Ghost Town (1988)

 

Bing Crosby Live at the Hollywood Palace (1965)

    We’re headed back to the palace for episode 13 of their third season, originally airing on Christmas itself, Saturday December 25^th, 1965. Most everything I said about this show during the Perry Como episode holds true except this was in the show’s heyday and starring its most frequent host, Mr. Bing Crosby. This is the first true variety show I’ve viewed, I feel, in that it was clearly put together to be its own thing and Crosby is just there to tie the parts together and sing the occasional song. This wasn’t tailored around him, he just happened to be there for the night.

The timecode's there throughout, just ignore it.

    Crosby was at an interesting time of his career. He’d finished the last of his ‘Road to …’ movies with Bob Hope in 1962 and had moved into television production. Bing Crosby Productions formed partnerships with both Desilu Productions and CBS television to produce a number of shows, including his own ‘The Bing Crosby Show’ which had gone off the air the April before this episode. The two most noteworthy shows he was involved in were ‘Ben Casey,’ a medical drama, and the comedy ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ of which more in a moment. Although he may have faded from the public eye as the years went by he was generally considered one of the richest men in show-business, having invested his money wisely. He continued making Christmas specials until his passing in 1977.

    His personal life was messy at best and it was revealed after his death that he was a serial adulterer, a gambling addict, had extensive ties to the mob, and was frequently physically abusive to his children. Time has not been kind to his reputation. He sang very well, though.

    The show opens with a quick run-through of the upcoming guests, of which there are more than I’m used to, before throwing up the fact that Clairol is sponsoring the show and cutting to a commercial. I’m not here to talk about them but I will say it is rather refreshing for the subtext of selling beauty products to women to become so much the text as the stentorian narrator bluntly tells the woman with slightly gray hair that she better dye her hair back to its original color or her husband’s not going to pay attention to her anymore.

Um, Bing?

    We get back from the commercial to the sight of Crosby descending a staircase singing another one of those 60’s songs that all blend together to my ear, something about the wonderful white world of winter. There are some nods to the fact that it’s Christmas, some fake trees and the dancers are wearing winter clothes. Crosby is very obviously lip-syncing and openly misses a couple of his cues but just rolls with it. He also keeps turning the wrong way to interact with the female dancers and again does not give a shit.

    After the song he greets the audience and acknowledges that it’s Christmas and that it’s almost over, like it’s a relief, and tells what has to be the fourth of fifth ‘exchanging presents’ joke I’ve heard from these specials, that was apparently more of a thing back when stores let you return stuff. He rolls directly into the setup for the next section which, okay, gonna need a paragraph break for this.

I question the accuracy of that weight.

    Gonna have to come right out and say it, the next act is Landon’s Midgets. The internet knows very little about them except they were likely associated with the Ringling Circus. Leaving the name aside it’s actually a fairly impressive act. The premise is that a clown helper elf for Santa named Blinko is sent to get help as they’ve fallen behind in their toy-making. He visits a professor working on an atom smasher. The professor loads the clown into a box, a comedy weight falls on his head, and the box bursts open with the troupe, the clown presumably having been smashed into them. They’re basically tumblers and acrobats and round it off with feats of unexpected strength. They stand on each other shoulders, do handstands off of their upturned feet, that sort of thing. It’s capped off by one of the little people carrying the other three members of the troupe around at once. What it has to do with Christmas is a complete mystery.

That is some strange background imagery.

    Crosby then introduces Fred Waring, a name utterly unbeknownst to me but apparently a very big deal from the 30’s through the 60’s, often referred to as “Americas singing master.” He was reportedly famous for his choral arrangements and here he leads a mixed chorus through a speed-run of highlights from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. It’s pretty enough and he’s actively conducting them so it’s pretty clearly being sung live.

    Coming back from the commercials there’s a great few seconds where Crosby either misses his cue or it’s several seconds late and he’s just squinting off-screen, mouth slightly open. He gets his cue and turns it on for the camera but we all saw what you did there, Bing.

Hey, Bing!

    Woof, and then the cast of ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ shows up. To anyone who’s not familiar with the show just Google it, I don’t have the strength to run through either it or the life of Bob Crane. It’s a whole lot. The premise is they’ve dug their way to America and are shocked when they realize that Crosby is the producer of their show and start calling him boss and asking for favors. It’s a funny enough premise. Klink and Schultz show up, there’s banter as they realize they’re in America and on television, and we’re moving on.

Yup, Nazis on Christmas.

    We come back from commercial and Crosby introduces Dorothy Collins for a couple of numbers. Known at the time for fronting the tv show ‘Your Hit Parade’ and also appearing in ‘Candid Camera’ she was later nominated for a Tony in 1971 for her performance in Sondheim’s ‘Follies.’ Apparently she’s one of those singers and performers who, if you get just past the surface-level knowledge of musical theater, is considered something of a legend. She sounds pretty good.

    The next act is a doozy, Bob Williams and Louie the Dog. Not gonna lie, if you put your concerns to the side about the possible mistreatment of the dog it’s a pretty solid act. The premise is that Bob Williams comes out, hypes up how amazing his trained dog is, and at the moment of introduction the dog fails to come out. It’s finally shoved out from behind a curtain and despite how increasingly desperate Bob gets continues to simply stare ahead and do nothing. The comedy lies in how much the dog doesn’t react no matter what Bob does. If it didn’t get a little too physical at points I’d rate it quite a bit higher but he does manhandle the dog a bit. It’s clearly either a well trained dog or it’s doped to the gills, which is the other concern I have. The audience eats it up, which is good because it takes up a solid nine minutes of the show.

    When we get back the choral singers are center stage again joined by the cast of ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ and Dorothy Collins. They sing ‘Go Tell it on the Mountain,’ for presumably reasons, then sing what I’m starting to recognize as a go-to time filler, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ Afterwards Crosby brings out what he claims is the guitar on which ‘Silent Night’ was first played, which sure, maybe, then they run through a medley of other Christmas classics.

They do ALL of the days of Christmas.

    To close things out he brings out his son Harry Crosby to do a number. Harry was seven at the time and is one of the few children of Bing Crosby to still be alive. He’s currently an investment banker and has largely kept silent on Bing Crosby’s treatment of his children and his other reported problems. He appeared on television with his father numerous times through the 70’s and has dabbled in music himself. He’s a decent enough little singer and manages to get through a rendition of ‘O Come Little Children’ without embarrassing himself. After the song Crosby plugs their New Year’s show as he promises some “special shtick” and “clever capers.” He wishes the audience a Merry Christmas and we’re left with a role call of the show’s sponsors.

    This was not a terrible show but it was fairly boring. Maybe it was the miscues but Crosby comes across as much less of a warm person than Perry Como and has about five percent of the energy that Johnny Cash brought to the stage. The acts are just acts, just there to fill time between the commercial breaks. None were terrible but I’m not going to remember any of them three days from now. Maybe the dog.

    This is more what I expected a variety show from the 60’s to be except it’s played at around half the speed I was hoping for. I wanted anarchy and loose takes and missed cues and the whole thing barely holding together until just after the final curtain dropped. I guess that’s an unreasonable expectation, and it occurs to me just now that what I’ve been wanting this entire time is just ‘The Muppet Show’ with an all non-felt cast. That’s a bit of a bummer. That dog would still have killed if you paired him with Gonzo, though, and I at least know Jim Henson would have treated him right.