{"id":27693,"date":"2018-03-30T08:38:29","date_gmt":"2018-03-30T12:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=27693"},"modified":"2018-12-04T22:34:50","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T03:34:50","slug":"the-bootleg-files-the-mad-mad-mad-comedians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/30\/the-bootleg-files-the-mad-mad-mad-comedians\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 632:<\/strong> \u201cThe Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians\u201d (1970 Rankin\/Bass animated television special).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Most likely due to a rights clearance issue.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Not likely.<\/p>\n

During the 1960s, Rankin\/Bass Productions enjoyed a skein of hit films and television specials, including \u201cRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,\u201d \u201cMad Monster Party?\u201d, \u201cThe Little Drummer Boy\u201d and \u201cFrosty the Snowman.\u201d In 1970, the studio put forth \u201cThe Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians,\u201d which turned out to be their highest rated television show.
\n<\/p>\n

Today, \u201cThe Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians\u201d is mostly unknown \u2013 it was never part of the rerun culture and never released on home video. In many ways, the production\u2019s obscurity is highly justified \u2013 it is one of the weakest Rankin\/Bass offerings in the studio\u2019s history. But on the other hand, it has a strange curio value due to having a number of comedy legends offering voice performances for caricature depictions of their well-known personas.<\/p>\n

The special opens with the Smothers Brothers\u2019 performing \u201cOh, the Slithery Dee,\u201d and thanks to animation we get to see the giant sea monster as it devours Tom Smothers in one gulp. Then we have the opening credits, which curiously depicts a silhouette montage featuring Charlie Chaplin\u2019s Little Tramp and the Keystone Kops \u2013 these silent era icons are nowhere to be found in the show. Also misleading is the title, which suggests a semi-sequel to the 1963 slapstick epic \u201cIt\u2019s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.\u201d Alas, this offering is not the least bit mad, let alone being mad to the third degree.<\/p>\n

Although this 30-minute production is a cel animation effort, \u201cThe Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians\u201d is presented as if it was a live action show. Thus, there is a loud laugh track that gets activated at the end of nearly every sentence, plus cutaways to what is supposed to be an audience of guffawing guests (including Queen Elizabeth II, Martin and Lews and Popeye the Sailor). The device was typical for its time \u2013 many Hanna-Barbera animated series had mild laugh tracks punctuating punch lines \u2013 but the volume on canned laughter is out of proportion with most of the weak humor on display.<\/p>\n

The first major segment of the show involves Flip Wilson doing his stand-up routine about Columbus\u2019 discovering America. The animation, which was outsourced to Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Production in Tokyo, did a decent job in capturing Wilson\u2019s appearance and mannerisms, complete with a cigarette squeezed in his hand. (Hey, in 1970 it was still okay for cartoon characters to smoke.) Wilson\u2019s stage routine is then reimagined into a 1492 setting, with Wilson as Columbus. Some odd sight gags include the presence of three of the Beatles in the Spanish court and a kosher butcher shop (in 1492 Spain?). But Wilson\u2019s mix of jive talk and deliberate anachronisms quickly becomes dull when visualized \u2013 some things are better left to the imagination.<\/p>\n

After that, three old school comics \u2013 George Jessel, Jack E. Leonard and Henny Youngman \u2013 exchange labored quips before the next segment is up. That features Jack Benny and George Burns driving along in Benny\u2019s infamous Maxwell automobile. A problem arises at a toll bridge over a river, where the toll was raised from 25 cents to 50 cents. Burns insists that Benny protest the toll hike to an oversized cop in the toll booth, and the cop is furious at Benny\u2019s reluctance to pay the toll. Benny gets physically manhandled by the cop, and it is a bit disturbing to see Benny get roughed up in such a crass way. (Yes, it\u2019s a cartoon, but Benny was a placid personality and that type of knockabout was alien to his act.) When Benny asks Burns for back-up, Burns talk-sings one of his vaudeville ditties. This shtick gets repeated before Benny and Burns decide to forego the toll and drive the Maxwell across the river.<\/p>\n

From here, we have the most unusual aspect of the show: a recreation of the Napoleon skit from the 1924 Broadway revue \u201cI\u2019ll Say She Is\u201d starring the Marx Brothers. Groucho was lured into doing the voice for his character, while Paul Frees voiced Chico and (for one sentence of dialogue) Zeppo. But Groucho\u2019s voice performance was enervated and the timing for the skit was completely off due to slowly paced animation. Even stranger was the follow-up: a recreation of a W.C. Fields skit based in an Alpine resort, with Paul Frees doing a so-so Fields imitation. Fields had been dead for nearly a quarter-century, and it was unclear why his character was resurrected when there were plenty of living funnymen to work with.<\/p>\n

After a brief exchange between Henny Youngman and Phyllis Diller about mothers-in-law, the final segment involved the Smothers Brothers in a visualization of their \u201cTroubadour Song\u201d routine. As with Flip Wilson, the visualization of the routine quickly becomes dull.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians\u201d was broadcast on ABC on April 7, 1970, as the lead-up program to the Academy Awards telecast. The show\u2019s high ratings could certainly be credited by the stellar act that followed, which affirmed the old axiom regarding the benefits of being in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n

To date, however, \u201cThe Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians\u201d remains unavailable for home entertainment release. Most likely, there are problems in clearing the rights to some of the comedy recordings that appeared in the show. A satisfactory copy can be found on YouTube<\/a>, but there has been no great demand to make the show available again for commercial release, and considering the shaky content it might be best if the production was allowed to remain quietly in oblivion.
\n
\nIMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall<\/a>\u201d on SoundCloud, with new episodes every Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 632: \u201cThe Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians\u201d (1970 Rankin\/Bass animated television special). LAST SEEN: On YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Most likely due to a rights clearance issue. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely. During the 1960s, Rankin\/Bass Productions enjoyed a skein of hit films and television […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":27694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[99,819,1958,1957],"class_list":["post-27693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-animation","tag-rankin-bass","tag-television-special","tag-the-mad-mad-mad-comedians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29741,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27693\/revisions\/29741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}