The Phil Silvers Show and more ...

Here's an episode of The Phil Silvers Show from 1955 with special guest star Fred "Herman Munster" Gwynne. This was Fred's television debut and Nat Hiken would remember him when he cast Car 54 Where Are You? several years later.



Here's the opening for The New Phil Silvers Show that aired in the fall of 1963.

Nat Hiken wrote a made for tv sitcom-movie in 1960 called The Slowest Gun in the West. The send-up of the current western craze starred Phil Silvers and Jack Benny and also featured the great lazy-eyed character actor Jack Elam. Here we see Lee Van Cleef confront Silvers.

An episode of Dinah Shore's variety show, Dinah! with several guest stars including Phil Silvers.




Phil Silvers guest stars on The Dean Martin Show:


I couldn't find any other full episodes of Bilko on the internet so here are several random clips from The Phil Silvers Show that remain hilarious even out of context.

Password Plus (1979)

I love it when Allen Ludden talks about his "hole" and how women get stuck in it "all the time."

The Joe Pyne Show (1966)

The beef box was a regular feature of The Joe Pyne Show in which beatniks and degenerates sitting in the audience could challenge the opinions of the all-American host, Joe Pyne. Sometimes the beef box simply consisted of old men complaining about the price of batteries, but many times it was old-fashioned Pyne versus the high-on-drugs youth of the sixties. If we needed to nominate the clips that qualify for "Best Ever" appearances here on Classic Television Showbiz, the previous Joe Pyne stuff would be right at the top of the list.

God, Pyne was such a dick. But so much more fun to watch than his descendents like Glenn Beck

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Ethel Merman (1979)

I don't know if it's true that "the older generation" despised Rock N' Roll when it became all the rage in nineteen fifties, but drive-in movies from that era seem to insist that it is so. If that was indeed the case ... how did the older generation justify the noise that was Ethel Merman? Here she appears with Johnny to promote her new disco album! The shrillest shrill that ever shrilled, Ethel Merman.

Password Plus (1979)

The password is ... LSD

!

The Merv Griffin Show with guest Patty Duke (1966)

Summer Time @ Classic Television Showbiz

Time to celebrate summer with some fine fine surf music.

Gary Usher and Roger Christian did great work for The Hondells, swell California surf rockers of the 1960s. What better way to get in the summer mood than to watch a clip from a movie called ... Ski Party (1965). Here are The Hondells rocking on the beach.

Dick Dale and the Del-Tones speed through a rocking distortion of Miserlou in the 1963 B-Movie A Swingin' Affair!

RCA Victor recording artists The Astronauts are one of the forgotten bands of the nineteen sixties. When they sang, which was most of the time, they were mediocre. When they shut up and just played their damn surf guitars they were one of the most exciting bands of the decade. Here they are in the film Surf Party (1964), a drive-in picture that starred Bobby Vinton and also featured Scott Walker!

Bikini Beach (1965) is easily my favorite of the Frankie and Annette beach films and one of the reasons is this integrated skinhead surf band, The Pyramids. Want backflips with your surf music? Yes, please! Don Rickles? Yes, please! Boris Karloff? Little Stevie Wonder? Yes! Yes! Yes!

Bob Denver played a beatnik in the rare beach film For Those Who Think Young (1964). Here he sings the song Ho-Daddy. The picture also starred comedian Woody Woodbury - read more about Woody and this movie over here.

The Beach Boys make their British television debut in 1965 on the popular teen rock program Ready, Steady, Go!

The Beach Girls and The Monster (1965) was kind of a low-budget version of The Horror of Party Beach ... er ... wait a second.

The Mike Douglas Show with guests Patty Duke and Morey Amsterdam (1967)

Two sitcom stars of the early sixties are welcomed by Mike Douglas in July of 1967.