The Merv Griffin Show with guests William Shatner, Deforest Kelly and Leonard Nimoy (1982)

I've Got a Secret with guest Jack E. Leonard

So the panel is hooked up to electrodes while Jack E. Leonard insults them and then a woman takes off her clothes and ...

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guests Dean Martin and Buddy Hackett (1973)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Don Rickles (1984)

Battlestars (1981) - Footage Offline 10/20/07

Alex Trebek hosted this short lived game show. This episode features Jerry Seinfeld, Rip Taylor, Debbie Reynolds and other assorted hams.

The Dick Cavett Show with guests John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara (1970)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Frank Zappa (1986)

The Dick Cavett Show with guest Judy Garland (1968) - Footage Offline 1/12/08

The Smothers Brothers Air Force Promo Spots

Before they became enemies of the military and the US government, the clean cut Smothers Brothers took the money and ran when they appeared in these television promos for the war machine.

Junior Samples

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Elizabeth Taylor (1992)

The Porter Wagoner Show featuring Buck Trent

The Porter Wagoner Show House Band

American Bandstand with guests The Count Five (1966)

The Incongruous Jackie Gleason (1968)

Jackie Gleason gets high on LSD in the movie Skidoo - the trailer for which is the first clip - and Jackie Gleason tells us, "The world needs [Richard Nixon]," in the next clip.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson

The Dean Martin Show: Celebrity Roast of Jack Benny (1974)

The Jack Paar Show with guests Liberace and Muhammad Ali (1963)

Burt Ward - Gay and Straight Sexual Innuendo Interview (1969-70) Footage Offline 10/25/07 - A SERIOUS DRAG!

Burt Ward - The Boy Wonder Screen Test

Batgirl (1966) - Unaired Pilot

The Hollywood Palace with guests Jimmy Durante and Mrs. Miller

Durante hosted this episode of The Hollywood Palace that also featured guests The Turtles and George Carlin.

Get Smart Outtakes with Don Rickles - 10/06/07 - video currently offline

Get Smart (1966)

Comedian Joey Forman does a yellowface turn in Get Smart's Charlie Chan take-off.

The Dating Game with contestant John Ritter (1967)

Bonanza Commercial featuring Bob Denver and Don Knotts

The Steve Allen Show (1958) with Don Knotts

Knotts' famous nervous-man character in fine form.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Bobby Darin (1973)

Jim Carrey as Don Rickles

From an episode of In Living Color in 1991 - a bang-on impression - and the only time I've ever seen somebody do Rickles.

The New Phil Silvers Show Promo (1963)

The Emmy Awards with Phil Silvers (1957)

The Dick Cavett Show with guest Jack Benny (1973)

Hefty Scrap Bags Commercial with Jonathan Winters

Ninety Minutes Live with host Peter Gzowski and guests David Cassidy with Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (1977)

The Captain and Tennille with guests Don Knotts and Dionne Warwick (1976-77) - Footage offline 1/13/08

I've Got a Secret (1969-72)

The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder with guest Marilyn Chambers - Footage Offline - 7/20/08

One of the first porn queens to branch off into a straight acting career was Marilyn Chambers.

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with guests Patty Duke and Don Rickles (1967) - Footage Offline 2/18/08

An awful sketch from a generally entertaining program. Pat Paulsen plays the medicine man.

The Mike Douglas Show with guests Ted Nugent and Dolly Parton

Milton Berle's Low Impact High Comedy Workout Video - 10/06/07 video currently offline

Uhhh ... ummm...

The Milton Berle Show with guests The Yardbirds (1966-67) - Footage Offline - 6/06/09

The Milton Berle Show was short lived, broadcast on ABC for less than a year.

The Pontiac Show: Phil Silvers on Broadway (1959)

The Phil Silvers Show was very theatrical for a television sitcom. Silvers, of course, had years of stage experience from vaudeville to Top Banana, and Bilko was filmed live - in sequence - without any retakes. So it was natural that they would take the show to the stage for a turn.

The Final Phil Silvers Interview

The beautiful Phil Silvers talks about The Phil Silvers Show and all the hookers that Joe E. Ross married in this interview that occurred shortly before his death in 1985. Not sure where the footage is from but it appears to be from 1983 or so.

The Dick Cavett Show with guests Phil Silvers and Jack Benny (1973)

WOW! Classic comedy orgasm! I was going to save this clip for Tuesday but I just can't sit on it that long. Phil Silvers! Jack Benny! Together! On a talk show! A mere five minutes, which is a nice chunk of time for YouTube, but I hope to find the whole episode sometime soon.

The Merv Griffin Show with guest Zaney Blaney

8/22/07: Embedding disabled by the selfish holder of the video. Find the footage on YouTube itself.

Another installment of Griffin in Vegas, here we have comedy magician Walter "Zaney" Blaney. Tricks for the first six minutes and a chat with Merv for the last little bit.

To Tell The Truth with guest Zaney Blaney (1975)

8/22/07: Embedding disabled by the selfish holder of the video. Find the footage on YouTube itself. While there you can also find footage of Blaney on The Mike Douglas Show.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Jonathan Winters

Three different appearances of Winters on The Tonight Show. The first clip is from the same week of the Exxon Valdez spill.

Good Humor Ice Cream Commercial with Jonathan Winters

And bloopers:

NBC Nightly News with Tom Snyder (1976)

The Jonathan Winters Show (1957) & (1967)

c

The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder with guest Don Rickles (1996)

Merv Griffin 1925-2007

The Merv Griffin Show with guests The Carpenters from 1981.

Merv Griffin 1925-2007

Buddy Rich on The Merv Griffin Show in 1978.

Merv Griffin 1925-2007

Priscilla Presley is interviewed on The Merv Griffin Show three days after I was born, February 23rd, 1980.

Priscilla on the Merv Griffin Show-1980
Uploaded by simplycilla

Merv Griffin 1925-2007

Merv Griffin appears as guest host on the original version of The Price is Right from 1959 - I think. Bill Cullen was the regular host.

More ... Car 54 Where Are You? (1962)

Another full episode of Nat Hiken's classic sitcom.

Car 54 Where Are You? (1962)

The Mike Douglas Show with guests Sonny & Cher (1969)

Steve Martin - The Funnier Side of Eastern Canada (1974) -Footage Offline - 12/10/08

Various Late Sixties NBC Promos - Footage Offline 06/13/09

Promos for Dragnet 1967, Star Trek, Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Huntley Brinkley Report, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Cool stuff.

The Mighty REVEEN

Way back at the time of this site's inception, I posted footage of hypnotist/illusionist Reveen performing on an episode of The Merv Griffin Show originating from Las Vegas (and a Canadian commercial for a Reveen performance in Newfoundland). Well, Stupid Comics, a swell site, has just posted something that I find amazing and endlessly amusing - I hope you will too. It's a Reveen comic book from the mid-sixties! It's simply too much. Check it out here.

Soul Train with guest Dick Gregory

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest host Garry Shandling (1986)

Man, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between this and an episode of The Larry Sanders Show.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Steve Martin (1980)

The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder with guest Maynard Ferguson (1982)

Few trumpet players could hit octaves as high as Canadian born Maynard Ferguson. He was quite a well respected jazz musician in the fifties and sixties before "going commercial" with his monster hits - discofied interpreations of the Rocky theme and Macarthur Park.

The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder (1979)

Perhaps the only good thing about having a legendary showbiz or media figure pass away in this day and age is the sudden influx of clips that flood the internet, hitherto unseen since their original broadcast. I can't make heads or tails of this interview but it's still swell.

The Electric Company Blooper - Footage Offline 10/25/07

The Lawrence Welk Show with guest Jack Benny (1971) - Footage Offline - 01/06/08

Tom Snyder 1936-2007

The Tomorrow Show with the late Tom Snyder and guests Ken Kesey & Jerry Garcia.

The Lucy Show Bloopers (1967-68) - Footage Offline 2/20/08

Lucille Ball made her return to television in 1962 in The Lucy Show. It co-starred Gale Gordon who Lucy and Desi had originally wanted for I Love Lucy but he could not abandon his commitment to Our Miss Brooks. Lucy was divorced by this time and The Lucy Show was nowhere near the quality level of the original program. Fans didn't care much however, as the show received huge ratings. By the late sixties the program seemed out of place and corny. Most of the writing staff were still churning out scripts that seemed left over from 1940s radio (to be fair, most sitcoms from 1962 to 1968 were in the same boat). The shows were often peppered with impressive guest stars to hide this fact. The same materail in somebody else's hands would have made it unbearable, but Lucy makes it worth watching. Television producer Sheldon Leonard makes a cameo in the blooper reel. You'll also see Desi Jr. and Buddy Rich in bloopers from the next Ball sitcom, Here's Lucy.

Raquel (1970)

Sadly this footage has been, according to YouTube, "L'utilisateur a supprimé cette vidéo." Not sure what that means exactly, but I know it's shitty.

At the height of her fame, Raquel Welch starred in this television special that featured right wing celebrities John Wayne and Bob Hope as guest stars.

Van Dyke and Company with guests Andy Kaufman and John Denver (1976)

It's too bad this isn't longer, but regardless it is a rather fascinating combination of people. Who would have guessed that Van Dyke would out live his guests?

The Rat Pack Live at The Sands Hotel

The Rat Pack live at The Sands! What footage!

The Tonight Show with guest host Steve Martin (1980)

Steve Martin interviews Andy Kaufman on February 20, 1980. How about that.

The New Bill Cosby Show with guest Groucho Marx (1973)

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.

The Ventures Live in Japan (1965)

Various Hollywood Squares

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Buddy Hackett (again!)

Another funny appearance from Buddy Hackett on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Buddy is now a Classic Television Showbiz regular, just like Muhammad Ali.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Shirley MacLaine (1989)

The Jack Paar Program with guests Bette Davis and Jonathan Winters (1963)

This entire episode is available on the fine SHOUT! Factory DVD set, The Jack Paar Collection.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Buddy Hackett

Buddy Hackett guests on Carson from this nineteen eighties episode. At the 37 second point Buddy mentions a brand of scotch that is blurred so that we can't hear it with the sound of backwards audio. At the 1:07 point somebody else's voice is dubbed in with "foot" instead of "dick." A couple of seconds we hear Hackett apologize to "Fred," as in producer Fred DeCordova. Ironically, after the joke Hackett talks about how the joke wouldn't work if he used a different word like "haircut," little did he know at the time that the network would change it to the word "foot."

Password Plus with guests Dick Martin and Betty White (1979)

Tom Kennedy did a bunch of mushrooms with comedian Dick Martin, Betty White and the contestants prior to the taping of this episode.



References to "Alan" are to regular host Allen Ludden who also happened to be Betty White's husband.

The Merv Griffin Show with guest Deborah Harry (1980)

The Jerry Lewis Telethon with guest Red Buttons

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Buddy Rich (1975)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guests Charles Nelson Reilly, Jack Albertson and Phyllis Newman (1974)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guest Madonna (1987)

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guests Gary and The Hornets (1966)

These kids are getting to regulars on Classic Television Showbiz just like Muhammad Ali! We've seen part of this before - the kids' rendition of Devil with a Blue Dress On. But now we have the tail end of Johnny's monologue at the start and an extra added garage rock song at the end. Check it.

The Mike Douglas Show with guests Muhammad Ali and The Pointer Sisters (1974)

Who else? These are just the clips that are out there, that's all. This time Mike goes on location to Ali's training camp.

The Dean Martin Variety Show with guests galore! - Footage Offline - 09/13/09

I don't know if I've ever seen one single sketch with so many cameos! Petula Clark belts out the Burt Bacharach tune, Call Me, and look at the who's who of celebrities that answer!

This sketch comes from The Dean Martin Variety Show Volume One, disc three, DVD compilation.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with guests The Duluth Accordionaires (1967)

The Dick Cavett Show with guest Gloria Swanson (1970)

Janis Joplin sits on the panel looking on at the lovely Gloria Swanson, the hottest senior citizen you ever did see.