Hey, you know what would make a cute musical number? Let's dress some grown-ups up as children and have them sing a kiddy song. Oh, and make sure the women show their underwear a lot!
That's right…it's another "music video" from the forties in the "Gags and Gals" series…
Here's another glorious ten minutes with the magnificent George Carl. If you don't know who he was, scroll back a few days on this site or do a search.
The history of the Slinky…
Here we have two tributes to the late, looney Will Elder, who as everyone knows was one of the original artists (some would say the keystone artist) for Mad, and who later illustrated "Little Annie Fanny" for Playboy. On this page, you can read the eulogy which was delivered at the funeral yesterday by Elder's son-in-law, Gary VandenBergh.
Then we have our video link. This is a two-part video and both parts should play, one after the other, in the player below. It's a twenty minute documentary that VandenBergh produced about his father-in-law…a pretty good one, I might add. It says it was released in 2000 but some of the footage is obviously much earlier than that. (Bill Gaines died in 1992 and Harvey Kurtzman died the following year.) The trust that Kurtzman and Elder have in each other is quite evident.
A lot of the great cartoon voice actors like Daws Butler, Mel Blanc and Don Messick have left us. Their characters, however, have not. A whole new generation of voice actors have stepped in to assume those roles…and in most cases, more than one person has spoken for a character. At least twelve different actors have spoken for Bugs Bunny since Mel died.
One of the better folks doing classic voices is Scott Innes, and he does a wide range of 'em, though he has tended to specialize in Don Messick's roles. Here's a little less than five minutes of Scott demonstrating his incredible versatility and the wide range of characters he's been called on to replicate…
This will make many of you very happy. Some time ago, I introduced you to the late George Carl, a man who spent more than sixty years touring America and Europe with a delightful pantomime act that at times consisted of twenty minutes of getting tangled up in the microphone cord. Mr. Carl, who I had the pleasure of seeing perform in Las Vegas, was a hero to several generations of comedians who did eccentric mime and silly dancing.
Here, allegedly from some Danish TV show in 1975, is a little more than ten minutes of George Carl screwing up on stage. Every movement is a picture and every picture is funny…
Chris Matthews gets under my epidermis at times, usually with silly analogies that he dreams up and applies where they don't fit. But I guess it takes one to know one because in this clip, he slaps down an L.A. radio talk show host who's out there repeating "red meat" talking points without knowing what he's talking about. This clip summarizes for me the problem with so much political discourse in this country…people who have a public forum (in this guy's case, a talk show but it could just as well be the kind of forum we give to elected officials) and they know the emotional "hot buttons" to push with their audience…but they don't relate it to reality. It's all and only about getting people riled up.
The other reason I'm amused by this clip is that I'm tired of hearing Neville Chamberlain's name evoked every time someone thinks the best course of action might not be to go to war, or at least to go to war right away. It's such a cliché: If you don't want to charge into every situation with guns blazing and bombs bursting in air, you're just like Neville Chamberlain trying to appease Hitler. Gee, do you think it's possible that threats of violence are not the only answer to every problem between countries? Or at least, not the thing we should try first? I don't think there's an actual elected official anywhere of either party who really thinks that but somehow, whenever anyone suggests trying to talk to a hostile nation, there's someone out there insisting it's no different from Chamberlain deeding over large chunks of Czechoslavakia to Hitler.
Take a look at seven minutes of a clueless talk show host embarrassing himself. Most of these guys don't do so well when they don't have home court advantage and a button nearby to mute their opponent.
I keep mentioning my buddy Chuck McCann here. This is a clip of Chuck's television debut…on The Garry Moore Show in 1958. He and Dick Van Dyke impersonate Laurel and Hardy, and then they have a go at being Jackie Gleason and Art Carney.
Here's another one of those "soundies" that features a bouncy little tune and charming retro ambience…though maybe not the most enlightened attitude about women…
Oh, wait. I just found it. Here's what I was talking about in the previous message. This is Jon Stewart's interview this evening on The Daily Show where he chatted with Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and one of the chief planners of the Iraq War.
There are some clips you just can't see too many times. This is the third time I've linked to William Shatner's famous (infamous?) interpretation of Elton John's "Rocket Man," as performed at the Science Fiction Film Awards in 1978.
But! — and you'll be excited about this "but" — this version has much higher video quality than most of the copies that have been floating 'round the Internet. So think of this as Shatner — The Special Edition. It's just too, too good.
And then after you savor that, you might want to enjoy the Chris Elliott version again.
"Soundies," as I've explained many a time here, were kind of the music videos of their day, that day being the forties. They were short films shown primarily in jukebox devices that contained a 16mm movie projector, and which were placed in taverns, diners and other public places. Most featured a name musical performer from that period and are now interesting as a record of those entertainers. Some are just kind of silly and charming in a goofy, retro way, especially one series called "Gags and Gals" that displayed what is now, thankfully, an antiquated role for women. Here's one of them and I may link to a few others in the coming week…
Tom Lehrer sings the short version of "The Vatican Rag"…
Here's a treat. You've probably heard about the famous/infamous time on the TV show, This is Your Life, when they attempted to surprise and profile Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The series would surprise some celebrity each week and tell their life story…and it was all done on live TV. When they did Stan and Ollie, all did not go quite as planned. It took far too long for Laurel and Hardy to get to the stage, which forced host Ralph Edward to ad-lib for long, painful moments. Then when The Boys finally arrived, Laurel was so sore about the whole thing that he barely spoke. (I wrote about it at greater length over on this page.)
Well, if you've never seen it, here it is. And you can download a pretty good copy in AVI format from this link.
A great thing about the Internet and YouTube is that you can become fans of someone whose work you might otherwise not have come across. One of my favorite video links here has been to this video of a guy named Jeff Hoover, who's part of the WGN Morning News crew in Chicago. He does the funniest Jerry Lewis imitation I've ever seen, up to and including the one that Jerry's been doing the last decade or so.
Today, we have another Jeff Hoover production for you. He plays the DeNiro-like boss in this one and the other performers are Mike Toomey, Terry Barthel, Matt Kissane and, as the FBI guy, Joe Farina, son of Dennis Farina. I won't tell you any more than that but I think this is pretty funny…