Monday, January 26, 2026
Watching the HBO Mel Brooks documentary...
I was reminded that Brooks remade the best films of Fred Allen and of Jack Benny...not quite as good as recapitulating James Whale, but The Twelve Chairs was at least the second US film based on The Twelve Chairs, after It's In the Bag! (1945) and To Be or Not to Be was even more an obvious revisit. It seemed a likely thing for Brooks to do, in both cases.
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In high school I read every book in the library about or by Fred Allen and Jack Benny. To Be or Not to Be is one of my favorite movies. I’ll have to watch It’s in the Bag!
I grew seriously interested in both in elementary school, after hearing a cassette recording of the KING FOR A DAY season-ending episode of THE FRED ALLEN SHOW, wherein the network encourages Allen to remake his series into a give-away game show series, and Benny tries to sneak on to win the prizes. I read Allen's memoir TREADMILL TO OBLIVION not too long after, and Benny was still active, then (Allen had died, alas, in 1956...one post on this blog is devoted to the unintentionally-star-studded episode of WHAT'S MY LINE?, Allen's last series, in part eulogizing Allen).
You'll see Benny has a role there!
More joy: Jackie Kashian's new stand-up comedy concert video, ALTER-KASHIAN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5kJlI41V2g
And today's/this week's JACKIE AND LAURIE [Kilmartin] SHOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_GFeECKN4E
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2015/12/two-tributaries-to-our-overlooked.html
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Two tributaries to our overlooked cultural flow, or Toshiko Akiyoshi, Jacques Plante, Cyd Charisse and Ann Landers walk into a studio to eulogize Fred Allen, and Mimi Perrin writes and performs noirish jazz lyrics in French with her sextet before turning to translating Le Carre, Erdrich and Sheckley...
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