DVD Obscurities #1: The Bob Hope Comedy Special

Netflix is great, but there is a lot of stuff out there, especially in the realm of what is generally called "Classic TV," that doesn't show up on Netflix, isn't bootlegged, and doesn't come from shoddy PD copies of kinescopes. Some of it is really great.

First up: The Bob Hope Comedy Specials.

I stumbled on this by searching YouTube for "NBC Peacock," and finding that someone had posted an entire 1966 Bob Hope special--"Murder at NBC," featuring an amazing lineup of comedy stars who somehow managed not to provide any actual comedy.

In the comments was a note--that at www.bobontv.com , you can order DVDs of any Bob Hope special from 1950 to 1996! From special guest stars Dinah Shore and Bea Lillie to special guest stars Joey Lawrence and The Judds! So I took a chance and ordered the episode from September 27, 1963.

Best $24.95 I've spent in a long time; I can't recommend it highly enough. Nice clear copy from a videotape original, and though it lamentably does not include the original Chrysler commercials, look what you do get:

Opening title animation by John Whitney (hard to read here, I realize):


An odd production number about the coming (1963-64) television season that takes you backstage at NBC Burbank:





Surprisingly tacky backgrounds...for Dean Martin:


...and for Miss Barbra Streisand:


...who is in Full-On High Early Barbra Mode (i.e., sleek bob, Cleopatra makeup, Empire waist):


...but who was not yet big enough a star to get out of the requisite dreadful pop-culture funny costume sketch (here, a parody of folk-music shows like Shivaree:



And at the top of the hour, Bob comes out and does eight minutes of standup. Eight Minutes!

The Vast Wasteland

This blog started out with a simple purpose: to explore The Vast Wasteland--by which I mean, the television landscape that Newton Minow famously decried in his speech to the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961. (You can not only read but hear the speech in its entirety here.) I had picked up a copy of Mary Ann Watson's The Expanding Vista: American Television in the Kennedy Years at a used bookstore in Denver; around the same time I'd been visiting a Temple University professor's blog on which he described his 1947 project--an attempt to see every film released by a major studio in 1947. I figured--what would the same idea look like if applied to The Vast Wasteland--television programs broadcast during the 1960-61 season that made up the wasteland Minow described?

I started by finding the network television schedules for 1960-61, then searching Netflix for all the relevant titles, and putting them in my queue. There's a surprising amount available--try it yourself if you don't believe me.

But in the end I decided not to be so narrowly focused. What changed my mind? I was defeated by trying to watch the first-season DVDs of Hazel. Yeesh. Among other things, it's easy to forget in this era of 13-episode seasons of Mad Men (and yes, that was another reason I wanted to revisit 1961) that tackling Hazel or any other network show meant 39 episodes. Nineteen-and-a-half hours of Shirley Booth is a daunting prospect, I assure you.

So I'm still going to work my way through The Vast Wasteland, but I'm going to also allow myself to watch and write about things I enjoy, in order to offset those 19 1/2 hours of Shirley Booth. Wish me luck.