As a lifelong fan of
game shows, especially ones that involve celebrities, I sometimes find myself poking around YouTube or other places on the Internet for something of interest. (Fortunately for my middle-aged waistline, this often happens while on a treadmill at the gym!) As of late, I've been checking out the entertainingly tacky
The New Treasure Hunt from the 1970s, old installments of
Name That Tune and
The Joker's Wild and vintage
The Newlywed Game. But I also stumbled upon a parody featured on a now-obscure show that was briefly a mild hit during my youth -
Fridays. What led me to it was a satiric presentation of
Family Feud.
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The Saturday Night Live rip-off competitor Fridays debuted in April of 1980 and aired on, um, Friday late night ABC television. Rather closely following the format of its inspiration, there were faux newscasts, envelope-pushing sketches, trendy musical guests and celebrity parody, most often with a political bent.
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The Family Feud parody had Bruce Mahler offering up a rendition of Richard Dawson that that the 3-piece suit and the carnation down (along with some gestures), but not any sort of accurate voice.
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One of the families on this episode will be somewhat familiar...
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Meet Ted, Rose, Joan and Jackie!
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I thought they got Jackie O down pretty well, actually.
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Rose was portrayed by none other than one Michael Richards, later of Seinfeld...! He was in drag a fair amount on this show.
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He had a hysterical
staggeringly-unfunny character called Beverly Hills who would pop up
from time to time (in a look seemingly stolen later by Sylvia Miles for Evil Under the Sun, 1982!)
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You thought I was just being snarky, didn't ya? I mean... look at this!
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Anyhoo... The other family playing against The Kennedys was The Carters.
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Meet Roselyn, Miss Lillian, Billy and on the far left (I'm not making this up), Walter Mondale!
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Again, I think they did well with the (now) former First Lady.
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Dawson's custom of kissing every female contestant was included. Roselyn allowed a peck on the cheek...
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Jackie was having none of it...!
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Walter seemed down with it, though...! That was probably quite an image on TV for 1980. Now, believe it or not, all this Family Feud stuff was just a prelude for the thing this post is truly about. Once I watched this, I began to peruse a few other episodes and was scarcely prepared for what I found in one.
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From Dickie Dawson's kisses on FF, we turn to the legendary rock band Kiss. They were a guest on one installment. (Fridays featured all sorts of acts from Devo to Pat Benatar to Journey to Paul McCartney) Seen here are Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley and, on drums, spanking new member Eric Carr, who replaced the more famous Peter Criss.
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Carr's makeup scheme/character was The Fox. In one of those bizarre coincidences, I had JUST seen his official introduction to audiences while looking up Kids Are People, Too, a show I was checking out after seeing it's host on Whew! Carr remained with the band until shortly before his death at 41 from heart cancer in 1991.
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I'm not able to claim significant fandom for Kiss, though I did play the hell out of a 45 I owned of "I Was Made for Lovin' You" back in 1979. They often showed some chest, but for this gig, Paul Stanley wore no shirt at all for the second number! The biggest surprise for me, though, was the guest host of this episode, someone I just would never in a million years connect with Kiss (or any music group, really, except maybe The Beach Boys, who also did this show.)
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Yes, that's our Tab Hunter, seen here choking his chicken on national television.
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He played the ultra-WASPy villain in a sketch about two Orthodox Jewish secret agents. Having captured them, he puts them on a counter, Goldfinger (1964) style, with razor-sharp matzo spinning threateningly as it closes in on their crotches...
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In a striking coincidence, this same episode features a short film about UFOs and alien invasion that starred Aldo Ray. (The five-minute piece is so obscure that it doesn't come up at all on Ray's imdb.com page!) In 1955, Ray and Hunter had costarred in the then rather racy war romance Battle Cry, based on a Leon Uris novel.
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Ray, five years older than Hunter, had been through the career and personal meat-grinder, including having his Columbia Pictures contract dropped after chief Harry Cohn's death and grappling with a severe alcohol problem. Though he worked and worked, he could not overcome financial obligations (to three ex-wives) and the urge to drink, yet there were periods of sobriety. He died in 1991 of throat cancer at age 64.
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One bizarrely amusing sketch, which could only have happened in the '80s, was a take-off on Hollywood Squares called The Hollywood Cubes.
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The game was hosted by Larry David (yes that Larry David, who went on to help create Seinfeld.)
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Instead of the usual 9-person celebrity panel who were used as points on a tic-tac-toe board, this game was played on a gigantic Rubik's Cube (!) with 54 (!!) celebrities located on the thing.
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In a bizarre twist, considering how many celebs were already being impersonated (and the didn't attempt all 54 for obvious reasons), Tab was playing himself, the famous actor, rather than a regular contestant.
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Much like Squares, the contestant would call on a star and then either agree or disagree with the person's response to a question.
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If he was successful in agreeing or disagreeing with the celeb, he earned a turn at solving the Rubik's Cube by calling out the move and then performing it on a remote cube at his station. This act caused the large cube to rotate around, throwing all the people involved to and fro!! Ha ha! It was strange, but sort of clever considering how hot that puzzle was in its day.
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That's gonna do it for this hideously random post, but I leave you with some shots of Paul Stanley during the curtain call. (And I'm sorry Paul, but it's just not the same with that Linda Lavin hairdo in place of all the long, curly, rocker locks!)
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Straight as he is, his movement and behavior during this sequence was gayer than a picnic basket (and speaking of baskets, his was on display in those flimsy tights!)
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Should you wish to partake of this episode or any of the others which have seen the light of day (despite rumors that Michael Richards had it in his contract that they would never be released in any home video format), you can check it out at Tubi (free with ads) right here! Till next time!
Absolutely no memory of this show at all. Let’s see - early 80’s, disco era, Friday nights, still had hair and a 30” waist - must have other things to do.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite game show parody is SCTV’s “Half Wits” which you can see on YouTube.
Funny how Aldo aged so poorly and Tab so well. Must be that foolin’ around with women, do it every time!
OMG! I used to watch FRIDAYS regularly when it was on, and I remember the FAMILY FEUD and HOLLYWOOD CUBES segments quite well.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was basically a rival network's cash-in on the popularity of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, but it should be remembered that SNL was in its worst period at that point.
Lorne Michaels had handed the reins over to Jean Doumanian, with the original cast all having exited the show and having been replaced with a *truly* "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" cast-- except for Eddie Murphy, who was the only one to return next season, when Michaels took over again.
FRIDAYS had in its cast a couple of members of a SF-based comedy troupe, the Low Moan Spectacular. Mark Blankfield and Brandis Kemp had just been in a run of an original play, BULLSHOT CRUMMOND, which was videotaped and run on Showtime in 1979. (It later was made into an unsuccessful 1983 theatrical film, but the Showtime special with the original cast is well worth seeking out.)
BULLSHOT CRUMMOND was a campy parody of '30s adventure films (and a pulp character "Bulldog Drummond"), with a cast of five playing multiple roles in quick-change; the versatility that they demonstrated made them perfect for FRIDAYS, since it was, like SNL, a live broadcast.
And being live led to FRIDAYS most notorious episode, in which guest Andy Kaufman bailed in the middle of a sketch and got into an onscreen fight with Michael Richards, resulting in the network cutting the cameras. The next week, Kaufman returned with an apology to viewers. However, the whole thing was yet another staged prank by Kaufman, with the other actors and director in on it.
FRIDAYS always got slammed as a lesser knockoff of SNL, but they actually had a better lineup of musical guests (at that time) and were willing to give lesser-known groups like The Plasmatics and The Stray Cats (still unsigned by a label at that point) network airtime.
Their sketch comedy was also more "out there" than SNL, occasionally getting local stations dropping the show when they went too far, like a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD parody that featured graphic gore, or a recurring sketch featuring a group of men who identify as "transphibian" and got body-conforming surgery. (Try to imagine that sketch airing now.)
Then-President Reagan naturally also came up for regular attack, but FRIDAYS was blessed with a really excellent Reagan performer in John Roarke, who led one of their best (and longest) sketches, THE RONNIE HORROR SHOW, with Dr. Frank N. Furter reimagined as Reagan creating "the perfect Republican"-- which, naturally, doesn't go well.
Even though FRIDAYS was always considered "second-string" and got cancelled when ABC decided to expand NIGHTLINE into its time slot, Lorne Michaels unsuccessfully tried to get their cast members to join SNL after the show was axed.
Thanks so much for taking this look at this show! Your posts are ALWAYS such a bright spot in my life!
Love to all and be safe and well, everyone!
Yikes! No memory of this whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteThe things you learn on the internet.
Thanks for the post, Poseidon!
Oh I remember Fridays, but I tuned in more for their musical guests. The local ABC channel would broadcast on an FM band in our area (Philadelphia) so I was able to record a couple of bands onto cassette (which I think I still have...pathetic, I know). I have Heart, Quarterflash and The Pretenders. If I remember correctly, Melanie Chartoff was getting a big push on the show, but her career fizzled after the show was cancelled. Thanks Poseidon
ReplyDeleteWhat I recall is, I guess it might be called a bumper, a quick segment of Michael Richards in drag going up or down an escalator turning to the camera & saying, "Shut up!" as a laugh track played.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe I'm hallucinating!
I watched Family Feud recently and had to stop, Richard's kissing and handy activity was so gross. I always thought he was charming back then, but now the show is nail-bitingly icky, especially when you can tell the female contestant isn't exactly game.
ReplyDeleteIs the Sylvia Miles wig a designer double dip? Haha
I was never a Kiss fan. When they accepted their R&R Hall of Fame induction I thought, now that's what rocking and rolling all night for decades looks like, puffy, dried up and death becomes her-ish.
Tab was just about to play Todd Tomorrow so this seems in line with the new direction he was heading. I'm so going to watch this! Thank you P!
I don't know where to start except that I fully remember "Fridays" and even went to see a movie or two that some members of the cast were in. They also followed SNL into a film or two but less successfully. The Jackie is fabulous and so is the Roslyn, I instantly knew who they were supposed to be.
ReplyDeleteOne of my besties is a huge KISS fan so we do talk about them from time to time, but I never knew that Peter Kriss left the band. "I was made for loving you" was their one time foray into disco and there was a big instrumental break in the middle of the song, which most disco songs had. In my middle school this was very controversial, as that was the era of disco sucks backlash. That's what straight boys were worried about in 1979, bless them.
I love random and this had Tab Hunter too!
I didn’t watch a lot of Fridays when it first aired. I was a Night Flight on USA guy. I remember the Andy Kaufman fracas being covered on Entertainment Tonight or somewhere along with his Letterman dust-up with Jerry Lawlor as part of a has he lost his mind sort of story.
ReplyDeleteMelanie Chartoff went on to play the principal on Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. Remembered today as a Ferris Buehler knock off, it was a pretty solid series that I revisited a few years ago. It’s rather dated (the lead character’s family owns a video rental store) but it holds up pretty well.
When I saw Fridays was on Tubi I checked out the Ronnie Horror and Kaufman segments then watched a couple full length episodes. Not terrible but nothing to inspire a full watch through.
Now for a truly obscure sketch comedy show, I give you Laugh Trax. I watched it on my NBC affiliate but I think it was syndicated. Jim Staahl as the nominal host, it was an early TV outlet for Howie Mandell. Gail Matthias, who was in the disastrous Doumanian SNL cast, brought over her Valley Girl character. Staahl’s Mr. Fridge, a sentient embodiment of a refrigerator, was often equal parts hilarious and terrifying. There is almost no web presence for the show (the other Laugh Trax that turns up in searches is unrelated but there is one complete episode on YT. Watching it with a couple drinks in me, I was amused but it’s not surprising it didn’t leave a lasting cultural impression. If anything it reminded me of a slightly updated Laugh-In. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ensrNLB_oU
Dan, I'm jealous. I doubt that I was ever slimmer than a 32" waist! Ha ha! Soon became 34" in any case and then.....! I think for the most part Tab led a pretty healthy life whereas Aldo went through some hard knocks. One of Aldo's biggest problems is that when he was a leading man, he wasn't really making the money he should have (as a studio contractee) and then when his time in the sun began to set, he had to take almost any role to keep afloat.
ReplyDeletehsc, I think the first season of "Fridays" was the last season of SNL's original players and so when the (unaccepted) replacements came in, "Fridays" ratings went up in its own second season. But then the "Nightline" thing happened and that was that. And, yes, "Fridays" had quite a lineup of musical guests! I'm glad you liked this. Thanks!!
A, I guess I really dug deep on this one to excavate the unknown. LOL
Abbagodz, the things we went through back in the pre-VCR days to capture even a hint of the things we loved....! Not pathetic, just desperate for the ability to keep a moment alive! ;-) Thanks.
normadesmond, it surely happened... It's interesting to track his journey from this to the super-popular "Seinfeld." That foursome hit the jackpot when that show was put together...!
Shawny, I hear you, though I think most of the gals couldn't WAIT for their turn at bat with Dawson (especially when you saw some of their husbands! LOL) He even married one of the ladies who came onto "Family Feud!" I always think of how his breath must have smelled like stale cigarettes and that creeps me out the most. BTW, I might have dreamed it, but I could swear that Richard kissed one of the boys from "The Waltons" on a celebrity match-up one time! Ha ha ha!!! Agree about Tab and, yes, the rocker lifestyle often takes its toll. Look at the dewy freshness of Keith Richards.
Gingerguy, I think Criss was fired from the band over some of his behavior (substance abuse perhaps or a personality conflict?) Probably came a quite a surprise to the fans after the success of "Beth" which was one of the band's huge hits and which he co-wrote & performed. My old roomie had the Kiss dolls by Mego and they were hot collectables for a while.
F. Nomen, I somehow avoided Andy Kaufman ALWAYS as I was growing up. I didn't get him and didn't attempt to. I would always hear weird things about his persona, though. I bet that if I saw something regarding "Laugh Trax" it would jog a memory, but in any case I certainly forget it ever existed! Thanks for bringing it up. I used to really love a show called "Not Necessarily the News" when I was a kid (and I bet much of it went way over my head!) Thanks!
By the way, all, I didn't write about it, but one thing I sort of always admired about Aldo Ray was his forthright attitude about a potentially explosive practice. He openly admitted to letting George Cukor go down on him as part of his grooming for movie roles. Not that it was right or acceptable or anything, but he was FRANK about it instead of denying it or covering it up (LONG before anything akin to "Me Too") the way so many others before and after did.
Yeah, the Aldo Ray admission about George Cukor always surprised me in that he was not only so frank, but also just "hey, it was no big deal" about it. IIRC, he said something like "I just let him take his pleasure, and it didn't compromise me any."
ReplyDeleteI remember NOT NECESSARILY THE NEWS quite well-- that was HBO, right? They would take actual news footage and edit comedians into it to create fake interchanges with reporters.
The one that always sticks in my head has Nancy Reagan at a podium taking questions from a press pool, and "the NNTN reporter" asks, "Tell us, Oh Wicked Witch of the West-- did you kill Dorothy to get those shoes?" to which Nancy "responds" by looking down at her feet and saying, "THESE shoes? No, but I wish I had!" and then she throws back her head and laughs bizarrely!
And it's funny that LAUGH TRAX should get mentioned by F.Nomen, because several weeks ago I was trying to remember where I'd seen a certain comedy sketch, and I knew there was a syndicated comedy show with Gail Mathias I watched for a while. I found LAUGH TRAX in her credits and found the small amount of YouTube video available, but I wasn't able to determine if this was the show I was thinking of.
At this time, the "Moral Majority" and Jerry Falwell and other "televangelists" were major targets for comedy shows. I know that LAUGH TRAX and FRIDAYS both had regular recurring characters that were "televangelists," but this was different and was either a one-off sketch, or it just wasn't either of those shows.
The sketch I remember was some sort of "revival" thing with a lot of people involved, where all the sermons and hymns substituted "Jesus" with "cheeses." Yeah, they were a sect that worships CHEESE! So it was loaded with bad puns like "We will now read from the Gouda Book..." and ended with some sort of group gospel number, where instead of ending with everybody doing "jazz hands" and singing "Ooooh, YEAH!" they ended with "Gru-YERE!"
And as I type this, I'm remembering a different sketch with "televangelists," only they're Satanists rather than Christians, so they line up the flock for a "faith UN-healing" where the minister chants "Be-el-ze-BUB!" and smites them and cripples them, rather than heals them. And the whole thing ends with the minister smiling into the camera with a cheery, "And so until next time, E-ternal Damnation to ya!"
Does anybody remember either of those sketches? (And no, I wasn't on drugs!)
Anyway, love to all and be safe and well, everybody!
Oh wow! I forgot about Not Necessarily the News. I loved that show. The big takeaway was Rich Hall's sniglets which bestowed upon the world the word "spork." And of course I've spent my entire life coming up with sniglets, to a fault. Of course the show had some regrettable skits, one I remember was a guy using one of those loop towel dispensers in a public bathroom. The second he pulls on it, the camera cuts to behind the wall and there's an Asian couple washing and drying the long line of the towel loop, in a sweat shop type environment.
ReplyDeletehsc, I'm embarrassed to say that I often find "corny" humor like the Jesus/cheeses thing. In fact, I was wrapping presents on the floor one December and the TV was on following my watching something on it earlier. "Modern Family," which I had never, ever seen, came on - still in its first season - and Gloria (Sophia Vergara) came in with "baby cheeses" in lieu of "baby Jesus" or something like that and it made me chuckle. I watched that show from then on...!
ReplyDeleteShawny, I LOVED sniglets. I still use one (though with the new way car keys are with alarms to set and automatic locks, etc... it's rare.) It was called "Ignasecond." It referred to that second when you slam a car door shut with the lock down and realize your keys are still in the ignition! Happened to me at least twice back in the day... I remember the towel thing, too, although (and maybe they did it more than once?) I had recalled it as coming from the headwear of an East Indian man...!! Won't be looking for that in reruns. LOL