 This is the SF Productions podcast network People used to tape shows. Let me see. There's a tape already in here. Let me hook this up here. Let me see what we got. Come back with us to the 60s and 70s, the dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models, and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. Welcome to the place your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. I'm your host, Mark Spindar, along with Wilbur Neal and Marty Wiley, and we're here to talk about 60s and 70s television. And tonight, it's variety shows! But before we get into variety shows, I just want to tell you we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. Here on ACTV, cable 21. And if you want to write to us, and boy, those letters just been rolling in, write to box 151526, Columbus, Ohio, 432-15. We'll start off with a viewer mail segment just any week now. Anyways, on to variety shows. Certainly one of the big things, one of the first things on television because they were just really cheap to do. You just basically got any out-of-work vaudevillian or Catskill type comic. Cat costumes in the barn. Yeah, that's about it. Pretty much no budget. Let's have a show! And of course, some of the younger Catskill comics went on to be the big 50s stars like Milton Burrell and people like them. But really, you have to get into the 60s for the golden era of the variety show. And so we just want to just go into that. What do we got here, Wilbur? Well, by golly, I didn't do the massive amounts of research that you did, sir, but the first, probably the first one that I really remember, well, there were two, actually. I've had to go with Jackie Gleason, Jackie Gleason and everybody's favorite Ed Sullivan. Right. Well, that's true, but I'm going kind of like in weekend order here. It's like, you got Jackie on Saturday, you got Ed on Sunday, and then Red Skeleton wasn't on until Tuesday. Oh, Eddy. Oh, Eddy. That was exactly it. Give me a kiss, Eddy. The exposure to the Muppets. Yes, he did. The good Muppets that blew up and were violent. They were the cute Muppets. Right. There was one I remember, the Glutton. The Glutton that would just eat everything, and he'd eat everything, and he'd eat everything. Then there's more food coming out. He'd eat, and he'd eat, and he'd eat, and he kept getting bigger and bigger. He'd keep eating, and he'd eat, and there's this little nut, little walnut had eyes in it that would glow like the twaddle lights in it. It's like this little walnut, and he ate it, and it shrank him down. He got tiny, tiny, tiny. Then another Glutton came out, and he just started eating and eating, and a lot of little Glutton was there, and he just ate him up. He was eating, and it was the funniest thing. Well, that's just one of many, many Muppets. I watched his solo for the Muppets, for Tom Pozzigio. I mean, hey, the rolling stars of the Beatles, who were they? Oh, yeah, right. I thought they were the Muppets. That's right. They were Tom Pozzigio. That's good. And I watched for the Circus Axe, too. The Dog Axe, yeah. The Circus Axe, hey. And the Marquee Champs. Right, Tom Pozzigio. Was it Marquee? There was a certain group of champs because they get ice to page, too. Yeah. The Marquee TV stars get ice to page. You're gonna see the skating champ. All right. They're the Marquee Champs. Well, that's something that they might even say. And the Trit Dog, and the Plate Axe. The Plate Axe. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And everybody thought that was dangerous, you know? Saber dance, you know, the Saber dance, that's just the best music to do anything to. The music. Yeah, that's the Saber dance. No, it's also the place for your music. The Taylor Dancers were out there. Yeah, everybody was on Ed Sullivan, pretty much. I mean, well, I rather than us. If Ed Sullivan was on today, we'd be on it. No, who didn't say no? Jackie Gleason had to let the Tom Hansen Dancers or something like that. We did, it'd be good. No. Well, maybe, I know, I thought, I thought he also had June Taylor. Well, did he have June Taylor? Oh, yeah. Hey June got around. Hey June, you got around. Dancing on every show on TV. Let's see you. Did you see that Ed Sullivan was like, really had absolutely no talent other than the fact that he could really pick acts that America loved. Shoes, he had big shoes. He had some really big shoes. But isn't this strange that, like, I don't really remember the Beatles being on there or the Rolling Stones. Well, I don't. I know, I don't. Or Elvis even. Well, hey, I saw the night that the Beatles were on. I'm sure I saw it, but that's not what sticks in my head. What sticks in my head from Ed Sullivan is that Ed Sullivan was an ugly little ape looking guy. A big one. He was a big ugly guy. We had a small TV. So he looked small. Everybody looked small. Everything was little. And nobody got anything. Jackie Gleason did have those June Taylor. Oh, yeah, I thought he did. Okay. Yeah. Well then the Tom Hance, they must have been on, Jack, um, um, the Red Skelton then. Yeah, I would assume. I like Red Skelton. I don't remember guests on this show. I don't really remember any. They were mostly regulars. Him and him. Him. Gertrude Heathcliff. Well. And Freddie the Freeloader. Who always reminded me of the town clown. And the mean little kid. And the mean little kid. And the characters he did. Well, those were called characters. And that was about him. Yeah. And other ones. And a host of others. And a host of others. But, uh, I liked it. It was, it was like being told a story. I was a little sad that they, uh, that someone did a, I think spy magazine did a poll last year where they, they said, here are various celebrities, which ones are alive and which ones are dead, as far as you know. And they did a poll and they said something like 60% of the American populace, but Red Skelton was dead. Oh no. Yeah. Yeah. But 60% is like something like 60% of the American people, but I mean, based statistically on this information. Yeah. Red do some more work. Maybe a little less painting, a little bit more TV exposure. I don't know. Well, good bye. And may God bless. Wow. That's a trip. Yeah. Did you mention Clem Cadittlehopper? No. He was always one of my favorites. He'd walk around and he'd do that little walk thing. And they had a little. I don't like that. Oh, Bill. Yeah. By golly. I remember him. Well, in the 60s, you also got into the, some of the, we, you got the, the movie stars, the big movie stars from the, from the 30s and 40s coming into a variety show in the 50s. And well, yeah. And you had, because really in the 50s, you didn't see it because everyone was like, oh, TV, that, you know, the motion picture industry was like, that's scum. You know, they're, they're competing with us. Upstarts. We're here. We don't want you around here. So TV. But by the 60s, they realized that the movie industry was starting to collapse at that point. And they, I mean, they, their business was slowing down and TV was picking up most of the, most of the slack. But, you know, they tried that 3D thing. Right. So, so you had, there was a show, Hollywood Palace. Hey. And this was, and Bing Crosby was the host. Boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo. You know, it was like, most of the, most of the shows back then, if it didn't have a name attached to the name of the show, it was basically the, it was rotating hosts. And that Hollywood Palace was one of those. Oops. That's a little every morning. Okay. So, let's see. What do we have here? Well, as you get into the mid 60s, you get more into shows. Let's see. Brothers Brothers. Well, that's, yeah, someone, yeah, going in the later 60s. That was one of the best ones. I remember that one. I used to watch that with my neighbor. It was that radical show. That radical show. They were talking radical stuff. Do you remember Steve Martin on there playing the banjo? I can remember that. Rob Reiner was a, was a writer for the show, wasn't he? Rob Reiner, Steve Martin. I don't know. I don't know about Rob Reiner. I believe that Rob Reiner was a, was a writer for the show. We can look this up here. And, and, um, Officer Judy, who's now Super Dave on the show. Super Dave. You know, I watched Super Dave for a long time. I kept thinking, where do I know him from? I know this guy from something. And it's Officer Judy. And then it like came out on the news mother's brother's show or something like that. But yeah. And I remember really, uh, Pat Paulson. Yeah, Pat Paulson was like my favorite on there. Yeah. And do you remember when Pat Paulson, and they did that itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini song, and he came out wearing the bikini? Well, I can't say I remember that. I remember that for such a strange reason. I can see how they could bear the impression. The image would burn into your consciousness. Yeah. If I would have seen it, I'd probably remember back in three. There we go. What are we screaming from the set? Well, here's Mason Williams. Mason Williams. Yeah, that did classical gas. Yeah, that was like his big claim to fame there. Jennifer, well, no. John Hartford. John Hartford. Okay, wasn't Glenn Campbell on the show also? Yes, he was. At a point, they don't mention him here. I know he was on there. Oh, yeah. Because I can remember. It seems like I remember a row of men, and they were all playing a guitar or a banjo, and it seems like Steve Martin was one of them, and... John Hartford was one of them, definitely. And it seems like Glenn Campbell was one of them. He probably was, because he and John Hartford, they played a lot together. Well, John Hartford went on, didn't he go on to the Glenn Campbell show? Well, yeah, when the Glenn Campbell show came on, John Hartford was right there with him. Yeah. And here, look, Don Novello. Oh! Early appearance by Don Novello. Wow, that's right. Father Guito Sarducci. Wasn't he one of the writers? Um, he could have been. The regular, according to that. Yeah. It was a regular on the 1975 reissue of the show that didn't really work very well because it wasn't nearly, it wasn't topical at all, basically. I mean, when the first show was out, they were just going, you know, well, we want you to do like a hip, you know, topical kind of show, but don't offend anybody. You know, and that's the way the networks always think. You know, it's like, well, you know, we always want it both ways. We want something, you know, it's really out there, but we want it to be exactly like everything else and homogenized. Yeah. Don't make people play. Poke fun at virtually all the hollowed institutions of American society. Motherhood, church, politics, government, et cetera. It was topical, it was funny, and occasionally it was in bad taste. I remember, well, but here's a sugary thing down here. It says the Smothers Brothers were replaced by He-Ha. Well, but yeah, the Smothers Brothers show kind of, you know, in a way begat the Glenn Campbell show and the Jim Stafford show. I mean, made a lot of careers. Oh, Jim Stafford had that neat puppet. Rodney. They all just kind of sprang off of each other there. Right. With the same kind of format, the same background, actually. Yeah, pretty much. The Sonny and Cher show, which had, which like, The Cher Show. Yeah, The Cher Show came off of it. And The Sonny Show. Think back of Cher doing a sexy Sadie the vamp and all that now. She's doing Moonstruck and Mermaids and all this cool stuff. It was like, when they split up there, they did the Sonny Show, Sonny had the funny stuff. Cher had all the singing and entertainment. Right. Sonny was just funny. Sonny was funny. And then you have Tony Orlando and Dawn. And then it was like, just Tony Orlando for a while. And then they stopped the show altogether. I liked Tony Orlando and Dawn. Well, I'll confess, I had a huge crush on Tony Orlando. It was off of the Tony Orlando and Dawn show. Just one of my favorite silly shows to think about. Pink Lady and Jeff. Now, for those who don't remember Pink Lady and Jeff, this show was on about 1980, I believe, 7980. It was right there in the late 70s. And this was one of the brilliant Fred Silverman concepts. The idea was, there was this Japanese female singing duo called Pink Lady, and they were a big hit in Japan. Nobody in the U.S. heard about it and said, great, I'll bring them over here to the U.S. and we'll pair them with this American comedian, Jeff Altman, who you now see on Letterman and stuff. And at that time he was a much more conventional comedian. Just basically, you know, I'm going to be at the Sands, you know, I'll be with Buddy Hacketters out then. And so you had this very conventional comedian and these two Japanese ladies who know English at all, had no concept of the English language. So they tried to do banter between Jeff and these two women with them giving all their lines phonetically. So it was like the absolute absence of comic timing because they had no idea what they were saying. So it was like, well, hey, you know. So I said, take my wife, please. Hello, Jeff. And then the other one, it was like totally like Tony Orlando and Don, because they were always, it was always like the nice one and then the one that was always cracking on him. So there's like little, hello, Jeff. That was the nice one. Then the other one, oh, there you go. Tomahawkins. It was one of the members of Don, and she's gone on just, she's in every sitcom now. She was the mean one on Tony Orlando and she was the one that was always cracking on him. But you know, Tony Orlando and Don, when they recorded Knock Three Times, were that their first or was it Gypsy Rose? No, it was Gypsy Rose of that Knock Three Times. When they did their first recordings, he did his part in California. They took it to Chicago or somewhere. Oh, we got some nice background singers here. Played them a tape. They didn't meet really until the song got popular and the idea from the show. But it worked out, you know, they just naturally, they were performers. It worked out. They were part of the family of performers here in the industry. By the industry, I mean the business. Unlike the Millie Vanilly thing, now where you have people that sing it totally away from them, then you have people perform it, who don't even sing it off. In fact, they don't even speak English really. But when they got together, it worked. And the same idea didn't work with Pink Lady. No, it was like an idea, but it didn't. It was funny. It was like an idea. It was like Fritz Goldberg had Saki one night and said, Japan, Japan! I can see this is the future. It's Japan! Well, the same manner brought us super train. Well, you really can't have a talk about variety shows without mentioning Dino. Everybody, love somebody. Sometimes. All the specials he did. He also had four different series. The Dean Martin comedy world in 74. Dean Martin presents in 68 to 73. Dean Martin's show from 65 to 74. And the Dean Martin summer show from 66 to 71. Which one did he come out one day? And the Gold Diggers show. Is that the one where he came out? Jumped on the piano in the piano? Yes. That was the Dean Martin show. These shows are all interchangeable. That's the amazing thing about it. All these shows, they call them different things. I just think because people said, we're bored with that show. The executive is sitting around. We'll rename it. Pretty much the exact same show. And that's all they did. Because, you know, Dean and sit there and drink and tell jokes. And Frank or Sammy had dropped by or, you know, whoever. And have Leonard Barr come out. Hi, I'm Leonard Barr. He could easily be Gilbert Godfrey's godfather or grandfather or something. You know, I can't separate the Dean Martin show too much from the roasts. Oh yeah. Those same people. They were at the same time period. It was like they would do maybe... The roasts were on Friday nights. That's right. But I just, I don't know for some reason the Dean Martin show and the celebrity roast show. I think what happened is they found, I think it's my opinion, is that they found out that Dean couldn't even, he was just, he came in so blotto that he even couldn't handle simple sketches. So it's like, well, let's see, he can probably read off a cue card and he'll be the master of ceremonies. We'll only have him on a couple of minutes and we'll put 10 or 11 other comedians around him so if he blows it we can always just, and it's all on tape so we can edit it anyway. It's like this is where Rodney Dangerfield really got his real big start on the Dean Martin shows. I remember him a lot and he still looked the same. I watched Gilbert Netmore. Of course she had her, she started out in some variety show before my time. Gary Moore. Gary Moore, okay. Yeah, Gary Moore. That's the cleaning woman, wasn't it? No. In various parts. I don't think there was, I don't think a cleaning woman showed up until herself. No, that was Gilbert Net, the charwoman. Really? I could almost, I almost think I saw her on other shows. I don't know. Before that and then it was like when she got her own show it was like, well, by golly, she isn't really a cleaning woman. I was surprised. I was truly surprised. Because I think that was how I first saw her on things. That's a charwoman there. She created a lot of characters. She really had a real, it was like, skit, song, skit, song, skit. It was a real structured kind of thing and from there you got the little Carol Lawrence. Vicki Lawrence. Excuse me. Vicki Lawrence. Queen of the Daytime Game Show. Yeah. I caught her last week on To Tell the Truth which they brought back. Yeah. And of course that put together Harvey Corman and Tim Conway who, Yeah. I think they're married, I don't know. They're still in commercials together. They're just joined at the gym for something. They're laughing at each other. Really, that was the last, as far as I'm concerned, the last great variety show. Carol, bring that up. I mean after that it was like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, Carol bring that up. I mean after that it was pretty much, you know, there were just the last few stragglers but see, see in my opinion I think the variety shows that are going to make a come back in the 90s. I'm convinced of this. Oh no! I know, see the thing is, all the scary, all the scary singing groups that don't have any records anymore like doing the same thing. Like doing the little tail of a rear end! People like the Silverz, the Silverz variety show. You see that! I mean the Jets could be their own variety show, there's so many of us. The new kids on the block. The block variety show. Well that's pretty much what that is. The kids down the street or whatever it is. The kids down the street on Saturday. The kids in the hall. No, not the kids in the hall. The kids next door. The guys next door. Whatever it is. Kids on the street. Kid clone guys. Kids from down the block around the corner. The neighborhood. The street back into yesterday. The thing is, I mean everyone's saying that the variety shows. Oh they're never going to bring back variety shows. But around 1980 they said, oh they're never going to do any more family sitcoms. They're dead. No one's going to do any more of those. We've done it. It's all done. And then the Cosby Show came and everyone said, that's okay then. And what's happening now is you're seeing shows like Cop Rock is a good example. This is a show that desperately wants to be a variety show. But nobody wants to be the one to stick out their neck and say, alright I'm going to do a variety show damn it. Nobody wants to do it. The closest thing we sort of have are the late night Letterman, Carson, Oh senior. See what they really need to find is somebody like Carol Burnett who She's doing Carol and company now. Oh yeah, it's true. See what they need to do is give it to her daughter. That's what they should do. Call her Carrie. The Carrie Burnett. Her name's not Burnett. It's Hamilton. Just give it to her daughter. It's a business anyway. You're who's kid okay here have a show. You're who's kid here you can be in the movie. You need that good gene. You need to find somebody who and this was the problem with shows like the Dolly Parton variety show they tried in the mid 80's. You don't want somebody who does one thing really well and a lot of stuff not nearly as well. You want somebody who can't do anything incredibly well. You don't want to show up the guest stars. You need the jack of all trades. Exactly. You want somebody who can do everything fairly well. Carry it soon. Act in the skin. Introduce people. Nobody wanted to go on and sing with Dolly Parton because she'd show them up every week. She writes her songs up in that range up here. You have to sing in my key. Oh no. You just plowed around down there somewhere. I'll sing up here. You just come in when you want. You think you can. So let's see. But anyways I think those are coming back. Who would you pick to get a variety show? I don't know. I think it's going to be one of the probably one of the pack of the current stand up comedians that will get it. Huh. One of the hundreds. Give it to Jerry Elliott. Jerry Elliott variety show. Watch him cuff up a big old old Christian. No you watch it. Cool. So I wanted to go over a couple more shows before we get out of here. One dimension that the ill-fated Mary Tyler Moore variety shows two different shows. They tried the Mary show which the only footnote to this was the fact that this was one of David Letterman's first appearances on TV. He was one of the regulars on the show. And then there was the Mary Tyler Moore hour which was kind of like half sitcom variety thing and they both died pretty much. Well the only reason that she had one was because Dick Van Dyke had had a variety tiny show there after the Dick Van Dyke show. Dick Van Dyke is one of those people that doesn't really do anything outstanding. Well he can dance. Yeah he can dance like crazy because he's got the. He's a likeable person to one thing. He's a real warm kind of likeable person. Unlike his brother Jerry who just becomes like a crabby guy. He just becomes like a crabby guy. He gets out there and he plays the banjo and he, well he can play the banjo and he's, it's like, it's like Dick got out there and saying everybody likes and then Jerry. This is your brother. You need somebody who's got a personality that you can you know relate to sort of like I was gonna grow up and be Cher. No. Pee-wee Herman. Let's see, one more trend that they really got into as the variety shows kind of died was there were so many variety shows that they had to differentiate them in the schedule by making weird names for the shows. Okay. And some ones down here like the Ken Berry Wow Show. Ken Berry. Let me find another good one. The late early fall Burt Convy show. I don't remember I don't remember that one. I don't like Burt Convy. The Pat Pulson's The Pat Pulson's The Pat Pulson's half a comedy hour. Half a comedy hour. Hey, you know what? They do a half a comedy hour on TV. Yeah. They do a half hour comedy hour. That's a good idea. But my personal favorite, your hot your hot hour. Wow. When you're hot, you're hot. That was the theme for it. And of course that's one of the big things in the summer shows was well, we only got like six or seven shows so we can basically center the whole thing around this hit that this guy has before this song is gone off the charts, this show will be gone anyway. Yeah. Something a little close to bringing back the varieties are these talent kind of shows. There's one on Saturday afternoons Natalie Cole hosts the Star Search. Those kind of things are sort of variety shows. Sort of. A lot of people are trying to do it but nobody wants to see one thing I just wanted to mention was that they had Larry King this fall did a thing on NBC, a variety special. I didn't get to see it but it was very much like exactly like a regular variety show. When I didn't hear anything else about it I didn't know what the ratings did we don't know but I think as far as I'm concerned it's time for the variety shows to come back. Because again they're going to go back to them for exactly the same reason as they started with them because they're cheap and they need cheap now because they're competing with cable companies and it's like you can't keep doing these Dallas and you know dynasty shows. You have an hour show that doesn't cost you anything it makes big ratings like America's Money's Home videos. I kept doing this for because one of my, just real quickly one of my favorite variety type shows was always The Gong Show Chuck Berry Chuck Berry He'd get out there okay now we've got a thing to do here.