Saturday Cornucopia of Clips

Immersion in the stand-up comedy of fallen heroes Gilbert and Bob lately has led, like a gateway drug, to today's Cornucopia of Clips focusing on sketch comedy.



With a note to blog readers that the Blogmeister is dealing with a host of challenging computer problems entirely of his own making, as well as the fact that Blogger does not have a functioning "Preview" (enabling one to actually see a post before it has been published), we kick this off with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca on Admiral Broadway Revue and Your Show Of Shows.








Love this sendup of very early cinema, D.W. Griffith and Florence "The Biograph Girl" Lawrence.



And then there's Ernie Kovacs, remembered best for his remarkably inventive work, in front of and behind the camera, on his own TV shows. He was out of the box, WAY out of the box, but always the master of the "orthicon tube".











Across the pond from Ernie and a few years later, there was the one, the only Marty Feldman!







And, speaking of the Brits, there's Spike Milligan, co-creator of "The Goon Show."



Very likely the first time Americans saw Spike Milligan was on the short-lived but glorious 1970 sketch comedy show, The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine.



Spike co-starred and wrote sketches with an all-star crew including Marty and Barry Levinson.




Like Marty Feldman, he was a trumpet player who, instead of leading a British bebop big band, became a comedian.



The musical nature of Spike's writing proved a constant in his career as a performer and author.













The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, who do not consider it a stretch at all to compare Bob Odenkirk's comedy style to Spike Milligan, has been watching and listening to various interviews from the former Saturday Night Live, Ben Stiller Show and Mr. Show writer from his current book tour, including the April 17 appearance on Al Franken's podcast. Bob Odenkirk, on said book tour, is interviewed here by none other than the great Jack Black.



In the 21st century known for adding a wry sensibility to provocative, hard-hitting, tough-as-nails dramas (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) and unconventional action hero thrillers (Nobody), Bob Odenkirk began his career in the 1980's writing comedy sketches with Second City. We know him well from his role as Winston Deaver in Disney/Pixar's Incredibles 2.

Also know Mr. Odenkirk from his years writing for Saturday Night Live, along with a crew that included Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel. The most famous SNL sketch he wrote would be the following.



In 1995-1998, Odenkirk and David Cross, supported by a host of comedy luminaries (John Ennis. Jay Johnston, Paul F. Tompkins, Jill Talley, Tom Kenny, Brian Posehn among the continuing players, Dino Stamatopoulos, Sarah Silverman and Jack Black as guest stars) produced four seasons of Mr. Show with Bob & David.

Mr. Show with Bob & David could be described as an American version of the kind of humor exemplified by the Pythons, especially in the movie Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life.



The Story Of Everest and Megaphone Crooners sketches would be this blogger's favorites.





Quite a few Mr. Show episodes are up on YouTube in their entirety.



They are also available on several DVD collections.

And This Blog Loves Spike Milligan

As comedy and showbiz fans ponder and mourn the recent passing of powerhouse Sid Caesar, today's posting remembers another wild and crazy guy (and favorite of this blog) who blasted into the comedy zeitgeist in the 1950's, the great Spike Milligan.



Like Marty Feldman, he was a trumpet player who, instead of leading a British bebop big band, became a comedian. The musical nature of Spike's writing proved a constant in his career as a performer and author.



Born in British India in 1918, Spike made his name as a writer, cast member and co-founder of BBC radio's The Goon Show.





In over 200 radio shows and a few TV and film appearances, The Goons - Spike, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe - for all practical purposes threw out the comedy playbook and invented a new one.



After The Goon Show, Milligan began doing standup comedy and guest appearances on various TV variety programs.







He would soon follow up The Goon Show by producing, writing and starring in his own sketch comedy program Q.



Very likely the first time Americans saw Spike Milligan was on the short-lived but glorious 1970 sketch comedy show, The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine.



Unfortunately, the 10+ seasons of Spike's Q series, at least on Your Blogmeister's home turf, the San Francisco Bay Area, did not get TV distribution in the United States, even during the 1970's and 1980's stretch when British comedy - Python and Python offshoots (Fawlty Towers, Ripping Yarns), The Two Ronnies, Benny Hill and such lesser known shows as Dad's Army and Up Pompeii (starring Frankie Howerd)- could be found everywhere on the boob tube, especially via a then more prosperous PBS. Granted, non-Python British comedy (Peter Cook & Dudley Moore, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, Sid Field, Flanagan & Allen, George Formby, Tony Hancock, Kenneth Horne, Jimmy James, Morecambe & Wise, Eric Sykes, Kenneth Williams, Norman Wisdom) was also seldom seen.



Thanks to YouTube DailyMotion and other online portals, it is possible now for comedy-challenged Americans to spend a bit of time in Spike's surreal comedy world.





Onscreen, he was the silliest of the silly, but offscreen was quite the activist in the environmental and animal rights arenas, as well as a prolific author. His books included a seven-volume autobiographical account of his World War II service. Hitler, Nazis, fascism and pompous twits in general were frequent targets of his humor.







Since Spike was known as a poet and author of Silly Verse for Kids, let's finish this post with one of his poems!

Laughs From The Great Marty Feldman

Now that we're living in an age in which comedies on both television and movies are few and far between - one would guess that The Suits have decided humor is insufficiently profitable - it's easy to be nostalgic for that last wave of outstanding screen comedians. One of the last, who would have fit right into silent era slapstick, was a trumpet player who became a comic in the 1960's, Mr. Marty Feldman.







Marty Feldman died in 1982 and boy, do we miss him!

More Marty Feldman Covers Of Tom Lehrer Tunes

Marty and Derek Griffiths perform Tom Lehrer's hilarious National Brotherhood Week on the 1974 BBC series Marty Back Together Again. While the quality of this clip isn't great (appears to have been mastered from a VHS tape that's going-going-going and soon to be gone), I can't complain, having never seen any excerpts from this series before a few days ago.



Thanks, flashbackcaruso, for posting this on YouTube!

Marty Feldman Covers Tom Lehrer

Marty covers "The Vatican Rag" as a high-stepping production number and sings "Pollution" with guitarist Derek Griffiths.

Marty Feldman and Spike Milligan, 1971

In "The Undertaker Sketch", from the Marty Feldman Comedy Machine show.

The Two Greatest Television Comedies You Never Heard Of

My first exposure to no-holds-barred British comedy was not Monty Python, but a show that ran on American TV in 1971, I believe as a summer replacement. An international production featuring wildly outrageous sketches and Terry Gilliam cut-out animation, it was titled The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine.

Terry Gilliam's opening with Marty Feldman as a "reject" on an assembly line - and closing with a host of bizarre 1890's figures "losing their heads" while saying "Goodbye" - resonated with me. I also recall a delightfully campy musical segment with Barbara "Agent 99" Feldon singing "The Codfish Ball". More generally, I remember that I just loved this program, and wouldn't see its like again for a couple more years, when the Python shows hit PBS.

About ten years later, I got the opportunity to see a complete Marty Feldman Comedy Machine show. The cast included chief Goon and patron saint of Britcom Spike Milligan, as well as three actors from The Benny Hill Show. The guest star: Orson Welles. The writers: Milligan, Feldman, Barry Levinson and a post-Sid Caesar, pre-M*A*S*H Larry Gelbart. While not necessarily brilliant from fade-in to fade-out (what sketch comedy program is?), much of it was unbelievably funny. Among many highlights: Marty as Dr. Jekyll - AND Mr. Hyde - accepting an award at a banquet, Orson Welles hawking "DICTIONARY - THE MOVIE" and Milligan as an insane lounge-lizard performer singing "The Girl From Ipanema."

Let's also hope that whoever is sitting on those Marty Feldman Comedy Machine shows will decide there's a buck to be made by reissuing the series on a DVD box.

Unfortunately, because these shows - and Feldman's BBC programs - are obscure, there seems to be a lot less interest in him out on the Web than in his contemporaries and successors.

Here's an inspired and Python-esque program (that actually preceded Monty Python's Flying Circus) in which Marty Feldman was a cast member, At Last The 1948 Show, featuring John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor and the late great Graham Chapman: