Book Review: Playboy Laughs: The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboy

“Since the launch of Playboy magazine in 1953, two elements have been remarkably consistent: the first is the celebration of nubile, female flesh and the second is Playboy’s involvement in the music scene.  The Playboy experience was never just about sex but about lifestyle, and music—particularly the finest jazz, a personal passion of Hefner’s—has always been an essential component of that lifestyle.”  So states the biography of author Patty Farmer, acknowledged to be the expert on the entertainment side (performers, television, etc.) of the legendary magazine that introduced the phrase “I only read it for the articles” into the American lexicon.  Farmer chronicled “the rise, history, and cultural impact of the Playboy empire, including the magazine, clubs, music festivals, and television shows” in her book Playboy Swings—published in 2015 after the success of The Persian Room Presents (2013), a history of the Plaza Hotel’s famed nightclub.

Lenny Bruce

Patty’s follow-up to Swings—which will be released August 3—is Playboy Laughs, a book that concentrates on the comedic side of Hefner’s empire.  (You don’t need to be familiar with the earlier book to enjoy Laughs, because there are some stories repeated here.)  I should be honest—when I requested a review copy (many thanks to my Facebook compadre Jeff Abraham at Jonas PR, who slipped me the freebie) of this book I thought it was going to be a little out of my wheelhouse at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  I’m pleased to admit that I was stupendously wrong, for Farmer’s exhaustive history of the funny men who entertained appreciative audiences since the first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in February of 1960 is crammed with wonderful anecdotes about such comedy greats like Joe E. Lewis and Lenny Bruce, and first-hand accounts from stand-up practitioners as Professor Irwin Corey, Phyllis Diller, Tom Dreesen, Jackie Gayle, Shecky Greene, Dick Gregory, Joan Rivers, and Larry Storch.  Laughs is one of the best books I’ve read on stand-up since devouring my pal Kliph Nesteroff’s amazing The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy.

Milton Berle

Playboy Laughs is one of those books where you want to keep a notepad nearby while reading it so you can jot down anecdotes and relay them back to like-minded friends interested in the history of laughter.  One of the anecdotes that leapt out at me concerns “The Thief of Bad Gags” himself, Milton Berle—who had a bit of a reputation of being a putz where his contemporaries were concerned.  Comedian Lou Alexander relates that when he was just starting out in the business, “Uncle Miltie” took an interest in him and his act, telling him: “I’m going to come to your show once a week and I’m going to heckle you, but before the show I’ll go to your dressing room and tell you what I’m going to say.  This way you can think of things to say back to top me.”

That’s what this great man did for me.  He came in once a week and heckled me, and I’d have all the toppers—the comebacks—and I’d kill him.  He’d put on this act: “Look at this kid, he’s got me again.”  And after a while, maybe two months, it was all over town that there’s some schmucky kid killing Milton Berle at the Interlude.  I loved him.  I loved Berle.  We became very good friends. He was a great guy, a very kind, sweet man.

The Vagabonds

Another memorable passage from the book that has a tenuous connection to a recent post here at TDOY concerns the comedic vocal group known as The Vagabonds, who certainly made their presence known in the 1946 feature film People are Funny.  I’m not quite as enthusiastic as Farmer about the aggregation (she describes their People antics as “scene-stealing”—we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one) but she did provide me with some information with which I was not aware, in that the quartet were favorites on the nightclub circuit (they even owned and operated nightspots in Frisco and Miami) and made quite a few appearances on shows telecast during the medium’s Golden Age (The Colgate Comedy Hour, Ed Sullivan, etc.).  “With the Vagabonds, even tempo was funny,” she writes.  “Sometimes they’d go so fast they left the audience breathless; other times, they’d drag out a song at such a snail’s pace that listeners would sweat with suspense.  It was as if they were comic masters, always carefully calibrating their punch lines.  And of course, that is exactly what they were.”

Jack Cole's famous comic book creation

Farmer’s wonderful stories about the people and personalities that either started their careers at the Playboy Clubs or benefited from those venues after already establishing themselves comprises a goodly portion of Playboy Laughs…but there are also chapters dedicated to those artists who created the cartoons that dotted the pages of the magazine.  One of particular interest to me was a nice little history on Jack Cole—which I’ll need to set up here.  I knew of Cole because I owned a copy of Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes as a kid (coincidentally, Feiffer also contributed cartoons to the magazine and has some wonderful stories in Laughs) as a kid and knew Jack as the creator of Plastic Man.  My father, on the other hand, was more familiar with Cole’s post-Plastic Man career as—you guessed it—a prolific contributor to Playboy.  (I admit—my opinion of the old man gained a few points that day after finding out he used to read the mag.)  Other cartoonists discussed in the pages of Patty’s book include Doug Sneyd, Shel Silverstein, Dean Yeagle, Arnold Roth (whose work I knew from TV Guide—his stories about assisting Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder on Little Annie Fanny are priceless), and Al Jaffee (the legendary MAD artist was a contributor, too).

Hugh Hefner and author Patty Farmer

Farmer does a bit of a sidetracking with histories on Playboy artists like (Alberto) Vargas and Olivia (De Berardinis); a little beyond the scope of a book on both humor and cartoons, in my opinion…but it won’t detract from your enjoyment—and it’s always nice learning about something you didn’t previously know.  As someone who actually did read Playboy for the articles (I had a subscription while I was in college—born to be mild, baby) I enjoyed Patty’s concluding take on Hugh Hefner (an informative history on the man and his pajamas) because anyone who put as much time, money, and effort to restore the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes films my mother loves to watch is aces in my book.  Classic movie fans might get a kick out of this observation of Hef in Playboy Laughs: “At ninety, he carries on the tradition he started decades ago of hosting weekly dinners followed by movies.  One night a week is set aside for a current film, another for a classic film noir, and sometimes a third is added for one of his favorite Chaplin movies.”  Gooble, gobble, one of us!

We laugh to win!

In 1925, a group of expatriate Broadway thespians who had moved to the West Coast for film work decided to establish a social club where members could fraternize and enjoy each other’s fellowship.  It would be known as The Masquers Club, and its members included at various times such classic movie icons as Joe E. Brown, Frank Morgan, Pat O’Brien, Charley Chase, Edward Arnold, and Charles Coburn.  It’s still going strong today—you can even check out the club’s website when you get a notion.

The Masquers Club decided to capitalize on the talent present in their membership and get into the motion picture production business in the 1930s with a series of two-reel shorts produced at RKO.  They weren’t the only outfit to express interest in making their own movies; The Lambs Club did a similar series for Columbia (among the familiar faces were Lynne Overman and Leon Errol) while the Thalians (featuring the likes of Franklin Pangborn and TDOY fave Grady Sutton) cranked out shorts for Universal.  But the Masquers Club’s movies were, in the opinion of Leonard Maltin in Selected Short Subjects, “easily the best of these shorts”:

If these two-reelers had one consistent quality, it was that they tried awfully hard.  There was a conscious striving for offbeat humor, which at times was overbearing, but which often paid off.  In Rule ’em and Weep (1932), the sound effects are always wrong. In a duel that runs through the film, every time the guns are fired, different noises are heard.  And when a horse-drawn carriage pulls up to the country of Bulvania, where the story is set, the sound effect of a train slowing to a halt is heard.

Director Mark Sandrich poses with Dorothy Granger and
Eddie Borden on the set of Thru Thin or Thicket (1933)

Alpha Video has issued a fun collection of these bizarre two-reel comedies in The Masquers Club: The Pre-Code Comedies Collection.  The set kicks off with an entry described by Maltin as “one of the wildest in the series”—Thru Thin or Thicket; or Who’s Zoo in Africa (1933).  (Many of the Masquers shorts had double titles, something reminiscent of many episodes of Rocky & Bullwinkle.)  Wealthy dowager Mrs. Chyzzlebottom (Grayce Hamilton) is financing an expedition in Darkest Africa on behalf of Professor Backwash (James Finlayson), who hopes to locate (despite some skepticism) the famous “Tarzan” of motion picture fame.  Instead, the party—with the help of reporter Scoop Skinner (Eddie Borden)—learns that that neck of the woods is ruled by the “Queen of the Jungle”—one Tarkana (Dorothy Granger), whose “yell” resembles in Len’s words, “a combination of Andy Devine and Johnny Weissmuller.”  Mr. M isn’t just whistlin’ Dixie when he says this is a wild short; it’s got some gut busting gags and wacky situations (Tarkana has a “homing pigeon” that’s a pelican) written by Ben Holmes & Walter Weems and directed by future Astaire-Rogers helmer Mark Sandrich.

"Youse is a viper!" declares Barbara Sheldon to villain Sam Hardy in Stolen by Gypsies (1933), who responds: "I hope she don't mean an old windshield viper."  (Okay, I didn't laugh at that so much as I did the reference to the classic Billy DeBeck comic strip Parlor, Bedroom, and Sink.)

Eddie Borden has a bit role in another short on the Alpha set—one that I found wonderfully amusing entitled Stolen by Gypsies; or Beer and Bicycles (1933).  (Borden figures in a running gag with June Brewster as the couple’s attempts to get in a little passionate necking are interrupted by various characters throughout the two-reeler.)  Stolen by Gypsies would the final short in the Masquers’ brief series; the best-known of their efforts (according to the [always reliable] IMDb) is the 1931 classic entitled The Stolen Jools (spoiler alert: the IMDb is wrong), which has been in the public domain for so long everyone’s seen it (if you haven’t—here it is).  A promotional short that sought to raise funds on behalf of the National Variety Artists’ campaign to combat tuberculosis, Jools spots an all-star cast in a funny tale about the hunt for some stolen bling belonging to Norma Shearer.  (Included in the cast are such TDOY favorites as Buster Keaton, Edward G. Robinson, Our Gang, Laurel & Hardy, and Wheeler & Woolsey.)

Stolen Jools isn’t in this collection, but the remaining shorts that are provide intermittent laughs and classic film celebrity wattage like Laura LaPlante, Walter Byron, John Sheehan, and Olaf Hytten in Lost in Limehouse; or Lady Esmerelda’s Predicament (1933—a funny melodrama that spoofs both Sherlock Holmes and Hairbreadth Harry-heroics) and Mary Carr, Russell Simpson, Lucile Browne, Russell Hopton, and Frank McGlynn, Jr. in The Moonshiner’s Daughter; or Abroad in Old Kentucky (1933—a feud between the Ratfields and Catfields in a tale from the hills).  My personal favorite is The Wide Open Spaces (1931), which features Ned Sparks, Antonio Moreno, Dorothy Sebastian, William Farnum, George Cooper, Claude Gillingwater, Frank McHugh, Tom Dugan, and George Chandler.  Moreno is a suspected bandito who’s smitten with heroine Sebastian…but she’s being pursued by crooked sheriff Sparks (as “Jack Rancid”).  When Dorothy agrees to marry Ned to spare Antonio’s capture (this is decided over a game of checkers), the two of them are about to be “spliced” when the justice of the peace (Gillingwater) asks Sparks to produce the ring.  Ned pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and a buttload of rings in various sizes falls to the ground.  Laughing, Judge Claude observes: “You’ve been ridin’ a merry-go-round!”

If Mack Swain is pourin'...I'm buyin'.  (Mack's the bartender in Wide Open Spaces.)

Brian Krey of Alpha Video provided me with a screener for this most entertaining compendium of classic film shorts…and I think fans of both two-reel comedies and those stars from the bygone days of Tinsel Town will want to add it to their bookshelf.  To quote Br’er Maltin: “Familiar faces and far-out humor were the order of the day in the Masquers Comedies.  They tried very hard to go off the beaten track.  Often they succeeded and sometimes they did not.  But the ingenuity that went into them always shines through.”

Kennedy for me

From 1931 to 1948, beloved character veteran Edgar Kennedy starred in over 100 two-reel comedies for RKO, as part of a franchise originally titled “Mr. Average Man.”  Kennedy was hands down one of the finest second bananas in the history of the movies, brightening even the dullest film by merely being in it.  He worked for Mack Sennett’s fun factory at the start of his movie career (he often played a Keystone Kop, and worked on a few occasions with Charlie Chaplin), and later freelanced in the 1920s before joining Hal Roach’s “Lot of Fun” toward the end of the decade as a supporting player in the classic comedies headlined by Our Gang, Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase, and so many more.  Edgar even got an opportunity to demonstrate his talents behind the camera, directing such Stan and Ollie romps as From Soup to Nuts (1928) and You’re Darn Tootin’ (1928).

Harry Harvey, Florence Lake & Edgar in Contest Crazy (1948)

Edgar passed away in November of 1948, about a month after his last RKO two-reeler, Contest Crazy, was released to theaters.  But the studio continued to release shorts from that backlog for years after that, and while it’s not possible to hit one out of the park every time at bat the “Average Man” comedies have an admirably consistent batting average in the laughs department.  Much of their appeal to audiences today lies in the fact that the shorts were a template for what eventually became the television situation comedy.  The plots of the comedies were simple and straightforward—dealing with everyday subjects as going on vacation or celebrating an anniversary—and they eschewed the kind of frantic zaniness that was the modus operandi of Columbia’s two-reel comedies, like those featuring The Three Stooges.  The Kennedy comedies didn’t skimp on the physical slapstick, but it was always grounded in a world of believability, only slightly exaggerated for comedic effect.

The reason why even the weaker “Average Man” comedies generate a chuckle or two is due to Edgar Kennedy, who was the undisputed master of short-fuse stack blowing.  His signature was called the “slow burn,” a gesture where he would wipe his face in frustration in a futile attempt to hold his temper before exploding in rage.  Edgar worked alongside many of the great mirthmakers: Joe E. Brown (When’s Your Birthday?), Eddie Cantor (Kid Millions), W.C. Fields (Tillie and Gus), Raymond Griffith (Paths to Paradise), Harold Lloyd (The Sin of Harold Diddlebock), The Marx Brothers (so memorable as the lemonade vendor who tangles with Chico and Harpo in Duck Soup), Olsen & Johnson (Crazy House), and Wheeler & Woolsey (Diplomaniacs), to name just a few.  He makes feature films such as Twentieth Century (1934), San Francisco (1936), A Star is Born (1937), It’s a Wonderful World (1939), It Happened Tomorrow (1944), and Unfaithfully Yours (1948) a joy to sit down with a bowl of popcorn.

Alpha Video has been releasing several volumes of Kennedy’s RKO shorts to DVD as part of their “Rediscovered Comedies of Edgar Kennedy” series.  (I know that for many they’re not technically “rediscoveries” in that film fanatics like the TDOY faithful are well-acquainted with how delightful they are—but since they don’t make the rounds on any of the classic movie channels on a regular basis some movie mavens may not be familiar with them.)  Volumes One and Two came out in 2010, with Volume Three following three years later and Volume Quatro released this past April.  Brian Krey was kind enough to shoot me a screener for Volume 4, which contains ten of Edgar’s two-reel efforts from 1934 to 1946.  Some of these are the very textbook definition of “doozy.”

The DVD kicks off with In-Laws are Out (1934), a sidesplitting outing that has Edgar returning home from a business trip to learn from his neighbors that wife Florence (Florence Lake) is kicking him out of the house.  The reason?  It’s Ed’s hair-trigger temper, which is always activated by his interactions with his sponging mother-in-law (Dot Farley) and brother-in-law (Billy Eugene).  Florence makes her husband promise that he’ll keep his anger managed…otherwise he’s out the door.  His in-laws scheme to make him blow his top, so between those two and a mantle clock he’s purchased that refuses to chime properly, Kennedy’s disposition is continually challenged.  One of the best gags in this comedy (directed by Jules White’s brother Sam and co-written by Arthur Ripley) has Edgar trudging up the stairs in his house with a priceless vase and some blankets blocking his view of what’s ahead of him…and Eugene placing a stepladder at the top of the staircase, resulting in Edgar’s continued climb.  The first time Kennedy makes the trip he’s stopped by Florence before he falls off the ladder…but on the second go-round, he falls right through the floor and emerges (somehow with the vase intact) from a room below the staircase landing.

Florence & Jack Rice scheme behind Edgar's back

Before his RKO series got underway, Edgar Kennedy appeared in an Educational two-reeler entitled All Gummed Up (1930), in which Florence Lake (Arthur’s sis) was cast as his wife.  Lake would continue in that capacity with the “Average Man” series, playing the delightfully dizzy Mrs. K.  Florence left the studio in the mid-30s, and while she returned for the occasional assignment in the Kennedy comedies she didn’t permanently return until the mid-40s, whereupon she finished out the franchise until it ended in 1948.  Rice was an integral part of the Kennedy comedies, and when she’s not around to chatter a mile-a-minute in her incredible fashion I find I don’t enjoy the shorts as much as I should.  They brought in a few actresses to play Mrs. Kennedy in the 1940s comedies—notably Irene Ryan and Pauline Drake—with Sally Payne even going as far to completely mimic Lake (the DVD features Payne’s turn in Inferior Decorator [1942], which is not one of Edgar’s stronger efforts) in her turns as Mrs. K.

Florence, Paul Maxey, Dot Farley, Jack, Harry Strang & Edgar
 in Brother Knows Best (1948)

I think In-Laws are Out is a delightful short, but in it you can detect one of the handicaps of the Kennedy comedies as noted by Leonard Maltin in his reference book The Great Movie Shorts: “Where the series often failed, however, was in straying too far from credibility, usually in the antics of Edgar’s meddlesome mother-in-law, played by Dot Farley, and his no-account brother-in-law, first played by William Eugene and then by Jack Rice.  In most cases, one could accept their obnoxious nature, and the fact that Edgar was forced to live with it since his wife was devoted to them; but when they blithely wreck a car in Quiet Please, “borrow” Edgar’s life savings in Brother Knows Best, or engage in one of the sundry get-rich-quick schemes in which Edgar always loses, it’s a bit hard to take.”  The pair (Farley and Eugene) deliberately connive to piss off Edgar so he’ll lose his temper in In-Laws, and while this was no doubt done to generate sympathy for his character I think more than a few of us would be practicing our curb kicks.

Edgar & Florence in Poisoned Ivory (1934)

In Poisoned Ivory (1934—a Christmas-themed short!), Florence thinks she’s accidentally poisoned Edgar and Brother (Rice this time) phones the doctor (William Augustin) for help.  Brother knows that Florence didn’t really poison her husband, but he suggests to the doc that he get a little payback for an argument that he and Edgar had the night previous.  The doctor approaches pranking Ed with relish (so much for that Hippocratic Oath) by telling his patient there’s nothing he can do for him…and that he’ll probably shuffle off this mortal coil with a yawn and a yearn to go beddy-bye (he gives Edgar a sedative before telling him this).  Ivory is another gem of a Kennedy comedy; even though I had serious reservations about anyone participating in that kind of foolishness there are some very funny moments in the short including Edgar’s waking up from his sleeping pill and, as his eyes focus, seeing his family and physician.  “And I thought I was going to Heaven,” he mutters.

Edgar Hamlet (1935)

Edgar Hamlet (1935) is another entertaining outing, with Edgar and Mother having an argument over a line of Shakespeare (she’s convinced it’s in Hamlet—he insists it’s Macbeth) that leads to his decision to take the family to see a performance of Hamlet to prove he’s right…but he gets distracted by such simple tasks as getting ice out of the icebox and unwrapping a new dress shirt.  This one is a lot of fun because you get to hear Kennedy recite Hamlet’s famous soliloquy (“To be or not to be…”) in the way that only he could.  “I overact,” he once observed of his performance style.  “I know I overact.  But at least I do try to act, and it’s easy enough for a director to say ‘Easy now,’ and I know what he means and calm it down.”

Edgar & Vivien Oakland

Comic actress Vivien Oakland replaced the departing Florence Lake as Mrs. Kennedy in many of the shorts, and in Maltin’s opinion “was rather subdued as Edgar’s wife.”  Three of her efforts appear on the Volume 4 disc; Bad Housekeeping (1937) is a so-so entry (it’s the old “wife-takes-husband’s-place-at-work-while-he-wrecks-the-house” plot) that benefits largely from an appearance by Franklin Pangborn as a piano tuner who proves to be no help when Edgar gets his tie caught in the washing machine or is buried under a bed that falls apart as he attempts to change the sheets.  (The windup gag has Pangborn pleased as punch at the job he did on the Kennedy’s baby grand—all the keys sound the same!)  A Clean Sweep (1938) is a definite improvement; Edgar can’t bring himself to tell Vivien he’s lost his job at the bank and that he’s become a vacuum cleaner salesman…until one of the houses where he tries to peddle his wares is hosting a housewarming party with Vivien in attendance!

An interesting trade ad for A Clean Sweep (1938): Edgar doesn't have a mustache in this short, and the other male character (Eddie Dunn) never interacts with Vivien's Mrs. K.

Underrated silent comedian Billy Franey appears in Sweep as Edgar’s buddy; he asks Ed why he lost his bank job and Kennedy explains it was because he was rooting for the Giants.  (“Oh…he’s a Yankees fan, eh?” Billy asks.  “Nah…it just happened that he was at the ballpark the day I was supposed to be at my mother-in-law’s funeral” is Edgar’s reply.)  Franey also graced several of Edgar’s shorts as his father-in-law, of which Mutiny in the County (1940), included on this set, is an excellent example.  Edgar must appear in court after losing his temper with a neighborhood kids’ ballgame results in his throwing a baseball into the window of a cop car (the gendarmes are James C. Morton and Fred Kelsey).  His trial coincides with the town’s annual “Boys’ Day”—which means the little jamokes who were playing ball are now the judge and prosecutor!  It’s a most diverting short, and what continually make me titter was a running gag in which Franey keeps getting hit with doors as Edgar stomps off in frustration.

Vivien looks over the mess the Kennedy clan made in her kitchen in Home Canning (1948), the penultimate short in the Edgar Kennedy "Average Man" series.

The interesting thing about Vivien Oakland is that once Florence Rice returned to play the Kennedy wife Oakland continued to appear in the shorts, usually as a dowager or upper-crust matron.  That’s the case with the last short on the Alpha set, Social Terrors (1946)—her daughter (Phyllis Kennedy) becomes Brother’s fiancée when Edgar tries to stave off being evicted by the landlord (Chester Clute).  The landlord can’t sleep in his apartment because of some awful woman who sings off-key in the adjacent apartment, and since Brother neglected to tell Ed they’re being chucked out (he received the notice 30 days ago) Kennedy schemes to marry off his in-law, which will free up a room in their house for the landlord to stay in.  The Kennedy clan dines with Brother’s future in-laws (character great Paul Maxey plays the father) with hilarious results, and after dinner his intended decides to serenade everyone with a song.  (I don’t have to tell you who the irate neighbor is at this point, do I?)

All the shorts on this must-own collection are worth watching except for The Hillbilly Goat (1937), one of those “mountain folks” comedies that always grates on this proud son of The Mountain State.  Hopefully I’ll get around to watching some of the earlier Edgar Kennedy volumes (I’ve been collecting them from Alpha since they’ve been putting them out) soon and writing them up for the blog—thanks again to Brian for making my Wednesday afternoon an entertaining one!

“Heeere's Johnny!”

“And I hope when I find something that I want to do and I think you would like and come back, that you'll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been…I bid you a very heartfelt good night.”  Those final words rung down the curtain on Johnny Carson’s thirty-season stint as host of NBC’s The Tonight Show (or The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, as it was officially known), when “The King of Late Night” officially retired on May 22, 1992.  Sadly, Carson never returned to TV save for a small vocal contribution (as himself) on an episode of The Simpsons and a cameo on Late Show with David Letterman in 1994; he left this world for a better hosting gig on January 23, 2005 at the age of 79.  (Correction: I wrote too soon; Mark Murphy e-mailed me to let me know that Johnny also did a monologue on a 1993 NBC special feting Peacock institution Bob Hope on his 90th birthday.  Thanks, Mark!)

Johnny...we'd hardly know ye.

I’m a little fuzzy on the exact time frame, but I remember I was on my way home from my night auditor gig at The Landmark Inn a year or two before Carson’s passing.  I took a taxi that day (I didn’t want to wait for the bus), and the cabbie was listening to a couple of radio jocks holding forth about how The Tonight Show just wasn’t the same since Johnny’s departure and that Jay Leno couldn’t carry Carson’s jockstrap.  One of the hosts—who claimed to know people who know people who know Carson—explained that Johnny had not made a return to the small screen because…well, he kind of danced around the reason but the implication was that the former talk-show host had really “let himself go” (see photo at left).  Then came the observation that he (the jock) would rather watch an obese, bloated Carson drooling all over himself than that poltroon Leno any day of the week.  I’m not proud of this—but I laughed like a hyena at his remark.

Those of you who get the substation Antenna TV in your area are aware that they added reruns of Johnny Carson (the retitled Tonight Show) to their schedule in August of 2015 (the shows from 1972 on, since only a handful of the pre-1972 Tonight Shows have survived due to “wiping”), and occasionally a segment surfaces on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ (their presentation, Carson on TCM, went great guns at first before eventually doing a slow vanishing act).  Time Life has released several DVD compilations—notably the 22-disc Johnny and Friends (SRP $199.95), with 61 hours of material—and next Tuesday (July 4) they’ll roll out a new-to-retail DVD collection of nine classic Carson telecasts (on 3 discs—the SRP is $29.95) with the emphasis on appearances by comedians Steve Martin, Robin Williams, and Eddie Murphy.

My good friend Michael Krause at Foundry Communications graciously gifted me with a screener for this upcoming release, which not only features these telecasts in their entirety (the musical guests are often excised from the Antenna TV repeats for copyright reasons) but the original network commercials as well.  This appealed to the old-time radio fan in me (I love to listen to broadcasts that have the commercials intact), though I admittedly only watched one of the shows with commercials (you have the option of watching without—something that I’m sure would please my father if Carson reruns were his particular meat).  That would be the oldest show in this collection, a July 21, 1976 telecast on the disc spotlighting Steve Martin.  For an hour-and-fifteen minutes (the Carson show was a ninety-minute program from 1966 to 1980) I got to reminisce about taking the Nestea plunge and how Heinz ketchup is “slow good” (voiceover by Casey Kasem) …not to mention seeing familiar faces like Betty White (plugging Spray ‘n Wash) and Doris Roberts (a Glade air-freshener commercial—she won a Clio award for those spots).

I cannot come up with the name of the actor playing Doris' husband in this commercial, and it's nagging at me because I've seen him in so many other things.  (It's hell getting old.)

Wild and crazy guy.

In high school, I thought Steve Martin was the funniest man to walk the planet.  I owned all four of his stand-up albums, mimicked all of his routines (“Excuuuuuse me!”), and relished every time he hosted Saturday Night Live.  With the passage of time, however…well, I find myself pondering what the hell I thought was so funny about the guy.  (Now I know why Los Parentes Yesteryear looked at me so strangely…though that may not have entirely been all Martin’s doing.)  His 1976 appearance on Carson features much of his “wild-and-crazy-guy” shtick, and to be honest, I enjoyed the other guests on that particular telecast more—Jimmy Stewart, plugging The Shootist (1976) but also reminiscing about It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and Karen Black…who seemed to be on some sort of narcotic that night but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it was.  A May 21, 1982 program brings Steve back along with Sylvester Stallone—both stars plug their current movies (Sly’s Rocky III; Martin’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid) but again, because I’m just weird this way, I got more of a kick out of the “Stump the Band” segment…because one of the songs suggested to stymie Tommy Newsome and the NBC Orchestra (Doc Severinsen, amusingly enough, was out of town—performing a concert in my home town of Charleston, WV) was Sunday Driving, a novelty tune recorded by Jerry Lewis.  The last show on the Martin DVD is the most fun: a December 19, 1991 outing that allows Martin to plug Father of the Bride (1991) and it also features one of my favorite funny ladies, Cathy Ladman, along with singer Leon Redbone (performing Christmas Island).

Nice threads, Eddie.

The third disc in this collection highlights three 1982 appearances from Eddie Murphy, who at that time was wowing SNL viewers weekly with his shtick—the July 30th telecast mentions that Murphy is working on his first feature film (the one that put him on the map), 48 HRS.  I’m quite fond of many of Eddie’s movies—48 HRS., Beverly Hills Cop (1984), The Golden Child (1986—don’t think I can’t hear you judging me out there)—and enjoyed many of his SNL characters (prison poet Tyrone Green never failed to make me fall to the floor), but his stand-up always left me stone-faced, particularly the homophobic Honeymooners bit he did in his 1983 HBO TV special Delirious.  (Try explaining it to both of your parents, who decided to watch with me.)  A February 10, 1982 appearance has him starting his routine by encouraging the audience to shout out the N-word…and I don’t mean “Norbit.”  (Edgy!)  If you’re a Murphy devotee, you’ll enjoy seeing the twenty-year-old trading yuks with Johnny on the cusp of Murphy’s phenomenal stardom; his January 1, 1982 debut on the Tonight Show is presented in this collection in its entirety.

Robin Williams, circa 1984.

If you need a solid reason to pick up this collection, the second disc—featuring three shows with the manic Robin Williams as guest—more than justifies the purchase.  Just as I prefer Eddie Murphy in movies, I thought Williams was at his best when he was simply turned loose on The Tonight Show, where his machine-gun stream-of-consciousness would always reduce the host to helpless laughter.  (It’s no surprise that Robin was the guest on the penultimate Carson Tonight Show telecast, along with Bette Midler.)  Williams’ April 3, 1984 appearance allows him to plug what I think is his finest film comedy, Moscow on the Hudson (1984—this and the 1983 movie he did with Walter Matthau, The Survivors, are my favorites) and his co-guest Phyllis Newman reminds the audience multiple times that her husband is lyricist-playwright Adolph Green (something that both Robin and Johnny start to mock after a fashion).  A January 10, 1991 show (with Steve Lawrence) coincides with Robin’s turn in Awakenings (1990); Williams relates the incident where he accidentally hit co-star Robert DeNiro in the nose while filming and it’s hysterical.

Comedy greatness.

The final telecast on this disc is a September 19, 1991 free-for-all that allows Williams (plugging 1991’s The Fisher King) to riff alongside his one-time Mork and Mindy co-star (and acknowledged influence) Jonathan Winters.  Honest to my grandma, I laughed so hard during this show I was literally in tears.  Winters enters the stage wearing a Union uniform (his first words are “We lost the fort—the Indians were sober…we were drunk this time.“) and when Park Overall (of Empty Nest) comes out and asks Johnny “Why is he wearing a Yankee uniform?” Jonathan comes back with “Cause I’m a Yankee—we’re gonna go through Chickamauga twice!”  It is classic comedy, and while I’m not a religious or spiritual individual, I like to think that if there is a better world after this one these two mad geniuses are cutting up in the afterlife to thunderous appreciative laughter and applause.  Thanks again to Michael for the screener—if you’re a fan of Johnny Carson, you’re going to want this one for the DVD shelf.

Addendum: Both the Mayor of Toobworld (Dr. Tobias O'Brien) and member of the TDOY faithful Mark Murphy have identified the actor with Doris Roberts in the Glade commercial as character veteran J.J. Barry.  The blog is grateful for their tireless efforts in small screen research.

“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

The night that I wrestled with the meshuggeneh desktop computer—the one that eventually had to be hauled into the repair shop so that the hard drive could be replaced—I was stuck for something to do while the diagnostic tests were running, so I grabbed the bedroom TV remote and started in with the channel surfing.  Imagine my delight when I learned that DISH has added a new channel to its lineup: BUZZR (channel 245), the Fremantle Media-owned subchannel that offers up classic game shows to those couch potatoes jonesing for a fix of Match Game or Family Feud.  Wikipedia says that DISH added BUZZR in May of this year but I’m still a little skeptical about that only because I go “round the horn” on a frequent basis if I can’t sleep at night, looking to see if I can find anything that won’t require a lengthy time investment.  It seems to me I would have come across BUZZR sooner, but…what the hey.

I’m not a big game show fan as a rule.  I watched a lot of them as a kid, and then eventually grew to understand that most of them are vacuous, insipid, and a clear threat to my logging as many classic movies under my belt before I’m summoned to that Great Movie Palace in the Sky.  Still, I have a soft spot for the panel shows of the classic TV era like What’s My Line?, I’ve Got a Secret, and To Tell the Truth…because there are celebrities on these vintage telecasts that are idolized by your humble narrator like Fred Allen (a panelist on Line from 1954 until his death in 1956) and Henry Morgan (Secret).  The Game Show Network used to run these repeats in the 1990s until Sony’s contract ran out…but by that time, GSN was starting to shift toward their own homegrown programming anyway.  (This resulted in people of my vintage reclining in our porch rocking chairs and grumbling about how great things used to be “back in the day.”  “Remember when AMC and TVLand used to be good?  Those were the days…”)

I can’t quite put my finger on it…but something tells me that unless you subscribe to one of DISH’s major packages (America’s Top 200, America’s Top 250, etc.) BUZZR isn’t going to be around Rancho Yesteryear for long.  (We have the Flex package, see, which—thanks to member of the TDOY faithful Barry—allows us to get channels we’ll actually watch and insulates the ‘rents from any potential danger resulting from my succumbing to The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ withdrawal and running after them with a butcher knife.  Okay, I am kidding about that.  Nobody runs in my family unless we’re chased.)  So I am currently DVRing every episode of Truth, Secret, and Line that I can lay my hands on; it will make marvelous filler for when I’m dubbing off movies to discs.  That’s three down and seven to go…Arlene?

From beautiful downtown Burbank…

When Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In premiered as a one-shot NBC-TV special on September 9, 1967, several of the show’s best remembered cast members were already on board: Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley, and Ruth Buzzi, to be precise.  Larry Hovis also appeared in the special, taking a sabbatical from his regular gig as Sgt. Andrew Carter on Hogan’s Heroes (he would return to Laugh-In later in the show’s run, along with his Heroes castmate Richard Dawson), as did Barbara Feldon—who might have become a Laugh-In regular if her Get Smart duties hadn’t limited her participation to a handful of the early telecasts.  What you may not know (then again, if you’ve read my Facebook compadre Hal Erickson’s book you might) is that Ken Berry was also in the pilot.  Just imagine.  If they had kept Berry in the cast, we might have been spared Mayberry R.F.D.  (Just can’t catch a break.)

If you’re curious as to my sudden interest in Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, it’s because I received an e-mail last month from my good friend Michael Krause at Foundry Communications that the iconic comedy hour—which aired over NBC from January 22, 1968 to March 12, 1973, and was television’s #1 show in the 1968-69 and 1969-70 seasons—has made its home video debut in a ginormous DVD collection available from Time Life and Proven Entertainment.  All 140 telecasts are present (including the final season, which until they recently resurfaced on the Decades channel had long been MIA) and accounted for in this 38-disc set, along with scads of bodacious extras and a 32-page collectible booklet—Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In: The Complete Series can be ordered right now at www.timelife.com/laughin: the tariff is $249.95 (for the budget-minded, there's a 40-episode "Best of" set priced at $99.95).  (Fans of the show have my permission to discard their “Best of” Rhino DVDs they may own—eBay operators are standing by.)

The cast of Laugh-In (1968-69)

Like most couch potatoes of my generation, I dropped in on the show’s legendary “cocktail party” from time to time…though admittedly, it was in the show’s declining years, when most of its famous cast members had moved on to bigger and better things and Laugh-In was having to rely on the high-wattage comedy contributions of Moosie Drier.  I’m more familiar with the whittled down half-hour version of the program which aired for a time on Nick at Nite (the series’ original hour-long syndication package consisted of 70 hours culled from the first three seasons, along with the pilot and a few Season 4 installments) but to be honest—I never could figure out what all the fuss was about.  I think Laugh-In’s reputation for hip irreverence is somewhat inflated; creator-producer George Schlatter describes it as “a free fall of television without a net.  It was dangerous.  It was controversial.  It was totally unpredictable and always funny.”  Well, not really.  It was little more than sped-up vaudeville hokum—a mixture of the irreverence of Olsen and Johnson’s Hellzapoppin’ and the technological wackiness of television comedy innovator Ernie Kovacs.  (Schlatter was and still is married to Jolene Brand, a cast member of Kovacs’ show.)

Creator George Schlatter (holding sign) and the Laugh-In writers

Laugh-In was critically praised for its “representation of the counterculture” …but in this superb article by Kliph Nesteroff (who recycles some of this material in his indispensable The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy), the argument is convincingly made that the show was nothing more than The Establishment’s idea of The Counterculture (if you read Kliph’s piece, you’ll learn that Laugh-In head writer Paul Keyes played a large role in making Richard Milhous Nixon palatable to TV audiences).  “Laugh-In is commonly considered a reflection of the late sixties youth sensibility, but closer examination reveals a much different picture,” Kliph writes.  “It was, in essence, an establishment show, profiting from the anti-establishment sentiment running through America.  Moderated by the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, Laugh-In was old in style, but draped in the popular fashion of the day.  It effectively garnered a genuine hippie aesthetic, but any actual connection to the counterculture was mostly smoke and mirrors.  The bulk of Laugh-In consisted of eye-catching vaudeville bits that mostly ignored the war, the riots and the protest.  It embraced the look and sound of the hippies and had no problem making references to getting high, but generally glossed over political issues.”

"Sock it...to me?"

This assessment goes a long way in explaining why I experienced disappointment with Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In as I got older: I was looking for something that was never there in the first place.  So I need to temper my criticism from the previous paragraphs with this caveat: if you’re looking for the biting political satire of such 60s shows as That Was the Week That Was or The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, you’re not going to find it on Laugh-In; its humor was more of the toothless Jay Leno-Tonight Show variety.  (In fact, if you read Nesteroff’s article in its entirety you’ll learn that hosts Rowan and Martin eventually bought out producer Schlatter’s interest in the program because the two stars “were very heavily into Nixon.  They actually had a quota of Daniel Ellsberg jokes, a quota of anti-New York Times jokes, and a weekly segment on the [left-wing] distortion of the news.”)  Yet if you look at the series through the prism as one of those classic television variety hours that they sadly don’t make any more, Laugh-In can be pretty amusing from time to time.  (Television to me has become a vast repository of “reality shows” …which you can actually lay the blame for at Schlatter’s feet for creating the successful Real People in 1979.)

Ruth Buzzi, Jo Anne Worley and Goldie Hawn in a Season 3 sketch

The “big names” on the show had already vamoosed during the period I watched Laugh-In although Lily Tomlin was still on the show; she joined in the show’s 1969-70 season, and became phenomenally popular with her characterizations of Ernestine (“Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”), Edith Ann (“And that’s the truth…thbthh!!!”), and Mrs. Earbore, the “Tasteful Lady.”  Tomlin probably enjoyed the biggest post-Laugh-In career—she garnered an Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1975 film Nashville, which also featured Laugh-In alum Henry Gibson—save for Goldie Hawn, who took home her Academy Award trophy (for Best Supporting Actress in 1968’s Cactus Flower) while she was still performing on the show.  (I’ve watched a few of the early telecasts featuring Goldie, and was amused that her persona of the giggly blonde ditz took a show or two to develop—in her early appearances she plays it perfectly straight.  Also hooty: Hawn was on the show at the same time her Private Benjamin co-star Eileen Brennan was also a regular.)  Laugh-In featured some truly funny comic actresses: Judy Carne (the “Sock it to me” girl who would be doused with water or dropped through a trap door whenever she uttered the show’s phrase), Ruth Buzzi (“I just want to swing!”), and Jo Anne Worley (“Bo-ring!”), who only has to start in with that infectiously goofy laugh to make me chuckle (“Is that a chicken joke?”). 

Buzzi and Arte Johnson as Gladys & Tyrone

On the distaff side, there was Henry Gibson (the poetry guy with the flower), Gary Owens (the old-style announcer with his ever-present hand cupped to his ear), Alan Sues (sidesplitting as “Uncle Al, the kiddie’s pal”), and Larry Hovis (I loved his David Brinkley-like newscaster).  I didn’t find Arte Johnson as hilarious as some of my contemporaries (his German soldier shtick—“Verrry interesting”—got old quickly) though I did like his interactions with Buzzi’s Gladys Ormphby (“Care for a walnetto?”).  (Actually, the funniest thing about the old man was that his official name was “Tyrone F. Horneigh” …though they had to pronounce the last name as “Hor-NIGH” for obvious reasons.)  And I still have a soft spot for Dave Madden, who made me titter as the dour deadpan guy who threw confetti as a reaction to punchlines…because his “Reuben Kincaid” on The Partridge Family is one of my role models.

Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In has been released to DVD to coincide with the commemoration of the show’s 50th anniversary, and while I couldn’t score a screener of the set I did receive a wonderful consolation prize that I’ll discuss in a bit more detail in a future post.  What I could sample was a delightful surprise in that the show still manages to be entertaining despite the inevitable dating of the material, and I would not hesitate to recommend a purchase for true Laugh-In diehards—it’s timeless TV.  (You bet your sweet bippy!)

Bank(s) holiday

You know the famous quote from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  The legend goes that up-and-coming movie mirthmaker Mario Bianchi was inspired to adopt the nom de screen of “Monty Banks” (also spelled “Monte Banks”) when the legendary Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, his employer, told him in 1917: “You can't play another 'montebank' [mountebank] with a difficult name like Bianchi!”  It makes for an amusing story…except that in a 1918 two-reeler, The Geezer of Berlin, “Banks” was still billed as “Bianchi.”  What we can be certain of is that despite his popularity in the 1920s as a comedy star in various shorts and features, Monte’s mostly remembered today (if at all) as the husband of British entertainer Gracie Fields (he directed her in four feature films during the 1930s).

Banks’ enduring contribution to silent comedy is featured in the Robert Youngson compilation Days of Thrills and Laughter (1961): the laugh-a-minute, thrill-a-second, runaway train climax from his 1927 feature Play Safe.  This sequence was later recycled for a two-reeler released that same year entitled Chasing Choo Choos (Play Safe didn’t do well at the box office)—and this engaging short is one of five comedies featured on a new DVD release from Alpha Video, Monty Banks: Hollywood’s Forgotten Comic Genius.  Choo Choos is an entertaining cutdown (the eye-popping stunt work is courtesy of Harvey Parry), though to be honest I think you’re better off watching this material in Thrills and Laughter…only because that movie concentrates on nothing but the chase, whereas Choo Choos contains a little bit of the backstory that might be confusing if you’re not familiar with the plot of the full feature.

Monty Banks in Wedding Bells

The wonderful thing about Forgotten Comic Genius is that Chasing Choo Choos isn’t even the strongest short on the DVD; I really enjoyed Wedding Bells (1924), in which Monty plays a would-be groom who must deal with his jealous bride (Ena Gregory) the morning after his wild bachelor party.  Monty doesn’t know that his neighbor (William Blaisdell) from across the hall is babysitting his fiancée’s dog (she won’t marry him unless she’s certain the dog is properly looked after), and Neighbor has smuggled the mutt into Monty’s crib out of sight of the landlady (Louise Carver).  Ena thinks that Monty’s playing around, and refuses to do the matrimonial sashay down the aisle unless Fido is outta there.  So Monty hilariously attempts to shed himself of his new pet, with hilarious results…and then when Ena gets everything straightened out with the neighbor, Monty must get the dog back.  The gags in Wedding Bells are clever and the denouement is hilarious (I did see this one coming, I must confess), making the overall effort a most delightful two-reeler.

Banks in The Covered Schooner

Pay or Move (1924) is also a gem; Monty must protect the father of his girlfriend (Gregory again) from a sinister outfit known as the Koo Koo Kans (my, that’s subtle)—even though he’s in Dutch with the old man because he’s in arrears where his rent is concerned (Papa is his landlord).  There are good gags in this one, but what makes them so engaging is that Monty’s character is shown to be a very resourceful individual (he’s able to fool a couple of goons with some mannequins dressed in police uniforms).  The Covered Schooner (1923—directed by Harry Edwards; the title is a jokey reference to The Covered Wagon) is just a slight slip in quality, mostly because it starts out strong (Monty’s a florist who’s trying to close shop so that he can rescue his girl (Lois Boyd) from the amorous clutches of Captain Blaisdell) but peters out in the second half (Monty gets shanghaied aboard Blaisdell’s ship).  (Though one gag did make me snort out loud: for some odd reason, there’s a gorilla among Blaisdell’s cargo [and not a particularly convincing one], and Blaisdell and his crew decide to throw Monty into the cage where the animal is certain to make quick work of him.  Then they look inside…and both Monty and the gorilla are on the floor of the cage, shooting craps.)

John Carpenter, Movie Man

The weakest short on Forgotten Comic Genius is Paging Love (1923)—fortunately it’s also the first short, so it’s kind of like eating your vegetables before you get to the dessert—and really, it wouldn’t have been that bad if someone had just considered making a one-reeler out of the material (the plot in this one, in which Monty must sell a copy of his prospective father-in-law’s [busy Blaisdell] encyclopedia to win his daughter’s [Boyd again] hand, is painfully thin).  (The last five minutes has Banks channeling his inner Harold Lloyd when the shenanigans go “high and dizzy.”)  All five of these comedies come from the collection of my Facebook chum John Carpenter (a.k.a. “The Movie Man”), whose participation in Alpha’s Blondes and Redheads: Lost Comedy Classics was so essential to that DVD release’s success.

As I was browsing the Internets looking for photos to illustrate this essay, I laughed out loud at some of the search results because a small group of people seem to have confused Monty Banks with Harold Peary, radio’s The Great Gildersleeve—and because I knew you’d be saying right now “Oh, come now, Ian” I grabbed this screen shot for proof:

Yes, that is misidentified at Getty Images.  I would expect something like that at eBay or even the (always reliable) IMDb…but Getty?

“It is almost impossible now to describe a once-popular comedian like Monty Banks by speaking of his mannerisms; he doesn't seem to have any,” observed Walter Kerr in The Silent Clowns.  “He is short, on the plump side, possessed of a miniature mustache that would seem suave on a head waiter but it is somehow a badge of apprehension on him.  He is likeable.”  Kerr goes on to say that despite his extensive comedy training Banks rode out his career in silents emulating Harold Lloyd (while taking special pains to ensure that the “thrills” in those features steered close of trickery).  “The stunting is impeccable, worth keeping in film anthologies; but we cannot quite remember the man.”  That’s why we’re fortunate to have releases like Monty Banks: Hollywood’s Forgotten Comic Genius—they do so much to make certain we don’t forget.  (Many thanks to my Alpha pal Brian Krey for the screener.)