Thinking of Ernie Kovacs, who ranks, along with a few silent movie greats, atop my list of favorite comedians.
Am especially thinking of Kovacs' very catchy ditty Hot Cakes And Sausage, which is on the short list of my all-time favorite songs.
This great tune prompted the thought that today's post would actuallybe all about breakfast food. After all, wrote a pancake-packed post on National Flapjack Day last March!
Hot Cakes And Sausage was Ernie Kovacs' song. He used it as an intro to his way-out kiddie show spoof The Kapusta Kids In Outer Space.
The cartoonish quality of The Kapusta Kids In Outer Space brings to mind Eugene, Ernie's homage to silent era comedy. Kovacs was a fan of Jacques "Monsieur Hulot" Tati and one can see the Parisian comedian's influence.
First saw Eugene when the Best of Ernie Kovacs series aired on PBS way back in the 1970's.
The last part of the Kovacs universe this classic television fan became familiar with was his anti-game show, Take A Good Look.
Here, the sight gags, absurdist concepts and surreal sensibility of Ernie's comedy meet the TV game show.
Elements of What's My Line and You Bet Your Life go to the Kovacsian funhouse mirror.
On the game show's panel: Edie Adams, Cesar Romero, Jim Backus, Hans Conreid and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Take A Good Look features future Ernie Kovacs Show stock company members Jolene Brand and Bobby Lauher and makes no sense whatsoever - just the way we like it.
The lost episode of Take A Good Look was found and posted on the Comedy Kings YouTube channel.
Tough to determine how to finish a post on Ernie Kovacs. Invariably, just want to add more of Ernie's hilarious comedy sketches.
Could Ernie have been a great dramatic actor? Yes - definitely!
Shall wrap up today's post with a personal favorite sketch from Kovacs On Music (1959). The entire Ernie Kovacs Show crew, especially Edie Adams, is in rare form.
In closing, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write a Blog seek an expensive cigar for Ernie and thank the Comedy Kings (George Schlatter?) and Kovacs Corner YouTube channels big time!
How the blog somehow missed the centenary of the birth of wacky, imaginative and marvelously goofy comedian Milton Supman, known professionally as Soupy Sales, back on January 8, we'll never know!
Oh well, at least Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remembered our pals Dick Van Dyke and Mel Brooks, both of whom lived to see that 100th birthday.
Let's rectify that grevious error of overlooking the fabulous Soupy Sales RIGHT NOW, shall we!
Soupy was an avid jazz and blues fan, so the guest on the following show is virtuoso guitarist, master of the Gibson ES-335 and king of vibrato B.B. King.
Soupy Sales is responsible for the ONLY television appearance of trumpet genius Clifford Brown!
Entertainer Trini Lopez and Rat Packers Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. co-star in the following Soupy Sales Show! Where's Dino?
Even Alice "Welcome To My Nightmare" Cooper was a guest on The Soupy Sales Show!
Must buy the following DVDs from RHINO VIDEO!
Undoubtedly, music mavens, jazz and blues fans, and the comedy-centric love him! The splendid Detroit Historical Society website adds:
Soupy Sales was a lifelong jazz fan who used his late-night Detroit program, Soupy's On, to champion legendary jazz artists. Hosted a late-night adult-oriented talk show in Detroit during the 1950s. Partnered with local venues like Baker's Keyboard Lounge to feature touring acts. Used Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite" as his theme song. Featured heavyweights like Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong.
The gang here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog love jazz, blues, rock n'roll, comedy, Soupy and his talented rocker sons Hunt and Tony.
The Sales brothers:
Formed the teen band Tony and the Tigers as children and secured a record deal by age 11
Todd Rundgren: Played on Todd Rundgren's early 1970s albums, backing the hit "We Gotta Get You a Woman".
Provided the iconic, driving rhythm section and famous drum groove on Iggy Pop's 1977 album Lust for Life.
Tin Machine: Reunited as the rhythmic backbone for David Bowie’s hard rock project alongside guitarist Reeves Gabrels from 1988 to 1992.
Today's hat tip goes to one of a favorite comedian and wordsmiths from my misspent youth, a TV producer who was also a lyricist, musician, satirist and prolific recording artist, the great Allan Sherman (1924-1973).
Here, Allan Sherman is the guest on The Mike Douglas Show, a very popular 1960's - early 1970s daytime TV variety program.
Allan goes international with British pop group Herman's Hermits.
Mr. Sherman was a frequent guest on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dean Martin Show in 1965-1968.
Well, whatdaya know - found The Allan Sherman Show (1968) on Internet Archive - yippee kai-yoh kai-yay!
Love seeing Allan Sherman meet Hans Conreid in a Jay Ward Production! Allan enters at 13:52, after Fractured Flickers has thoroughly spoofed cowboy William S. Hart.
The latest Allan Sherman material this scribe has seen is the following 1970 appearance at UCLA.
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog respectfully tip our hats to Allan Sherman - and an old friend who gave us a splendid 120 minute cassette of the song parody king in concert way back when. Miss you!
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.
One of our all-time favorites, the great Dick Van Dyke, has beat all the odds and lived to celebrate his 100th birthday today.
Can a person still dance well into his/her nineties? Yes.
Loved seeing Mr. Van Dyke with Chris Martin of Coldplay on The Jimmy Kimmel Show last year.
Dick Van Dyke's appearance on the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson was a hoot!
Many of us 1950's kids enjoyed a thrilling experience of big screen fun back in 1964 when Disney's Mary Poppins, featuring Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke (in multiple roles) and painterly special effects/animation and live-action combos by the super-talented likes of Ub Iwerks and Peter Ellenshaw, hit movie theatres.
Before Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke made his silver screen debut in the Bye-Bye Birdie, the movie version of the 1960 Broadway hit he starred in (and won a Tony for).
While Ann-Margret is nothing less than amazing and Paul Lynde is, as usual, hilarious in the 1963 Bye Bye Birdie movie, can't say this writer likes it anywhere near as much as Dick Van Dyke's other films, starring TV shows (including the 1976 variety program Van Dyke & Company), and appearances on such programs as The Carol Burnett Show.
After Mary Poppins, Dick went on to star in a series of enjoyable movies.
There's something about his physical comedy that gets this slapstick fan thinking of Charley Parrott Chase.
Dick starred in Carl Reiner's The Comic, a tragicomedy about an egocentric silent screen comedian. While the mannerisms appear to be based on Stan Laurel, who Dick knew quite well, this silent movie buff is convinced that it's all about Larry Semon (1889-1928), the otherworldly little comic whose frequent co-stars included Babe Hardy . . . and sometimes Stan Laurel.
After these movies, there was a second Dick Van Dyke show, co-starring Hope Lange from TV's take on The Ghost & Mrs. Muir and Broadway musical star Nancy Dussault, in the early 1970's.
Produced by Carl Reiner, The New Dick Van Dyke Show has its moments, but does not feature as deep and exceptional a supporting cast as Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie, Richard Deacon, Jerry Paris and Ann Morgan Guilbert in the 1961-1966 show.
Dick first made his name on TV hosting CBS Cartoon Theatre. That's right - Dick Van Dyke, who could resemble a super-rubbery cartoon character animated by Jim Tyer, introduced Terrytoons. Thanks, Barry Siegel Film Archives, for the following!
The Dick Van Dyke Show remains my favorite of all sitcoms, along with The Addams Family, Bob Newhart's first show and the first season or two of Get Smart!
The Dick Van Dyke Show episode in which Rob Petrie the deejay does a 100 hour marathon cracks me up.
Decades later, in the 1990's, Dick Van Dyke would co-star with his son Barry in a medical whodunit show, Diagnosis: Murder. My father, an avid fan of mysteries and whodunits, loved it.
Strikes this writer as appropriate that tonight, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum will be screening Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL on Dick's 100th birthday. Mr. Van Dyke knew Buster and Stan Laurel; all three brought countless laughs to a weary, hurting, troubled world.
As big fans of Jay Ward and Bill Scott, we've posted about Jay Ward Productions on many occasions.
On the natal anniversary of Jay Ward, we're thrilled and delighted to spotlight his studio's creative, imaginative, satiric and funny animated shows again!
The great Jay Ward was born in San Francisco on September 20, 1920.
First and foremost, the gang here insists that readers purchase The Moose That Roared painstakingly researched and entertainingly written history of Jay Ward Productions by character actor-voice artist-impressionist and film/radio/animation historian Keith Scott.
The Jay Ward Productions legacy of hilarious cartoons began in Berkeley back in the late 1940's with CRUSADER RABBIT, produced by Jay and written in mass quantities by Alex Anderson, nephew of Terrytoons producer Paul Terry.
Alex Anderson, who wrote a gazillion episodes of Crusader Rabbit elaborates:
After a few pilots that didn't sell, most interestingly The Watts Gnu Show, the next Jay Ward series on TV was. . .
Rocky & His Friends!
At first the series was Rocky & His Friends - Adventures of Bullwinkle & Rocky with Fractured Fairy Tales or Aesop & Son and Peabody's Improbable History.
It would subsequently air in the early 1960's on Sunday prime time as The Bullwinkle Show.
Of the Jay Ward Productions, especially love Fractured Fairy Tales and the incredible roster of character actors/voice talents - Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Frees, Bill Conrad, Daws Butler, Edward Everett Horton, Hans Conried, Charlie Ruggles, Walter Tetley, Hal Smith, Chris Allen and more.
Are we fans of Fractured Fairy Tales here? Yes. Let's watch a slew of them!
Also enjoy the cousin to the Fractured Fairy Tales series, Aesop & Son.
Also incredibly funny: Peabody’s Improbable History!
Another favorite is Dudley Do Right.
Especially love the long unaired "Stokey The Bear" episode.
Even the lesser-known Jay Ward Productions series, such as Hoppity Hooper, are frequently wonderful, in large part due to the incredible voice talents (Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Frees, Bill Conrad, Daws Butler, Edward Everett Horton, Charlie Ruggles, Walter Tetley) and the consistently brilliant comedy writing by the talented team of writers: Lloyd Turner, Allen Burns, Chris Hayward, Chris Jenkyns, Jim Critchfield and George Atkins.
Hans Conried, fresh off his stretch as a frequent guest on Ernie Kovacs' surreal take on game shows Take A Good Look, was Fractured Flickers' very reluctant host. Fractured Flickers featured incredibly funny voice acting throughout by Jay Ward regulars Bill Scott, June Foray and Paul Frees.
In this cartoon buff's opinion, the last outstanding animated series made for television until The Simpsons debuted as segments on The Tracey Ullman Show was George Of The Jungle.
The befuddled apeman, Tom Slick and Super Chicken always get this avid Jay Ward aficionado ROFL.
After George Of The Jungle, the Jay Ward Studio made numerous commercials and a few pilots.
The last was RAH RAH WOOZY in 1980. Imagine how much more fun Saturday morning would have been had the networks bought the Jay Ward pilots (especially Fang The Wonder Dog) and they were the rare non-Filmation or non-HB series then.
How do we finish a Jay Ward tribute? Hmmmm . . . with Amber Jones’ documentary on Jay’s co-producer, head writer, colleague and pal Bill Scott, the voice of numerous Jay Ward characters!
Is it great to see blazing animation and film history luminaries from Mark Evanier to Mark Kausler to Keith Scott to Frank Welker to Will Ryan, Corey Burton, Frank Welker, Billy West, June Foray, Daws Butler, Jay Ward, Skip Craig, Jymn Magon, Brian Cummings and more? Yes! Is the writer of this blog pleased to be in the credits? Yes!
In the oddest of odd coincidences, our comedy-centric beat recently has been focused on late night TV - and behold, big time changes are underway in that world.
The latest and not greatest is that Stephen Colbert has been canned by the pathetic craven cowards and greedy bastards at CBS and Paramount. CBS' not so grand poobahs, very likely smarting over Colbert's criticism of the pending merger of Paramount Media and Skydance Global, will pull the plug on the show when the Late Show host's contract expires next May.
That said, as we stifle no small degree of anger, disgust, contempt and revulsion towards CBS, Paramount, Shari Redstone and the Ellisons (Larry and David), we continue our series Saluting The Heroes Of Late Night TV.
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was the biggest thing in showbiz, so big that The Beach Boys devoted a song to him. This ditty is as catchy as can be and even the nasal vocals of Mike Love are enjoyable! We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog agree wholeheartedly with Brian Wilson's assessment, as Johnny was the coolest guy ever, especially in his 1960's and 1970's heydey as The King Of Late Night. Reportedly, Johnny HATED the song, but what the heck, it's our blog, so here it is.
There are innumerable extremely funny Carson clips, even with so many of the 1960's shows still missing - WAY too many Tonight Shows were taped over.
Herrrrrrrrre's Johnny, first with vocalist and actor (then on the Daniel Boone TV series), Ed Ames.
Can't believe I forgot all about Johnny's hilarious routine with Jack "Joe Friday" Webb from a 1968 Tonight Show. As Webb's radio shows (Pat Novak For Hire and Dragnet) and his guest star appearance on an episode of All Star Revue starring the wacky Ritz Brothers indicate, he possessed a wry sense of humor.
Do we miss the ridiculously talented Betty White, always flat-out hilarious on The Tonight Show with Johnny and other hosts? Yes. Did Betty ever get the opportunity to be a Tonight Show guest host? I don't know, but that would have been great.
Today we pay tribute to the many terrific stand-up comedians seen frequently on Carson and Letterman (note with the exception of Groucho, there weren't tons of comics on Dick Cavett's show, at least in his 1960's and early 1970's incarnation which aired between 10:00 p.m. and late night).
Johnny Carson's Tonight evolved into a showcase for stand-up comedians.
George Carlin, with Richard Pryor the best of the monologists, actually guest hosted The Tonight Show, as did Groucho Marx, Mort Sahl and Bob Newhart.
Johnny often featured his contemporaries in the standup world: Jackie Mason, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart and, especially, Rodney Dangerfield.
Richard Pryor, most trenchant of all stand-up philosophers, was a frequent guest on both the Carson and Letterman shows.
As was Stephen Wright.
One of the outstanding albeit lesser-known stand-up philosophers was the excellent Native American comedian and actor Charlie Hill, featured along with Robin Williams on The Richard Pryor Show.
Among the satirists seen on Late Night With David Letterman: Bill Hicks (1962-1994).
Sam Kinison, friend and cohort of Bill Hicks, brought his incendiary Pentecostal preacher persona and severe fallout from multiple bad marriages to the stand-up world.
In another galaxy of the stand-up comedy universe: Mitch Hedberg (1968-2005).
And then there was Norm, like Mitch Hedberg an original thinker with a singular view of the world.
Here, David Letterman pays tribute to his friend (and friend of all late-night TV shows) Robin Williams.
Robin cracked up Johnny and David and thus got dozens of appearances on their shows.
Here's the monologue that got Stephen Colbert, here sporting a mustache reminiscent of the octogenarian version of Groucho Marx, fired. Colbert is correct in his assessment that CBS' craven 16 million settlement of a frivolous lawsuit by Off-Brand Orbán was, indeed, a BIG FAT BRIBE.
Desperately hoping the merger will get FCC approval, CBS announced that the decision to cancel Late Night With Stephen Colbert is for "financial reasons." Even given that high-rated late night TV shows don't bring in anywhere near the dough-re-me they did in the past, ESPECIALLY during the 1960's heydey of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, to suggest that this decision is not at all politically motivated remains laughable.
The behavior of CBS/Paramount over the potential merger with Sundance (producers of dumb, lousy action flicks) and the pusillanimous actions of the cowards at Columbia University and the Paul Weiss law firm, alas, is par for the course these days.
And, yes, Your Correspondent makes this observation even after having listened to Keith Olbermann's extended excoriation of Colbert, the guy who followed David Letterman at the CBS Late Show franchise. It would be an understatement to suggest that Mr. Olbermann, both the most erudite and scathing of commentators, vehemently dislikes Mr. Colbert.
At CBS, 60 Minutes, the show the "don't you mess with me" likes of Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley and Harry Reasoner worked on, will be next to go.
That's because in 2025, plummeting television viewership and the related popularity of streaming with young viewers has dramatically reduced the potential for TV shows, including news-related programs which in the past were loss leaders for the networks, to make not just the big bucks but ANY bucks.
As far as the Paramount/CBS 16 million bribe by brazen, lily-livered and yellow-bellied appeasers of fascists is concerned, no doubt those pocket-lining Teapot Dome boys of 100+ years ago would say "geeeeees, Louise, can you guys tone down the sleazy corruption, graft and grift just a smidge?"
Rant over! In closing, thanks, readers, for your patience. After realizing that it appears to be the end of the road for the format which began with Steve Allen and hit its high water mark with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and David Letterman - while admitting that his own viewing of Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live over the past decade has invariably been via YouTube, NOT at time of broadcast - we shall return next weekend with the fourth installment of Saluting The Heroes Of Late Night TV.
