"LAST WEEK, WE DID A SHOW ... THAT LAID ... WITHOUT A DOUBT ... THE BIGGEST BOMB IN HISTORY": It's one of my favorite Hollywood stories, and I'm glad to see it
told well by Splitsider -- You're In The Picture, the Jackie Gleason celebrity game show which aired once on January 20, 1961 (um ...
kind of
a busy night?) and only once, a show so bad that Gleason spent the next week's half-hour slot
apologizing for the show having aired.
Back to back posts about January 20ths? Most important day in (pop-culture) history? Or just most noteworthy this weekend?
ReplyDeleteJanuary 20 is nothing -- January 15 is the anniversary of the great Boston Molasses Disaster. 21 people killed by a WAVE of molasses! I want to see that movie.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Heather Graham is still going door to door apologizing for "Emily's Reasons Why Not," though the creator of that has now found a much happier place (she created Suburgatory after a stint on Parks and Rec).
ReplyDeleteRob Schneider has a sitcom on CBS. Who at CBS owes Adam Sandler a massive favor? How else does one explain it?
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to note that"Whose Line Is It Anyway" used a similar device, with Colin Mockrie standing in front of a green screen and trying to guess what was going on behind him (usually, it seemed, he was being chased by giant lizards). But it probably works better as a five-minute skit than an entire program.
ReplyDeleteAdam - if you mean it was a busy night because of the JFK inauguration, that doesn't make sense for the era. There was maybe an hour of evening news and that's it. I doubt there was any sort of wall-to-wall JFK coverage that would have competed with this show.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I checked the NYT archive: no primetime coverage.
ReplyDeleteAnd when you have a professional comedian doing it instead of random civilians.
ReplyDelete