I haven't put up many, maybe even any political videos here but my buddy Bob Claster sent me the link to this one and it's just too good to skip. It features Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Garry Marshall, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara and Valerie Harper…
Category Archives: Video Links
Today's Video Link
This runs nine minutes but a lot of you will like it. It's a whole buncha network promos for TV shows of the sixties…mostly shows that didn't last all that long but there are a couple in there that were hits. I remember watching every one of these series except the one that starred Robert Goulet.
Today's Video Link
Here, from some time in the sixties, is another one of those commercials that I saw eighty thousand times. In fact, I even went out and bought the product — Great Shakes, which promised to turn milk into a milk shake. It came with a little plastic shaker cup and there were little envelopes of powder. You used the cup to mix an envelope of powder into the milk and when you did, you discovered that Great Shakes were no great shakes. Not a great invention…but the jingle was great.
Today's Video Link
We interrupt this website for a very stupid commercial…
Today's Video Link
You probably won't want to watch all of this — it runs close to a half-hour — but you might enjoy a few minutes of a 1968 "educational" (propaganda) film done for the Los Angeles Rapid Transit District. The early part features Paul Lynde in what was not one of his funniest roles. Most of the film features (and was probably at least co-written by) Ralph Story, who was a prominent L.A. TV host and occasional newsman back then. Mr. Story was a clever, folksy gent who usually appeared in more interesting shows than this…but it's fascinating to see a lot of the arguments then being advanced for public transportation. Some are ridiculous but some were prescient…and unheeded.
Today's Video Link
Let's remember the late and lovely Edie Adams with one of her eighty million commercials for Muriel Cigars…
Today's Video Link
Mr. Magoo (voice by Jim Backus) was the spokesperson for an awful lot of products over the years. Here he is selling General Electric Soft White bulbs.
Today's Video Link
You may have seen video of David and Dania, the reknowned "quick change" artists. I linked to one of their amazing routines here. Now, direct from Germany, we have six minutes of another couple that does a clothes-switching act that'll make your oral cavity hang open in amazement. Allow me introduce you to Lex and Alina…
Today's Video Link
The following is another rerun, sort of. I posted a link to a fuzzy copy of this a few years ago. Here's a much better video of a Kellogg's Raisin Bran commercial with Daws Butler as Mr. Jinks and Don Messick as Pixie…
Today's Video Link
I only vaguely remember these from long ago…a series of commercials for the Ford Motor Company that were designed and probably at least co-written by Ted "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. I don't know who animated them but some or all of the voices seem to be by Marvin Miller. Neat stuff. This runs four minutes…
Today's Video Link
From The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for October 3, 2003: Here's an installment of "Even Stevphen," the debate segment starring Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert. I thought this was enormously funny and pointed at the time it first aired. These days, it seems even more so…
Today's Video Link
And now we have a better sample of what Lloyd Thaxton did on his fabled dance party TV show. This is the first five minutes of a 1966 episode with Lloyd lip-syncing a then-popular record. He did a lot of that on his show, figuring out ways to make it more interesting to play records and have kids dance to them…and it was all done on a microscopic budget. Once or twice a show, they'd just select a teenager from that day's dancers and get him or her up to lip-sync a popular record, reading the lyrics off cue cards. Or Thaxton would do this thing where he took a record album cover that had the singer's photo more or less lifesize and he'd cut out the lips and put his own through the hole to lip sync the song that way. Very weird but always entertaining.
I remember one other Thaxton moment that stuck me as very funny and gutsy. He was on KCOP, Channel 13, from 5 PM to 6 PM. For a brief time, a local disc jockey named Sam Riddle was hosting a very similar show that was done live on KHJ, Channel 9, from 6 PM 'til 7 PM. My memory on this may be a bit off but I recall at the end of one show, Thaxton announced that it was Sam Riddle's birthday and to honor it, he was going to go over and hit Sam in the face with a pie. I think he may have even shown the pie.
It was enormous sportsmanship because, of course, everyone watching Lloyd's show turned over to the competition to see if it would happen. And sure enough, about fifteen minutes into Sam Riddle's show — fifteen minutes being about the time it would take to drive from KCOP to KHJ — Lloyd Thaxton walked out onto Sam Riddle's show and, as promised, hit him with a pie.
Here's a little more of Lloyd Thaxton. Don't thank me for this. Thank Barry Mitchell.
Today's Video Link
I don't see a clip anywhere I can embed of Lloyd Thaxton doing the unique kind of thing he did on his sixties' dance party show. But here from 1965 is a clip of him introducing Peter, Paul and Mary. Hard to believe that at the time, some people thought they were weird, radical and dangerous. Today, they're too square for The Disney Channel.
Today's Video Link
A trio of fine female vocalists — Audra McDonald, Marin Mazzie and Judy Kuhn (in that order) — sing three Andrew Lloyd Webber songs that fit together quite nicely…
Today's Video Link
I haven't stuck in one of my Garfield cartoons in a long time. This is "Day of Doom" from I-forget-what-season. Garfield is voiced by the late, great Lorenzo Music. Jon and the theater owner are Thom Huge. The newsman and the wishing well are Gregg Berger. And all the female voices are the magnificent Ms. June Foray.
That leaves only the narrator to tell you about. I cast a wonderful character actor named Charles Aidman in what turned out to be, I think, the only cartoon job he ever did in his long, illustrious career. Mr. Aidman, who passed away not long after we did this, was one of the most prolific actors to ever work in television and sometimes in movies. Here's a link to his Internet Movie Database listing which itemizes 168 TV and motion picture credits…and is, I'm sure, missing a few hundred more. You may also recognize his voice from hundreds of commercials and from narrating the 1985 Twilight Zone revival. (They picked him for his obvious dramatic qualities and also because he'd been in several episodes of the original show.)
Charles was a little puzzled why we wanted him for a cartoon. He showed up and said, "I only have this one voice and I don't think I could sound like a squirrel or a bunny rabbit." We told him to forget it was a cartoon and just read the copy like a dramatic show, which he did. A real pro.