Saturday, January 28, 2012

"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.

8 comments:

  1. Jordan12:11 PM

    Back to back posts about January 20ths?  Most important day in (pop-culture) history?  Or just most noteworthy this weekend?

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  2. January 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.

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  3. Meanwhile, 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).

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  4. kd bart5:38 PM

    Rob Schneider has a sitcom on CBS.  Who at CBS owes Adam Sandler a massive favor?  How else does one explain it?

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  5. Fred App8:32 AM

    It'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.

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  6. The Pathetic Earthling11:24 AM

    Adam - 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.

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  7. Okay, I checked the NYT archive: no primetime coverage.

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  8. Roger8:49 PM

    And when you have a professional comedian doing it instead of random civilians.

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