Monthly Archives: June 2007

Michael Riedel has a nice article remembering Charles Nelson Reilly. A couple things it doesn't tell you about the man: Reilly was not only Dick Van Dyke's understudy in the original Broadway version of Bye Bye Birdie but Paul Lynde's, as well. In fact, he took over that part for a while when Mr. Lynde left the show, and it was one of those rare times when a replacement in a show generated a lot of buzz and many said he was better than the guy he replaced.

Reilly's audition for the role of Bud Frump in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was an example of another thing that occurs from time to time in show business: The contrary casting notion. The way that works is that the folks casting the play or movie or TV show or whatever it is believe that the character is a fat brunette and they look and look at every fat brunette in the business and don't find what they want. Then a skinny blonde somehow gets an audition and is so wonderful that the producers and/or director decide the character is a skinny blonde. At the time Reilly auditioned, Bud Frump was supposed to be shorter than Robert Morse — which made the job hard to fill because Robert Morse was pretty short — and the character had other qualities that didn't correspond to Charles Nelson. But Morse got his friend Chuck the audition and Reilly was so funny that they changed the character to fit him. It's a tale often told by acting teachers in classes on How to Audition and the moral of it, which I'm not sure is always the best advice, is "Forget what they say they want. Just go out there and be wonderful."

Lastly, I'm also not sure I agree with Reilly's line about how once you do game shows, you can forget about a career in theater…and I'm not sure he meant it to be taken seriously. More often, the situation is that once an actor is making steady money off game shows, he or she doesn't want to do theater. If they do, the name recognition from the game shows will certainly help. It may not help on Broadway but a large part of Broadway is suspicious of anyone doing anything that isn't Broadway.

Thanks to James H. Burns for the link.

Okay, here's a treasure. Very few kinescopes exist of Tonight (it was not called The Tonight Show back then) from when it was hosted by Steve Allen. Here's a little less than a half hour from the Halloween show of 1954. That's Gene Rayburn doing the opening announce and then Steve, wearing a Halloween costume, welcomes the new audience.

I need to explain that. Back then, the show was in two parts. At 11:15 or 11:20 (it changed over the years), Allen would host something called either The Steve Allen Show or The Steve Allen Knickerbocker Show, Knickerbocker being a brand of beer that sponsored the program. This was an extension of the local show Allen had done in New York which led to him being signed by NBC to do Tonight on the full network. At 11:28 or so, that show would break for commercials and when it came back at 11:30, they'd continue the same show but now it would be Tonight with the whole network watching. It was like only New York got the first 10-15 minutes of the program. If you were watching there, you'd hear Rayburn open the show once at 11:15 or 11:20 and then he'd open the show again, but with a different name at 11:30.

The dual start times continued after Allen departed. Jack Paar's Tonight program started at 11:15 and then it started again at 11:30. It was called Tonight (later, Jack Paar Tonight and briefly, The Jack Paar Show) in both parts. Stations around the country had the option of joining it at either point, depending on whether their 11:00 news was fifteen minutes or thirty. It wasn't until a few years into the Carson era that this changed. Johnny got mad that only a small part of the country was seeing his opening monologue so he began getting what he called The Fifteen Minute Flu. At 11:15, he'd declare he was feeling poorly, so Ed McMahon and bandleader Skitch Henderson (who you'll also see in today's clip) would host the show until 11:30 when Johnny would be miraculously cured and would come out to do his monologue when the show restarted. Eventually, NBC took the hint and lined up all the stations to take the show at 11:30.

This chunk of Steve Allen's Tonight is in three parts and there are a few odd jumps and edits where things are missing. Still, it's a must-see. Here's Part One…

The second part contains a musical number performed by Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams and Pat Marshall, plus appearances by Jayne Meadows, Faye Emerson, Gene Rayburn and Kim Novak…

Which brings us to Part Three. It starts with an overlap from Part Two and then they play some silly Halloween games. This is not indicative of everything that occurred on Tonight but it's also not that atypical. Some nights, it apparently was very much like this…