For reasons that will be obvious in this video, I was a fan (at age 18) of The Golddiggers, the troupe of young ladies who graced The Dean Martin Show and anything else produced by Greg Garrison. I thought they suffered from an assumption that has been too often made in show business; that if a woman is marketed as "eye candy" (hate that term), she must not be good for much of anything else. Some of them were pretty good at singing and dancing and even comedy.
I said that last sentence once to a writer friend and he said, "I'll grant you the singing and dancing…but comedy?" And I reminded him that this was a Greg Garrison show, which meant not enough rehearsing and too much conspicuous editing. I liked Garrison and thought he did the impossible just getting his shows taped each week…but there were episodes where you wouldn't guess that Bob Newhart and Dom DeLuise were ever that funny.
Back when I used to poach in the halls of NBC, I always made a point of dropping by the stage where Dino taped on those rare moments when he actually graced his own stage. I never saw Dean rehearsing because he didn't…but I'd usually find either Lou Jacobi or Nipsey Russell running through a sketch or the Golddiggers blocking a dance number in not that much more clothing than they're wearing in this clip. So either way, I was happy.
This is the opening of their "prime time access" series that ran from 1971 to 1973. The first season had as its hosts, Charles Nelson Reilly and Larry Storch. This clip is from the second season where Charles and Larry were replaced with Lonnie Schorr and Jackie Vernon. Each episode featured a guest star…and I believe some of the guest star spots were tied-in with Dean's concurrent show. Garrison liked to bring in celebrities and have them tape appearances on several different installments of one or more series at the same time. I once heard Jonathan Winters say with a note of sarcasm, "It was fun working for Greg. When you taped a bit for him, you never knew what show it was going to turn up on." I think Jonathan, without his prior knowledge, was on a couple of episodes of this…
