Today's Video Link

In 1951, the great Phil Silvers starred on Broadway in a musical comedy called Top Banana. It was all about a high-pressure comedian who made the shift from vaudeville to the (then) new medium of television. At the time, Milton Berle was the most prominent star who'd made that transition…and there were aspects of the character that certainly seemed to be based on Uncle Miltie. When Berle found out about the project, he insisted on investing in it, and thereafter did little to discourage the notion that it was based on him, even though the role Silvers played was a pretty unpleasant guy.

Hy Kraft wrote the book and the legendary Johnny Mercer penned the songs. Rose Marie and Jack Albertson were in the cast and the whole thing got pretty good reviews…so good that many were surprised it didn't do more business. It ran a little less than a year in New York and then toured to modest success. It has rarely been revived since then. No one has ever been interested in seeing it if it doesn't have Phil Silvers in it. (There have been occasional rumors that it will be resurrected with Nathan Lane in the lead but there are rumors of every show that ever played Broadway being revived with Nathan Lane in the lead. Me, I'm waiting to see him play Annie…and don't think he won't.)

All the major movie studios passed on committing Top Banana to film. Then, when the touring version was in Los Angeles, Silvers was approached directly by producer Alfred Zugsmith, who was then (and excepting the later Touch of Evil, still is) known primarily for cheapo horror and sex films. Zugsmith proposed a deal to, in essence, film the touring show with most of the same cast, sets, costumes, arrangements, etc. The idea was to do it low-budget and quick in 3-D and rush the film to market while there was still a big demand out there for 3-D movies. Silvers and his producers agreed and Top Banana was photographed in just a few weeks, essentially by restaging the Broadway show in a movie studio and pointing cameras at it.

But as fast as they got it done, it wasn't fast enough. The film was shot in July of '53 but by September when editing was completed, its tentative distributor dropped it, citing a plunging marketplace for 3-D movies. Zugsmith and his crew eventually got a distribution deal the following February for a "flat" version that seemed cheap, even for an Alfred Zugsmith movie. They'd been counting on the three-dimensional gimmick to make up for the shoddy production values…and now they were all there on the screen in two dimensions. A murky conversion from the 3-D negatives didn't help, either.

Mr. Silvers was embarrassed by the film at the time and he'd be really humiliated by the versions around today which are blurry and missing around fifteen minutes. The movie was never exhibited in 3-D and apparently never will be, as no 3-D print is known to exist. But a copy of the trailer in that format has survived and has been restored…and guess what today's video link is! If you have a pair of red/green 3-D glasses around, run and get 'em 'cause here it is…