There are a lot of cable TV channels that rerun a lot of pretty old TV shows. Some of those programs hold up, some don't. For example, Jewish Life TV runs old episodes of The Soupy Sales Show — some from the sixties, some from the seventies. In the sixties, I loved that show and if I were still twelve, I probably still would but…well, they don't quite hold my attention the way they did back then. (I got to hang out on the set of his seventies show during tapings and those bring back good memories but, again, the actual content doesn't quite delight me the way it once did.)
JLTV reruns Candid Camera, which I never liked, not even when I was twelve. They run The Jack Benny Program, which is a lot like The Soupy Sales Show for me. I'm fond of the star and admiring of his talents but I don't have the patience to wait for the moments when they're as good as I'd like to think they always were.
They rerun That Show with Joan Rivers, a late-sixties talk program which was sometimes interesting because of its guests. I found Joan Rivers impossible to watch in her later years when she became so nasty and so committed to plugging her financial enterprises, but it's nice to see her when she was the Joan Rivers I liked. And they run The Danny Kaye Show.
There are a lot of stories around about Danny Kaye not being a very nice person. My dear friend, the late Howard Morris, was a semi-regular on that series for a while and he hated Danny Kaye almost as much as he hated Jack Carter. It is not humanly possible for one human being to hate another human being more than Howie Morris hated Jack Carter. Then again, my friend Ron Friedman who was a writer on The Danny Kaye Show loved its star.
When I watch these reruns, I elect to side with Ron. Mr. Kaye is so funny and magical and delightful to watch and the writing, which was done by the best in the business at the time, is quite good…and durable. It generally holds up. Danny's performances generally hold up. The guests are great. And when Howie wasn't the second banana, Harvey Korman was and he was sensational.
If you get JLTV, I suggest you check this series out but I'll warn you: JLTV is very bad at telling you what they're running when. I have a Season Pass on my TiVo for these and half the time, what it records is some other program altogether. Also, I never know which episodes they're running. If it's on twice a day, that may be the same episode twice or two different ones…I think. They have me very confused. All I know is that I enjoy watching that man, in large part because he comes across as the exact opposite of what Howie Morris said he was. If Howie was right, I don't want to know it.