I haven't posted for a few days for one good reason and one very good reason. The good reason is I have a FRA NOI article deadline rapidly approaching Monday morning and I've been working on an article about Italian American female vocalists. The other very good reason is I've been spending all my other free time watching my new DVD set of "The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends."
You know how sometimes you're looking so forward to something that when it finally arrives, it ultimately disappoints you? Not so, in this case. I had first spotted "The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends" announcement on Amazon months ago. You see, I had been wondering for awhile why Cavett, or whoever controls these shows, was waiting to release a compilation with some of the comedy greats that I knew he had interviewed over the years? After all, what the hell do I care about Rock Icons? Niente! That's what. Anyway, it would appear from this set that Cavett exerts at least some level of control over the product and now that it's finally out I'm not complaining.
Cavett deserves our thanks, not only for giving us time with some of the legends of comedy like Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, George Burns, Woody Allen, Lucille Ball, and Mel Brooks, but also for doing it right. Most of the time we see a product like this, it's nothing more than a compilation of clips and highlights from a number of different shows over many years time. That's all well and good. Quite often those shows are very entertaining. However, I've always longed to see entire shows without having the compilers take out what they considered boring. I want real time-capsule type stuff and finally someone has done it. "The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends" presents full shows from roughly the time period of 1968 to 1974. Some are quite funny and some are not. BUT, all are fascinating!
Now to be perfectly honest, I haven't seen all the shows yet. There are 12 full shows plus some very good bonus material included in this set. Thus far, I have seen all of Disc One which has three full shows: Show One - all Groucho Marx; Show Two - Woody Allen, Ruth Gordon, and walk on by Gina Lollabrigida; Show Three - all Bob Hope. The bonus features of Disc One include a half hour show of clips including Groucho, Woody, and Hope but also with some priceless footage of (the recently departed) Pat McCormick, a wonderful comic and comedy writer, and Jack Burns, of Burns & Schreiber fame. There is also a piece where Cavett is interviewed about these shows and an alternate opening filmed for the Groucho Marx episode. The only disappointment on Disc One is the Hope program. For whatever reason, Hope is too subdued.
Disc Two includes a full 90 minutes with Woody Allen from October of 1971 which is very, very good. The second show features Mel Brooks, one of my all-time favorites. He does the schtick you'd want and expect like the 2000 year old man, as well as a treat of him imitating Frank Sinatra singing "America the Beautiful" as though he were in a Las Vegas lounge. Remember, this is about seven years before Brooks made "High Anxiety" and would do the classic Sinatra take-off on the film's title song.
I'd like to rave more about this set but I want to try to watch the rest of Disc Two tonight before I wander off to dreamland. The next show up is from November 1971 with a pre-Heathcliff Huxtable version of Bill Cosby. Bonus features for this disc include an outtake segment from the Woody Allen episode and an interview from 1968 with Joanne Carson, Johnny Carson's wife at the time.
If you want to buy this set from Amazon, as I did, you can click on the "Dick Cavett: Comic Legends" link in the left column of this site. My zen/web master Jason tells me that if you do so, Amazon will compensate me in some minor way that may eventually help me pay for the site. It all sounds like voodoo to me but then I'm still amazed and impressed by Still Photography.
I'm off to the year 1971. Good night all you moderns stuck in '06.
