Perry Como’s Christmas in the Holy Land (1980)

    Well. This one’s pretty much a set of minefields. I think the most important line of the entire special is spoken at the very end after the credits have rolled: “We would like to thank the Israel Government Tourist Office for their help during the production of this program.” While I don’t doubt the sincerity of Como and the production staff in wanting to simply put on a Christmas program it’s clear that they bent over backwards in their efforts to please the Israeli government in order to get the access they were granted in this special.

Pretty straightforward.

    1980 was a fairly complicated year in Israeli politics, not that any of them have been particularly simple in quite some time. In July of that year the Knesset had passed what became known as The Jerusalem Law, an effective declaration of annexation of East Jerusalem. The law was apparently more symbolic than anything else but did draw worldwide condemnation and would eventually lead to the eventual moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018. I’m not going to pretend to be at all familiar with the complexities of these matters and in fact I wouldn’t bring any of this up at all if the special didn’t directly address the actions of Israeli settlers and feature quite a few scenes set on a kibbutz. It’s also noteworthy that while much is made of the Jewish heritage contained in Bethlehem and its surroundings and of course its historical significance to Christianity neither the terms ‘Palestinian’ nor ‘Muslim’ are spoken at any point.

    This is not a fun special. There are a couple moments of light banter but for the most part we have a very straightforward depiction of Bethlehem as the place where Jesus was born and are told the popular conception of his history as presented in every simple Sunday School class for decades as being simply true. The most basic story of the birth of Jesus, from the census to the manger to the Wise Men are all directly and flatly confirmed as historical facts. This is not a special in any way trying to do anything other than depict what the intended audience already believed.

    The special was broadcast on Saturday December 13^th, 1980, on ABC, directly after an episode of ‘The Love Boat’ and opposite a showing of ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ on NBC, which is quite a contrast. There are only two guests for the special, Richard Chamberlain at the height of his ‘Shogun’ fame and Israeli singer Ilanit, whom the special refers to as “Israel’s Ambassador of Song,” which is unsurprisingly a fake title but she was immensely popular in Israel at the time. It’s also just nice to pair Como with another professional singer. There are also various dance troupes and choirs that are used as buffers between the other scenes.

    We open with a series of dramatic shots of the Bethlehem and Jerusalem skylines which I was completely prepared to call as ripped off from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ except for the fact that that movie came out in 1981. Como opens with a number called “The Holy City” which was immensely popular at the beginning of the 20^th century but has since faded into obscurity. After the introductory credits a glasses-wearing Como in full grandpa mode gives us an idea of the tone of the rest of the show by giving a straightforward classic telling of the story of Mary Magdalene and the empty tomb before launching into “I Wonder as I Wander,” which I’d always assumed was from a production of something but apparently has a quasi-folklore origin.

He just seems so tired.

    That showbiz connection is saved for the next part as Como meets up with Ilanit, they briefly pretend to care about archaeology and history, then duet on “Tradition” from ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ I’m not going to criticize the special for that, how do you not? We then have a buffer dance number of some authenticity before finishing off with a reprise of ‘Tradition. There’s a shot of people wearing various examples of cultural garb including a guy with a full beard and a Santa hat striding down the Jerusalem street. It’s an attempt at some kind of diversity, I guess.

    Next we have a very sympathetic portrayal of Israeli settlers rather magically coaxing the desert to produce pine trees and other crops. I’m not expecting any kind of nuance in this portrayal and I certainly don’t get any. We then get a montage of buildings and places from the region again simply identified as places where stories from the New Testament for reals, no fooling took place, right there, we know it. Como then sings “Ave Maria” again which does make it seems little less special that he also sang it in the last special but, I mean, if you’re going to sing that song this would be the place to do it.

Not incongruous in the least.

    Richard Chamberlain arrives to walk Como around a 50:1 scale model of historical Jerusalem and while I’m sure it’s not a million miles off we again get traditional Bible stories mixed in with actual scholarship with no attempt to differentiate between the two. This is the part where I kept expecting Indiana Jones to wander in with the Staff of Ra. There’s another perfectly pleasant dance number then Ilanit is back to sing one of her actual pop hits, “Bashana Haba'a” from 1970. It’s a perfectly fine pop song from that decade. Como and Chamberlain wander in and they do a brief “Who’s on First?” riff on the Hebrew language, which sure, before Ilanit launches into the Yiddish song “Chiribim.” Going over this list I’m starting to think that Ilanit was more singing time than Como, which is fine as she’s a very talented singer, but it is a little odd.

Como's the singer on the left.

    The rest of the special is really just a slow crawl through the popular highlights of the New Testament. We have a brief scene at the Sea of Galilee to tell the “fishers of men” story, Chamberlain reads some scripture looking very dreamy in a shirt/sweater combo, Como interrupts to sing a version of The Lord’s Prayer, then we’re off to a kibbutz to pretend that Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas. I can almost feel the settlers rolling their eyes from decades away.

I can see why he was cast in 'The Thorn Birds.'

    The last ten minutes is a condensed portrayal of the Biblical birth of Jesus: the census, the manger, the shepherds, the whole bit. Mary and a basically off-screen Joseph are barely inconvenienced by there being no room at the inn and I personally would have not hesitated to camp out in the manger depicted in these scenes. Mary gives birth during a scene transition and never so much as musses her hair. The shepherds and Wise men are very polite and stand in line and Como calmly narrates the entire thing in a voice you know belongs to someone to whom it’s never even occurred to question a single moment of this. Perry sings “Christ is Born” to close things out and leaves us with a simple “Merry Christmas from Bethlehem. Good night.”

Just really tired.

    I’m not sure what these specials have turned into at this point. When they were straightforward variety shows they were easy to understand, if hard to enjoy. The year before this the special was in New Mexico, the year after it would be in Quebec, so they’re all over the place. Presumably there was an audience for these still as they would continue on for a number of years taking up prime-time slots on network television. I suppose my grandmother would have enjoyed this, and by this point in his career that may have been enough. He was still releasing albums but they weren’t really charting and starting in 1982 almost all of his new albums and compilations would be Christmas themed. His persona seems to have fused with the holiday at this point, either by design or by public appetite.

    I’m only doing one more of these and I’m genuinely torn over which one. I can either do his final television special or the last concert performance before his death. Either one is likely to be rather maudlin. The grudging respect Como finally wrung out of me by being the best part of his specials is starting to fade in much the way he so obviously does as the years pass. I know he didn’t but I can’t help but think everyone would have been better served if he’d chosen to simply retire some years earlier and enjoy the retirement he had so clearly earned.

 

Perry Como’s Early American Christmas (1978)

    Well this was a bit ... sad isn’t exactly the right word, possibly disappointing is more correct? It’s certainly a different beast from the previous two specials. Something of an air of melancholy pervades throughout and I don’t know if I’m bringing that emotion into this or if it comes from a Perry Como that’s finally starting to look his age. He was 66 as this point, after all, and that’s age 66 over forty years ago when that really was starting to be up there in years.

    This is very firmly not a variety special, at least not in the way it was previously meant. There are no stupid skits, no forced comedy, no trying to be hip to the kids of today. This is a very slow walk through a museum with occasional musical interludes. There aren’t even any egregiously inserted commercial plugs. In a way I got my wish for the focus to be more on Como in the cruelest way of all because without those stretches of inanity the straight musical numbers stop being moments of respite and instead just become stitched-together stretches of tedium.

They didn't seem to sweat the opening credits much.

    This special was shot entirely in the historical city of Williamsburg, Virginia and it makes sure you do not forget that fact for a single second. I happen to have visited Williamsburg with my family as a teenager and as mildly ludicrous as it is to say about a town specifically kept period-authentic it hadn’t changed a bit from when Como wanders its streets. I therefore also know that the city is fairly small with just a couple of main roads. The buildings themselves are rather tiny with cramped interior rooms, and that plus the lack of modern lighting must have made it rather a nightmare to shoot and assemble this special and also explains why almost the entire thing was shot in the daytime.

    The show aired Wednesday December 13^th 1978 an ABC, directly after ‘Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey’ and right before ‘Merry Christmas from the Grand Ole Opry House.’ It also aired opposite a showing on CBS of the tv movie ‘Lovey: A Circle of Children, Part II,’ which is definitely going in my notes as something to check out. It’s guest were Kylene Barker, Miss America 1979, Diana Canova, one of the stars of the sitcom ‘Soap,’ and Eugene Fodor, winner of the Tchaikovsky violin competition in 1974. He plays the violin quite a bit in this special.

    The other big name is John Wayne who pops up several times over the course of the special to amble about being, well, John Wayne. He was about six months from his death by stomach cancer when he filmed this special and it occasionally shows, especially in a scene where he had to read a letter from a colonial soldier and stumbles and loses his place several times. Either this was the best take of several or no one had to the heart to push him to do better. For the most part he’s fine and, well, very much John Wayne.

    The entire special rolls forward at a fairly leisurely pace. It opens with a bowdlerized version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ that runs down the various shops and stores at Williamsburg and shows the employees pounding out horseshoes, baking, weaving baskets, all that kind of stuff as Como wanders from shot to shot. It is nice to hear the word “milliner” used so casually, that’s nice.

I get why there are sheep in Williamsburg but not why in this shot.

    This leads to a brief roll of the opening credits and then a fife and drums display that of course leads to a rendition of “Little Drummer Boy.” This show is not trying to blow any minds. After a commercial break Como directly addresses the audience to introduce the show looking, I’m sorry, very tired. He wanders into a nearby house and starts sampling a spread of old-timey Christmas food. It’s odd to say but I kind of miss the Kraft Foods guy. He hears a violin and wanders into a room with the aforementioned Eugene Fodor playing Thomas Jefferson, who after getting a compliment for his playing utters the immortal line “Your kind words pleasure me,” and an actor playing George Wythe, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. They spend a few minutes talking about how great Ben Franklin was.

    I suppose it’s unavoidable to have a Christmas special set in Colonial Williamsburg with John Wane in the cast and not have it be pretty patriotic but it’s very awkward to sit here in 2020 and get these pat little speeches about how great American democracy is and how wise our founding fathers were. It’s a bit too on the nose for the times we’re living through.

    We get a number from Diana Canova that’s very adult contemporary, very 1978, something called “My Cup Runneth Over.” It was written in 1966 so it’s the arrangement that turns it to treacle. She wanders around a house in something a little too close to a nightgown to be believably period accurate. The Como joins here for, I shit you not, “It Couldn’t Please Me More (The Pineapple Song)” from ‘Cabaret.’ The justification is that pineapples were very rare in colonial times and would have made a very lavish Christmas gift, which is true but it was still their decision to have a pineapple in the shot and then do a number from ‘Cabaret.’ In a Perry Como special in 1978. I spent this entire song staring at my screen in utter confusion.

Listen, we're all confused.

    There’s a montage of shopping scenes again plugging the tourist traps of Williamsburg during which we get introduced to John Wayne being, well, John Wayne. This segues into a ball scene set to ‘Home for the Holidays’ and another violin solo. It’s a much less weird and forced version of that ballet guy in ‘69. This is when Wayne reads the letter from the continental soldier and although they play it up as all stark and sad Ken Burns has ruined such things for us now and instead it just comes off as kid whining about having to fight.

That sure is John Wayne.

    Another Canova number leads to another duet with Como and it occurs to me that they keep doing this, have Como do a love song duet with whatever female guest he happens to have that year. At 25 Canova is the youngest one yet and it’s hard not to notice that as Como gets older the women get younger. More singing, more vague ballroom dancing, and then it’s apparently the next day and we’re seeing an outdoor auction. Which, again, raises some issues about colonial times that the show in no way intends to be raised. The inevitable Christmas medley begins and at least this time the city has on-staff professional singers to help out. Wayne even joins in for a few audible lines.

    The special ends with perhaps the only part where it feels like Como actually cared. His birth name was Pierino, shortened to Perry, and he was very open about his Italian heritage his entire life and was a fairly devout Catholic. I have purposefully omitted a number of Italian jokes over the course of these recaps. One of the most requested songs over his career was ‘Ave Maria’ which he was always reticent to sing, although he would very occasionally do so, demurring that it wasn’t the time or place. Well, apparently now was the time and place as after a very Catholic procession of choirboys (which I can’t help but feel would not have been period authentic in the incredibly Protestant colonial times, but sure let’s go with it) he very simply and with feeling sings ‘Ave Maria’ in what sounds to me like the original Latin before simply wishing the audience at home a good night, ending the special.

It really is a lovely rendition.

    This is an entirely different animal than the specials that came before and looking at the next couple I can’t help but feel it’s something of a preview of what’s to come. Variety shows were basically dead or dying by 1978 and although with its mix of short sketches of scenes, violin solos, and musical numbers this might fit the technical definition of a variety show it feels a thousand miles away from a drunken Santa nuzzling Kukla and Ollie in front of a Hollywood crowd or Sally Struthers shaking her stuff at the North Pole. While much calmer and more tonally consistent this lacks any of the harebrained loony energy that made the previous specials whipsaw back and forth in at least an interesting way. Como is older, slower, and grayer and the songs are either a mix of the deeply traditional or just odd, not trying to be hip and cool but I guess maybe just recognizable. I have no intention of watching it but I can’t help but feel that ‘Merry Christmas from the Grand Ole Opry House’ felt more contemporary at the time.

    Maybe sad is the right word for this after all, not in an insulting sense but in a kind of gradual recognition of the passing of time and increasing cultural irrelevancy. Melancholy, perhaps. Como still had a prime time special on one of the three networks but this couldn’t have really been appointment television. His yearly specials would last another eight years before either old age or network indifference finally put a stop to them. He’s still not a performer I would ever seek out to enjoy in my own time but he’s very much been the best part of all of his specials. I suppose that should have been expected but apparently I was much more condescending about the past than even I was aware of.

    Oh, and if you’re wondering why I never pointed out an appearance by Kylene Barker, Miss American 1979, it’s because even after watching this twice and literally having a picture of her in the corner of the screen I managed to not notice her at all.

 

The Perry Como Winter Show (1973)

    So we move on to the rather more loathsome year of 1973. Como had settled into something of a groove, releasing a winter special every year since 1971 and going on to add summer specials starting in 1974. It was sponsored by Kraft Foods and aired on CBS on December 10^th, 1973, right after ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ and ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and right before an episode of ‘Medical Center’ whose plot description reads as “A critically ill derelict dreads a forthcoming reunion with her daughter who is unaware of the life she’s led.” So, y’know, typical Monday night. 

It's the 70's so, y'know, zoinks.

    I find the association of Como and Kraft Foods to be oddly hard to untangle.  From 1961 to 1967 they collaborated on ‘Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall,’ Kraft having taken over sponsorship of the already running show from Chesterfield Cigarettes.  The partnership came to an end in 1967 with the start of Como’s overall reduction in television appearances, although the exact nature of the ending seems to be under some dispute, some describing it as ‘abrupt.’  Yet here we are in 1973 with the entirety of the commercial breaks being given over to Kraft foods to share with the lucky viewers a series of truly awful sounding recipes.     There was a 1964 ‘Kraft Music Hall’ Christmas special filmed inside the Vatican that I would give several teeth to be able to see.

    In general I’m oddly fond of the old-timey way of companies directly sponsoring shows.  I can’t stand Grape Nuts but just the fact that it was literally called ‘The Grape Nuts Program Starring Jack Benny’ makes me oddly fond of the inedible cereal.  If there’s going to be advertising anyways it may as well be blunt and to the point.  Our current viral/clever/sideways style of advertising that tries to bypass the natural skepticism we’re developed as a defense mechanism to the continual exposure to capitalism that is our entire lives seems even more nefarious after hearing a stentorian voice calmly instructing us to put mini-marshmallows on top of our casseroles and doesn’t feel the need to even bother with a reason why.

    The special opens with an apparently snow-covered car making its way through what is eventually revealed to be the highways of southern California. There was a good solid three decades of television and movies being absolutely certain the rest of the country found it flabbergasting that southern California was warm when most of the rest of the country was cold, they just never stopped bringing it up.

    Eventually the car arrives in a production studio parking lot and Como steps out of the car rubbing his hands and play-acting at being cold. Then there’s a truly odd and stilted moment with a child actor that would have been explainable as a live-read gone wrong but makes no sense in a pre-filmed special. The joke is she doesn’t want to take candy from an oddly dressed stranger? He moves on and singes his way into the credits where it’s reveals that our non-Como performers for the night will be Sally Struthers, the comedy duo of Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber, and the singing group The Establishment.

You will come to hate these men.

    

    A word about The Establishment. First, that name, woof. Second, I can’t find a damn thing anywhere about them of any substance. They emerged in 1968 for a run on ‘The Jonathan Winters Show,’ did a few appearances over several other specials (including 1970’s ‘Don Knott’s Nice Clean, Decent, Wholesome Hour,’ which hopefully had people doing whippets on horseback during commercial breaks), then this special, then just disappeared. They seem to have been a group of maybe a dozen young men and women who’d had their personalities scoured clean before being christened as a literal embodiment of the ruling class.

    As with the previous special Como himself (no appearance this time by The Ray Charles (not that Ray Charles) Singers) is the highlight of the show, acting as a sort of buffer between the frankly embarrassing attempts at comedy. The only other performer I’ll give credit to is Sally Struthers who is at least trying with the material she’s given. She’s treated as a kind of sexless Goldie Hawn, all girly mannerisms and vocal ticks that come off as awkward and I’m not sure was intentional, but she does get the stand out number in a later ‘comedy’ sketch that we’ll get to.

    Our various hosts do a “So and so, what are you doing here?” thing before taking an elevator to Vermont, a rather clever meta-gag that comes up a few more times over the course of the show. At one point when they later go to a mall to go Christmas shopping Como is asked if they’re taking the elevator and he reassures them they’ll be walking through the closet instead. The show could have used a few more touches like that.

 

So we're, what, twenty minutes from the end of this horror movie?

  

    After a very odd song/montage about decorating the house/set for Christmas that ends with what I can only describe as a scene straight from a pagan ritual we have a few two-handed ‘comedy’ routines between the non The Establishment players. It’s at this point I should mention that one of the three credited writers is Lorne Michaels, the man who inspired the characterization of Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movie and was also involved in ‘Saturday Night Live.’ This all leads to the aforementioned closet-hopping trip to go Christmas shopping and also another visit to Santa, although this time firmly established as just a guy playing him in a department store setting and with 100% less creepy sexual infantilizing.

Dignity was never an option.

    That’s reserved for the next section where Struthers and the comedy act play essentially misfit toys where it turns out the supposed comedic actors are, in fact, not very good at singing and dancing either. After a Kraft brand commercial break we have an attempt at something like classic silent comedy from Como, very clearly not playing to his strengths, as a man sneaking down at night to make a sandwich while not waking the house. Although it doesn’t seem to be a direct rip-off it feels like it’s trying very hard to be a Morecambe & Wise sketch. We will not be examining any of their Christmas specials because 1. they’re British and 2. they hold up, and where’s the fun in that?

    Just when it’s starting to become very noticeable that for a Perry Como special there has not been very much Perry Como singing he and Sally Struthers sing a very awkward love song duet. While not terrible it’s very clear why Struthers wasn’t constantly breaking into song on ‘All in the Family.’ The Establishment descend onto the scene for a song that I think is about dancing, or is it not waking up the house? I don’t really care. This is finally followed by a full solo Como number, I believe the first of the special. Again it’s perfectly fine, perfectly pleasant. Como’s numbers have already become something I look forward to not because they’re particularly entertaining but they’re calm and competent and I can focus on taking my notes.

    After another set of recipes shooting for interesting but instead landing on unsettlingly bland we come to the standout number of the special, a solo Como performance of the song “The Hands of Time” as he wanders by a charming if not-fooling-anyone fake snow-covered gazebo. Again it’s just Como softly crooning and it’s something of a lovely song. It’s nice.

Honestly, no fooling, best part of the show.

    Then ... then. Then he meets back up with Santa, who is the actual Santa now, and they go to a nightclub at the north pole. There’s some lame stand up then Struthers does a decent turn as a Mae West figure named Belle Yukon. This is the stand out number I referred to before. She doesn’t have the pipes to be an actual singer but she plays the part to the hilt, strutting around the stage and throwing off some real attitude. It’s the best non-Como part of the entire thing. Then The Establishment come out to do something at least comedy adjacent, the rest of the cast tumble onto the stage and they sing their way into the last inedible commercial break. To end the show it’s Como back on the gazebo set to sing an anodyne something about harmony, wish everyone a nice Christmas, and then it’s one last plug for Kraft Foods before dropping the audience, presumably, right into ‘Medical Center.’

Maybe a little phallic there.

    

    I need to talk about the Kraft Food ads. Not the ads themselves, actually, they’re simple and direct: buy Kraft stuff. It’s the recipes, or more correctly ‘recipes.’ The very first one is literally melted Velveeta with chopped green peppers and chucks of French bread for dipping. That’s it, that’s the whole recipe. Not even sauteed peppers or toasted bread. Next is cream cheese spread onto pieces of white bread, rolled up, then cut into slices. This dish is described as “interesting.” Another is mashed yams topped with mini-marshmallows, although this one is slightly complicated by placing it briefly under the broiler to brown the marshmallows. I don’t particularly want to talk about the turkey basted with squeeze-bottle margarine. The entirety of their vegetable suggestions seem to basically be ‘take the vegetable, pour melted Velveeta over it.’ It ends with a boast about their famous cranberry mold with its featured ingredient: Miracle Whip. There’s an implication throughout that these aren’t the full recipes, that you’ll have to mail in a postcard to get those, but I don’t really see how you could improve on such perfection.

    After two specials the pattern seems to be coming into focus: everything that’s just Como singing is at worst tolerable and at best sometimes is pretty good. I’ve kind of lost perspective here in that I’m sure his presence hasn’t gotten any better it just keeps being thrown into starker and starker relief by the antics around him. It’s interesting that for the second time in a row it’s the female guest who emerges with any kind of dignity or display of talent, although it’s quite a step down from Diahann Carroll to Sally Struthers. The comedy parts remain a flat-line, although at least there are two of them this time to spread the hate between and they’re not visibly drunk during the show. Even though the center of the show is more clearly Como this time I almost prefer the other special just because it was tighter, with less fluff between the musical pieces. This was a little indulgent. And whatever The Establishment was doing I’m glad it at least stopped after this show.

Stay classy, Perry.

    The difference between 1969 and 1973 is subtle but it’s there. More walrus mustaches, less hip-cat patter. The music is the same and Como could have just walked directly from one show to the other for all the different he looks but the tone is a bit sillier and way less creepy. Kukla and Ollie would not have worked in this show and I have no idea how they would’ve justified a ballet number. As the years grind on we’ll see if Como can just keep doing his thing or if he starts becoming more and more noticeably detached from the culture surrounding him. The next special is all the way in 1978 and those are five pretty big years to jump all in one go.

 

Perry Como Live at the Hollywood Palace (1969)

    Perry Como feels a bit inexplicable in 2020. At the tail end of his cultural relevancy, sometime in the 80’s or maybe early 90’s, he was simply synonymous with a kind of boring, inoffensive blandness, a beige-colored feel associated with Grandma’s living room and old golf magazines found in dentists’ waiting rooms. He has since passed out of the general consciousness in a way that many of his contemporaries haven’t. People still know who Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin are, but for a number of years Perry Como was more popular and higher paid than any of them. He was a television star who transitioned from radio who kept being phenomenally successful for over forty years. He had 14 number one singles and although records are spotty at best it’s generally agreed he had several million in album sales. As he grew older he started limiting his appearances on television to special appearances and holidays, especially Christmas. He lived a controversial-free life and was known for being the same person both on and off screen, a continually casual, easy-going guy.

    Which might be enough to explain both his original rise to popularity and how long it lasted while also fading into almost nothing since his passing in 2001. For the most part we know of his contemporaries by their misdeeds, by their now-offensive stage patter and offstage peccadilloes. Frank Sinatra is known more now for his mob ties than his musical work, mention Bing Crosby and his history of family abuse will quickly come up, and Dean Martin is shorthand for a womanizing drunk. For a man to simply be a good singer and entertainer isn’t nearly enough to be interesting anymore.

This does not become easy to explain at any point.

   

    ‘The Hollywood Palace’ was a weekly television variety show that ran on ABC in the late 60’s. It had a revolving set of guest hosts, most notably the previously mentioned Crosby, Sinatra, and Martin, as well as Liberace, Tony Bennett, Judy Garland, and so on. It’s basically an historical footnote now to acts like The Rolling Stones, who made their first US appearance on the show, and The Jackson Five, who made their first nationwide appearance, but at the time if you were a name of any renown you likely either hosted or appeared on it. It ran for seven years it was finally canceled in 1970.

    On December 20^th, 1969, Perry Como hosted ‘The Hollywood Palace’ for its annual Christmas show. It’s most prominent guest was Diahann Carroll, starring at the time in ‘Julia’ on NBC, the first show to star an African American woman as the central character. By this point she had already won a Best Actress Tony and had been nominated for an Academy award. She would later go on to star in ‘Dynasty’ and pop up frequently in various television roles. Comedian Sheldon ‘Shecky’ Greene acted opposite Como in several skits, and dancer Edward Villella performed an oddly serious ballet number. Oh, and there were also bits with Kukla and Ollie. I ... don’t really have time to go into Kukla and Ollie. Let’s just say it was a puppet show that seemed like it came from the same fever-swamps that spawned Sid & Marty Kroftt shows but had in fact been running, in one form or another, since 1947. People were deeply weird in the past as well.

He's surrounded by ladies a lot.

    

    The show opens with a boisterous introduction, with Como walking onstage to loud applause. He is gently surrounded by the crooning Ray Charles (not that Ray Charles) Singers lilting out a rendition of ‘Home for the Holidays.’ The band starts playing and Como joins in and ... he’s fine. He’s fine. He was famously a quiet singer, to the point where they had to invent a small enough microphone to both pick up his voice and not get in the way of the camera shot. He sounds like a guy with a good voice singing well but there’s nothing there to indicate why the bobby-soxer contingent used to consider him so swoon-worthy.

    He sings a verse then wanders over to lean on a piano and croon away at another song while the pianist tinkles away. I’ll be honest, there are a lot of songs in this special and I know maybe half of them. They were standards of the time but in a day and age where ‘Oldies’ stations refers to songs from the 70’s they have long since faded into relative obscurity.

    Back to the singers and they wrap up the song. He briefly addresses the audience, dropping a bunch of names that mean nothing to me but were clearly familiar to the audience. He seems like a soft-spoken, perfectly pleasant man. Then Shecky Greene wheels onto the stage as a creepy Santa to introduce what is by far the skeeviest section of the show. The best way to explain Shecky Greene is as the poor man’s Buddy Hackett. After some banter Como introduces the ‘lovely girl’ who’d like to meet him, Diahann Carroll, who at the time was 34 and who they decide to dress like this:

And we're moving on.

    

    And yes she does the little girl voice and yes Santa spends the next few minutes drooling over her as she sits on his knee, at one point singing “Thank heaven for little girls!” So, yeah, moving on to Como and Santa bantering with Kukla and Ollie for a few minutes, managing, in 1969, to get in a hippy-punching joke as well. It’s deeply weird outside of the context of the time.

    Next is the dance number which is oddly, fervently serious, set to ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ It’s deeply incongruous. After a commercial break and a gratefully short Carroll / Carol pun a gorgeous Diahann Carroll comes out to sing a number. It’s one of those upbeat 1960’s numbers you’d see in a Vegas review. As good as Carroll is there isn’t a hook to be found anywhere. After the number she sits at the edge of the stage to sing a much more downtempo Irving Berlin tune after which Como comes out to join her. There’s a brief moment where they fumble in getting her dress out of the way and the actual people behind the performers show through. They seem like perfectly pleasant people. They reference her role in ‘Julia’ then banter a little, including a dig at ABC itself about canceling Christmas that plays a little differently now. Then they sing ‘Silver Bells.’

Could not be more late-60's if they tried.

   

    Another commercial break and another ‘comedy’ bit with Shecky Greene as a drunk businessman bemoaning his upcoming divorce to a sympathetic piano player. It’s not even enough to be properly offensive, just slurred speech patterns and an odd insistence on talking about ‘hormone shots,’ which again plays differently now. This eventually ends and then Como is surrounded by The Ray Charles (not that Ray Charles) Singers for another number with dreamy background vocals, all dressed in what must have been sweltering fur coats under all that stage lighting. Another section of Kukla and Ollie going back and forth about long distance phone calls back when that was still an actual thing and a nonsense dragon language. They even drag Diahann Carroll into a sub-sub Sesame Street number. One last commercial break, one last summoning of The Ray Charles (not that Ray Charles) Singers for a Christmas medley before a final good night from Como during which he plugs an upcoming Sears sponsored special on NBC and closes which a snippet of his signature tune ‘You Are Never Far Away from Me.’ Cue curtains and applause.

I mean like all the time.

    

    So what does all this leave us with? The show itself, as presented, is just fine. It’s some pleasant tunes sung by a pleasant man with a strange dance number and some unfunny skits with only one creepy scene, which is pretty good for 1969. It’s ... pleasant. And to modern eyes and ears deeply boring in a kind of fuzzy way that’s more likely to lead to a nap than annoyance.

    I’ll be honest, I expected a lot more to be cringe-worthy about this special. It was 1969, it was the deeply unhip Perry Como, and while not entertaining in the slightest it was clearly a well-put together show by professionals who knew what kind of show they wanted to put out and then did so. Aside from a few grating lines and the general antics of Shecky Greene there wasn’t all that much that was offensive. For the number of people on stage there was a decent amount of diversity for the time, Diahann Carroll is portrayed as the artist she clearly was (with of course one glaring exception) and it manages to give decent screen time to a very serious and artistic dance number. In fact if you cut out all of the bits with Shecky Greene I’d find just about nothing to actually complain about.

Diahann Caroll has very little time for your nonsense.

       

    Not that the occasional crack doesn’t show. The version I got included the commercial breaks which were noticeable for 1. how much shorter they were compared to now, 2. how directly pitched most of them were, essentially nagging people to buy the correct product, and also 3. how deeply jarring it is to see just a straight up television commercial for cigarettes. And although they’re kept to a relative minimum it’s a little unsettling for so many clearly contemporary jokes and pop-culture references to be basically inexplicable without pausing to do a deep Wiki dive every five seconds. The past is like a whole other world.

    This is not the last time we’re going to visit Mr. Como. The rest are going to be specials of his own making, however, rather than just a guest spot in an already running show. We’re also going to stretch later into his career and as a general rule people become more and more themselves as they get older so we’ll see if the image of Perry ‘Beige’ Como still rings true as the years progress.

    After this initial exposure I’m forced to a sort of grudging respect for the man. He was clearly very successful for many years for reasons that I simply cannot explain. That doesn’t make that success invalid, however, just very inexplicable to me. I get the appeal of Crosby, Sinatra, and especially Martin, for whom I will forever have a place in my heart for his wonderful turn in ‘Rio Bravo.’ In a grubby way I even get the appeal of Sheldon ‘Shecky’ Greene. Como is not an enigma, I don’t sense unplumbed depths to the man, but he is something of an anomaly, and while I’m not exactly looking forward to another four hours or so of spending time with him I don’t dread it nearly as much as when I started in on this.