By RM
monday, april 21, 2025 at 3:45:00 a.m.
There was a wonderful ongoing parody of Mr. Rogers on the short-lived series Van Dyke and Company (1976)-first you'd get the syrupy version, where the neighborhood is so wonderful, then they'd show a miniature train going through a tunnel and emerging in the "real" world, where everyone is nasty to each other!
Great series-Andy Kaufman was on that, as well, before he made it big. Too bad Dick van Dyke turned out to be another big-mouth, leftist jerk. These people live in a liberal bubble, and have no clue they're dispelling the good will people once held for them.
-RM
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9 comments:
I've watched the original "Dick Van Dyke Show" occasionally and think it's completely overrated. I never laugh at it--ever. It SHOULD be funny,but not even a twitch of a smile from me.
--GRA
Not even the one about the walnuts from outer space, with an alien that looks like Danny Thomas (played by Danny Thomas, of course)? If that's not a gem of TV comedy, I don't know what is!
Just two observations: Dick Van Dyke was the rare comic (on TV) to combine physical with verbal comedy (Stan Laurel was his hero), and Mary Tyler Moore was the rare (TV) comedienne who was funny and charming and actually good-looking, unlike face-making ogres like Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett. In her prime, one of the most gorgeous women ever to stand before a camera.
-RM
PS- Subjectivity is a funny thing. I was just noting N.S.' post where he listed FROM HERE TO ETERNITY as something like the 13th greatest movie of all time- I sat through that one twice and thought it was HORRENDOUSLY overrated! Probably showered with awards because it was anti-military, and popular because it was based on a best-selling book and had mild sexual interest (like the famous beach scene, which appears onscreen for about two seconds but became iconic as a still image).
Of course, it rescued Sinatra's fading career- the Mob bought him the Oscar!
-RM
I know,I don't understand why I don't find the show funny. Very talented stars,Mary was gorgeous,Dick was a superstar. I'm not much on "I Love Lucy' either. Not familiar with the Danny Thomas episode--SOUNDS funny but...
--GRA
Just to show the power a single image can have, there were two memorable parodies of FROM HERE... that used it: Caesar and Coca as the lovers, getting doused by (offscreen) buckets of water, Sid unable to keep from breaking up; and an early issue of MAD where the still image of Burt and Deborah was interspersed throughout the story, gradually being submerged by the incoming tide!
-RM
jerry pdx
I haven't watched enough of Dick Van Dyke's original show to really say but I did enjoy him in Mary Poppins, his slapstick could be funny in the right setting. I do like watching Laurel and Hardy but Stan brought a certain pathos to the pair that gave their routines some emotion along with the slapstick. Abbot and Costello didn't have that which is why I probably didn't care for them. I like slapstick sometimes, but not always. Unlike most men, who are supposed to, I didn't like the 3 Stooges because they were just mindless pratfalls, but I liked the Marx Bros. because they had sort of a background socio political element in their movies along with the slapstick. Plus, they were just so amazingly talented in comedy, acting and music, there was depth there. I never cared for Jackie Gleason but when he did slapstick playing off Art Carney in the Honeymooners, it was pretty funny. Lucille Ball wasn't funny at all and her show was boring as hell, I don't know why anybody liked it. Just mindless slapstick with her mugging like she thought she was the funniest thing in the world. Plus, if she were born 30 years later, I'm pretty sure she would have been a mudshark. Carol Burnett could be funny, at least her show was but she was playing off of some pretty towering talents like Tim Conway and Harvey Korman.
I believe I wrote something about this a while back when Suzanne Sommers died but since we're on this subject, here it is again:
I never liked Jerry Lewis slapstick, didn't think he was the slightest bit funny and hated his movies but when John Ritter, who was heavily influenced by Jerry Lewis, did his slapstick type schtick on 3's Company, for some unaccountable reason, I thought it was hilarious. I have no explanation for that one, I can't think of one redeeming quality about that show other than Joyce Dewitt and Suzanne Sommer prancing around in halter tops and short shorts, but I laughed at Ritters antics. Sometimes we don't know why we laugh, we just do.
I liked the Stooges themselves, especially Curly, but most of their short comedies are mediocre-to-awful, and their later feature films were terrible!
Gleason was brilliant (along with Carney) in THE HONEYMOONERS- the only other great sitcom besides THE DVD SHOW, the first 2 seasons of BILKO, and some of THE MTM SHOW. Absolutely hated Lucille Ball- even in her "glamor girl" days, I found her homely and unpleasant. Yet she was HUGELY popular- she had THREE long running series, spanning nearly 25 years! Also hate Jerry Lewis, BUT- have to credit him for THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, a brilliant performance! I never saw 3's COMPANY, but I saw Ritter in a nice little movie called HERO AT LARGE some 40 years ago (!) and thought he definitely had some kind of quality. Since he was the son of Tex Ritter, maybe there was some untapped potential there.
The best comedy on TV wasn't in a sitcom- but in the sketch comedy of Sid Caesar/Imogene Coca, and the unique Ernie Kovacs.
-RM
I'm much more a fan of the Stooges--even the subpar Shemp ones. A slap or an eyepoke said a lot(and the accompanying sound effects). The remade movie of years ago was even okay. I concur about the other observations. The best sitcom has to be the first 3 years of "All in the Family"--big laughs--I watch it every night at 8 pm.A 10.
Taxi and Cheers were 9.9. out of 10. Never get tired of watching those two shows. M*A*S*H(before Rogers and Stevenson left)was fun. Mary Tyler Moore and M*A*S*H about a 9 out of 10.
Skit comedy is great when it's done the right way.SNL in the early 90s was top the of the line entertainment--not at all now.
--GRA
I should have put in a word for Jack Benny- like anyone else, his show varied with the writing, but he was intrinsically funny, he could do more with just a look than most comedians with words (Carson was a big fan of his).
ALL IN THE FAMILY was brilliantly written and perfectly cast- but it was still insidious liberal propaganda (though it was a huge success because half the audience was on Archie Bunker's side- it was designed that way, a sort of Trojan Horse for Norman Lear to promote his ideology). (Lear's activist group, People For The American Way, is still around!)
-RM
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