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robplunkett
Reviews
Jackie Gleason: American Scene Magazine: Premiere Show - Art Carney, Frank Fontaine, Sue Ane Langdon, The Newton Brothers (featuring Wayne Newton) (1962)
A great start to a terrific, unique family friendly variety show
"Jackie Gleason's American Scene Magazine" was, later under other names, the last revival of Gleason's variety show. It later lost its mojo as Gleason eliminated almost all the features that made it great. This was a great start for it.
It had the sharp June Taylor Dancers, the premiere of it's most popular new character, Crazy Gugenheim, a Honeymooners sketch (with Sue Ann Langdon as Alice), the network premiere of Wayne Newton, who was the star of the Newton Brothers and several Gleason classic characters.
Crazy Gugenheim, portrayed by the now-pretty-much-forgotten Frank Fontaine was quickly dubbed the funniest man in America. This honestly had everything. The only reason I gave it 9 instead of 10 stars was that the Honeymooners sketch was pretty lame.
I know episodes were preserved for posterity as they were featured on PBS long afterward and I had a VHS of this particular one, but good luck finding any of this anywhere. The only DVD I've seen is from the poor later episodes. It's not on Youtube etc.
The Ken Berry 'Wow' Show (1972)
Terrific First Episode Repeated 5 Times
I remember being crazy about this show for one week and one hour. After the series was over, I figured that the powers that be had a choice of either having a bleh six episodes or having one terrific episode and showing it, with a little new material, six times. Looking at the small excerpt on You Tube, makes me doubt my judgment about how great the first episode was but, it seems likely that the best material was in the unexerpted two thirds or so of the show. Given the number of star cameos and the good production values, I think the network must have had big hopes for this. The five stars is an average of the whole series. I wish I could see the whole first episode again.
Town Without Pity (1961)
An utterly repulsive movie, spoilers!
I am shocked at the glowing reviews this movie receives.
Spoilers ahead!
Here's all you need to know about it. A girl is raped by several GI during the post WWII occupation of Germany. The main character
(the hero) convinces everybody that it's her fault and she is hounded until she commits suicide...
All the junk about this being a masterpiece is just like all the praise that "Birth of a Nation" has gotten.
More spoilers!
"Birth of a Nation" is a racist love letter to the Ku Klux Klan. No amount of great camera-work or whatever makes up for either movie's repugnant core.