{"id":33090,"date":"2020-04-17T10:17:30","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T14:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=33090"},"modified":"2020-04-17T10:17:30","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T14:17:30","slug":"the-bootleg-files-marys-incredible-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/17\/the-bootleg-files-marys-incredible-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Mary’s Incredible Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 725:<\/strong> \u201cMary\u2019s Incredible Dream\u201d (1976 television special starring Mary Tyler Moore).<\/p>\n

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

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.
\n
\nREASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Too many music and performance rights issues to address, not to mention quality control problems.
\n
\nCHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Unlikely.<\/p>\n

The 1970s represented the pinnacle of bizarre variety programming on American television. Whether it involved regularly scheduled programming \u2013 look at \u201cPink Lady and Jeff,\u201d \u201cThe Gong Show\u201d or \u201cThe Brady Bunch Hour\u201d \u2013 or standalone specials \u2013 think of Raquel Welch doing \u201cThe Age of Aquarius\u201d on an Aztec pyramid or Ann-Margret joining the Bay City Rollers\u201d in \u201cSaturday Night\u201d before an audience of old ladies or Paul Lynde throwing lavender-scented double entendres at KISS on his Halloween show \u2013 the decade represented the alpha and omega of musical-comedy inanity.
\n<\/p>\n

But for sheer off-the-wall lunacy, you haven\u2019t lived until you\u2019ve experienced \u201cMary\u2019s Incredible Dream,\u201d a one-shot 1976 special designed to highlight the singing and dancing talents of Mary Tyler Moore. At this point in time, Moore was eager to wind down her iconic sitcom and pursue ventures that tapped into her desire to sing and dance. The fact that she was strictly adequate as a dancer and decidedly unsatisfactory as a singer did not bother Moore \u2013 and her network, CBS, gave her green light to proceed while forgetting her dismal track record with the song-and-dance film flop \u201cThoroughly Modern Millie\u201d and the legendary Broadway musical disaster \u201cBreakfast at Tiffany\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

As its title suggests, \u201cMary\u2019s Incredible Dream\u201d is a slumberland fantasy with the star drifting off into a deep snooze that finds her in extraordinary situations with extraordinary people. In this case, she is surrounded by Ben Vereen, the Cajun singer and fiddler Doug Kershaw, the cutesy-poo quartet The Manhattan Transfer and the Boston Pops\u2019 maestro Arthur Fiedler. The theme is a vaguely Biblical riff on the earlier aspects of the Old Testament\u2019s cycles of sin, salvation, the return to sin, the return to salvation and the endless wash-rinse-repeat formula.<\/p>\n

As Moore drifts off into sleep, her dreams take her to a version of Eden if it was redesigned by Busby Berkeley for a 1930s Warner Bros. musical. Arthur Fiedler conducts a heavenly choir while the Manhattan Transfer zips through Depression-era pop standards and Ben Vereen prances about in a green tuxedo and derby with \u201c666\u201d shining on his chest. Doug Kershaw sings his tune \u201cI\u2019m a Natural Man\u201d while wearing a white tuxedo, while poor Moore tries (and fails) to vamp her way through the Peggy Lee standard \u201cI\u2019m a Woman.\u201d Whether cocaine played any role in conceiving and executing this segment is unclear, but it is hard to imagine sober minds and clean nostrils played a role in this.<\/p>\n

The story then goes to a supposedly post-Eden setting in what looks like a typical Saturday night in a 1940s Monogram Pictures cowboy flick. (Don\u2019t ask why.) Kershaw does another Cajun-flavored tune called \u201cMama\u2019s Got the Know-How\u201d while Moore dresses in hippie-mod clothing with a headband and cutoff blouse. There is a wild bacchanalia with Vereen dancing wildly and the Manhattan Transfer singing \u201cJava Jive\u201d before Kershaw does an intense fiddle rendition of \u201cWabash Cannonball.\u201d The segment is supposed to represent society before Noah\u2019s flood, with Arthur Fielder conducting an off-screen orchestra in appropriately fatalistic music.<\/p>\n

In the post-flood epoch, Moore emerges with Vereen as her supposed mate a water-logged world \u2013 the two never show any physical affection, perhaps because old-school taboos on interracial relations were still in place in 1976. Instead, Moore launches into a sincerely incompetent rendition of Cat Stevens\u2019 syrupy ballad \u201cMorning Has Broken\u201d \u2013 and I will wager this performance qualifies as torture under the Geneva Convention. Seriously, it is worth enduring this catastrophe just to see this musical nadir \u2013 you cannot imagine how bad television variety programming can descend until you hear Mary Tyler Moore eviscerate Cat Stevens\u2019 hippie-dippie pop musing.<\/p>\n

Any redemption that Moore and friends might have enjoyed after the deluge is lost in a return to sin and incivility. Moore barely dresses for a scanty burlesque-style number that shows off her legs (to her credit) and her vocal cords (to everyone\u2019s loss) as Kershaw launches into a convulsive version of \u201cWabash Cannonball\u201d while going into Ed Gein-worthy facial madness. The Manhattan Transfer warble \u201cSh-Boom\u201d while a chronologically eccentric patchwork of political newsreels flash across the screen.<\/p>\n

And just when you think things could not get worse, Moore dresses up in old lady make-up and clothing to eviscerate Stephen Sondheim\u2019s landmark \u201cI\u2019m Still Here\u201d in a talk-sing presentation that steamrolls the song\u2019s irony with breathtaking incompetence. The Manhattan Transfer tries to score with \u201cSympathy for the Devil\u201d while Vereen does some furious dancing in a one-piece red jumpsuit and Moore does a reprise of \u201cMorning Has Broken.\u201d <\/p>\n

As a writer, I find impossible to lambast \u201cMary\u2019s Incredible Dream\u201d because any trash-talking of the endeavor will give the impression that this is a so-bad-it\u2019s-good work. On the contrary, it is a so-bad-it\u2019s-bad initiative. The production is not lacking considerable talent, but it is incompatible talent that doesn\u2019t belong together under the same banner. It\u2019s like a TV version of a peanut butter and sardine taco \u2013 great ingredients separately, but totally wrong when combined. <\/p>\n

This production was created and written by Jack Good, who helmed the Monkees\u2019 career-killing 1969 TV special \u201c33 1\/3 Revolutions Per Monkee\u201d and directed by Gene McAvoy and Jaime Rogers, who served respectively as art director and choreographer on Sonny and Cher\u2019s TV series. The series seemed to make some impact on CBS\u2019 executives, who approved the star\u2019s two unsuccessful attempts at variety programming when her classic sitcom went off the air. <\/p>\n

\u201cMary\u2019s Incredible Dream\u201d can be found from several grey market labels and in a blurry. multi-part unauthorized posting on YouTube<\/a>. Problems in clearing music and performance rights have kept it out of commercial home entertainment channels, and the dismal quality of the show doesn\u2019t help much. Mercifully, the self-indulgent star was able to turn the world on with her smile and save her reputation from what should have been the television equivalent of a career suicide letter.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT 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 the award-wining podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, now in its fourth season. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 725: \u201cMary\u2019s Incredible Dream\u201d (1976 television special starring Mary Tyler Moore). LAST SEEN: On YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Too many music and performance rights issues to address, not to mention quality control problems. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely. The 1970s represented the pinnacle of bizarre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":33092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[2472,1693,2473,2471,2000,2474,1728],"class_list":["post-33090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-ben-vereen","tag-cbs","tag-doug-kershaw","tag-mary-tyler-moore","tag-musicals","tag-the-manhattan-transfer","tag-tv-special"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33090","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=33090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33091,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33090\/revisions\/33091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}