Holding pattern

Since I’m at the halfway point before Thrilling Days of Yesteryear makes its official move to the brand-spanking-new WordPress blog in October, I thought I’d post this to let you know why TDOY went silent this week.

I had planned to have a few reviews up but the post I penciled in for Monday got pushed to the side due to a Radio Spirits liner notes project I was trying to complete.  That activity took place all weekend, the time I utilize to plan what will go up on the blog for the week.  With my RS assignment completed, I had to further postpone posts because of that Irma thing (we were a lot luckier than some of our fellow Georgians in that our electricity didn’t go on vacation during the storm…but it did come and go a few times, interfering with the movie I was trying to watch) …and then a pair of doctor appointments (for the patriarch of Rancho Yesteryear, mi padre) ate up some more time.  I finally said ta heck wid it and vowed to get back to the blogging thing Monday.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a little hammering-and-nailing at the new site; there are close to 300 classic TDOY posts up there now, some with new photos added and a few tweaks and edits here and there.  I’ve also been doing a little pruning here at the old blog; I’ve made some editorial decisions about what to transfer and what to destroy—so if it looks as if the old blog has lost a little weight that’s the reason.  It’s simply going to be too Herculean a task to transfer everything to the new site, and some past posts will have to sit in the waiting room (most appropriate in light of the medical appointments this week) while others will simply vanish into the blogosphere, accessible only for those patient to sift through archive.org.

So that’s how things stand—come back by next week and I’ll have a thing or two to bend your ear about.  Have a great weekend, cartooners!

Don’t touch that dial!

If you were going to request that a “coffee table book” be written on old-time radio, I can’t think of a more suitable author than my fellow Radio Spirits contributor and nostalgia expert Martin Grams, Jr.  I’ve joked in the past that my pal Martin is “the Isaac Asimov of OTR books,” due to his prolific output of tomes on that subject.  Honest to my grandma, every time I’m in communication with the guy he seems to be in the middle of writing yet another invaluable pop culture reference contribution.  You’ll find many of his books—ranging on topics from radio’s Duffy’s Tavern to TV’s The Time Tunnel—for sale at his website…and this November 1, he’ll add another title to his overstuffed bookshelf with The Top 100 Classic Radio Shows, co-written with Radio Spirits founder Carl Amari.

The end papers for the book.  To paraphrase A Date With Judy's Oogie Pringle, "they look sna-a-zzy!"

(Someone once asked me to explain the Asimov reference—I got the idea from M*A*S*H actor Alan Alda, who, after encountering the science fiction legend at a social gathering, jokingly asked: “Shouldn’t you be writing a book somewhere?”)

When Ann Rutherford took over for Penny Singleton on
Blondie in March of 1949, she adopted Penny's bleached-blonde
tresses, too.  At left is Arthur "Dagwood" Lake and in the
middle is Jeffrey Silver (as son Alexander).

Coffee table books, as a rule, are rather simple in content (they serve mostly to show off photographs and/or illustrations), and serve as light reading for the occupants of the home or visitors to same—though they can be pressed into service to jump-start a little conversation at a party or get-together.  You’ll get much, much more with Top 100 Classic Radio Shows, however; it’s packed to the rafters with important history on a range of radio favorites from Abbott & Costello to X-Minus One, and includes loads of trivial ephemera to go along with its profuse presentation of photographs.

The book is split into six sections: Comedy, Drama, Mystery & Detective, Sci-Fi & Kids, Variety, and Western & Adventure.  For each show, the reader is provided with a cast list, airdates, and additional program background; many of the shows discussed also feature a “Did You Know?” section which offers up tantalizing trivia for those of us who eat that sort of thing up with a spoon.  Included with Top 100 Classic Radio Shows are three CDs with vintage old-time radio programming (not dissimilar to the bonus disc that accompanied Leonard Maltin’s The Great American Broadcast) and a website where you can download additional broadcasts (mentioned in “call-outs” in the sections of the shows listed) for additional hours of listening enjoyment. 

Martin was swell enough to send me a .pdf proof of the book (I don’t have a coffee table—just an ottoman) and what I saw in that digital copy convinced me that fans of old-time radio will not want to be left out when the big book hits the streets in November.  Simply put, it strikes the perfect balance between essential and informative OTR reference material and page-turning pictorial.  (And really—how many more nature books can you fit on your table anyway?)  Pre-order this one at an Amazon near you.

“Well…how-dee do!”

Rick Mitz, author of The Great TV Sitcom Book, once joked that Amos ‘n’ Andy constituted the “two dirty words” of American broadcasting (and he even thought the “’n’” suspect).  I myself refer to the program as “the third rail” of old-time radio, insomuch as the medium’s first true phenomenon has been clouded with controversy ever since its premiere over Chicago’s WMAQ on March 19, 1928 (the show went national over NBC’s Red network in August of 1929) and stayed with the show long after it left the airwaves on November 25, 1960.  Created by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, two vaudeville performers who had a talent for black dialect, the long-running serial/sitcom began as Sam ‘n’ Henry over rival Windy City station WGN in 1926; the two men left the following year after a dispute with the station…and since they were unable to use the “Sam ‘n’ Henry” name (it was still owned by WGN) they changed the name of the characters to their better known alliterative association.

Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll

Amos ‘n’ Andy was one of the Golden Age of Radio’s most durable programs in addition to most popular.  In its early years (1928-43) it was a comedy serial, and its history is documented in a first-rate McFarland book penned by my fellow Radio Spirits scribe Elizabeth McLeod, The Original Amos ‘n’ Andy.  (McLeod has always championed that the serialized Amos ‘n’ Andy presented its characters in a sympathetic fashion—that it was only when the show adopted its sitcom format that the racial stereotypes became more blatant.)  From 1943 to 1955, it was presented as a weekly half-hour sitcom, and from 1954 to 1960, the show played out its waning radio years as The Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall—a weeknight program with Gosden and Correll performing skits as their characters while spinning records as disc jockeys.  Amos ‘n’ Andy made the eventual transition to television (casting African-American performers in the title and supporting roles, of course) in 1951 but CBS-TV would cancel the series two years later despite its popularity, under protest from organizations like the NAACP…and in 1966, CBS completely removed Amos ‘n’ Andy from its syndication package.  (The Wikipedia entry for Amos ‘n’ Andy notes that Rejoice TV, “a small independent television and Internet network in Houston,” reran the show in 2012…though there’s scant mention as to whether CBS, which purchased the rights to the series from its creators in 1948, brought in their team of attorneys.)

With the cancellation of The Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll weren’t quite ready to abandon the characters that made them famous…and with the prompting of ABC, anxious to duplicate the success of their hit animated series The Flintstones, they came up with an idea that would allow them to continue the show in cartoon form.  It was not a new idea; a cartoon version of Amos ‘n’ Andy had actually been attempted as far back as 1934 at the Van Beuren Studios but after two entries (The Rasslin’ Match and The Lion Tamer) the series was abandoned.  This time around, Freeman and Charlie would lend their characterizations to a pair of anthropomorphic animals…and Calvin and the Colonel was born.

Charlie & Gos with their cartoon counterparts

The “Colonel” was Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon (voiced by Gosden), a crafty Kingfish-like fox who ostensibly ran a real estate firm but more often than not was involved in any number of get-rich-quick schemes.  Like his radio counterpart, the Colonel possessed a streak of larceny and many of the Calvin and Colonel episodes would find the character cooling his heels in the cartoon animal hoosegow.  The “Andy” of the series was Calvin J. Burnside (cartoon characters seem awfully fond of “J” as a middle initial for some reason), a dimwitted bear (Correll) who, depending on the situation, either served as the Colonel’s patsy or confederate in whatever scheme Klaxon had cooking on the burner.  Calvin and the Colonel didn’t really have an “Amos” character (though Andrew “Grover” Leal has posited that that function was fulfilled in the minor character of “Gloria,” Calvin’s manicurist girlfriend voiced by Gloria Blondell) but by the time Amos ‘n’ Andy had reached its radio sitcom stage the character of Amos Jones had started to take a backseat to the Kingfish-Andy shenanigans anyway.  (An acquaintance of mine who had just started listening to the radio show once asked me: “Why isn’t this series called Kingfish ‘n’ Andy?”)

The Colonel had a Sapphire-like spouse in Maggie Belle (voiced by Virginia Gregg)—although her name is spelled “Maggi Belle” in the show’s closing credits, I’m going to go with “Maggie.”  Instead of having to put up with a mother-in-law like the Kingfish, Colonel Klaxon suffered under the domineering thumb of Susan Culpepper (Beatrice Kay)—Maggie Belle’s sister, affectionately known as “Sister Sue.”  The character of Maggie Belle is not one of Ginny’s finest thespic hours, mostly because of the severe limitations of the role (she’s there to be a constant scold to the Colonel and little else) …but Kay doesn’t come off that much better (though I do giggle when she calls The Colonel an “old foof”).  I believe this can be explained by the fact that the radio counterparts of Sapphire and “Mama” were also rather thinly written…yet I wish they had considered letting Ernestine Wade and/or Amanda Randolph perform the Maggie Belle/Sister Sue roles to give their cartoon counterparts a little more oomph.  (I can certainly understand the reluctance to do this, though.)  The remaining character on Calvin and the Colonel was “Judge” Oliver Wendell Clutch (Paul Frees)—a shady lawyer (appropriately portrayed in weasel form) who the Colonel was always asking for advice (Clutch was the show’s Stonewall/Algonquin J. Calhoun counterpart).

Bob Mosher & Joe Connelly

Calvin and the Colonel was produced by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher through their company Kayro Productions…and if it seems a little odd that the two men responsible for Leave it to Beaver and The Munsters would get involved with a project like this, it’s because Connelly and Mosher not only wrote many of the original half-hour Amos ‘n’ Andy radio scripts but the TV ones as well.  Many of the Calvin and Colonel teleplays are credited to Joe and Bob, mostly because they dusted off a lot of their earlier Amos ‘n’ Andy efforts and recycled them for their “funny animals.”  Even though Amos ‘n’ Andy earned a fair share of criticism for promoting unflattering racial stereotypes, there was never any real malice in the program’s content—you could read the scripts without the black dialect and still enjoy a fitfully funny sitcom…which is why Calvin and the Colonel works so well, in my opinion.  The only thing that gave me pause about the animated series was that Calvin seemed to have an eye for a lot of females who were not of the ursine persuasion (I chortled at the thought of fundamentalists having a field day with this dating “outside of his species”) though he does get engaged to a female bear in “Calvin’s Glamour Girl.”

My interest in Calvin and the Colonel was stoked by the recent Oldies.com purchase of three volumes of the show released by Alpha Video.  I’d previously watched an episode or two at YouTube, but the more episodes I tuck under my belt the more I enjoy this pleasurable little series.  I’ll state right off the bat that this is due in large part to my familiarity with the source material, but as someone who loves old-time radio I think like-minded folks will follow my lead.  It’s quite hooty hearing the voices of Kingfish and Andy emanate from a fox and a bear, and in addition to the regular cast you’ll hear OTR/character favorites (in various episodes) like Joe Flynn, Jesse White, Frank Nelson, Barney Phillips, Will Wright, June Foray, Howard McNear, Hans Conried, Charlie Cantor, Frank Gerstle, Marvin Miller, Elvia Allman, Forrest Lewis, Olan Soule, and Peter Leeds.  (“It’s too piercing, man…too piercing.”)

It’s television animation, of course, but despite the limited budget the style of Calvin and the Colonel is reminiscent of that in the creations of Jay Ward (Rocky and His Friends) or Total Television (King Leonardo, Underdog).  A 2006 post at Michael Sporn Animation notes that the company who produced Calvin was TV Cartoons/Creston Studios (who also did the non-Jay Ward version of Crusader Rabbit), and the roster of talent that cranked out the installments included Chuck McKimson, Norm Gottfredson, Lee Mishkin, Phil Roman, John Sparey, Ben Washam, Tom McDonald, Volus Jones, Dave Weidman, Jim Davis, and Bob Bemiller—“They were more WB & Disney people unlike the Hanna Barbera shows which initially seemed to use more of their MGM cohorts.”

That post also observes that Calvin and the Colonel was the “second prime time show to premiere” after The Flintstones—which I don’t think is entirely accurate if The Bugs Bunny Show is worked into the equation (you can argue that the animation on Bugs had already appeared in motion picture theatres…but the segments that introduced the cartoons had not).  (Television Obscurities notes that CBS Cartoon Theater even predated The Flintstones by four years—though like Bugs, the show featured shorts previously unspooled in theatres.)  It is accurate to say that the success of that “modern Stone Age family” ushered in a slew of prime-time cartoon efforts in the 1961-62 season, with Calvin joined by the premiers of The Bullwinkle Show (okay, technically a continuation of Rocky and His Friends), The Alvin Show, and Top Cat.  Calvin only lasted two months in its 8:30pm Tuesday slot (stiff competition from Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) before it returned in January of the following year to a Saturday time slot (7:30pm) to fulfill its obligation to sponsor Lever Brothers.  It then made Saturday a permanent home—mornings, that is—for another year before fading from the small screen landscape.

Calvin and The Colonel working for the sponsor.

Though produced in color, Calvin and the Colonel originally aired in black-and-white…which is why so many of the prints you’ll find at YouTube and elsewhere are presented in monochromatic form (most of the sources I’ve consulted question as to whether the series was ever syndicated), except for the program’s inaugural episode, “The Television Job”…

…which I will graciously share here with you until some hoser pulls the YouTube plug.  “Job” (the black-and-white version), “The Polka Dot Bandit,” “Thanksgiving Dinner,” and “The Costume Ball” are featured on Alpha’s first volume of the series, while Volume 2 includes “Sycamore Lodge,” “Wheeling and Dealing,” “Sister Sue’s Sweetheart,” and “Nephew Newton’s Fortune.”  (“Wheeling” is one of my favorite Calvin outings—The Colonel is under orders from the women in his life to ship Nephew Newton’s car to him out on the West Coast…but he and Calvin have a mishap that results in Newton's ride being filled with cement.  It’s an unusual episode in that The Colonel emerges victorious in this one—at the end of the show, he breaks the fourth wall as he enjoys breakfast in bed: “I know I didn’t earn all this love and affection, but…I’m a married man, so I’m gonna take what little I can get.”)

But if you’re like me and there’s often too much month at the end of the money, Volume 3 is the Alpha Calvin and the Colonel collection is the one you should get—it features four color episodes in “The Colonel’s Old Flame,” “Sister Sue and the Police Captain” (this one was an episode I watched on YouTube—in color!—but it has apparently been yanked), “Calvin’s Glamour Girl,” and “Colonel Out-Foxes Himself.”  This last one is very funny (it’s the one on which I heard Conried and Cantor), as The Colonel attempts “The Pocketbook Swindle” after it’s been pulled on him…with unsuccessful results.  Animation history king Jerry Beck calls the show “illustrated radio” …which is certainly fair, though I’ve heard the same term applied to much of the Hanna-Barbera product as well, and Calvin and the Colonel can certainly hold its own with Huck, Yogi, and the rest of my childhood heroes.

I told Grover I'd only buy these dolls if one of them said "Holy mackerel, Calvin!"

Dell Comics published two Calvin and the Colonel comic books in 1962 (one of which was in their “Four Color” series, which is why the second issue was labeled “#2”) and Milton Bradley released a board game to capitalize on the (non)popularity of the program (Leal also notes that there were “Calvin” and “The Colonel” dolls available for purchase—they talk, too!—and Beck has published this image of a C&C coloring book)—you can find the board game/comic books on eBay, if you’re curious.  I’d settle for a DVD release of the complete series only because I believe it’s much better than its reputation and it doesn’t deserve its current obscurity.

The spice of the program

In 1919, when Earle W. Hammons founded Educational Pictures, the motion picture studio was dedicated to doing what was indicated in its title—making films for schools.  This didn’t work out too well for E.W., so Educational switched to comedy…and enjoyed great success in the 1920s as a fun factory, with successful generators of mirth like Lloyd Hamilton and Lupino Lane working under its banner.  By the 1930s, however, Educational’s fortunes had changed a bit as Leonard Maltin relates in Selected Short Subjects:

Earle W. Hammons

If one searched for a key word to describe the Educational comedies of the 1930s, the best one might be “cheap.”  Educational films almost always looked cheap, even though they were made in most cases by seasoned veterans.  One problem was the claustrophobia of shooting at the company’s eastern studio in Astoria, Long Island.  In addition, one suspects that the largest chunk of the small budgets went to pay the stars’ salaries, leaving very little for sets, costumes, and technical frills.  Nevertheless, the comedies (which were distributed by 20th Century Fox) always made money, despite the fact that the quality of the material was often downright poor.

I should point out here that film historian/friend of the blog Richard M. Roberts is hard at work writing a reference tome on the history of Educational Pictures similar to his splendid compendium on the Hal Roach Studios, Smile Guaranteed: Past Humor, Present Laughter, and I strongly suspect he’ll have a (most welcomed) dissenting opinion (I know, for example, he disputes Mr. Maltin's "cheap" observation with regards to Buster Keaton's oeuvre at the studio) .  For that matter, I’ve watched several of Harry Langdon’s Educational shorts and found some of them darned entertaining.

Ad copy for Educational in that era touted “the best of the old comedy favorites…the brightest of the new stars.”  It was a stage stop for folks on their way up and old-timers on their way down.  Notable among the veterans were Langdon, Mack Sennett (behind the camera), and Keaton (whose Educational shorts are available on the Kino-Lorber Blu-ray/DVD release Lost Keaton), with funsters like Milton Berle, Imogene Coca, and Danny Kaye numbering among the newcomers.  Maltin further observes: “There were also vaudevillians and stage comedians like Ernest Truex, Tom Howard & George Shelton, Buster West & Tom Patricola, Tim & Irene Ryan, and Joe Cook, who were not down on their luck, but whose stage success meant little in the movie world.”

Charlotte Greenwood in Girls Will Be Boys

“It took the hilarious dialect comedy of young Danny Kaye, in films like Getting an Eyeful, the contagious good-naturedness of Joe Cook, or the sheer professionalism of Charlotte Greenwood to overcome bad scripts,” Maltin writes in assessing the quality of Educational’s product.  Greenwood, a lanky comedienne who you might remember as “Aunt Eller” in the 1955 movie adaptation of Oklahoma!, is represented on a new release from Alpha Video—Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies, Volume 2—with a very funny Educational effort, Girls Will Be Boys (1931).  Charlotte plays a housewife who agrees to swap jobs with her husband (Vernon Dent) …unaware that her hubby is now employed as a piano mover.  There’s a lot of sprightly physical comedy in this one (Char channel her inner The Music Box), and Greenwood delivers some nice wisecracks (it’s also fun to see Dent—who later worked alongside his old colleague Harry Langdon in shorts at Educational—as a milquetoast type) courtesy of a script from Paul Girard Smith and Al Boasberg.  (‘Snub’ Pollard also appears in a small role!)  I don’t know what it was about Charlotte, but she demonstrated an ability to shine even with the weakest material—her antics alongside Buster Keaton in his Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931) are a testament to this.

Publicity shot of Marjorie Beebe (and non-talking dog)

The copy on the DVD box describes Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies, Volume 2 as containing “zany, hilarious, and just plain bizarre shorts from the anything-goes pre-Code era.”  Ghost Parade (1931) certainly qualifies for the “just plain bizarre” designation; this Mack Sennett-directed effort stars Andy Clyde in his ‘Pop’ Martin persona, having to deal with the wackiness in a haunted house that previously belonged to his Civil War ancestor.  And by wackiness, I mean the likes of talking dogs (this kind of tickled me, to be honest—when one of the characters imparts some info to Andy he remarks “I know…the dog told me”), xylophone-playing ghosts, and menacing gorillas (played by Sennett’s big-monkey-for-hire Charles Gemora) running amuck in “Moseby Mansion.”  Harry Gribbon (as a police detective) and Marjorie Beebe (as Andy’s secretary) provide solid support (both were big stars at Sennett during Mack’s talkie era); Sennett distributed his comedies with Educational from 1928 to 1932, then switched to Paramount Publix until 1933.

James Gleason, Harry Gribbon, and Mae Busch

Harry Gribbon returns as prizefighter “Ham Hand McShelly” in 1932’s High Hats and Low Blows—not an Educational comedy, but an RKO Pathé two-reeler that was the sixth and final entry in the brief “Rufftown” franchise based on the stories by Arthur ‘Bugs’ Bear (which began in 1931 with When Canaries Sang Bass).  James “Iz zat so?” Gleason played manager Danny Ruff in these comedy shorts, and in High Hats he’s asked by a pal (Tom McGuire) who’s come into money to crash a tony society affair being sponsored by his wife (Maude Truax).  Gleason, Gribbon, and (the ever popular) Mae Busch show up pretending to be society swells, and the party eventually plays host to an exhibition bout between Gribbon and butler Irving Bacon.  I enjoyed this little two-reeler, particularly the scene where Gleason’s bluff is called by party attendee Gertrude Astor—who plays along with Jimmy’s charade until she tells him his bum of a pugilist needs to “stop leading with his chin.”

The remaining shorts on Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies, Volume 2—So This is Marriage (1929) and The Beauties (1930)—resemble those Vitaphone two-reelers that often air on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ from time to time; they’re pleasant if unmemorable, though Beauties does have a saving grace in that Billy Gilbert (billed as “Billie”) generates many chuckles as a vengeance-obsessed man whose constant refrain of “For 400 years the blood of a Castilian has run through my veins” gets funnier and funnier with repetition.  The Messenger Boy (1931) stars Benny Rubin as the titular character; he’s hired to look after a brat on behalf of a nightclub performer (Marie Wills), which results in the darling little tot proceeds destroying his tiny automobile.  Later, Rubin must don drag and perform in an act with apache dancers John Sinclair and Bud Jamison (who has a propensity to repel folks due to his onion-eating regimen).  If you like Jewish dialect humor you’ll get a kick out of Messenger…but the high point for me was hearing Rubin use a favorite gag with which I have become most familiar thanks to the Three Stooges (“Tell me your name so I can tell your mother…”  “My mother knows my name!”).

Also new from Alpha Video is Blondes and Redheads: Pre-Code Comedy Classics, Volume 2—a follow-up to the first volume of Blondes and Redheads comedy shorts reviewed here on the blog in March of last year.  I couldn’t get through the entire disc as this was going to press…but this release includes the debut comedy in the franchise, Flirting in the Park (1933), and a very funny outing directed by Sam White in Wig-Wag (1935).  There’s just something about a guy (in this case, TDOY fave Grady Sutton) having to appear in drag that makes for great comedy (Some Like It Hot [1959] taught us this); Sutton is dragooned into the female masquerade by his pal Jack Mulhall, who’s scheming to make his fiancée jealous (not knowing of course, that the bride-to-be—played by Dorothy Granger—is already wise to the gag).  The icing on the cake in Wig-Wag is that it features plum roles for back-to-back Best Supporting Actress Oscar winners: Hattie McDaniel plays the family maid (and does a nifty fall into a wedding cake—though it may have been a stuntwoman) and Jane Darwell is Mulhall’s mother, who at one point takes a tumble down a flight of stairs (again—work for a double) while carrying a tiny dog in her arms.  (Bud Jamison is in this short, too, as a butler—the bewildered look Bud gives Grady as Sutton keeps pulling “springs” out of his corset is gold, Jerry.)

Many thanks to Brian Krey at Alpha Video for providing me the screeners (and encouraging my behavior with regards to both the blog and the liner notes I do for Radio Spirits); Brian has informed me that a third volume of Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies will be coming classic movie fans’ way in May, and I’m most looking forward to it.

“I wanna tell ya—I’m thrilled to be here!”

One night in 1973, legendary comedian Bob Hope sneaked into the NBC studios to attend a taping of The Dean Martin Show, where fellow mirthmaker Don Rickles (who we sadly said good bye to this month) was appearing.  The studio audience applauded wildly upon spotting Hope, and when the applause had died down Rickles cracked: “Well, the war must be over.”  Despite a lengthy show business career that encompassed stage, screen, radio and TV, the jokester born Leslie Townes Hope in 1903 established a legacy “performing United Service Organizations (USO) shows to entertain active duty American military personnel (he made 57 tours for the USO between 1941 and 1991),” as referenced at Wikipedia.  I don’t have the quote handy (nor can I give proper attribution, sad to report) but the old joke went something like “It’s not officially a war until Bob Hope shows up.”

Bob Hope’s dedication to “entertaining the troops” had its origins in radio, when on his May 6, 1941 broadcast he performed at March Field, California.  Hope never wavered from his earnest belief that “GIs are the greatest audiences in the world,” and I take him at his word that he was sincerely enthusiastic about the goodwill that resulted from his many trips overseas.  But a comedian also thrives on being loved and adored, and a complicated man like Bob (once described by his one-time manager Elliott Kozak as “the most self-centered man” he’d ever known) no doubt fed on the approval from what he admittedly referred to as “captive audiences.”  (My comedy idol Fred Allen once joked that his rival “reeked of” self-confidence.)

Santa, Linda Bennett, Dick Albers, Ann-Margret, Bob Hope

Hope’s television specials performing on USO shows at Christmas time were always tops in the ratings, and this May 2, Time Life is releasing a three-disc DVD set, Bob Hope Salutes the Troops.  My pal Michael Krause at Foundry Communications was generous enough to send me a screener, which features six telecasts that originally aired between 1963 and 1991.  I should be honest: I had reservations about watching these shows—not due to any political differences (though I can state with confidence that Bob and I have differing views with regards to Vietnam), but because I remember watching the entertainer’s small screen specials in the past and wondering why the man whose movies I adored as a kid (and still do) no longer seemed all that funny.  As author Kliph Nesteroff posits in The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy:

By the mid-1960s Hope was one of the wealthiest men in America and one of the largest private landowners in California.  Radio star, television star, movie star—he’d achieved every possible show business goal.  There was nothing left.  And without ambition driving him, the quality of his comedy plummeted.  He was still doing up to six television specials each year, but he was phoning it in.

Dolores Hope (in green) welcomes her husband's troupe home in 1969; Hope's philandering was legendary in the business, and some say he went overseas in the first place so he could fool around out of sight of Mrs. Hope.  (Incidentally, you might recognize that couple to Dolores' right.)

Bob channels Maynard G. Krebs.

Despite the questionable quality of his TV work (his dependence on cue cards, uninspired writing, etc.) I found a few nuggets among the dross.  The earliest special on this set is from January 16, 1963, as Bob and his troupe entertain audiences at nearly a dozen military bases in the Pacific.  Lana Turner is the big draw here, dancing the Bossa Nova and trading quips with Hope in a sketch that casts her as a captive in the clutches of an Asian warlord (Bob), but Janis Page is also in Bob’s entourage (she plays a counterculture chick in a WTF sketch with Bob as a bass-playing beatnik), as are singer/future orange juice pitchwoman Anita Bryant and Amedee Chabot—Miss USA at the time.  (Hope’s tendency to feature plenty of females in his shows was later satirized in the “Playboy bunnies” sequence in 1979’s Apocalypse Now.)  Hope’s radio sidekick, “Professor” Jerry Colonna, and Stan Freberg regular Peter Leeds handle much of the comedy along with Bob, with music by Les Brown and His Band of Renown. 

Lana Turner, Les Brown, Bob

I have always admired Les—not just because he began with Hope in his radio days (Les also brought along his band’s female vocalist, Doris Day), but because he was seemingly able to play Thanks for the Memory over and over and over again all those years without getting sick of it.  He figures in a funny exchange with Bob and Lana:

BOB: Les, have you been making overtures to Miss Turner?

LES: Bob…I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my career…

BOB: You wouldn’t, eh…well, have you been making goo-goo eyes at Miss Turner?

LES: Bob, I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my career…

BOB: Was that you in the hall in the hotel last night singing Fly Me to the Moon through her keyhole?

LES: Bob, I told you—I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my career…

LANA: Les…honey, why don’t you meet me after the show and we’ll have a nice, long talk…?

Brown glances at Bob…then glances at Lana…then breaks his baton in two, hands it to Bob, and walks off the stage arm-in-arm with Lana.  Doris Day credits Bob Hope with teaching her everything she knows about comedy, and it’s nice to see Les stuck around for a few classes, too.

Show business nepotism: a young soldier asks Bob if he can take a photo of one of the girls for the camp newspaper.  (That solider is Tony Hope, Bob's son.)

Peter Leeds then informs Bob there is no camp newspaper.  ("It's too piercing, Bob...too piercing.")

A January 15, 1965 telecast is next in the lineup—with Paige, Bryant, Colonna, Leeds and Brown all returning.  (Bryant attempts to seduce a pair of MP’s with You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You, which made me chortle considering her later morality crusade.)  Jill St. John, Hope’s co-star in 1967’s Eight on the Lam, leads off the eye candy in this one; there’s even an amusing exchange (and a prescient one) in which Jill answers Bob’s query as to how an intelligent girl like her (she had an I.Q. of 162) could play so many daffy redheads in the movies.  “Isn’t it ridiculous?” Bob asks her.

Something new has been added in the form of TDOY fave Jerry Colonna.

“Well, you’re still playing romantic leads—aren’t you?” St. John shoots back, echoing a concern many critics noticed at the time.  (St. John returns to make a guest appearance in a January 17, 1972 special; she’s fresh off the set of Diamonds are Forever, the 1971 James Bond film in which she played “Tiffany Case.”)  To me, the star of Hope’s 1965 Christmas special is the madcap Colonna; there are three routines featuring him and Bob in this telecast, all resonant of the splendid work they did during Hope’s radio years.  Bob, doing a monologue, notices that Jerry is reclining on a coach in the audience:

BOB: Pardon me, sir, but—who are you?

JERRY: I’m the base psychiatrist…

(Wild applause from crowd)

BOB: Well, you don’t look like a psychiatrist to me—I have a hunch you’re a fraud!

JERRY: That’s me—Sigmund Fraud!

BOB (to the audience): I think he shrank his own head… (To Colonna) What are you doing on a couch in my audience?

JERRY: Can you think of a better place to sleep?

A nice moment: Bob gets a hug from his son Kelly, who's stationed at a nearby base.  (Bob: "He's in civvies...I hope he's not AWOL...")

Ann-Margret

The Bob Hope Christmas Special: Around the World with the USO (01/16/69) is a great little special, and its appeal can be summed up in two words: Ann-Margret.  (Or is that one word?)  My Dad, not a Hope fan by any measure of the yardstick, has had a thing for Ann for many, many years (he often jokes that they “went to different schools together”) and Ann is entertainment with a capital “E” performing Dancing in the Streets.  My favorite part of this telecast, however, is Bob and The Golddiggers’ rendition of Perfect Gentleman—the show-stopping musical number performed by Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom in one of my favorite movie comedies, The Night They Raided Minsky’s.  Also appearing in this one are Linda Bennett (a one-time child actress who worked with Bob in The Seven Little Foys), ex-football-player-turned- warbler Rosey Grier, Penny Plummer (Miss World), and Honey, Ltd…as well as ol’ reliable Les and his Band.

I wasn't able to get a better screen grab of this...but that old fossil is four-star admiral John Sidney "Jack" McCain, Jr.  His son is John III, currently the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona...and also an old fossil.

Les, Bob (not less Bob)

Despite the approval of Bob’s “Christmas with the Troops” specials with TV audiences, the entertainer eventually found that the unpopularity of the Vietnam War discouraged a lot of entertainers from taking him up on an offer to hit the USO circuit—not to mention his own views on both the controversial conflict and the rise of the counterculture back home.  (Some of the bases began to reject the idea of the comedian performing there, and a 1969 appearance in Long Binh found the crowd of soldiers flipping the cameras the bird and giving power salutes.  None of this was shown on American TV, of course.)  But the celebrity wattage had dimmed a bit by the time The Bob Hope Christmas Special: Around the Globe with the U.S.O. aired on January 17, 1972.  This is the show that Jill St. John makes a guest appearance on, but the lineup includes luminaries such as Don Ho (three guesses as to what he performs—the first two don’t count), baseball’s Vida Blue, and former astronaut Alan Shepard.

They pre-empted The NBC Wednesday Night Mystery Movie for this?  Snoop Sisters fans revolt!

Redd Foxx, Bob

It’s fitting that Bob closes his time in Vietnam with a January 17, 1973 telecast that comes to a wow finish with a duet of Cabaret with Lola Falana and a nice retrospective of all the celebs who appeared with Hope on his past USO Christmas specials.  (It’s not all peaches and cream—the comedian is still doing stale jokes with people like football’s Roman Gabriel.)  But there is an amusing sketch with guest Redd Foxx (I’ll bet NBC put a gun to his head) that’s worth the price of admission:

BOB: Come on—crank it up and let’s get started here, huh?

REDD: Okay…if you want to work a man who’s old and…sick…and tired…

BOB: If you’re sick, how did you get in the Navy?

REDD: Instead of a physical, they gave me an autopsy…

BOB: Hey—can you imagine giving a man with my I.Q. a job like this?

REDD: Well, what’s your I.Q.?

BOB: Twenty-three…

REDD: Twenty-three?  I didn’t know you were a college man…

I realize I'm the only one who's going to find this amusing...but this lookalike duo from Louisville, KY are Cyb and Tricia Barnstable.  The twin sisters were later regulars (as The Bettys) on the short-lived sci-fi sitcom Quark.

Khrystyne Haje, Bob

Included on Bob Hope Salutes the Troops is a January 12, 1991 special, Bob Hope's Christmas Cheer in Saudi Arabia.  With a war everybody liked (well…almost everybody), Hope was able to persuade some big names to appear in this one: The Pointer Sisters (they sing I’m So Excited), Marie Osmond (Crazy), Ann Jillian, and Khrystyne Haje (Head of the Class), who does an amusing routine with Hope (I noticed that Bob, now in his late eighties, has cut back considerably on the leering with regards to his female guests) in which he mentions her environmental activism and in particular, her commitment to the California redwoods.  “You planted them…the least the rest of us could do is try and preserve them,” she cracks, producing a king-sized titter from your humble narrator.  Country singer Aaron Tippin is mentioned in the opening credits of this one though he’s nowhere to be found in the special…which is a shame, since they could have snipped a rather unfunny exchange between Bob and Johnny Bench and let Aaron do a tune or two.  Mrs. Hope, Dolores Reade, is also on hand; she was Bob’s only “Christmas cheer” in Saudi Arabia because the government wouldn’t let the other women in the country (they performed on U.S. naval vessels along the coast).

Ann and Bob duet on The Two of Us in the 1969 special...

...and Bob and Ann Jillian reprise the tune in 1991.

Barney Dean (behind Bob), Jerry, Tony Romano (behind Frances Langford), Patty Thomas

A bonus feature, Bob Hope: Memories of WWII, is also included on the Salutes the Troops collection; first airing in 1995, the Hopes reminisce about Bob’s early years “doing his bit” for WW2 and his first USO tour.  Frances Langford and Patty Thomas are also on hand…though curiously, they’re never shown in the same shot as Bob and Dolores despite it being edited as if they’re all having a conversation.  (For a real reunion between Bob, Frances, Patty, and guitarist Tony Romano check out the DVD Entertaining the Troops, which I reviewed here at the Radio Spirits blog.)

If you’re a fan of classic television, Bob Hope Salutes the Troops is a disc you’re going to want in your collection; it’s the kind of variety special that they literally don’t make any more, though my strong advice would be to watch these telecasts sparingly as Bob likes to recycle jokes from time to time.  Considered by many to be the greatest entertainer of the 20th century, the comedian demonstrates that through his tireless efforts overseas for many so far from home “there was no one like Hope for the holidays.”

Due to circumstances beyond our control…

…the blog is going to go dark for the rest of the week.  (Much apologies go out to the Forgotten Noir Fridays fans among the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful.)  I’m racing a deadline for a dan-dan-dandy Radio Spirits project (here’s a hint: the comedian is renowned for his violin playing), so that’s going to keep me occupied for the duration…but TDOY will return next week, so leave a light in the window for me, okay?

“The critics are always right. The only way you shut them up is by winning.” – Chuck Noll

Profuse apologies for not having this announcement up sooner: I’ve been distracted by little annoyances all morning, and didn’t get a chance to draw the winner in Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s “Pulp Fiction” giveaway till after lunch.  The response to this one, by the way—tremendous, as Dear Leader himself might say; we came close to Johnny Dollar proportions.  As always, I wish I had enough sets to hand out to all who entered…alas, I cannot.  But I can make certain that copies of Nick Carter, Master Detective: Chasing Crimes and The Shadow: Dead Men Tell make their way to lucky winner and member of the TDOY faithful Richard C. of Kingman, AZ (“Home of the Dry Heat”).

While I’m issuing mea culpas…I should have had a pair of posts up on Thursday and Friday this past week (one for TDOY’s “Silent Spotlight” and the other for Forgotten Noir Fridays) but I had a deadline for an outside project due, not to mention an appointment at the optometrist and various and sundry interruptions.  Tuesday, I’ll be back with Overlooked Films on Tuesdays and normal blogging will resume.  I thank you.

The weed of crime bears fantabulous swag

Just wanted to give the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful a reminder that our latest giveaway—a “Pulp Fiction” prize of the Radio Spirits collections Nick Carter, Master Detective: Chasing Crime and The Shadow: Dead Men Tell—will conclude this Saturday, February 11 at 11:59pm…so if you want a chance to win these two sets, you need to get your entry in before the deadline.  (You can find the full info in this earlier post.)  The response to the contest so far has been most encouraging (I’ve already received more entries than the previous “Smile a While” promotion), so e-mail me an entry if you’re in a gambling mood…and remember: Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is the phrase that pays!