https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4y5ekYmYQ&list=PLKjjIa7cwTkIqj4eFYjBYkhe5K7v-DaD- What and when was your first exposure to Monty Python? Mine was in early 1975 but it wasn’t the TV show–it hadn’t yet begun to air on PBS yet (at least not on the Southern California affiliate). Nor was it ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ which wouldn’t open
Every day after school in 6th grade I came home and hit the record shelf for the comedy album du jour. Thus far we’ve dipped into two of my favorites, Allan Sherman and the ‘2000 Year Old Man’. But it was Bob Newhart’s ‘Button Down Mind’ and ‘Button Down Mind
I mentioned my love of comedy LPs yesterday and naturally one of the most important ones on my parents shelf was ‘The 2000 Year Old Man’. The genius (I think) of the routine is that if you attempt to explain the mysterious evolution of life it turns out to be
Here’s a clip from a variety show called ‘Fanfare’ of Allan Sherman and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits doing a little lyric-swapping routine using Sherman’s sequel to his ‘Hello Muddah Hello Faddah’ song. (There’s a fun clip somewhere that I can’t find of Sherman on another variety show introducing that
The beloved Allan Sherman actually was a thoroughly depressed screwed-up man and his biography, ‘Overweight Sensation’, is so depressing that I haven’t watched/seen/thought of Sherman since I read it a few years ago. Today I’m breaking that self-imposed sanction with this delightful clip of Sherman singing ‘Crazy Downtown’, his parody
Here’s ‘Fright Night’ (1947), Shemp’s first Stooge short in the Columbia years iteration of the Stooges. It takes a certain kind of low-budget brilliance to make a fight film that doesn’t actually show a boxing match. (Shemp gets batted about the ring a little bit but its inside the gym
Let us close this Greenwich Village obsessed week with a little dancing. This is the magnificent duet between Bob Fosse and the great (and unsung) Tommy Rall from the 1955 musical version of ‘My Sister Eileen’. What has this to do with the Village? Well, the story is set there.
This week we’ve seen views of Greenwich Village in the 1940s, early 60s and late 60s verging on the 70s. Now we have a minute of deep 70s village at hand. In some ways this clip is so period-perfect that it doesn’t feel real–more like an expensively re-produced set (complete
Our Greenwich Village history week continues with this very nice one minute clip of color footage of the Village in the 1940s. We are in three locations–Washington Square North, MacDougal Alley and Eighth Street which, as you’ll see in this footage, was once lined with artists peddling their wares. (It’s
This is a real find–a lovely ten or so minute travelogue style journey around Greenwich Village featuring lots of the fashion of the time and plenty of views of streets and buildings that are all pretty much still there. From the look of things I think we’re in 1968–a close