The comedy-crazed gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has watched Ten From Your Show Of Shows, an amazing document of early 1950's sketch comedy, numerous times.
The THIS IS YOUR STORY sketch from 10 From Your Show Of Shows, spoofing This Is Your Life, featuring Howard Morris as the affectionate Uncle Goopy, destroys me every time I see it.
Nobody, not even Victor Borge and P.D.Q. Bach, has taken on classical music quite like the ridiculously talented casts of Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour.
The Caesar's Hour episode with guest star Benny Goodman (which aired on 11-1-1954) is particularly memorable.
After powering through an unrelenting decade-long torrent of comedy, Sid Caesar would be less visible in showbiz for a few years. Post Caesar's Hour, he appeared in this BBC Broadcast which aired on September 9, 1958.
Sid co-starred with 1000 other comedians in Stanley Kramer's It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and appeared a slew of commercials, then dropped out of sight through the latter 1960's and the 1970's. He re-emerged in the early 1980's and was interviewed by David Letterman.
While Sid dropped out of sight, his writers, especially Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks would bring the world The Dick Van Dyke Show, Alan Brady and the 2000 year old man.
When it became apparent to comedy geeks just how truly exceptional and extraordinary such performer/writers as Sid Caesar and Ernie Kovacs were, numerous events and interviews followed.
In particular, a 2014 tribute to Sid by Carl and Mel is very enjoyable.
The Writers Guild Foundation interview with Carl Reiner is a must-listen.
Larry Gelbart recalls his stretch working with Sid.
While individuals in my age group generally went ga-ga for Star Trek and Star Wars, as much as I enjoy both sci-fi series, obsession was reserved for the silent era comedy greats (all of them), Your Show Of Shows, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Hal Roach Studios, Mel Brooks movies, SCTV (Second City Television) and visionary animators Tex Avery and Bob Clampett.
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.
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.
The last post about pianist Victor "Yes, There Can Be Humor In Music" Borge reminds me that there are all kinds of 20th century comedians - some sophisticated, others not so sophisticated, still more wonderfully lowbrow - who are fundamentally musical. We begin this Saturday cornucopia of clips with. . .
The Wiere Brothers
Victor Borge was not the only performer to combine classical music with comedy. It's often the modus operandi of the trio this writer first read about eons ago in Leonard Maltin's indispensable Movie Comedy Teams book: The Wiere Brothers.
Here they are combining the music of Frederic Chopin with silent comedy on the April 26, 1951 episode of "The Ford Festival."
Harry (1906-1992), Herbert (1908-1999) and Sylvester Wiere (1909 – 1970) had a five decade career, beginning in vaudeville and then mostly on stage, but occasionally seen onscreen in feature films and periodically on television as well. Their act goes back to the 1920's. Billed as The Continental Trio, here they are, in early acrobatic dancing form, captured in these time capsule clips from The British Pathé Collection.
The team appears in Bob Hope & Bing Crosby flick Road To Rio (the Wieres' dance, starting at 1:50, sets up a sequence involving the spectacle of Bob Hope in drag), as well as the Roy Rogers western Hands Across The Border and the 1967 Elvis Presley vehicle Double Trouble.
The following Wiere Brothers television appearance presents their act, performed hundreds of times over decades. Herbert plays classical music on the violin while Harry and Sylvester muck up his performance by changing the tune and "going hillbilly." Then all three perform acrobatic derring-do involving stringed instruments. Well, hold the mayo and the Stradavarius - one hates to ponder if any bass violins bit the big one while the boys rehearsed this bit!
There was an attempt at a Wiere Brothers TV series in 1962. While this writer has not seen any of the 12 episodes of Oh! Those Bells, one would surmise that,
as producer Jules White did frequently when directing Columbia Shorts Department 2-reelers starring headliners other than The Three Stooges, by casting The Wiere Brothers in slam-bang slapstick, the producers may have missed out entirely on what was wonderful about Herbie, Harry and Sylvester in the first place.
Spike Jones & His City Slickers
Since it remains utterly beyond Your Correspondent's powers as a wordsmith to describe the musical lunacy of Spike Jones & His City Slickers, we'll show you with clips, jam-packed with jokes about sound and music, from the band's appearances on the early 1950's live comedy show All-Star Revue.
The casts of Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour
Nobody, not even Victor Borge, has taken on classical music quite like the ridiculously talented casts of Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour.
One could make a strong argument for Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca as the greatest and most versatile pure comic talents to ever headline a television program.
When Imogene left the cast after Your Show Of Shows, her successor was the stalwart musical comedy gal from stage and screen (The Band Wagon) the mighty Nanette Fabray.
Two decades later Ms. Fabray would be a frequent guest star on a variety program modeled to a significant degree on Your Show Of Shows - yep, The Carol Burnett Show.
The Ritz Brothers
Seems like a good idea to follow Sid Caesar with a comedian who clearly influenced him - and his intrepid writer cohort on Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour, the inimitable Mel Brooks - in a big way, the legendary Harry Ritz (in the act, albeit not in the following photo, "the guy in the middle").
While the wacky Ritzes - led by rubber-faced alpha goofball Harry - do not play musical instruments as Harpo and Chico Marx did, their comedy is not about jokes per se, but all about music and dancing.
As is the case with musical comedy guys Ray Bolger and Donald O'Connor, the humor is frequently in how they sing, as well as all about how funny their movements to the music are.
This excellent production number from the Alice Faye vehicle On The Avenue would be this blogger's answer to the question, "just what did people find funny about The Ritz Brothers?" Harry's bravura vocal is followed by a series of skillful and indescribably funny dance moves by the trio - the bit where they mimic penguins is tops!
Besides that amazing He Ain't Got Rhythm number, the best example of Harry, Jimmy and Al Ritz remains the episode of The All Star Revue they hosted on May 17, 1952.
It presents a valuable record of their act, as The Colgate Comedy Hour shows did for many comics (Martin & Lewis and Abbott & Costello as well as the Ritz Brothers, whose Feb. 22, 1953 episode of the series does not exist) - and is also the reason this blogger has been known to utter the phrase "DON'T HOLLA - DON'T HOLLA" for no apparent reason. The Ritzes' anarchic spirit and musical comedy mojo reigns supreme throughout.
Jerry Lewis Both teamed with Dean Martin and as a solo, Jerry Lewis - whether lip-syncing to Mario Lanza's Be My Love on the Colgate Comedy Hour, performing a silent comedy routine to Count Basie & His Orchestra in The Errand Boy, conducting in The Bellboy or dancing up a storm with Sheree North in Living It Up - is fundamentally a musical comedian.
Along with Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks, Jerry Lewis strikes this writer as among the artistic progeny of Harry Ritz. As with The Ritz Brothers, the credo is: sound + music + image = laughs, big laughs.
The Typewriter Routine gets this correspondent laughing every time, as does the very funny sendup/homage by another gifted physical comedian, Martin Short.
The following sequence featuring Jerry as the conductor, demonstrates how Lewis' 1960 feature The Bellboy would make a splendid double bill with the 1957 Chuck Jones WB cartoon Baton Bunny.
Danny Kaye One wonders whose tongue-twisting musical routines were developed first, those of Danny Kaye or Sid Caesar - or if they both got the bits from Harry Ritz.
They appear to be two entirely different performers working along similar artistic lines - in some respects comparable to saxophonists Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane in 1950's jazz. Chronologically, Danny got there first, with a breathtaking linguistic prowess comparable to Sid's.
Jimmy Durante
When he sang and played the piano, the ol' Schnozzola was a remarkable musical comedian and a most endearing one, too.
Unfortunately, there are no film clips of Jimmy as part of the team of Clayton, Jackson and Durante, but we do at least have this bit starring 2/3 of the show-stopping vaudeville trio.
Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams
There was no more creative comic mind than Ernie Kovacs and no more talented musical comedy gal than the Juilliard-trained Edie Adams. Arguably my all-time favorite musical comedy routine - well, maybe tied with the Wagnerian incarnation of Elmer Fudd singing "Kill The Wabbit" in What's Opera, Doc? - remains the sendups of opera performed brilliantly by Edie Adams on The Ernie Kovacs Show.
Perhaps the most wonderfully chaotic finale to a television program is the "topper" from the epic Kovacs On Music special.
Today's post closes with a comedian who wrote music but was mostly silent in movies - but NOT in this clip. Here he is, the guy who started the 20th century's first British Invasion, the greatest dancer on film not named Fred Astaire - and one who Michael Jackson definitely picked up at least a move or two from - the one, the only Charles Spencer Chaplin.
Today the Jack Buchanan top hat tip goes to actress Hillary Brooke (1914-1999), largely known as the statuesque, classy, charming and always ladylike foil for rough-and-tumble comedians Abbott & Costello.
Hillary Brooke complemented those working with her in movies and TV adeptly, and by all accounts was a nice person offscreen as well. She was the only element of class and refinement in Abbott & Costello's TV show.
Her presence proved quite the counterpart to the raucous hijinx from Bud & Lou, Sidney Fields, Joe Besser as "Stinky", Gordon Jones as "Mike The Cop" and others.
Her calming presence in feature films, The Abbott & Costello Show and other programs (My Little Margie with Gale Storm and Charles Farrell) was invariably most welcome.
Ms. Brooke also did numerous TV ads. The commercials she appeared in and narrated promoting Kelvinator Foodarama (ONLY 47 inches!) no doubt had viewers ready to purchase one of these mammoth machines about 23 seconds into the pitch!
September 8 is also the birthday of comedy legends Peter Sellers and Sid Caesar. Today's post wraps with a few choice trailers and clips from their prolific careers.
