Frazetta: Painting With Fire is running many times this week on the Independent Film Channel. This is a documentary on the great painter of fantasy scenes and women with awesome rear ends. Here's what I wrote about it a year ago. If you haven't seen it and you get IFC, this would be a good opportunity.
Several folks have asked me to keep them posted of interesting folks who pop up on the old What's My Line? reruns on GSN. If you taped or TiVoed this morning's episode (i.e., the one running right this moment), you saw Jacques Cousteau and William Bendix. Tomorrow morning, we should have William Holden and the June Taylor Dancers. Friday morning, Claudette Colbert and director George Stevens are Mystery Guests. Then, jumping ahead past less exciting names, next Monday morning is an episode with Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and the two men who wrote My Fair Lady, Gigi and Camelot among other wonders, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. If I forget, someone should remind me to mention again that next Thursday morning, May 26, there's an episode with Jerry Lewis (newly divorced from Dean) on the panel, and the Mystery Guest is Walt Disney.
Also: Next weekend's "classic" rerun of Saturday Night Live is the show from October 23, 1976 — a second season episode and the first time Steve Martin hosted. It's not a particularly memorable show, sketch-wise, nor is it helped a lot by musical guest Kinky Friedman. The best moments are to be found in a couple of stand-up spots by Mr. Martin that will remind you what he did well back when he did that kind of thing. Legend has it that Lorne Michaels had once resisted booking the guy because he thought his act was too silly…but Martin impressed all and was immediately invited back to host again. He returned to the post just nine shows later and made many memorable appearances thereafter.
The following weekend, the rerun is from May 22, 1982 — one of the Eddie Murphy/Joe Piscopo years — with guest host Olivia Newton-John. The highlight is probably a duet on "Ebony and Ivory" by Stevie Wonder (Murphy) and Frank Sinatra (Piscopo), and Graham Chapman makes a couple of brief, odd appearances in other sketches.