On the evening of January 18, 1965 — in the week before Lyndon Johnson was sworn in for his full term as president — NBC aired a great special called Allan Sherman's Funnyland. It starred (of course) Allan Sherman and his guests included Lorne Greene, Jack Gilford and Angie Dickinson. One of the high points was when Mr. Greene sang his then-current hit record "Ringo," followed by Allan Sherman walking out to perform a parody of it.
I thought it was a great special…and I guess it was also a pilot but it didn't turn into a series. I played it over and over again…and you may be wondering how I could do that in 1965, long before anyone had invented the VCR or the DVR or anything that would record both video and audio off the TV. I recorded just the latter on my Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder and listened to it often for several years. Three decades later, I managed to obtain a DVD of the show and it really was as good as I always remembered.
Someone uploaded a video of the special to archive.org and I've embedded it below. The image isn't great but it's watchable…and if you start watching it, I have a feeling you'll watch the whole 59 minutes of it. Later today, I'll tell you some interesting things about one of the people who worked on it…