I wrote about this piece of remarkable TV history back in 2014, and it remains one of my favorites. Though there's some background music in it, it's not about music at all, but it will nonetheless fit in perfectly for Holiday Music Fest, mainly on the Fest part. Back in my initial posting on this site about Kukla, Fran and Ollie, I wrote about how the show's brilliant creator, puppeteer Burr Tillstrom won an additional Emmy Award that was not involved with KF&O, but for his work on his own. It was for one of the "hand ballets" that he performed on occasion for the satirical news series, That Was the Week That Was. That Was the Week That Was was a smart, pointed, very sharp British sketch-comedy show which was brought over to the U.S. in the early 1960s. Among other things, it introduced to American audiences one of the original British cast members, David Frost. It's also the show that introduced Tom Lehrer to most Americans. He wrote periodic songs for the series, and then recorded them for his now-classic hit album, That Was the Year That Was. And it also brought Burr Tillstrom into the national spotlight in a way people hadn't seen or expected. His hand ballets were little vignettes that didn't use any puppets at all, but merely Tillstrom's bare hands, using them alone to evoke some story in the news he wanted to get across. It was done with great artistry, often movingly. And one of them so artistic and moving that it won him an Emmy Award. In 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall had been erected, a very brief concession was made. The Wall would open for the Christmas holiday and allow those in the West to travel into East Berlin and visit family and loved ones, needing to return a few days later. This is what Burr Tillstrom did a hand ballet about shortly after. And -- -- I found the video of it! It is one of the favorite videos I've been able to find. I'm thrilled. The quality of the video is a little rough, especially at the beginning, but it's fine. And ultimately, as you watch -- one brilliant artist using only his hands -- the quality of the video won't matter one whit. And if anyone ever wonders where the humanity of Kukla, Fran and Ollie came from, to bring such life into puppets, now you'll know. When I posted this one year, I got a perturbed note from a reader who found nothing worthwhile about the video, and took me to task for wasting his time. In the spirit of the season, I will again refrain from anything ad hominen in return. I will just say that I feel completely comfortable in recognizing the legend of this piece, and anything else is an understandable matter of personal taste. Wherever that may lie. I say this knowing that it's not just my opinion on this, but also the opinion of the members of the Television Academy who voted Tillstrom the Emmy Award. But to be fair, I guess I should add a disclaimer. If anyone doesn't like old black-and-white video or just looking at hands for three minutes, or politics and history, or quiet, thoughtful, emotional storytelling with the sparsest of action or jokes, centered instead on pure artistry, I get it, and so by all means avoid this. For everyone else, here it is. The video calls it "Burr Tillstrom's 'Berlin Wall.'" For me, I think of it as "The Burr-lin Wall".
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We take a moment for a bit of Personal Privilege. Back in March, I wrote a piece here about a TV documentary series that airs in Miami called Inside the Heat that provides a look into the Miami Heat NBA team. And they just did an episode that devoted the full program to the 35-year career of my cousin Andy Elisburg who is the General Manager and Senior Vice-President of the basketball team. (No, not a typo, their wing of the family spells it differently) At the end of the article, I quipped that -- "I also believe that the show should be nominated for an Emmy next year as Best Program of the Year. Though I'm admittedly biased." O ye of little faith. It turns out that it wasn't just a quip, but a prescient one. Because bizarrely -- and happily -- I wasn't far off. Really. The other week, at the 47th Annual Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards -- the episode actually, really won an Emmy Award! Hey, like I always say here, I tries nots to steers ya wrong. And I'm not fibbing. Here's the proof -- And just to show that, no, this isn't just a photo of a random Emmy statuette, here's a close-up of the text on the base for those who choose not to the use "zoom" feature on your computer -- And as Andy ways -- "Working my way slowly to an EGOT..." Last week, I embedded a Christmas special from Julie Andrews' weekly TV series, The Julie Andrews Hour. Here's another one, from 1973. And like the other, they again went all out to make it a rich special, not just another episode. The guests aren't as extensive -- but they're prime. My fave Peter Ustinov (who's wonderful as her guide through the episode and history as Santa Claus, played unlike you've seen him), and also Peggy Lee, playing an ethereal Sugar Plum Fairy. It's a low-key, stylish sort-of journey through some years past of Christmas. One of the highlights is a wonderful, 8-minute medley that Julie Andrews and Peggy Lee sing together. (Note that when Peggy Lee sings "He's a Tramp" from Lady and the Tramp, she co-wrote the all the songs to that film.) And even Peter Ustinov gets a very little singing, notably when he explains the symphony he suggested to Mozart as a gift. For several years now as part of the Holiday Music Fest, including this year, I’ve played some song from a 1956 TV musical production of A Christmas Carol, that was called The Stingiest Man in Town, which was done for The Alcoa Hour. I had the cast album, and as far as I knew that was all that existed. But as another of those major treats, I just found a video of the entire 80-minute TV production! And if anything qualifies as “little-known” for the Holiday Music Fest, this is it. Normally, I’d post it on Christmas Eve as befits the story, but that spot is reserved for my favorite adaptation of the story, a BBC radio version with Sir Ralph Richardson and Paul Scofield, so we’ll post this ahead of time. It's very early television, so the production and video quality is a bit creaky. But it comes through fine enough and is a respectably done version of the story – and is fun, as well, seeing something from early days of TV…and done live. when maneuvering around a soundstage wasn’t as simple as today. The cast is part of the treat here. Though many of the names are not well-known today, they were for the time. It’s all led by Basil Rathbone as Scrooge, easily the most famous name in the cast today for his years playing Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Marley's Ghost is played by Robert Weede, a major Metropolitan Opera star who later moved into more popular culture productions, most notably as the star in Frank Loesser’s Broadway musical, The Most Happy Fella. And Bob Cratchit is played by Martyn Green, one of the leading stars of the renowned D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, a group famous for being considered the home of Gilbert & Sullivan productions. There’s another Metropolitan Opera star here, as well – Patrice Munsel, who made a few movies and TV shows, and plays Belle in this production. The show also features two popular singers of the era – Johnny Desmond as Scrooge’s nephew Fred, and Vic Damone as Young Scrooge. And the popular singing group The Four Lads perform as a sort of travelling Greek Chorus, filling in some narration. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of my favorite character actors, John McGiver, even in just a very small role. Here, he plays the first of two gentlemen who come to Scrooge’s office asking for a Christmas donation. The score is serviceable, as the expression goes, though there are a few solid numbers, like “Mankind is My Business” and "Birthday Party for the King." The music is by Fred Spielman, with lyrics by Janice Torre, who wrote the teleplay. And definitely worth noting is that it’s directed by Daniel Petrie, who had a long career directing movies and TV. His most famous movie was A Raisin in the Sun, and for TV he did the film Sybil for which Sally Field won an Emmy as Best Actress and established her as a serious actress. (SIDE NOTE: If you stick around to the end credits, they announce next week's show -- which sounds tremendous! It's Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced ...which has a seriously impressive cast: Jessica Tandy, Roger Moore, and the legendary Gracie Fields, as 'Miss Marple'. And no, alas, I can't find a video of it online.) Which brings us to Christmas Eve, the very night that Jacob Marley died seven years ago… Starting last year, I thought it would be appropriate to not just offer wonderful, but little-known holiday songs, but also some wonderful, but little-known holidays TV specials. This one was a tremendous treat for me to come across. Most especially since I suspect folks here know that I'm a big lover of Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Back on December 14, 1979, the TV legends Kukla, Fran and Ollie reunited for a TV special. The show -- which was wonderfully-titled 'Tis the Season to Be Ollie (a line from their much-earlier rendition of "Deck the Halls") -- was made for WMAQ, the NBC-owned station in Chicago (where they produced their TV series back in the 1950s and early 1960s). I don't know for sure if this was syndicated to other NBC "owned-and-operated" stations, but I suspect so. The storyline here is the Ollie is trying to figure out plans for what kind of special they should do. It's slow and gentle, the way that Kukla, Fran and Ollie always were are are -- though there's a off-beat sequence where Ollie suggests that they make things a lot more hip -- but it's all a joy, especially for fans, to see them reunited. So, as their long-time theme song said, "here we are, back with you again Yes, by gum and yes, by golly, Kukla, Fran and dear old Ollie" -- and Burr Tillstrom with the Kuklapolitans. Today's little known holiday song -- this time, for Hanukkah -- comes from what I believe was the first season of the animated series South Park. It was their initial Christmas special, centered around the adventures of Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo, which brought the show even more attention. I have a couple of tangential stories connected to the song, "It's Hard to Be a Jew on Christmas." As I think I've mentioned, back in my dark days of P.R. I was the unit publicist on the movie BASEketball, which was directed by David Zucker (of the Airplaine! and The Naked Gun series, which was why he brought me along) and starred Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who did -- and still do -- South Park. During the movie's production, which overlapped with them being in production on South Park (so, in essence, they were doing two jobs at the same time), Matt and Trey mentioned that the only reason they signed to do the movie is because they were sure the TV series would be canceled after 10 episodes, and they'd have plenty of time to make the movie. Ha. So much for the best laid plans. It was during the movie's production that the TV series started peaking -- for instance they made the cover of both Time and Newsweek during the film. They said that if they had any idea that the TV show would still be going on, they never would have agreed to be in the movie. It was a crushing schedule -- including having an editing trailer for them on the set every day, and going back to their production offices after the day's filming -- but they handled it seriously impressively. Anyway, going back several months, we had a read-through of the movie script one night, and given that it was the "South Park guys," families and kids were invited. And as it happened, the read-through took place the night after their Christmas special aired. In the milling around phase of the evening, I went over to Trey and Matt to introduce myself, and I also wanted to tell them how much I particularly had loved this specific song. Given the fame of South Park at that time, they were not surprisingly surrounded by a bunch of young boys gushing about the show. But in particular, they were gushing about another song in the TV special. So, I stood off to the side and waited for their fans to finish. The other song in the show was sung by the character 'Cartman," and lasts about 30 seconds, with the words basically being, "Kyle's mom is a big fat b*tch, she's a b*tch, b*tch, b*tch, she's a big fat b*tch," over and over for half a minute. The little boys just loooooved that. And one after another, they enthused to Matt and Trey about it, and kept singing the song back at them. After the kids all departed, I finally walked over. I said hi, we chatted a bit, and then I said how terrific I thought the song, "It's Hard to Be a Jew on Christmas" was. That the lyrics were so funny, yet touching, and the music was wistful, and it was just really nicely crafted. And what was hilarious and memorable was how their faces suddenly filled with a smile of relief. They completely understood why the little boys all loved the "Kye's mom is a b*tch" song -- but this other was an actual song. And one they took great pride in. So, they were SO relieved to have someone praise it, rather than the one getting all the attention. A few months later, during production I also had a question for them that had been nagging me. About a minute into the song, the character Kyle singing it mentions some Hebrew phrase which I couldn't make out, words it seemed from some Hebrew Hanukkah song he has to sing instead of getting to sing "Silent Night." I asked what it was, since I didn't recognize the song, and if they did research to find it or what. Trey broke out with a big laugh, "Oh, that," he said, "we just made the words up. We didn't know any Hebrew, so we just wrote some gibberish that sounded right." (Note: When I originally posted this for a few years, it's only been the audio track of the song from the special since the sweet video wasn't available. But I kept checking and finally -- it's at last there, and I found it. So...huzzah. Or rather, chuzzah. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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