The other day, I recommended watching reruns of The Danny Kaye Show on the Jewish Life TV channel. Actually, I don't recommend trying to watch anything on that channel, which is like a restaurant that doesn't advertise, doesn't have a sign out front, doesn't have a menu and if you do stumble in there, they just serve you anything they like whenever they feel like it.
Also, someone there seems to occasionally decide that right in the middle of a musical number is a dandy time to cut away for three minutes of commercials.
They've revamped their website and it now actually purports to tell you what they're showing and when…but my sporadic checking finds that what they say they're airing and what's actually on the channel rarely match. Worse for some of us is that the listings they send out to others don't match either. My cable company (Spectrum) has no idea what airs when and my TiVo listings (which come from a separate source) are different and also wrong.
Until early today, my TiVo listed no shows of any kind this week on JLTV. It said that each day, the network was running a 24-hour program called "To Be Announced." Today, they changed and began listing individual shows with The Danny Kaye Show airing each day at Noon, my time. As I write this, it is just after Noon and today's episode of The Danny Kaye Show is over because it actually aired at 11 AM. I think, if I've figured it out right, they're actually airing Monday-Thursday at 11 AM Pacific Time but TiVo still thinks they're on at Noon and Spectrum is thinking 2 PM.
By the way, here's the writing credits on today's episode, which originally aired October 2, 1963: Herbert Baker, Mel Tolkin, Sheldon Keller, Saul Ilson, Ernest Chambers and Larry Gelbart. A pretty impressive roster. If they run what the website says they're going to run — unlikely but not impossible — tomorrow's should have Gwen Verdon as a guest star, Wednesday should have Art Carney, Thursday should have Louis Jordan and the Amazing Carl Ballantine, and Thursday should have Julie Newmar and (again) Howie Morris.
In any case, my friend Bob Elisberg just sent me a link to a sketch that ran at some point on the series. It's a long one with Danny plus Buddy Ebsen (in his Beverly Hillbillies role), Howie Morris and Harvey Korman. Howie is playing pretty much the same character he played on The Andy Griffith Show, Ernest T. Bass. Contrary to what most think, Ernest T. only appeared on five (5) episodes of that show but he sure became a memorable character.
In the last decade or so of his life, a goodly part of Howie's income came from appearing as Ernest T. at autograph shows and screenings connected to The Andy Griffith Show. By then, his residuals had long petered out and they weren't much to begin with, but he was able to buy groceries and pay alimony thanks to those five appearances. There have been many actors who were similarly supported. I worked with Roger C. Carmel on what may have been his last acting job. He told us all how amazed he was that after appearing in dozens and dozens of TV roles and films, his best source of funds was appearing at Star Trek conventions, where he was welcomed because of the two episodes of that show on which he appeared.
Anyway, here's the clip. The person who uploaded it to YouTube wrote in his notes, "Howard Morris gave me a copy of this years ago. He enjoyed doing this sketch but didn't like working with Danny Kaye at all." Like I told you.