Monthly Archives: February 2012

In the late sixties and early seventies, comic actor Don Adams often went on talk shows with outtakes (or fluffs or bloopers or whatever you want to call them) from his show Get Smart — especially scenes from episodes that guest-starred Don Rickles. They were a sensation and Adams got the idea of doing a TV series that would just present that kind of footage from other programs.

When he explored the idea, he discovered it wasn't feasible. The costs of licensing the clips were high…but the real problem would be getting permissions from the actors who appeared in the clips. The Screen Actors Guild has since changed some of its rules and now it's a bit easier but back then, it would mean negotiating with each actor…and obviously some of them would demand huge sums while others would veto the airing of the most embarrassing (and therefore, funniest) material.

So Mr. Adams abandoned that idea but put his mind to this question: How can I create outtakes that I could afford to show? The solution was Don Adams Screen Test, a 1975 series that looked like a talent competition — and was, in a way. But it was mainly an excuse to make and show bloopers.

Thousands vied for the prizes which were small roles in a TV show or movie. Each week, the contestants who were selected to compete would do scenes with real Hollywood-type stars, re-creating moments from classic motion pictures. The finished "screen tests" would be aired and a panel of judges from the industry would pick the winner…but before that, Adams would show the outtakes from the shooting of the screen tests.

When you're filming or taping a scene, hilarious errors occur…but not always. (It helps if one of the actors in the scene is Don Rickles.) To yield the desired number of outtakes, the performers on Don Adams Screen Test were obviously told to screw around and to do each line wrong ten times before they tried to do it right. Props were sabotaged. Tricks were played. It all wound up being very forced and phony…and therefore not that funny.

And there was another problem. To the extent this was a talent competition, you want to root for the contestants to do well. But this focused on everything they did wrong…so that kinda killed the "stars of tomorrow" aspect of it all. The whole series had a forced, overly-edited quality to it and no one looked good.

Here's twelve minutes from the first episode from the one season of Don Adams Screen Test, complete with the longest, most tedious opening in the history of television…

Here's a half-hour of excerpts from The Tonight Show for New Year's Eve 1965, ringing in '66. Johnny Carson was (of course) the host of the show but you won't see a lot of Johnny in this. You'll see Ben Grauer reporting as he did in those pre-Dick Clark days, from Times Square. You'll see commercials. But most interestingly, you'll see the legendary First Fifteen.

During the Steve Allen and Jack Paar years, the program was an hour and 45 minutes, though not everywhere. Some local stations had a half-hour of news at 11 PM and some had 15 minutes. To fit in with both, Tonight worked like this: The show would start at 11:15. Then it would start over with a new opening billboard at 11:30. Stations that ran 30 minutes of late night news could join it at the 11:30 mark.

Over the years, more and more NBC affiliates went to a half-hour of late news. By the time Mr. Carson became the host, he was doing the first 15 minutes of the show (including his monologue) for less than half the country and that half didn't include New York or most other major markets. Eventually, as more and more stations stopped carrying what he considered the best part of the show, he decided things had to change. He told NBC to get their stations all lined-up to start at the same time. NBC said they couldn't arrange that. Johnny said in effect, "In that case, I may have a 15 minute flu every night."

Which is what he did at first. He'd announce he was ill and that he wasn't going on at 11:15 but hoped to be well enough to appear at 11:30. Announcer Ed McMahon and bandleader Skitch Henderson had to host the first fifteen minutes. Eventually, that became the format and Johnny dropped all pretense of sickness. His part of the show would just start at 11:30.

Apparently, this arrangement prompted more and more local stations to program a half-hour of news at 11:00 so before long, it wasn't necessary to do the First Fifteen for anyone. This made everyone happy except Ed and Skitch, who'd rather enjoyed having their own little network show every night. In this video, you'll get to see how that little show went and you'll see why it was no great loss…