By George!
Here's another of the wonderful TV documentaries that George Plimpton made with producer David Wolper in the early 1970s for ABC. Plimpton, as I noted, was editor of the erudite Paris Review, and a friend of writers like Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer, as well as many others. He was most famous, though for his participatory journalism, where he wrote books about his experiences training in a wide range of challenging fields, mostly sports, but he branched out on occasion, generally for these TV documentaries.
For this one, he trains to be…the opening act comic in Las Vegas for Paul Anka. It's great fun from all the famous comics who give him advice - most of it funny, but utterly unusable for him. But he's game for it and tries many of the suggestions. Among those trying to help are Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Woody Alllen, Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller and many others. (I'll leave them to be discovered, but they include a well-known -- at the time -- impersonator.) I've always remembered, from watching it when it originally aired, the suggestion from Jonathan Winters which, of course, is totally loopy and pure Winters, and I still laugh at the idea of thinking that George Plimpton might have actually tried that. (It's one that he wisely doesn't.) He has professional comedy writers put together the material, and we seem trying out the act in comedy clubs and with almost anyone who'll listen, including stewardess mid-flight. And it all leads up to his one night only opening.
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