Well, as a devout follower of
The Lawrence Welk Show,
The King Family holiday specials and
Hollywood Palace, you pretty much know I'm going to be down for any sort of colorful, 1960s/'70s variety show containing a mix of eye-popping, ear-splitting, fantastic, frightful, glitzy, ghastly variety material! I was far too young to have ever witnessed
The Kraft Music Hall (revival) in its day. Running from 1967 (the year I sprang forth) till 1971, there was no chance of my having absorbed any of it then. Originally a long-running series featuring Perry Como and guests, it was revived in a different format, which is where today's 1970 offering came to be.
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Most of you will "get" the title of the installment without help, but just in case... The prior year, the racy comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) was released. The movie concerned the concept of and potential ramifications from the act of wife-swapping, when two couples decide to get "with it" during the sexual revolution and try it out.
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The movie's poster came in the first colorful one shown above, but also had one depicting the four stars in bed. Foreign release posters such as these turned to circular and spiral concepts.
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And so it was on Kraft Music Hall when the title was shown on-screen. But WHO are these people??
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Bob & Carol were Broadway stars Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence, by this time married for about 7 years.
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At the top of the hour, the two couples impishly discuss how they've been getting together for however many Wednesday evenings and how it may be time to mix things up. "You mean Bob & Barbara and Martin & Carol...??" I won't reveal the joke, but I can tell you that they don't disrobe, tossing their polyester clothes on the stage floor and crawl into bed naked together...! Ha ha!
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Pretty soon, they're all gussied-up and singing a song all about Variety, the show business bible.
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Needless to say, this is old hat for accomplished live performers such as Bob "Camelot" Goulet and Carol "West Side Story" Lawrence.
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Game, but far less comfortable, are The Landaus.
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During the number, brief blackout comedy sketches depict these folks as various sawdust-covered showbiz veterans as the understudy who has to go on, the magician whose assistant wants to quit and so on.
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Next up, Lawrence is given a series of numbers that involve gender-reversal. For example, there's "Luck Be a Lady" from Guys and Dolls, which was sung in the play by Sky Masterson (Robert Alda in the original production.)
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In the main shot here, I thought that Lawrence resembled her West Side Story costar Chita Rivera to no small degree. (If you want to hear me singing this ditty, click here. I played Sky in 1999 and later did a one-take recording of the song in Sinatra's swingy version. I eventually could do it better, but the dice were already tossed... Ha ha!)
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That number is followed by "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" from Oliver!, the song belonging to Fagin as played in London (and the later film) by Ron Moody.
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Then the four male dancers of the special (each one a little sweatier than the one before!) emerge as representatives from West Side Story.
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Lawrence, in mini-skirt and go-go boots, pops in for a somewhat psychedelic rendition of "Maria" "Gee Officer Krupke" "Something's Coming."
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Thank you, Jesus, for craptastically dazzling moments like this.
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In the next bit, our fabulous foursome sweep into an NYC restaurant, fresh from having opened their new Broadway show.
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Each member of the quartet is in love with him or herself and all of the others as they fawningly compliment one another. (As a bonus for me, I now know roughly how Bain and Lawrence would have looked had they celebrated New Year's Eve in the ballroom of the S.S. Poseidon!)
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Lawrence manages to attract the attention of (an unseen) David Merrick who wants to talk to her about starring in Hello Dolly! (Shout out to the recently-departed, divine Miss Mitzi Gaynor, whose portrait can be seen above Goulet's head!)
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Likewise, (unseen) Hal Prince has his eye on Goulet for an upcoming project.
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Then the newspapers arrive, with the NYC critics' reviews, none of which is in any way kind!
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Now, they all hate each other and the performances delivered by their former besties...!
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The gals express the agony of having to audition for a coveted part on the stage, a set up for the next segment.
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This gives Landau the opportunity to show off his Method acting chops.
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Landau, who at virtually all other times in the special can be spotted reading cue cards, must have poured most of his time and attention into this vignette. He emotes and emotes and goes on and on. (I cannot tell you if it's truly good or not because I must confess that I checked out after a while... There was not enough chiffon in this portion of the show.)
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At the tail end, he appears in old age makeup, facing a mirror and it's rather uncanny how much he looks like his much later rendition of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994!) He couldn't have guessed in 1970 that nearly a quarter of a century later he would pick up an Oscar for his portrayal of the elderly portrayer of Count Dracula.
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Now comes Bain in her featured solo segment.
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Bain is one of my people. She was given a tribute here eons ago. That said, she is in no way a vocalist. She could carry a tune, but she was not a singer. She faintly gets through the early phrases of Jacques Berel's "If You Go Away" before speak-singing much of it.
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"Daddy always says an ounce of pretense is worth a pound of manure." Ha ha!
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I think there was only one other woman who could out-do Bain when it came to the blonde swoop of the '60s & '70s. That would be the wonderful Gena Rowlands. That style suited both these women exceptionally well.
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When I see something like this on TV, I begin to tingle all over...
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For my part, the world lost something when we stopped putting together visually arresting, geometric sets with which to frame singers. ('Course, there really aren't many true singers around that I care to watch or listen to!)
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There's an almost halo-like situation going on here, though not as literal as that, as Goulet sings "Healing River," a 1964 spiritual.
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While Goulet always lends a highly-resonant, polished quality to most any song, this never quite heads out of the stratosphere the way we might have hoped. It's a little bit low-key compared to other times he performed it (sometimes in the company of soul singers, who added energy and lift to the proceedings.)
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This is what Poseidon's Underworld ought to have been called...
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Here, it's a parody talk show (hosted by real-life producer and TV personality David Susskind portraying himself.) His topic for the program is the change in sexual mores and he assembles quite a melange of expert guests...
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I did like Bain's loooonnngg wig!
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The finale is really the part that can't be missed. The foursome (not literally! LOL) wonders what their grandchildren might think of that time if they heard some of the lyrics from popular songs of the day. Thus begins a mind-blowing medley, with each star getting a solo as well as taking part in duets with another...
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No, he's not reacting to wifey's singing... (But I bet some audience members made a face like this when Marty began to croon...!)
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She seems a mite skeptical to me.
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The medley includes songs from Hair (!) and the Joe South hit "Games People Play." (This was done to a fare-thee-well by my beloved Nancy Ames on Hollywood Palace prior to this. At 20:03 if you're impatient.)
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Talk about an impossible mission... vocalizing on national television next to two Broadway belters! I'll give 'em credit for trying.
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"Abraham, Martin and John."
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"The Sound of Silence"
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"Everybody's Talkin' at Me" followed by "Make Your Own Kind of Music" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart."
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Check out the TALONS on Ms Bain's hand...!
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And so it comes to a close with the performers schnuggled up with their spouse.
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As it was, these four could perhaps have used a little more love in their hearts than what was demonstrated here. Showbiz marriages are tough to maintain in the first place and these both, sadly, didn't make it over the long haul. My mother, rather hilariously yet aptly, could never stand performing couples who were too ooey-gooey with one another, like they had something to prove to the world. This was born out in one case, for sure, when Guy and Ralna - THE stickiest and most cringe-inducing ooey-gooeys from The Lawrence Welk Show divorced about 20 minutes after its cancellation! LOL Anyway, this program may be seen in all its glory right here if you're inclined.
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That happy day in 1963 when two leading lights from The Great White Way made it legal.
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The couple had sons together in 1964 and 1966. They also worked together periodically, including a televised rendition of Kiss Me, Kate. I must tell you that I saw Goulet while he was touring in South Pacific in the late-1980s as Emile de Becque and he sounded positively incredible. I don't think I'll ever forget hearing him do those songs.
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Unfortunately, the wheels came off and they were divorced by 1981. In 1990, she released an auto-bio revealing the endless hell of living with her husband. I recall reading it in disbelief since I had always bought their performance as a couple. (As an aside, I just "love" it when people in general have huge, splashy weddings, tearfully vow their undying love, have kids, etc... and then divorce and suddenly the ex-spouse is The Anti-Christ! LOL) Goulet died in 2007 of pulmonary fibrosis at age 73 while Lawrence is still with us today at 92.
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The Landaus were wed in 1957 and had daughters in 1960 and 1965. Landau had been a New York stage actor, but made a mark with Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) as a sexually questionable henchman to James Mason. His career progressed successfully, but it was Mission: Impossible that really made him a household name. Though Bain had also been acting for years, she was basically unknown and Lucille Ball (the head of Desilu) had reservations about "someone's wife" costarring on the spy series, but Bain won the part along with three consecutive Emmys!
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Things having ended badly on Impossible, the couple later costarred on the British-made sci-fi series Space: 1999, which also had its share of issues. Their careers piddled along with Landau dabbling in horror flicks and the two of them appearing in the infamous The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981.)
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This really seemed like a couple who would be in for the long haul, though, and they remained together until 1993. By that time, he'd fully resuscitated his career including two Oscar nominations and an eventual win. Landau died of heart disease in 2017 at the age 89. Bain is still with us today at 93.
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I will end this post with a photo from an entirely different (and not readily available?) episode of
Kraft Music Hall that made me smile. It's from a 1989 episode in which two comedians poked fun at the west coast lifestyle. "Don Adams and Don Rickles Are Alive and Well and Living in California." The biker get-ups and the demeanor in the publicity pic reminded me of something out of
The Born Losers (1967), a movie we recently discussed in the comments of a prior post...!
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I'm *just* old enough to remember THE KRAFT MUSIC HALL in its earlier incarnation with Perry Como-- along with the anthology drama THE KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATER that shared air time with the Perry Como version for a couple of years!
ReplyDeleteThis episode is really amusing with that unlikely pairing of two celeb couples (I guess for once, Steve & Edie weren't available?), especially since it required them to toss in those "dramatic acting" moments to play to one couple's strengths.
OTOH, this wasn't Barbara Bain's first shot at singing on network TV. There was an episode of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE that got special coverage in TV GUIDE, in which Bain posed as a Marlene Dietrich-styled *chanteuse* and performed two musical numbers, one saucy and one wistful. While I can still remember some of the lyrics, I can't remember if it was two complete numbers in the show, or just parts of the performance edited into the action as cutaways.
(And in all fairness, I don't think I've ever heard a version of Jacques Brel's "If You Go Away/Ne me quitte pas" that didn't lapse into *sprechstimme* at some point-- it's just sort of written that way, as much of a dramatic piece as a ballad. Come to think of it, a number of Brel's songs are written to accommodate a limited vocal range.)
Those gowns in the "waiting for the reviews" sketch-- yikes! I don't know what's more appalling-- the leopard print on Carol Lawrence, or the trim on both getups that looked like it was made from endangered-species Muppets. They made you think of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, but I kept imagining Divine wearing those in FEMALE TROUBLE or POLYESTER! LOL!
I don't know if either of the Goulet-Lawrence sons were famous, but one of the Landau-Bain daughters is actress Juliette Landau, who was in ED WOOD with her Dad, but is best known as the charismatically insane villain "Drusilla" from TV's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL.
And finally, I got a *big* chortle out of that shot of Don A. and Don R. in "biker drag" (and hey, that one's title was a Jacques Brel reference!) and the comparison to THE BORN LOSERS-- but they really remind me more of THE PINK ANGELS (1971)!
Thanks for yet another fun trip down memory lane, Poseidon, and for all you do! This site is the best!
Love to all, and be safe and well, everyone!
My family loved the variety shows - Flip Wilson and Dean Martin were especial favorites - but I don’t recall watching Music Hall, and certainly don’t remember this extravaganza. Ye gods, strikes me more as an hour to be endured than enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteBut how I miss all those shows, and all that music! Yes, there were a lot of clunkers, but some incredible gems as well. The 60s and 70s were a golden age of TV musical entertainment, but we just didn’t realize it. Luckily many of those wonderful moments are available on YouTube.
Mitzi said the networks were forever asking her to host a weekly show, but Gene Kelly advised her to stick to event television. Wise advice.
Hi Poseidon!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I want to point out that your post is almost exactly 54 years after it was first aired, almost to the day. It aired Wed, Oct 21, 1970, and I was 12.
I think I remember this episode for two reasons. I was heartbroken to discover that Robert Goulet was married (to a woman!). And the other, I remember somehow being scandalized by Barbara Bain wearing that wig, with the implication that she had nothing on under it.
What a treat to get this post. Thanks again for all of your postings.
Oh, and also thanks, I guess, for me now thinking that Don Rickles was kind of hot.
Wow, Poseidon! Must see TV, if not for all the right reasons. Two things: Barbara Bain always reminded me of a less-weathered Lauren Bacall. I recall Bain in a '40s set TV movie called "A Summer Without Boys," and thinking she really looked like Betty Bacall. Second, Robert Goulet always reminded me of a singing Tony Curtis, both personally and professionally. Cheers, Rick
ReplyDeleteAm I psychic? Getting in my miles today, my childhood crush Ron Ely suddenly came to mind - and now I read he just died. Every week I prayed for Tarzan’s loincloth to slip a leetle lower…
ReplyDeletehsc, now see? Bob & Carol & Steve & Eydie would have been NEXT LEVEL entertainment! And, yes, I'm sure that great care was taken to find just the right sort of song for Ms Bain to work through. I really, really like watching her (no, I really do!), but I have to confess that she often took a sort of self-satisfied, almost smug, facial expression at times. I can see someone being put off with that if they weren't captivated by her sultry, mysterious gazes. LOL about "endangered species Muppets!!" But I can totally see these gowns up in The Promenade Room of "The Towering Inferno," too... That era. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteDan, I have been, since I was a tyke, eager to self-flagellate with any sort of horrible variety show. Ha ha! Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they are rancid, but I'm always there to partake. I've been noticing - now that the full hours are finally becoming available instead of the butchered ones - how downright BAD some of the musical guests were on "The Carol Burnett Show" during their solo bits. But I don't care. I have to see them. Mitzi was a MASTER at providing great TV specials. Such an underrated entertainer - seemingly known only for "South Pacific" to many people. She DAZZLED on those specials.
A, how fascinating that I nearly hit the date head on. Didn't realize that. And you may have hot on something. I just somehow HAD to share that Don & Don pic once I saw it, even though I never enjoyed Don Adams much and was only barely fond of Rickles. But maybe on a subconscious level I found him sexy in it, too! (BTW, Mr. Ely died a few weeks ago or more! I'm sorry you didn't know about it sooner. I wrote about him in August and then.... Bad habit of mine.)
Rick, the title alone, "A Summer Without Boys" sounds unbearable! LOLOL Never heard of that one. But as you know I adore vintage TV movies. I did pick a bad one yesterday, though. It sounded right up my alley, but I could barely hang in through it. "The Night the City Screamed" all about a blackout and the melee that followed. Many TV faces, but it just wasn't happening for me. :-(
One thing I forgot to mention in my comment above:
ReplyDeleteThe title OPEN MOUTH used for the David Susskind sketch was a parody of his groundbreaking 1958 TV talk show on a NYC independent station titled OPEN END, which had an interesting gimmick-- it was *literally* an open-ended free-form discussion with a group of celebs that went on until they all ran out of steam!
Three years later, it got reformatted with a two-hour time limit and went into syndication, where it was retitled THE DAVID SUSSKIND SHOW in 1966 and ran for another 20 years. The show was notable at the time for being one of the few places on TV that allowed open, balanced discussion of controversial topics like the anti-Vietnam War movement, race relations-- and gay rights.
Not only was Susskind one of the first to interview openly gay people on his show, he became so associated with it to the extent that a '70s cartoon in the ADVOCATE (by "Donelan," IIRC) made the flip-side joke: "A gay man interviews a group of David Susskinds."
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And sadly, your comment about the musical interludes on THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW is true. My Dad used to leave the room while they were on-- particularly if the musical guest did a duet with Carol, which he referred to as "bellowing contests." (He always grumbled that getting an Emmy for that musical special with Julie Andrews went to her head.)
Thanks again for all you do, Poseidon! Love to all, and be safe and well, everyone!
PS Poseidon! The stars in their "historical' costumes remind me of the Sonny and Cher "V-A-M-P" skits! Cheers, Rick
ReplyDeleteOMG I am so down for this.. THANK YOU for the link. I was JUST talking to my fella the other night about Barbara Bain, We didn't know she was Jewish, as was Martin. We also agreed that she bears a slight resemblance to Dr Joyce Brothers. I loved her hair. I thought the Carol of the title was going to be Burnett. Twist! I cannot wait to watch. Variety shows can be deadly but groovy ones are heaven. Delish.
ReplyDeletePoseidon, you go where few else do. God bless you. I can’t imagine sitting through this. I remember “variety” TV. I never watched “The Kraft Music Hall.” I suppose I should have. I was probably watching something equally wretched. I was looking at TV schedules from my childhood years and, boy, did I make some awful TV choices as a kid. “The Ugliest Girl in Town?” Yes. Quality programming not so much. Keep it up. Belated congratulations on your anniversary. It’s always a high point of my day when I check in at your site.
ReplyDeletePoseidon, at the time I posted my comment, I hadn't actually spotted the YouTube link and checked out the video of Bain's musical performance-- I was just commenting on the nature of the song itself. But now that I've actually heard her rendition, I realize how diplomatic you were actually being.
ReplyDeleteThat performance isn't even *sprechstimme*-- it's just rattling off all the lyrics like a "to do" list, without conveying the depth of emotion Brel intended. And seeing how bad that actually was led me to Google to find the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE episode I haven't seen in 50+ years. Yipes.
First of all, the Google search popped up one of those "People also ask" things, with the top search being "Can Barbara Bain sing?" And the answer was a link to the IMDb page for that episode, where the "Trivia" page noted:
"Not being a trained singer, Barbara Bain was anxious about recording her three songs. Though the recording sessions were a disappointment, the Paramount music department deemed them passable and doctored the songs as best it could."
(Um, so that's a "Not really!" to that question?)
But I did find three YouTube clips (one a video of somebody's TV tuned to a MeTV broadcast!) from the episode "Illusion," in which Cinnamon goes undercover as "Mona Bern"-- basically Marlene Dietrich during her live performance years, minus the Jean Louis gowns and the talent. Judge for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaYLrlE29E4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTII-L4bv2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2z3Sgj3lgQ
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Two other things I picked up on by checking out the linked video of the "B&C&M&B" show:
In the "Open Mouth" sketch, there's a quick flash of what Bain was wearing under that Lady Godiva wig, when she flirts to "Peeping Tom" and wriggles her shoulders and gives a glimpse of her rib area. (Surprisingly, they didn't even bother to make it a matching flesh-toned leotard, and it really stands out now that you have the option of going back for another look!)
Also, the ending of that acting sketch where Martin Landau is seen as an old man had to have been intended on some level as a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE joke-- as a reversal of the moment in each episode where Landau or another "disguised" agent was shown peeling off a glued-on "incredibly lifelike mask" (with all "masked" scenes played by another actor) to reveal his own face. (At least here, when the "youthful mask" comes off, it's actually Landau in old age makeup "underneath the mask," rather than another actor substituted.)
Thanks again for all your great posts, Poseidon-- there's always so much to explore in them!
hsc, "Open End" sounds like something that might run on The Playboy Channel! LOL That's something, though... I bet DS heard all sorts of things during those discussions. Nice to know that a balanced and thoughtful person was out there back in the day to give people a voice. "Bellowing contests...!!!" I sort of enjoy Carol's huge belt, but I can get why others don't. Sort of like The Merm. Some folks just can't get there. ;-). Thanks!
ReplyDeleteRick, I loved Sonny & Cher and was raised on that show. It was such a disappointment when they divorced and had their own shows (!) then, IIRC got back on one show even though split up personally! And it didn't click anymore...
Gingerguy, HOWLING over the apt comparison to Dr. Joyce. That sort of hairdo. (Which I think the good doctor clung to longer.) Thanks.
Lamar, thanks so much for commenting. I absolutely LOVED watching TV as a kid. And my grandparents were forever bellyaching about how much time I spent doing it. (My only other go-to was comic books - I was no athlete!) Look where it got me... Still writing about all this crap decades later! LOL Glad you enjoy muddling your way through it.
hsc, M:I is one series I actually have on DVD in its entirety, but it's been a good while since I watched any. I think she was trying to make Fritz Weaver remember some past love of his from WWII or something, but - um - I doubt that the woman in question had 1968 TWA Chief Stewardess hair like that! LOLOL The whole thing remainds me of "Cabaret," in which Sally Bowles is intended to be a not-exactly-stellar, low-rent singer (and Jill Haworth on Broadway was not a "vocalist" per se), but then the movie comes out and Liza is killing every number one after the other!!! And, yes, every once in a while I try to be diplomatic. It's at my discretion. Ha ha ha ha!!! I know I never like to read cruel things about people I happen to like, so I do attempt to rein it in some in case the person in my sites is a favorite of a reader. Considering the rather acrimonious way that. Martin and Barbara split from the show, I'm surprised someone didn't raise a stink about his little "homage" to Rollin Hand on KMH. Lastly, as much as I always liked Cinnamon's hair, I often got a kick out of some of the fancier "'dos" she wore to events like The Emmys. She really good create a whole look that was arresting to behold. Oh, and with the leotard thing. "Pause" can be such a delight. I was watching a Brigitte Bardot movie the other night ("Don Juan") and one of the men was changing into a robe. You saw nothing as you watched, really, but going back frame-by-frame, he showed his behind and it was very round and attractive! Never would have seen it without the good ol' remote. Thank you!