Ghost Town (1988)

 

The Dean Martin Christmas Show (1972)

    The opening visuals announce as loudly as possible that the 70’s have already fully had their way with this show. It’s all oranges and browns and visuals designed to hurt the eyes. Every time I worry that the decade is in danger of losing its status as the ugliest time of human history it swoops back in to reassure me in the worst way possible.

You are trying my patience, 70's.

    Airing on December 21^st, 1972, this was when the show was limping along on its last legs. This is the last Christmas special aired as part of ‘The Dean Martin Show’ as during its last year it changed formats to become a weekly celebrity roast, a format Martin would milk for the rest of the decade. Even on paper the show is much-diminished, for guests we’re down to a still-returning Dom DeLuise, Nipsey Russell, and Rodney Dangerfield well before he attempted to be anything but a standard stand-up comic. The rest are half-familiar names that make Dennis Weaver look like a superstar.

This is about how invested he is at this point.

    Martin ambles out to once more sing ‘A Marshmallow World,’ giving most of the heavy lifting to a couple of The Golddiggers. He’s simply not trying too hard, mostly just standing there playing the song straight while giving half-hearted asides to camera. He does what’s even for him a half-assed read of the cue cards to set up the next bit before wandering towards backstage. It actually does a freeze-frame on his retreating form so there was clearly no second take.

    It’s DeLuise as a Santa who comes down the chimney into Martin’s home and squabbles with his inexplicably present wife before Martin wanders in wearing a robe over his tux. More drunk jokes follow and from his delivery I could maybe start to believe Martin may have actually been drinking this time. DeLuise does all the lifting and it ends limply on another freeze-frame so maybe they’re just doing that now.

You just kick back and smoke, you've earned it.

    Glenn Ford has inexplicably taken the place of Ken Lane and given someone to improvise off of Martin is interested again. His maybe housekeeper comes in to deliver some lines and interact with Ford so Martin came lean back and have a smoke facing away from the camera. Then The Golddiggers come out to sing a song about how great Martin is before cutting to a nightclub set where Rodney Dangerfield does his stand-up for a couple of minutes before sitting down with Martin as a table to continue the act in a slightly different format. If you are at all familiar with Dangerfield’s act you know exactly how it goes.

    Next is a duet between Martin and country singer Lynn Anderson. Martin plays it pretty straight when paired with a non-comedy performer although he still hams it up a bit. They sing a song and that’s pretty much it.

    If it seems like I’ve kind of been blowing off the show up until this point it’s mostly because I have, but we now come to a scene I have to hunker down a bit and dig into. It opens with Glenn Ford sitting on a park bench holding a leash connected to a collar around the neck of a woman dressed as when I’m guessing is a reindeer. Deep breath, it keeps going. Martin wanders on, also leash in hand, leading a girl dressed as a leopard. Martin greets Ford and sits on the bench next to him and the cat lady settles on the ground in a submissive pose with her head in Martin’s lap. Another deep breath, people. Martin asks after Ford’s reindeer and Ford replies it’s Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. When asked why his nose isn’t red Ford replies he gave up drinking. So we’re playing with genders as well here, okay. They make a couple of reindeer jokes and then it just ends on a joke about male reindeers having so many mates they have to live up north where the nights are so long. Which ... why was there a cat lady? Why was there a reindeer lady? Did they just sneak a fetish scene past the censors? Genuinely confused here.

I feel like I need an explanation but don't want one.

    We’re back on the outdoorsy winter set I swear I’ve seen like five times by this point. Martin does a straight version of ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’ and it’s as boring as it sounds. Next a very strange transition as we cut to the outside of a clearly labeled NBC affiliate (specifically KNBC-4 out of Los Angeles) before panning over to what is passing itself off as the interior of a barber shop. Nipsey Russell and Dom DeLuise are barbers to Martin and Ford and it’s just an excuse to rattle off a bunch of jokes. Russell and DeLuise do fine and Ford keeps up with his deadpan replies, Martin is pretty checked out and is back to smoking. Best part is when Ford clearly blows a cue card read and they refuse to let him move on until he gets it right and he just keeps blowing it. Worst part is the actual jokes which range from topical to repulsive and are all very much 1972.

    There was apparently a stand up comedian named Norm Crosby. I only know this because he comes onto the stage and does five minutes of material. Next they just straight up re-air DeLuise’s beat cop sketch from the 68 special. I guess before reruns you could just do that.

    This part is conceptually interesting. Here’s the Wikipedia description: “During the show's eighth season, the finale was a selection of songs from a popular MGM film musical. Clips from the selected film would be shown, with Martin and guests singing a medley from the films.” This is pretty misleading as what they actually do is have the week’s performers do snippets of the songs as they roughly act out or parody scenes from the chosen movie. What this mostly resembles is the ‘Previously on “The Satellite of Love”’ sketch from MST3K. The film selection for this episode is 1947’s ‘Till the Clouds Roll By’ which I have never heard a peep about. The cast plays the songs over the top and swoon about not bothering to even address the plot. Too bad it’s not funny in the least. But at the end leopard lady’s suddenly back! What the fuck!

Seems like a desperate last-second pitch they just rolled with.

    Martin seats himself at a desk on the set, takes a beat to obviously check his cue card, mumbles something about love, then wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and credits and we are out.

    Of all of the Christmas specials I’ve looked at this, by far, had the least amount of Christmas. Those must have been four very long years since 1968 because Martin was even more checked out than I thought. No charity drive at the end, no big stars popping by, the format has been stripped of the most interesting parts, two sections were just stand up routines and one was a recycled bit from years previously. It’s no surprise they changed up the format one last time for the next season before the show was finally put out of its misery.

    Martin doesn’t seem really built for Christmas specials, he has no appeal to children and his entire persona is set up to mock the conventions of such shows. He plugged away for a few years but by 1972 he’d been in the game going on forty years. I’ve got one more Dean Martin special from 1980 and my mind fairly reels at the prospect.

Basically the vibe is 'Zardoz' meets Vegas, but not as entertaining as that sounds.