three minutes from that event. The first part is Groucho arriving…and the lady you'll see with him is the infamous Erin Fleming. This was back when Groucho was still relatively coherent and Erin was relatively sane. Both those conditions would soon change and not for the better.

The second part is Hitchcock and it's all in French so I have no idea what he's talking about except that I think he's playing detective. Then again, I barely understood Hitchcock in English. I actually met Alfred Hitchcock once and wasn't sure what either of us was saying.

As you may have figured out from this website, there's darn near nothing I like better on a movie or TV screen than the finer exploits of Mr. Stan Laurel and Mr. Oliver Hardy. Today's video link, however, is not a Laurel and Hardy comedy even though it's often mistaken for one. Matter of fact, the people at Veoh, who used to host this treasure on their website, didn't seem to know the difference.

This is The Paperhanger's Helper, starring Oliver "Babe" Hardy and Bobby Ray, originally released under the title, Stick Around. It was shot by a Hollywood studio called Arrow Films and came out in March of 1925. By the time it was released, Hardy had finished another film or two for Arrow with Ray, then moved over to work for the Hal Roach Studio. There, the following year, he teamed with Mr. Laurel and…well, you know what happened. On several occasions, Hardy would cite The Paperhanger's Helper as a kind of foreshadowing of his on-screen work with Stan. You can see a lot of the Ollie/Stan relationship in it, and some who've studied such things say this is the first film in which Hardy does his famous long-suffering stares into the camera lens. The two men are even wearing derbies.

Many versions of this film abound, including one common one with titles that say the other guy is Laurel. (Some sources, by the way, will tell you this was from 1915. They're wrong about that, too.) Embedded below is a print just shy of nine minutes. It came from the legendary Castle Films home movie company, complete with their title cards and a music score that they probably added. Take a gander…

Here's a bit of TV history…the episode of Hollywood Palace that aired April 17, 1965. It was hosted by Groucho Marx and the guest list included Gordon and Sheila MacRae, Shecky Greene, Miriam Makeba, Groucho's daughter Melinda, a flamenco dancer and a few other acts. The number Groucho performs with his daughter is charming but the real treat comes late in the proceedings — a sketch he does with the dowager of dowagers, Margaret Dumont.

Though her association with the Brothers Marx made her rather famous, Ms. Dumont did not work a lot. The last decade of her life, she averaged about one acting job a year. In February of '65, she taped the routine with Groucho — a re-creation of material from Animal Crackers…then a few days later, more than a month before the show aired, she died of a heart attack at the age of 83.

Isn't it nice that she got to do this before she left us? And am I imagining it or are she and Groucho both really happy to be together again?

The F.A.A. today released recordings of the conversations between the Air Traffic Controllers and the pilot of U.S. Airways flight 1549 — the one that made that spectacular landing in the Hudson River recently. You can hear them on most of the news sites but the presentation that Keith Olbermann did on his show this evening was the clearest one I came across. It also includes Olbermann's account of a brief encounter with the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger…

Just watch this one…

If you've never quite decided how you feel about the Three Stooges, this will settle things. This is the entirety of Micro-Phonies, all seventeen minutes of it. Made in 1945, it's widely hailed as their best and while some Stooge Connoisseurs might dispute that point, I don't think anyone would deny that if you don't like this one, you're just plain never going to like the guys. End of argument.

Today, class, we're going to look at the opening to Branded, a series that ran two seasons on NBC ('65 and '66) and starred Chuck Connors. He played Jason McCord, a West Point graduate who was unceremoniously drummed out of the Army back in the days of the Wild West. McCord was the sole survivor of an infamous massacre which occurred at someplace called Bitter Creek, and the working assumption was that he'd fled in a moment of cowardice instead of doing the manly deed and dying along with the rest of his buddies.

We, of course, knew he'd done no such thing. I mean, come on. He was Chuck Connors. But each week, we'd see this opening of him having his sword broken…a very long vamp when you consider it was only a half-hour show. Then he'd set out to find the proof that would clear his name and prove he wasn't a yellow-bellied, lily-livered deserter. Invariably in his quest, he'd run into someone who'd lost a loved one at Bitter Creek who would hate him and throw things at him because he hadn't also died there.

Nevertheless, he'd get involved in this person's problems. He'd save the day and prove his bravery…but the proof of his non-cravenness at Bitter Creek would remain elusive. So at the end, the person who'd previously hated him would say, "I believe you're a man and I wish I could help you" and McCord would wander off to the next village and the next person who would hate him because they'd lost a loved one at Bitter Creek. It was all rather joyous in its repetition.

Another fun part of the show is that at some point in each episode, there'd be some cowboy with a few lines of dialogue who clearly lacked the skill to deliver them. You'd hear this terrible reading and you'd know, "That's the Dodger!" Earlier in his life, Chuck Connors had been a pro baseball player and I guess he still palled around with them. Whatever the reason, Los Angeles Dodgers were always popping up in little cameo roles and committing acting errors. But maybe it was good luck because the team won the pennant both years that Branded was on the air.

Both of those seasons are out on DVD — here's a link if you want to order Volume 1 — and they aren't bad if you don't watch more than one in a row. The series was produced by the game show company, Goodson-Todman, probably as a result of some old NBC contract where they renegotiated the terms for one of their quiz programs and received as a bonus, a commitment to produce something in a different genre for prime time. (One of my first TV writing jobs was on a sitcom produced by Monty Hall's company — a commitment Monty got in exchange for another season of Let's Make a Deal. Or maybe NBC traded it for Door Number Three…)

Here's the opening of Branded and I ask you: Does that man look like a coward?

Here's a nice little tribute to Gene Kelly with commentary by Christopher Walken…

Here's a preview of an upcoming documentary on the best actress in the world, voice legend June Foray. That's Gary Owens narrating and I'm in there somewhere…

Last night, we linked you to this video featuring three funny men, two of whom were Jeff Hoover and Tim Kazurinsky. I'll tell you about the third guy in a second.

First, though: My pal Kim "Howard" Johnson writes this to me about Mr. Kazurinsky…

Tim has been living in the Chicago suburbs for close to twenty years now, and the older he gets, the funnier he gets. Nowadays, he seems to do more writing than acting (which is a great loss to us all). He can write anything — his 2001 drama, My Beautiful Son/aka Strange Relations, which he wrote for British TV, won a BAFTA award for Julie Walters, and Tim was nominated for his script. If a TV series (particularly a comedy) is shooting in Chicago, or one of his friends is producing a show (According to Jim, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Still Standing, etc.), Tim nearly always ends up appearing in it. There's a long list of his credits on imdb, of course, but I should mention that Tim is also the go-to guy for Second City here in Chicago for so many things, and volunteers his time for any number of charity events, student projects, moral support, and countless other things for which he never gets any credit. He appeared on a panel I hosted at Second City a few months ago for The Funniest One in the Room, my Del Close biography, and was characteristically brilliant, insightful, and hilarious, usually at the same time.

Years ago, when Tim and his wife Marcia had kids, they decided to leave NY and LA so they could raise them in a Chicago suburb. Had he stayed on a coast, he would undoubtedly be rich and famous today. But he's still got plenty of funny left in him, and if he can be coaxed out of Chicago long enough to do a few more films, don't be surprised to see a resurgence…

Wouldn't surprise me one bit. As I said, Tim was an oasis of comedy during a period of arid desert on Saturday Night Live. People were so busy saying "The show's not as good as it used to be" that they didn't notice that his segments generally were. Tim also has a fan in Dan Castellaneta, who wrote me to say…

Tim started in Chicago where I use to see him at the Second City. I met him when I started performing myself. He would come back to Chicago occasionally to improvise with us. As you know, Tim was also an incredibly funny guy, some of the sketches he wrote Second City are still classics and done by the Second City Touring company. He's also one of the nicest guys I've met there.

Not surprising. Meanwhile, Jeff Hoover — the second guy in the clip, the guy who also does the great Jerry Lewis impression, sent his thanks and a link to this article about Jerry. It's a recent interview with Mr. Lewis, who is about to get a big honorary Oscar at this year's ceremony. Jerry continues to be Jerry, making odd and candid admissions about things like why he shouldn't have made the deal to let Eddie Murphy remake The Nutty Professor and why the character in King of Comedy was the most like him of all the characters he's played. Well worth a read.

Which brings us to the third man in the video. That is, it turns out, comedian Mike Toomey, who is known for many wonderful things. One of them is a great impression of Adam West. In the clip below, we see Mr. Toomey perform his Adam West impression on the news in Chicago…and then return later to do it for Adam West. (And by the way, this is not an official announcement but I wouldn't be the least surprised to see Adam West at the Wondercon in San Francisco this year…)

Here — watch Mike Toomey in action…

Someone — I can't find the e-mail just now — wrote me a few months ago to ask what had become of Tim Kazurinsky. He was one of the funnier members of Saturday Night Live during one of its bleaker periods, and he was featured in the movie, Police Academy, among other places. Well, I guess he's in Chicago now because here he is in a segment for a Chicago news show…a lesson on Super Bowl etiquette. The other guy is Jeff Hoover, who's been spotlighted here before, especially for the best Jerry Lewis impression I've ever seen.

For this week only, we have a tradition of linking to a Monty Python clip on Monday…