Kliph Nesteroff Presents "a portal into a previously unseen world" - The Guardian
"Invaluable" - The Onion AV Club
"Important" - John Hodgman, The Daily Show
From a rarely seen 1975 CBS Special titled Rickles. It features a good example of what Rickles' live act is still like today. He sings, he dances lightly and, of course, he hurls insults. The song "I'm a Nice Guy" is still performed today (listen for the line about everyone in the band being high) at every Rickles gig. As with the most recent Rickles post, this one features many several bizarre celebrity cameos. Otto Preminger delivers his weirdest work since Skidoo (1968) - Preminger singing and doing musical shtick with Rickles on stage? I'm reverting back into that "James Brown, Little Richard, Weird Al Yankovic on Wheel Fortune together" dream state. It seems too much like a dream to be real. Like that dream I keep having about teaching a sheep how to tap dance - except with celebrities.
Unfortunately this has been removed from YouTube for the time being. The man who uploaded it often has footage appear, disapear and then re-appear at a later date. I don't know why. Hopefully that later date will be soon.
Perhaps the greatest political comedian of all time is Dick Gregory. In the same league as Mort Sahl, George Carlin, Dick Davy, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce and a handful of others, Gregory's comedy was devoted to a greater cause than simply making people laugh. His comedy LPs are among the most meticulously ever crafted. His material was brilliant and enlightening. Recently, he did some lush theatre gigs with Mort Sahl, a dream bill if there ever was one. Here he is in a PSA that obviously never did one bit of good.
In this wild footage we see Don Rickles reprise his live act for television. Cleaned up a bit for TV - it was probably edited for time too, but its incredible how long this set is, on somebody else's show. Just shows you how much of a fan Dino was of Don. This footage features an incredible planted audience of celebrities. In this television studio audience, appearing specifically to participate in this segment, are Don Adams, Danny Thomas, Lena Horne, Polly Bergen, Ricardo Montalban, Barbara Eden, Ernest Borgnine, Jackie Cooper, Guy Marks, The Andrews Sisters, Rose Marie, Bob Newhart, Dom Deluise, Pat Boone, Robert Morris, Pat Collins and several more.It includes a staged cameo from Bob Hope in which Rickles reprises some once-improvised lines from a real-life cameo Hope made at one of his shows.
Tommy Smothers does an impression of Johnny Carson on The Smothers Brothers final appearance on the show before Johnny left. A reminder that Tommy Smothers says the DVD collection of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour should be out before the end of the year.
