Here’s a terrific sampling of the 1975 Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, featuring a good deal of Sinatra, some Totie Fields, a little Harry James and some of Jerry’s greasiest, most self-serving moments. This extended highlights reel is best played in the background while you do something better with your time,
Much like the Ernie Kovacs clips I’ve been posting over the past few Fridays, SCTV was very much an acquired taste. If you got it, you got it forever. One of my favorite bits was Rick Moranis’s cruel (and impressively accurate) impression of Merv Griffin. They never did an actual
Let’s close this weeks Sinatra-bashing extravaganza with another goofy clip from his shaggy television variety series of the early 1950s, the boringly named ‘The Frank Sinatra Show’. In this clip he introduces the singer/comedienne Dagmar–somebody once said car bumpers were styled after Dagmar’s figure. Sinatra’s intro is embarrassing. He was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMGASlOu028 Continuing our shallow dive into the slump years of Frank Sinatra’s career (roughly 1949-53) here’s a clip from Sinatra’s TV show that he somehow maintained during the period, the daringly titled ‘The Frank Sinatra Show’. Frank sings ‘These Foolish Things’, one of the loveliest ballads of the era accompanied
Was Henny Youngman ever really funny? Of course not. Which is why he’s so frigging funny. It’s the staleness of the jokes, the completely tossed-off manner of his delivery (as if he were pre-bored on the audiences behalf) and constant lack of invention and relentless recylcling of material that somehow
Let’s kick off this terrifying year with a kickass episode of the great dance show ‘Hullabaloo’. This particular show dates from 1966 and features the young Simon & Garfunkel, a thin Lainie Kazan and the awful George Hamilton (skip his opening vocal number unless for some reason you’re jonesing for
Apropos of yesterday’s post featuring the short-lived Bobby Fuller singing ‘I Fought The Law’, above is more Bobby and his band. This time it’s from a pop & dance TV show called ‘Shivaree’ and features two of his other big tunes, ‘Let Her Dance’ and ‘Another Sad and Lonely Night’.
This past weekend I posted the Three Stooges movie ‘Gents Without Cents’ which features a classic Vaudeville routine known (incorrectly) as ‘Niagra Falls’. (It’s correct name is ‘Slowly I Turn’). The Stooges were one of many comedians to do a version of the sketch and above we see Lou Costello
Last night we watched the above installment of ‘Hollywood Palace‘, an hourlong variety show that broadcast Saturday nights (except September 1967 to January 1968, when it aired on Monday nights) on ABC from January 4, 1964, to February 7, 1970. This particular episode was broadcast on January 20th, 1968. The host
Here’s the complete ‘Shindig’ from October 7, 1964 which features The Beatles bookending the show. They begin with ‘Kansas City’ which features a rocking (though barely audible) McCartney vocal and then everyone has to wait twenty minutes for their return. Meanwhile another seven performers take the stage, possibly feeling the