Lunedi Lunacy

They called it the "Golden Age of Television" and looking at this clip you can understand why. It was live - including the commercials, it was without teleprompter and it was in front of a studio audience. There were not second takes, no laugh track - just talents that had been honed on stage in vaudeville, musical comedy and drama. And with a repertory company that included Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, and Nanette Fabray, Sid Caesar delivered a wild mixture of slapstick, pantomime, sophisticated take-offs, satire and laugh from 1949 until 1958 on The Admiral Broadway Revue, Your Show of Shows and the Sid Caesar Hour.    It didn't hurt that over the years his stable of writers included Lucille Kallen, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Michael Stewart, Mel Tolkin, Sheldon Keller and Larry Gelbart.  All that talent suggests that it was indeed a "golden age".

The one thing none of these talented people ever did - oh current producers take note - was under-estimate the intelligence of their audience.  Here's Caesar and Fabray in a brilliant piece of mime set to a familiar piece of classical music.

And then you ask why I don't currently own a TV?????

01 October - 1908: Ford puts the Model T car on the market at a price of US$825. (Thanks Mr Ford!)

Lunedi Lunacy

The unsinkable Betty White is still going strong and proving that comic timing is a gift and an art. Here she is with Johnny Carson in a sketch from The Tonight Show in the late 70s.

One of the running jokes - though he may not have appreciated it in real life - on the Tonight Show was the amount of money Carson forked out in alimony payments. Of course he thought of divorce lawyers as the Devil!

29 novembre - San Giacomo della Marca

Lunedi Lunacy

Its was a Golden Age of TV Comedy: Carol, Harvey, Tim and a Guest.



Most people don't realize that Maggie Smith got her start in Revue comedy as a singer/dancer/sketch performer. I was fortunate to see her both in London (Hedda Gabler directed by Ingmar Bergman) and later when she decided to live in Stratford, Ontario and become a member of the famed Shakespeare company there. For 10 seasons she played everything - Chekhov, Congreve, Coward, Cross, Shakespeare. Her Lady Macbeth was outstanding, her Rosalind in As You Like It one of the finest comedy performances I've ever seen and even though she could do star turns she just as easily became a member of an ensemble. To this day I remember a frighteningly beautiful Three Sisters with arguably a group of the finest actors in North American at that time. It was another Golden Age.

31 marzo - San Beniamino