Speaking of Milton Berle: Next Monday evening, the E! Entertainment Network is rerunning the 1979 installment of Saturday Night Live hosted by that gent. This is one of two episodes in the original five year run which Lorne Michaels thought was so dreadful that for a long time, it was absent from the rerun package. The other was one hosted by Louise Lasser, who was reportedly going through some "personal problems" (I'm being polite) and she was rambling and occasionally incoherent.
"Mr. Television" was at least coherent but — they way they tell it — way too determined to make funny faces and interject old bits. At one point, he insisted on singing "September Song" and interjecting a syrupy philosophical discourse, along with plugs for his autobiography. At its close, a friend he'd planted in the audience leaped to his feet to lead a "spontaneous" standing ovation.
Long unseen, the Berle episode finally turned up in a 30-minute cutdown in one of the SNL syndication packages. That version, as I recall, pretty much cut Mr. Television down to about half a monologue. E! is running an hour-long version and it will be interesting to see if whoever performed the edit (from the original 90-minute airing) will preserve or trim the parts Michaels found so unbearable. If it were me, I'd leave it in. That's what made this one famous.