This is a treasure and one that needs some explanation. In the fifties and sixties, a wonderful songwriter named Billy Barnes wrote a lot of wonderful songs, many of them quite funny and the kind of thing that performers performed in revues and cabarets. He wrote serious songs too. "Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?" was one of his bigger hits of a more serious manner. But the funny songs were very funny and they were featured in a number of revues called things like The Billy Barnes Revue, Billy Barnes' People, Billy Barnes' Party, Billy Barnes' L.A. and Billy Barnes' Hollywood.
I think all played at one time or another in Los Angeles and at least one was on Broadway for a while and there were a few touring companies. They led to Billy being hired often to do what they call Special Musical Material for TV shows, including the entire run of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. The revues also led to many of the performers in them being hired for TV shows.
(If any of this is sounding a bit déjà vuish, it may be because I wrote about Billy and one of his later shows here.)
Anyway, my pal Kliph Nesteroff alerted me to an amazing 51-minute video of numbers from The Billy Barnes Revue. It stars Joyce Jameson, Bert Convy, Patti Regan, Ken Berry, Ann Guilbert, Jackie Joseph, Len Weinrib and sketch writer/director Bob Rodgers. All of those folks went on to other things. Ann Guilbert, for example, became a regular on The Dick Van Dyke Show and I can't resist pointing out that Jameson, Regan, Berry, Joseph and Weinrib all guested on that show — and most of them, more than once.
I am not altogether certain just what this video is but it would seem to be an episode of Playboy's Penthouse, a syndicated TV series that Hugh Hefner hosted from 1959 to 1961 and which was taped in Chicago. It looks like whoever had this video lopped off the opening and whatever Hefner did until the final segment and credits.
But it seems real odd — not impossible but odd — that Hef abandoned his show's usual format for a week to devote the hour to Billy Barnes' show. And here's another interesting thing to consider and I am here quoting Wikipedia…
Following its three-week run at the Lyceum Theatre [on Broadway], rather than closing down for good, the show [The Billy Barnes Revue] moved off-Broadway again to the Carnegie Hall Playhouse on October 20, 1959. Producers George Cayley, George Brandt and Samuel J. Friedman acquired the rights from [Producer George] Eckstein, who remained with the production as stage manager and performed the role vacated by Bert Convy.
A controversy erupted when Barnes, Guilbert, Berry, Joseph, Regan, Rodgers, Weinrib and Eckstein flew to Chicago to tape an episode of ABC-TV's Playboy's Penthouse, produced by Hugh Hefner's Playboy Magazine, and failed to make their flight back to New York in time for the Tuesday, October 27 performance. As a result, the Tuesday night performance was cancelled and $800 had to be returned to the ticket holders.
Eckstein sent a telegram to the producers stating that the cast had made a "frantically conscientious effort to return to New York by curtain time as numerous impartial witnesses can testify; a dispatching error resulted in misconnections," but rather than simply recognizing the value of the network television publicity, the management filed a complaint with Actors' Equity Association and the American Federation of Musicians (of which Barnes was a member). "There's no excuse for missing a show," declared the producers' lawyer, Benjamin Schankman. "They shouldn't have gone to Chicago if they could not arrange to get back in time. An agreement is an agreement."
Although one of the producers, Samuel J. Friedman, denied that their decision was a retaliatory action, two weeks later, the entire cast (except Virginia de Luce, who had replaced Jameson) was replaced by Ronnie Cunningham, Arlene Fontana, Jane Johnston, Larry Hovis, James Inman, Charles Nelson Reilly and Tom Williams.
The cast change proved to be a major mistake and the show closed on November 28, 1959 after just six weeks at the Carnegie Hall Playhouse. Ironically, the promotional appearance on Playboy's Penthouse by the original cast members did not air until Saturday, December 5, one week after the show had closed.
Some of this is a bit confusing. The Wikipedia piece says that Convy and Jameson were in the cast that went to Chicago and was fired for missing a performance. But it also suggests that Convy and Jameson had been replaced by then. Also, I don't think Playboy's Penthouse was ever an ABC network series, though it may have played in some markets on ABC affiliates.
And I really don't get why you fire the actors as if they were responsible for going to Chicago to appear and perform material from the show. They didn't even have the legal right to do that. Someone — the old producers or the new producers — had to arrange that. There's some reason, probably buried deep within the contract with the new producers, that would explain things.
But at least they went and at least we have this video of material from the show. For that, we should be very happy…