Today's Video Link

I always liked Leonard Barr, a veteran vaudeville comic who got a lot of attention because he was Dean Martin's uncle. I thought he deserved a lot of attention because he was funny. This clip shows you his deadpan delivery but does not, alas, close the way he closed most of his stand-up performances…with a funny, eccentric dance.

In the early eighties, I wrote a sitcom pilot for CBS that was to star comedian Tom Dreesen. The whole thing was a real roller coaster experience: One day they liked it, the next day they didn't and so on. They ultimately decided against taping it but through the process, the one element of it that everyone at the network loved was a casting idea of Tom's. One of the characters was a crotchety old man who is hated by everyone on the series and in the neighborhood where it took place. I had imagined Charles Lane in the role but Tom suggested Leonard Barr…and from that moment on, that's who it had to be.

I'm sorry the show never got made. It would have been fun watching Mr. Barr steal it. Here he is in a badly-edited clip…