Jerry Lewis is doing his 41st Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon this weekend. The entire network telecast from Las Vegas is 21 and a half hours but some cities only run portions of it and some let their local segments lengthen the broadcast. In Los Angeles, for instance, the entire show will run 23 hours on KCAL Channel 9…I think. My TiVo is somewhat confused because the schedule has the festivities broken into four separate parts. The first and third are called The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon while the second and fourth are called The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon (Cont'd). If you want to record the whole thing, you need to mark all four sections.
Thanks to my little satellite whatzis, I can also watch on it WGN in Chicago. They're running fifteen hours of it, then they go away for a baseball game. The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs are currently locked into a life-and-death struggle for last place in the National League Central Division and you don't want to miss that. After they duke it out, the station will cut back to Jer for around two and a half hours.
Wanna know about guests? The following is from a press release…
MDA National Chairman and Telethon star Jerry Lewis, joined by anchor Ed McMahon and co-hosts, Jann Carl, Tom Bergeron, Norm Crosby, Billy Gilman, Larry King, Tony Orlando and Bob Zany. This year's on-air talent includes Celine Dion, Paul Anka, Goo Goo Dolls, Lee Greenwood, Dave Matthews Band, Joshua Bell, Jo Dee Messina, Daddy Yankee, Cheap Trick, Rita Rudner, Neil Patrick Harris, Ray Romano, William Shatner, Donald Trump, Sean Hayes, Lance Burton, Clint Holmes, Louie Anderson, George Wallace, Julie Roberts, Maureen McGovern, George Clinton, Village People, the casts of Phantom of the Opera, Shout, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Color Purple and The Wedding Singer and more.
Not bad…but still a far cry from the days when Sinatra would come on to sing and would bring along his friend, Dean Martin. I linked to a fuzzy and brief clip of that moment here but we now have access to a longer version that includes more of the performances before and after. Here's Part One, which you may or many not want to skip. It's Frank singing before bringing Dino on and it runs a little over eight minutes…
And now, here's Part Two, in which Sinatra brings Dean onto the stage and the audience goes understandably crazy. This part runs a little under ten minutes…
Finally, here's Part Three, which is mostly Dean Martin carrying on for four minutes. I suspect an alien from another planet could watch this and find it hard to believe the man ever made a living as a professional entertainer…but I still enjoy watching Dean even when he's phoning it in from the wrong area code. There will be nothing like this on this year's telethon but there will be Shatner. That's something.