The show is loaded with intramural cracks, tedium, desperate looking guests reaching for laughs, mechanical dolls that wave their arms and drop their pants, additional tedium, and the apparent illusion that several million people want to watch 120 minutes of the scriptless life of a semi-educated, egocentric boor. The rise and fall of a late night TV talk show host. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet
on Jan 23, 2010 -
31 comments
A Horror Film that will Stiffen You with Laughter! The jungle is jumping, with gals, gags, and goofs! And a gorilla! It's not the set-up for an awkward joke, but an
honest to
goodness motion picture, starring Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist, and nightclub comedians Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo as themselves, though in roles approximating
Martin and Lewis. It was the comedy duo's only movie (possibly due to the
cease and desist request to
Sammy Petrillo from Jerry Lewis), and was one of Bela Lugosi's last movies. Some classify this movie as a
z-grade budget film, while others claim it to be
staggeringly unfunny. But don't take their word for it. You can
watch it all online, or download it from the
Internet Archive.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 12, 2009 -
17 comments
The Continental was a short-lived TV show that
debuted in 1951 on KNBH Los Angeles and aired nationally on ABC and CBS during the 1952-1953 TV season. Sponsored by
Cameo Stockings, the show featured Italian actor
Renzo Cesana (who got discovered when Robert Rossellini produced a play Cesana wrote when he was 16!) purring seductively into the camera, while offering "sham-pan-ya" to an offscreen lady friend. Best known for inspiring a series of
Saturday Night Live sketches starring
Christopher Walken, the show inspired parodies in its own era, such as this
Popeye cartoon (where Bluto tries to seduce Olive Oyl by posing as "The International"), a
Jerry Lewis skit on the
Colgate Comedy Hour that imagines the Continental as played by Marlon Brando, and a Pepe Le Pew cartoon where our amorous skunk attempts to seduce the feline object of his affection in
The Cat's Bah. Unfortunately, Internet footage of the real show appears to be nonexistent, although you can buy some
love songs recorded by the Continental off EBay.
posted by jonp72
on Aug 14, 2007 -
25 comments
In
30 years of going to Cannes, Roger Ebert has witnessed Francis Ford Coppola suffering from post-Apocolypse insanity and learned Jerry Lewis's secret for preventing riots--but the most interesting character he ever met there was a loudmouthed, fast-talking Texan named Silver Dollar Baxter with an uncanny gift for bluffing...
posted by yankeefog
on May 9, 2005 -
5 comments
"
The Day The Clown Cried." Even unfinished, the breathtaking scope of it's...
awfulness has for thirty years
both attracted and repelled would-be producers and distributors. (
script, zipped Word doc) Just the concept is startling, like some kind of hellish Sad Lib -- Jerry Lewis plays a clown in Auschwitz who leads children to the gas chambers. Harry Shearer, one of the few to see the film: "You are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. 'Oh my God!' -- that's all you can say." Can this movie ever be made?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders
on Jul 16, 2003 -
39 comments
Does the MDA Labor Day telethon do more harm than good from a cultural perspective? Sure the money helps to find a cure, but does it cause 'normal' people to feel undue pity for the physically challenged? Is
Jerry Lewis doing more harm than good for the cause? [MORE..]
posted by ZachsMind
on Sep 2, 2002 -
28 comments
Jerry Lewis pulled an Andy Kaufman at a recent comedy awards Q&A session. When asked about female comics he admires, he answered with "I don't like any female comedians" and went so far as to say that he considers a woman "a producing machine that brings babies in the world." No word yet on whether or not he'll start professional wrestling anytime soon.
posted by mathowie
on Feb 14, 2000 -
4 comments
