My son Shane will probably have an after-school snack around 4:00 PM EST, eat dinner around 6:30 PM EST and have some popcorn while we watch TV between 7:30 and 8:00 PM EST.
I only mention this as I thought that some of my many "friends" in the circus industry could save themselves a little time and come by then and take the food DIRECTLY out of my child's mouth.
Some very nice tribute videos were posted to YouTube over the weekend. Since clownalley.net was down when Tim passed it's time that we honor him here in "The Alley"...
From the New York Times
Timothy J. Holst, Who Filled Circus Big Top With Talent, Dies at 61
By GLENN COLLINS Published: April 22, 2009
Timothy J. Holst, who joined the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as a lowly Keystone Kops clown, rose to the role of singing ringmaster and ultimately became the show’s talent czar, died April 16 in São Paulo, Brazil, during a visit to sign up circus acts. He was 61.
He died in a hospital there after a short illness, said a circus spokesman, Stephen Payne.
Mr. Holst, whose official title was vice president for talent and production, circled the planet for more than two decades signing performers from star clowns to trapeze hair-hangers. He was fluent in Spanish and Swedish and spoke passable Russian, Mandarin, French and Portuguese. He recently calculated that he had visited 164 countries.
“He was the ambassador to the world for the Greatest Show on Earth,” said Kenneth Feld, Ringling’s owner and chief executive. “And for the performers, he was the one who introduced them to American society. He became involved in these families’ lives at every step of the way.”
Since 1986 Mr. Holst “was responsible for the careers and livelihoods of more than 3,000 people, and since so many of them paired off, there are countless marriages to his credit, and the children that came from that,” said Nicole Feld, Mr. Feld’s daughter, the executive vice president of Feld Entertainment.
William B. Hall III, an independent circus consultant and producer in Churchville, Pa., said: “It was under Tim’s watch that Ringling began making deals with Communist countries to sign performers and acts. A lot of those countries were still closed, so he was an integral part of breaking down Iron Curtain barriers for cultural exchanges.”
Though Mr. Holst prided himself on his ubiquity, even he was teased by his circus peers when he turned up in the Jan. 20, 1992, issue of The New Yorker, in a “Reporter at Large” article describing an exotic trek to Mongolia.
The writer, Fred C. Shapiro, quoted a Western diplomat who recalled being “welcomed in a gher near the Gobi Desert,” referring to a herdsman’s tent. The diplomat added that “we were far away from any road, and I asked the shepherd if we were the first foreigners he had ever received. ‘The second,’ he said, and he showed me a card left by the first — a scout from Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, who had been there a few months before.”
Mr. Holst was born in Galesburg, Ill., on Oct. 9, 1947. His father was a letter carrier, his mother a registered nurse. “Growing up amid the cornfields of Illinois,” he once said, “I never dreamed of ever leaving the United States, let alone traveling all over the world.”
Before proselytizing for the circus, Mr. Holst spent two and a half years as a missionary in Sweden for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he was a lifelong member. He also studied drama at Ricks College and later at Utah State University.
Mr. Holst began doing stand-up comedy in college, and while performing in Butte, Mont., the future talent finder was himself discovered by a Ringling talent scout, who offered him a 1971 berth at Clown College, the Ringling school in Venice, Fla.
In 1972 Mr. Holst performed as an Auguste clown, with red nose and exaggerated features, recalled Steve Smith, a 1971 classmate who years later became director of Clown College. Mr. Holst’s star turn was as the hapless flatfoot in the clown-car routine. He donned a long blue coat and an enormous police badge and blew a whistle helplessly though frenziedly as he chased a jalopy crammed full of 20 clowns around the ring.
After performing with the Blue Unit, one of Ringling’s two traveling shows, Mr. Holst became a ringmaster for both units and eventually performance director of the Red Unit.
Mr. Feld headed the talent-finding operation for his father, Irvin, then the circus’s owner. But he had to focus on running the company after his father died in 1984, so he groomed Mr. Holst as the new scout. After his decades on the road, Mr. Holst had in recent years been grooming Ms. Feld as a talent scout.
Mr. Holst lived in the circus community of Sarasota, Fla. His two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his daughters Megan, of Marblehead, Mass., and Adrienne, of Dallas; a son, Matthew, also of Dallas; a brother, Thomas, of Luanda, Angola; a sister, Sandra Cordon of Salt Lake City; and a grandson.
A portly man of deceptive agility, perseverance and physical strength, Mr. Holst tirelessly hefted commodious traveling bags full of gifts. “If the matriarch of a circus family needed a certain kind of fabric to make a costume,” Mr. Smith said, “Tim would carry it halfway around the world for her.”
I've heard from a few folks over the weekend that videos from Hulu.com are only available inside the United States. I was unaware of this and will make mention of it while linking to videos there in the future.
The Colgate Comedy Hour was an American comedy-musical variety series that aired live on the NBC network from 1950 to 1955. The show starred many notable comedians and light entertainers of the era, including Eddie Cantor, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Fred Allen, Donald O'Connor, Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, Ray Bolger, Gordon MacRae, Robert Paige, and Spike Jones and His City Slickers.
Synopsis
The program evolved from NBC's first TV variety showcase, Four Star Review, sponsored by Motorola. The "running gag" sketches were dropped in favor of more performing acts. The weekly show was proposed to be hosted by four comedians in a four weekly rotation and to provide competition for Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town on CBS.
The new format was heavily backed by its sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive, to the tune of $3 million in the first year, and the 8:00 p.m. EST, Sunday evening format show was a spectacular success, particularly for Eddie Cantor and the Martin & Lewis and Abbott & Costello duos. In his autobiography, Jerry Lewis wrote that the show premiered Sunday, September 17, 1950 with Martin & Lewis, and was telecast from the Park Theatre off Columbus Circle in New York City. As theatres are known by different names over history, it is possible that this was the now-demolished International Theatre at 5 Columbus Circle, the broadcast location of another NBC show of the era, Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca.
During the 1950-51 season, AT&T put into regular service a coast to coast coaxial/microwave interconnection service which allowed live telecasts from both coasts. Two production units were quickly set up, one out of New York City, the other out of Hollywood/Los Angeles. Martin & Lewis and Abbott & Costello anchored the West Coast, broadcasting from the El Capitan theater in Hollywood (now used by ABC-TV's Jimmy Kimmel Live), while Eddie Cantor anchored New York City. This gave NBC a substantial edge over Ed Sullivan, since top-grade talent from motion pictures could also do network TV on a West Coast Colgate Comedy Hour while Sullivan had to work with whoever happened to be in New York at the time that a particular episode aired.
During the 1952 season, Cantor suffered a heart attack after a Colgate Comedy Hour show in September, and was reluctant to move with the show. By the fourth season, the sponsor was providing $6 million, but the performers were finding difficulty in providing fresh material and ratings were starting to decline. Cantor had become too ill to continue in the hosting role and the travel was too stressful and painful for him.
During the 1954-55 season, the show changed its name to the Colgate Variety Hour to reflect a move away from pure comedy. A number of the earlier hosts left and the show shifted toward mini-musicals, starring hosts such as Ethel Merman and Frank Sinatra. The show was also performing on the road as well, unlike other seasons where the shows were transmitted from New York or Los Angeles at 8 p.m.
However, ratings continued to slide while The Ed Sullivan Show got stronger. The final show was aired as a Christmas special on 25 December 1955 with Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians choral ensemble. The Colgate Comedy Hour was replaced the following season with the NBC Comedy Hour, hosted by Leo Durocher for the first three shows. After Durocher, the regular hosts changed, and after 18 broadcasts, the final show aired in June. Regular supporting casts always co-starred in each of the episodes. Jonathan Winters was featured on the show.
On 5 November 1967, NBC broadcast a special Colgate Comedy Hour revival with guests Nanette Fabray, Kaye Ballard, Edie Adams, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Phyllis Diller, Bob Newhart, Nipsey Russell, Dan Rowan, and Dick Martin. Oddly, none of the performers who had performed in the original 1950-1956 shows appeared.
Color
The episode broadcast on 22 November 1953, hosted by Donald O'Connor, made history. The episode was the very first ever color television broadcast in the NTSC color system (still used in the U.S. as of 2007). There were few other color broadcasts in the 1953-1954 season.The series was also used earlier in the season to demonstrate the final form of RCA's "Compatiable" color system to members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Two sets were in the room: an experimental color model and a standard black-and-white unit. Eddie Cantor hosted the program with guests including Frank Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, and Brian Donlevy.
José Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Meléndez (November 15, 1916 – September 2, 2008) was a Mexican character animator, film director and producer, known for his cartoons for Warner Brothers, UPA and the Peanuts series. Meléndez provided the voice of Snoopy and Woodstock in the latter as well.
Early life
A native of the Mexican city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Meléndez was educated in U.S. public schools in Douglas, Arizona, and later in Los Angeles at the Chouinard Art Institute (which would later become California Institute of the Arts).
Disney and Warner Bros.
In 1938, Meléndez was hired by Walt Disney to work on animated short films and feature-length films such as Bambi, Fantasia, and Dumbo. While there, he worked to unionize the rank and file animators he was working with.[2] A member of the Screen Cartoonists' Guild, he left as part of the 1941 Disney animators' strike and never returned as an employee, moving on to Leon Schlesinger Productions and its successor company, Warner Bros. Cartoons, along with Emery Hawkins, Basil Davidovich, and Don Williams, where he would remain until the early 1950s. On most of these productions, Meléndez was credited as "J.C. Melendez" and worked mostly for directors Robert McKimson and Art Davis.
UPA and commercial animation work
When the number of animation units at Warner Bros. was reduced from four to three in 1948, Melendez moved over to United Productions of America (UPA) where he animated on cartoons such as Gerald McBoing-Boing. Melendez also produced and directed thousands of television commercials, first at UPA, then Playhouse Pictures and John Sutherland Productions.
Bill Melendez Productions
In 1964, Melendez formed Bill Melendez Productions which produced the annual broadcast Christmas special A Charlie Brown Christmas, for which he won an Emmy Award and the George Foster Peabody Award despite having to work on short notice and with a tight budget. Meléndez performed the voice of Snoopy, who normally in the specials does not talk. Meléndez first started animating the Peanuts characters for a series of commercials in 1959 for the Ford Falcon, and it was during that time that he met Charles Schulz, the comic strip's creator. Melendez was the only animator authorized to work on Schultz's Peanuts characters.
Meléndez went on to do over 75 half-hour Peanuts specials, including the 1989 miniseries This is America, Charlie Brown, as well as four feature-length motion pictures – all with partner Lee Mendelson.
In 1979, he directed a made-for-TV animated version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for Children's Television Workshop.
Amongst the other comic strip characters he animated were Cathy and Garfield, as well as the 1992 special Frosty Returns.
Melendez died on September 2, 2008 in Santa Monica, California. He was cremated.
My Little Chickadee (1940) is a Universal comedy/western motion picture starring Mae West and W. C. Fields, with Joseph Calleia, Ruth Donnelly, Margaret Hamilton, Donald Meek, Willard Robertson, Dick Foran, George Moran, William B. Davidson, and Addison Richards. It was directed by Edward F. Cline. The original music was written by Ben Oakland (song "Willie of the Valley") and Frank Skinner.
West reportedly wrote the original screenplay, with Fields contributing one extended scene set in a bar. Universal decided to give the stars equal screenplay credit, perhaps to avoid the appearance of favoritism, but the move incensed West, who declined to re-team with Fields afterwards. The stars spoofed themselves and the Western genre, with West providing a series of her trademark double entendres.
Plot
The story is set in the American Old West of the 1880s. Miss Flower Belle Lee (Mae West) is a singer from Chicago who is on her way to visit relatives out west. While she is traveling on a stagecoach with three men and a woman named Mrs. Gideon (Margaret Hamilton), the town gossip and busybody, a masked bandit on horseback holds up the stage for its shipment of gold and orders the passengers to step out.
The masked bandit immediately takes an interest in the saucy blonde. As he makes his getaway with the gold, he takes her with him. Upon reaching Little Bend, the others report the robbery and kidnapping to the sheriff (William B. Davidson). Flower Belle then walks into town, unharmed, and explains, "I was in a tight spot but I managed to wriggle out of it."
Later that evening, at the home of her Aunt Lou (Ruth Donnelly) and Uncle John (Willard Robertson), the masked bandit enters Flower Belle's second floor bedroom and they start kissing. However, his presence and departure is witnessed by Mrs. Gideon. She quickly reports what she has seen and Flower Belle angrily finds herself hauled up before the judge (Addison Richards). Flower Belle is then run out of Little Bend.
She boards a train to Greasewood City. It makes an unscheduled stop to pick up con-man Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C. Fields). When hostile Indians attack, Flower Belle saunters to a window and mows them down with two pistols, while Twillie dodges flying arrows and fights off the Indians with a child's slingshot. Flower Belle has little use for Twillie until she sees a stash of money in his bag. Believing him to be rich, she then plays up to him and they get acquainted. They have an impromptu wedding, officiated over by a passenger, Amos Budge (Donald Meek), a gambler who looks like a minister.
As she has only pretended to marry Twillie for "respectability," Flower Belle gets a separate hotel room in Greasewood City. Meanwhile, Twillie is made sheriff by the saloon owner and town boss Jeff Badger (Joseph Calleia), who has an ulterior motive. Flower Belle attracts the attention of Badger, newspaper editor Wayne Carter (Dick Foran), and every other man in town. While keeping her troublesome "husband" out of reach and out of trouble, Flower Belle encounters the masked bandit again.
One night, Twillie enters Flower Belle's room one night disguised as the masked bandit. He is accused of being the masked bandit, and is about to be hanged. With the noose around his neck, he makes his last request to the lynching party. "I'd like to see Paris before I die. Philadelphia will do!" However, Flower Belle saves Twillie. At one point, she and Badger had kissed, and from that, she recognizes that he is the masked bandit.
When Flower Belle and Twillie say good-bye, West and Fields spoof each other's signature line.
"Come up and see me sometime," he says.
"Mmm, I will, my little chickadee," she replies.
As Flower Belle sashays up the stairs, "The End" is playfully overlaid on her posterior.
Reception
My Little Chickadee was the most successful film of 1940 after Gone With the Wind, despite only mediocre reviews from critics. It grossed upwards of $20 million in the United States alone, an outstanding amount at the time.
Pop culture references
"My little chickadee" is the catch phrase most associated with W.C. Fields. He first used it during a scene in If I Had a Million (1932) to address co-star Alison Skipworth.
"Come up and see me sometime" is an extremely famous misquotation of Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (1933). The actual line was "Why don't you come up sometime and see me."
My Little Chickadee was Mae West's first screen performance since Every Day's a Holiday (1937) for Paramount Pictures. This was her only performance for Universal, which now owns most of the pre-1950 Paramount film library.
W.C. Fields also starred in a series of comedies for Paramount in the 1930s. This was his second performance for Universal.
Margaret Hamilton played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, which was released the year before My Little Chickadee. Fields had been considered for the role of the Wizard, but he declined the opportunity.
Horse Feathers (1932) was the fourth Marx Brothers film. It starred the four Marx Brothers, Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo, as well as Thelma Todd as Connie Bailey. It was written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone. Kalmar and Ruby also wrote some of the original music for the film. Several of the film's gags were taken from the Marx Brothers' stage comedy from the 1920s, Fun in Hi Skule.
Plot
The film revolves around, among other things, college football and a game between the fictional Darwin and Huxley Colleges. (Thomas Henry Huxley was a defender of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.) Many of the jokes about the amateur status of collegiate football players and how eligibility rules are stretched by collegiate athletic departments remain remarkably current.
Groucho plays Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the new president of Huxley College, and Zeppo is his son Frank, who convinces his father to recruit professional football players to boost the Huxley team's chance of winning. There are also many references to Prohibition. Baravelli (Chico) is an "iceman", who delivers ice and bootleg liquor from a local speakeasy. Pinky (Harpo) is also an "iceman", as well as a part-time dogcatcher. Through a series of misunderstandings, Baravelli and Pinky are recruited to play on Huxley's football team; this requires them to enroll as students at Huxley, which, of course, results in nothing but comic chaos throughout the school.
The climax of the movie, often referenced as one of the greatest football-related scenes in movie history, includes the four protagonists winning the football game by taking the ball into the end zone in a horse-drawn garbage wagon that resembles a chariot and which Pinky rides as such.
Musical numbers "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It" "I Always Get My Man" "Collegiate" "Everyone Says I Love You" "Bridal Chorus" "Wedding March" "I'm Daffy Over You"
Notable scenes
The opening number features Wagstaff and a group of college professors singing and dancing in full academic robes and mortarboard hats. The song sets the tone for Wagstaff's irreverent view of the school:
I don't know what they have to say It makes no difference anyway; Whatever it is, I'm against it!
One famous scene features Baravelli guarding the speakeasy, and Wagstaff trying to get in. The password for entry is "Swordfish". This bit was the inspiration for the title of the movie thriller Swordfish. The sketch includes several jokes about fish, with some puns-within-puns:
Wagstaff: I got it! "Haddock". Baravelli: 'At's a-funny, I got a "haddock" too. Wagstaff: What do you take for a "haddock"? Baravelli: Sometimes I take an aspirin, sometimes I take a calomel. Wagstaff: I'd walk a mile for a calomel. Baravelli: You mean chocolate calomel? I like-a that too, but you no guess it.
During this scene, the mute character Pinky wants to come in and is asked the password; he responds by pulling a fish with a small sword stuck down its throat from his coat. At one point Wagstaff and Baravelli are debating the cost of ice. Wagstaff argues that his bill should be much smaller than it is:
Baravelli: I make you proposition. You owe us $200, you pay us $2000, and we call it square. Wagstaff: That's not a bad idea. I tell you ... I'll consult my lawyer. And if he advises me to do it, I'll get a new lawyer.
The joke immediately after that one illustrates that the Hays Office was not in total control of film scripts yet, and hints at Chico's real-life lifestyle. The essence of this joke would be repeated by Chico in Duck Soup:
Baravelli: Last week, for eighteen dollars, I gotta co-ed with two pair o' pants. Wagstaff: Since when has a co-ed got two pair of pants? Baravelli: Since I joined the college.
A notable scene taken from the earlier revue Fun in Hi Skule consists of the brothers disrupting an anatomy class. In this scene, the part of the anatomy professor is played by Robert Greig, a character actor who appeared in over 100 films, many in the role of a butler. He appeared with the Marx Brothers as Hives, the butler, in Animal Crackers. After Chico and Harpo "bear him out", Groucho takes over the class and continues the lecture:
Wagstaff: Let us follow a corpuscle on its journey... Now then, baboons, what is a "corpuscle"? Baravelli: That's easy! First is a captain... then a lieutenant... then is a corpuscle! Wagstaff: That's fine. Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?
Earlier in the scene, he recited this little poem in response to the professor asking the students to explain the symptoms of cirrhosis, which Baravelli mis-hears as "so roses":
So roses are red So violets are blue So sugar is sweet So so are you.
A little later, Wagstaff advises Pinky that he "can't burn the candle at both ends". Pinky then reaches into his trenchcoat, and pulls out a candle burning at both ends.
Foreshadowing the famous 'stateroom' scene from 'Night at the Opera,' all four Marx brothers and the comic villain take turns going in and out of Connie Bailey's room, and eventually their movements pile up on each other's, resulting in a crowded, bustling scene, notable both by Groucho's breaking of the fourth wall during Chico's piano solo, and his constant opening of his umbrella and removing his shoes upon entering the room.
Chico's ridiculous play-calling during the actual football game, (signals like, "You wan-a get-a hurt-a? Well, we gonna do a forward pass." and "Hey diddle diddle, we gonna take the ball up the middle.") is also notable.
The film prominently features the song "Everyone Says I Love You", by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, which was later the title song of the eponymous 1996 Woody Allen movie Everyone Says I Love You. All four brothers perform the song:
Zeppo leads off with a "straight" verse, befitting his usual non-comical characterization: Everyone says I love you The cop on the corner and the burglar too The preacher in the pulpit and the man in the pew Says I love you.
Harpo whistles it to his horse, and later plays it on the harp. In keeping with his standard mute characterization, he does not sing it.
Chico sings a comical verse, with his standard fake Italian accent, while playing piano: Everyone says I love you The great big mosquito when-a he sting you The fly when he gets stuck on the flypaper too Says I love you.
Groucho sings a somewhat sarcastic verse while strumming a guitar, befitting his attitude throughout the film of being suspicious about the college widow's intentions:
Everyone says I love you But just what they say it for I never knew It's just inviting trouble for the poor sucker who Says I love you.
Except when Harpo (the dogcatcher) whistles it to his horse, the song is used to serenade Connie Bailey (played by Thelma Todd).
Eventually, Pinky and Baravelli are sent to kidnap two of the rival college's star players to prevent them from playing in the big game. The intended victims (who are much larger men than Pinky and Baravelli) manage to kidnap the pair instead, removing their outer clothing and locking them in a room. In order to escape, Pinky and Baravelli saw their way out through the floor. The saws came from a tool bag Pinky carried with them that held their "kidnappers' tools," which included, among other things, rope, chisels, hammers and at one point, a small pig. This is an example of the surreal edge of Marx Brothers humor, which later became a heavy influence on the Bugs Bunny cartoons.
One direct example of that influence occurs in the speakeasy scene. Two men are playing cards, and one says to the other, "cut the cards". Pinky happens to walk by at that moment, pulls a large meat cleaver out of his trenchcoat and chops the deck in half. This none-too-subtle gag, which was recycled from the brothers' first Broadway show, I'll Say She Is, would be repeated by Curly Howard against Moe Howard in the Three Stooges' 1936 short subject Ants in the Pantry, and by Bugs Bunny against Yosemite Sam in the 1948 cartoon, Bugs Bunny Rides Again.
A picture of the brothers in the "chariot" at the end of the film made the cover of TIME in 1932.
Cast
Groucho Marx as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff Chico Marx as Baravelli the Iceman Harpo Marx as Pinky Zeppo Marx as Frank Wagstaff Thelma Todd as Connie Bailey David Landau as Jennings James Pierce as Mullen Nat Pendleton as McHardee Reginald Barlow as The Retiring President Robert Greig as The Biology Professor
Reception
American Film Institute recognition 2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs #65
Period references
A term that occurs often in Horse Feathers, but may not be familiar to modern viewers, is "college widow". The term, which is somewhat derogatory, referred to a woman who stays in college after graduation in order to find a husband. It is used to describe Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd). Such women were stereotypically "easy"; in the film, the character is shown as being involved with each of the Marx brothers and the principal antagonist, Jennings.
In this now lost, deleted scene from Horse Feathers, the Marx Brothers are seen playing poker as Huxley College goes up in flames around them.
During the climactic football game, at one point Groucho utters the exclamation, "Jumping anaconda!" This seemingly nonsensical phrase probably is a reference to the notorious stock market performance of Anaconda Copper immediately preceding the Great Depression.
Groucho had delivered other jokes related to the stock market in the Brothers' preceding films (for example, "The stockholder of yesteryear is the stowaway of today" in Monkey Business) and all the Marx Brothers had experienced severe losses in the 1929 crash.
Missing Sequences
The only existing prints of this film are missing several minutes, due to both censorship and damage. The damage is most noticeable in jump cuts during the scene in which Groucho, Chico and Harpo visit Connie Bailey's apartment. Several sequences were cut from the film, including an extended ending to the aforementioned apartment scene, additional scenes with Harpo as a dogcatcher, and a scene where the brothers play poker as the college burns down. (A description of the latter scene, along with a still image, exists from a pressbook from the year of the film's release, however.)
Alan Abel (born 1930) is an American prankster, hoaxter, writer, mockumentary filmmaker, and jazz percussionist famous for several hoaxes that became media circuses.
Education and early career
Abel graduated from the Ohio State University with a B.S. in Education. One of Abel's earliest pranks took place in the late 1950s. Abel posed as a golf pro who taught Westinghouse executives how to use ballet positions to improve their game.
Beginning May 27, 1959 with a story on the Today Show, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), was Abel's most elaborate hoax. SINA's mission was to clothe naked animals throughout the world. They are best known today for their tagline: "A nude horse is a rude horse". As spokesman for the group, Buck Henry appeared on television and radio several times, including the CBS Evening News on August 21, 1962. The hoax began as a satire of media censorship but took on a life of its own with sympathizers offering unsolicited contributions (always returned), citizen summonses for walking naked dogs, and sewing patterns for pet clothes.
From 1966 to 1967 Abel wrote a weekly syndicated humor column "The Private World of Prof. Bunker C. Hill" that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner and several other newspapers.
1970s
Following the Watergate scandal, Abel hired an actor to pose as Deep Throat for a press conference in New York City before 150 reporters. Literary agent Scott Meredith offered $100,000 to buy the rights to his story. At the news conference the Deep Throat impostor quarreled with his purported wife, then fainted and was whisked away in a waiting ambulance.
Abel wrote, produced, and directed two mockumentaries – Is There Sex after Death? (1971) and The Faking of the President (1976).
In 1979 Abel staged his own death from a heart attack near the Sundance Ski Lodge. A fake funeral director collected his belongings and a woman posing as his widow notified the New York Times. The Times published an obituary January 2, 1980[1] (a rare example of a premature obituary). On January 3, 1980, Abel held a news conference to announce that the "reports of my demise have been grossly exaggerated".
Omar's School for Beggars was a fictional school for professional panhandlers. As Omar, Abel was invited to numerous television talk shows including the Tomorrow Show hosted by Tom Snyder, as well as Morton Downey, Jr., Sally Jessy Raphael, Mike Douglas and Sonya Friedman, who was especially upset because Omar ate his lunch on camera. The hoax was a satirical commentary on the rise of unemployment and homelessness in America. Omar's TV appearances spanned the period from 1975 to 1988, even though he had been exposed several times.
Live from New York
Abel was behind one of the most talked-about incidents in The Phil Donahue Show's history - on January 21, 1985, soon after the show's well-publicized move of its operations from Chicago to WNBC New York.
On that day's program, seven members of the audience appeared to faint during the broadcast, which was seen live in New York. Donahue feared the fainting was caused by both anxiety at being on television and an overheated studio on a morning that was cold and snowy outside. He eventually cleared the studio of audience members and then resumed the show.
It turned out the fainting "spell" was cooked up by Abel in what he said was a protest against poor-quality television.
Parodies
In 1993, when euthanasia and Jack Kevorkian were common topics in the news, Abel set up the bogus Florida company "Euthanasia Cruises, Ltd." which would offer cruises allowing suicidal participants to jump into the ocean after three days of partying. He revived this hoax in a column in 2006.[2]
In 1997 Abel launched a new venture, CGS Productions, to promote gift-wrapped pint jars of Jenny McCarthy's urine. (A parody of McCarthy's role in a shoe commercial where she appeared sitting on a toilet.) The name of the communications director for CGS Productions was Stoidi Puekaw – "Wake up idiots" backwards.
Abel once ran for Congress on a platform that included paying congressmen based on commission; selling ambassadorships to the highest bidder; installing a lie detector in the White House and truth serum in the Senate drinking fountain; requiring all doctors to publish their medical school grade point average in the telephone book after their names and removing Wednesday to establish a 4-day workweek.
Not quite retired
At the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Abel introduced a campaign to ban all breastfeeding because "it is an incestuous relationship between mother and baby that manifests an oral addiction leading youngsters to smoke, drink and even becoming a homosexual." After two hundred interviews over two years, Abel confessed the hoax in U.S. News & World Report.
Documentary
In 2004, his daughter Jenny Abel along with Jeff Hockett made a documentary film of Abel's life called Abel Raises Cain, which played at the Boston Independent Film Festival and the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival where it won first prize for Best Documentary. It has been released on DVD.
Books
* The Great American Hoax (1966) * The President I Almost Was by "Mrs. Yetta Bronstein" (Abel and his wife) (1966) * Confessions of a Hoaxer (1970, Macmillan) * The Fallacy of Creative Thinking (as Bruce Spencer, 1972) * The Panhandlers Handbook (as Omar the Beggar, 1977) * Don't Get Mad, Get Even (1983, Sidg. & J) * How to Thrive on Rejection (1983, W W Norton & Co Ltd, as W. W. Norton)
Bello Nock, coming off 8 years as a star on Ringling, a winter with Circus Sarasota and having just Nocked 'em dead at the Shrine Circus in Springfield is now headed to Walden to begin rehearsals for his triumphant return to the BAC.
I have a friend who describes the proliferation of the "New Vaudeville" approach to clowning as the "New Yama". His reason being that now it's just as generic, hackneyed, and uninspired an approach to clowning as the rainbow wigged, Simplicity-patterned, greasy, smeared makeup of the "yama yama" clown that hands out stickers at the car wash now simply repackaged to showcase how much money these performers have spent picking items out of the Dube catalog.
His assessment may not be true of everyone but it is essentially valid and is only gaining more ground with me as time goes on.
Dressing in gray, black or brown thrift store castoffs and topping it with a derby or porkpie to show how different you are from the typical convention, Shrine and Christian clowns that you are trying to distance yourself from makes sense only to other "New Vaudeville" clowns. The general public doesn't understand or care about the idea - or what you are doing with it. If anything, it only serves to distance you from your audience, for whom vaudeville (either old or new ) is a largely meaningless word.
It all boils down to character, without a strong character you have nothing. So if the costume only serves to make the character more accessible, more unique , more marketable... why look like everybody else?
When you think about it, it really makes about as much sense for a contemporary performer to wear a top hat as it would have for Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd to work in the 1920s dressed as Joseph Grimaldi.
Naiseng, a longtime employee of the Archie McPhee Catalog people, gives his brutally honest assessment of some of the company's most popular products.
This really helps to illustrate just how a prop, devoid of a talented comedian's ability to "sell" said prop, can (and very often does) look completely stupid and totally useless in the cold light of day.
I think that I would prefer watching Naiseng either alone or without the condescending demeanor of the host. This pretty clearly illustrates the talent of someone like David Letterman, who could present the same material in the same way without giving you the impression that he was personally insulting the subject.
"Dying is easy; presenting ironically humorous online videos based on a foreigner's difficulties in comprehending an American hipster's pop-cultural sensibilities based on encountering a series of non-related items from a mail-order novelty catalog is apparently quite hard, or at the very least much harder than it looks on late night television."
Andy Kaufman performing his Mighty Mouse bit on the premier episode of Saturday Night Live (then called NBC's Saturday Night) on the night of Saturday October 11, 1975. I didn't see it that first night but I did see it when it was repeated during that first season. I was eight years old.
An absolutely perfect clown gag, just brilliant.
I have to place this one in a category with Buster Keaton's vase bit from Pest of the West, Ernie Kovacs' Nairobi Trio and Jim Henson's Mahna Mahna; a bit where the performer is locked into an inevitable action that the audience is fully aware of and totally expects. It's virtually the exact opposite of a traditional clown gag which is usually based on the element of surprise.
I could watch this a million times.
Side note: I watched Andy Kaufman punch Jack Burns live on ABC's Fridays while sleeping over at Eric Mischel's house.
It looks like most folks now know that things are back up and running here but we're still down in individual hits from where we were before the break.
Please spread the word and let folks know that things are back to normal here and all of the archives have been restored.
I'm not involved in every single date of the tour but I will be in these towns promoting the following upcoming shows:
May 25 & 26 Atlantic County 4-H Fairgrounds Egg Harbor City, NJ May 27 & 28 Cape May Courthouse,NJ June 6 & 7 Norwich, NY June 8 & 9 Afton, NY June 10 & 11 Whitney Point, NY June 12 & 13 Frankfort, NY June 14 Fonda, NY June 15 & 16 Ballston Spa, NY June 25 Goshen, CT June 26 & 27 Riverton, CT
Video and original comments courtesy of Gary Kaskel
Harpo Marx clowns with Uncle Miltie on The Kraft Music Hall starring Milton Berle broadcast January 14, 1959. Billy May conducts the orchestra. May also wrote and conducted the music on all the early Capitol Records' Bozo the Clown albums.
When I first saw this at the Museum of Television and Radio in NYC I was floored by Harpo's "Shiner-esque" gestures intimating alchohol, cocaine and heroin use in 1959! And keep an eye on Uncle Miltie's left hand after Harpo plays the clarinet, as he prompts Harpo's final prop in the scene.
I'd like to see America build an honest-to-goodness circus building in New York City.
Not Madison Square Garden, not a tent in Damrosch Park or out on Coney Island but a real European-style home for the American circus; a building with no other purpose than to teach and present circus.
No hockey. No basketball. No rock concerts or ice shows. Circus. Only circus.
A place that Ringling could play in the spring and Big Apple could play in the fall. A place where New York could finally have it's own Shrine Circus in the winter. Something that could house a Clown College (were anyone so inclined to restart such a program) in the summer and host Cirque when they are in town.
A place that New York could invite the great circuses of Europe and introduce American audiences to a classical circus, devoid of the elephant rides, inflatable bounce houses and the 7 minute peanut pitches that keep American shows from trancending the carnivalesque.
Something that FINALLY says that we understand that the circus is an art form deserving of respect.
THAT is what I want.
Where should it be built? Right in Central Park
Can such a thing be done?Of course! Do it at night when no one is looking.
A clown is a mirror for the society. With these words, Peter Shub proposes a reflection to us on the figure of the clown. On the occasion of his participation in the Festival the International of Theater of Seville, the teacher of clown analyzes the keys of comedy, the contemporary clown and the importance of the laughter in the daily life: we are losing the capacity to laugh?
The very happiest of 29th birthday wishes go out today to my good friend, co-conspirator and one of the very best clowns anywhere in the world today, Mr. Drew Richardson.
FOREVER YOUNG
May God bless and keep you always, May your wishes all come true, May you always do for others And let others do for you. May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung, May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young, May you stay forever young.
Cowboy Mike Keever is currently in the hospital with pancreatitus.
Here is his information: Skaggs Regional Medical Center PO Box 650 Room 121 Branson, Missouri, 65615 417-335-7000 room 121
Please call Mike only if you personally know Mike, otherwise I know that he'd love a card or to read your message in the comments of this post. We all love ya, Mike. Get better soon!!!
We all owe a debt of gratitude to these two men, Scott Saidel and Eric Mischel, for getting clownalley.net back.
And to Facebook.
And the Old Bridge Township School System in general and the Lakeridge West bus in particular.
Neither of them are clowns.
I went to school with both of them.
When the blog disappeared Scott, who I hadn't seen since high school, sent me a very nice Facebook message telling me that he'd Googled my name one day, discovered the blog and how much he'd enjoyed it. He knew that Eric, who we'd both gone to school with, worked at Google and suggested contacting him.
Eric and I had been very good friends in middle school. We'd slept over each other's houses, played Atari, rode bikes... typical middle school stuff. I went to Eric's Bar Mitzvah. His father gave me the best lesson I ever got on how to throw a baseball and my very first, and best, stock tip ("Just put your money in the bank.")
I sent him a Facebook message and Eric, who I hadn't seen in 25 years really went above and beyond to get things back up and running here.
So, the old adage really is true: there is no friend like an old friend.
If you appreciate having the archives here back please take a moment to thank Scott and Eric because without them this would very likely have been gone forever.
Mark Buthman in Lou Jacobs' bathtub, 1974
Head Maitre De, Frosty Little
More whitefaces in one photo than there currently are
Mr. Dougie Ashton and his gal Sal
Ron Jarvis and Mark Buthman
Billy Baker wearing the same Lou Jacobs patch on his hat
The late Eric Braun with Shoopee
Artist's rendition of clown baby
Drew The Dramatic Fool
Scott Saidel
Eric Mischel
