Calling it talent is stretching a point. From a klutzy tap-dancer who can't quite stick the landings, to a woman puppeteer talking to her hand, to a terrifying man in a giant peanut suit, this is a lineup you won't forget, try as you might. And then there's the barbershop quartet.
And in case you start to forget who the sponsor of all this talent is, the lady with the thingie on her hand pulls jar after jar of Planter's products out of a basket, to the great enthusiasm of the thing on her hand (which looks a bit like a dog in a peanut suit) which keeps "talking" to her (whispering in her ear, of course, which lets her out of any attempt at ventriloquism). Then the peanut man shows us how to spread peanut butter on crackers.
Most of these kinds of shows disappeared into the ether, being live, or if taped were mercifully erased to make way for quiz shows. But I follow a YouTube channel called Free the Kinescopes!, which has a surprising array of "stuff" like this, almost unbelievably bad, but no doubt considered a wonder at the time. Early TV was either radio with pictures, or VERY bad vaudeville-type variety programming like this.
Incredibly, I just got this AVI file from an internet source to post on YouTube! Call me a techie genius. All right then, don't. But here it is, Kids and Company, one of the most surreal things I've ever seen on the internet.
How did this happen? I started off with one of MattTheSaiyan's old DuMont videos. I found the intro for this incredible kids' show from 1951, made three gifs of it, then wondered if I could find any more.
Kids and Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kids and Company
Presented by Johnny Olson Ham Fisher
Country of origin United States
No. of episodes 39
Production
Running time 24 mins.
Release
Original network DuMont
Picture format Black-and-white
Audio format Monaural
Original release September 1, 1951 – June 1, 1952
Kids and Company is an American children's TV show that aired on the now-defunct DuMont Television Network on Saturday mornings from September 1, 1951 to June 1, 1952, and was hosted by Johnny Olson and Ham Fisher. The series was primarily sponsored by Red Goose Shoes.
This was Olson's third series for DuMont, previously hosting the talent show Doorway to Fame and daytime variety series Johnny Olson's Rumpus Room. Rumpus Room shared the schedule with Kids for the latter's entire run, and ended a month after Kids did.
This Wiki entry has more links in it than text. By today's standards, the show ended almost before it began. But back then, they actually had weekly episodes that were weekly, period! So 39 episodes wasn't bad for a nine-month run.
The show is execrable. The goose, a horrible puppet that reminds me of the deformed bird-woman at the end of Freaks, flails around in one spot. It can't walk around or even hop or move at all except to flap and bounce. Its whole purpose is to be a shill for Red Goose shoes (which is why it's called Red Goose!) This ranks as one of the worst puppets I've ever seen, though Howdy Doody is right up there. The goose has a horrible kidlike voice that sounds like it's on the wrong speed, and also makes a rasping noise something like a death-rattle.
I had a weird feeling about this show. It reminds me very strangely of an SCTV feature called Happy Hour, with Happy Marsden introducing episodes of Six Gun Justice (A Republic Serial) from a bar. He had a strange puppet with him called. . . Sammy the Goose. The goose snapped its bill together in an alarming way, but didn't talk. Only its head and neck showed.
I did wonder, just now, if Sammy the Goose was based on one of those infinitely fuzzy embryonic memories, a first-childhood-memory thing all blurred in your consciousness, but, hauntingly, still there. When the writers at SCTV came up with Happy Hour and that bloody goose puppet, was there some faint echo of something they'd seen on Dumont Network in 1951?
It's possible.
This is before my time, but the SCTV crew are a few years older than me. I don't remember Dumont at all, but how could a 2-year-old remember Dumont? I just remembered that TV scared me half to death.
This was something I felt ashamed of - I was sure I was the only one - until I began to find HUNDREDS of YouTube videos of "scary", "terrifying" TV logos, most of them very old. Some of the comments mentioned very early childhood memories, and being scared shitless of these things.
So maybe people DO remember? But not consciously. For who'd drag this creature from hell out of his or her memory bank?
There's something fascinating about worsts, especially when they think they're pretty good, or at least passable. God knows how I fall into these things, but this one had something to do with landing on a site full of FREE old movies (and another sister site with hundreds of FREE old TV shows), and finding myself at the very bottom of the failed-TV-pilot barrel.
I quickly discovered that this had been on YouTube for quite a long time, though I was the first to leave a comment. I think everyone else was just too stunned. This bizarre thing is an attempt to cash in on the wild popularity of quiz shows in the 1950s: To Tell The Truth, I've Got a Secret, What's My Line, etc. These involved people like Gary Moore and Durward Kirby making quips and holding up pieces of cardboard while a bell went DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING (I never could figure out if the DINGDINGDING was good or bad, but maybe that's because I was three), while Kitty Carlisle snuggled in white furs and rattled her jewellery.
In other words, panel shows, the good ones at least, were popular, all in good fun, and even, sometimes, had a touch of class. Bennett Cerf might show up, or Noel Coward, or - oh no, not Noel Coward.
So someone - someone had an idea, an awful idea, for a quiz show that was such a mess that after three or four viewings I still can't figure out what it is supposed to be about. Really, it's about nothing, and about five minutes in, the panellists begin to realize this fact and laugh wildly and make lame remarks to cover the awkward silence. Never has a 26-minute show lasted so many years.
As far as I can make out, the host of the show has brought in his next-door neighbor, probably for free, so that he can function as an Artist. The Artist is supposed to draw a picture in only ten lines. He draws a line, then gives it to the first panelist who copies it, who then hands it to the next panelist who copies it, who - yes, I know it sounds pointless because it is. It is just jeezly bad, from the outset.
Eventually you end up with an incoherent mess of bad drawings with dumb captions. The panelists seem to have been chosen at random - a horse-teethed woman with an ear-shattering laugh, a guy who looks like he's straight out of an SCTV parody, a - but, my God, who's this sitting on the end?
As with so many of these ancient TV treasures, there is, after all, someone on this dog of a show who would go on to be world-famous. And I'm not going to tell you who he is, so there. You have to watch. His presence seems to float, Buddha-like, above the seething swill of bad TV brewing below. He says some truly funny things that drop like shot pigeons because no one is paying attention to the budding comic genius in their midst. They're too busy screaming with fake laughter and making ugly and meaningless squiggles on sheets of paper.
It becomes truly dada-ist at the end of the show when the loser of a moderator starts yammering about how the folks at home are going to want to participate in this fiasco. Sitting there copying a line, then handing it to someone who copies a line, then. . . until no picture is produced. He displays special pads of paper the audience is supposed to buy for this purpose, which they are supposed to then "scotch-tape to the TV screen". You may now scream.
The sight of the (inexplicable - why is he there?) gum-chewing piano player, the awkward crowd standing around as if at a surreal cocktail party, and the producer - I guess that's who he is - nakedly pitching the show to sponsors in the ugliest manner possible - what can I say about this? I think it was Jackie Gleason, about whom I have mixed feelings, who hosted a game show that lasted exactly one episode. It too was about "art", but was called, I think, You're In the Picture (I'll try to find it, I'm sure YouTube has it somewhere). Celebrities had to stick their heads through holes in a fake painting, then ask panellists questions about what painting they were in - or something. Awful, awful.
At least Jackie had the magnanimity/humility to come on the air the next night and offer an apology that lasted one hour. He felt really badly about You're In the Picture and wanted everyone to know it. That kind of candour is rare now. Whatever you do, you cover your ass. You "lawyer up". If you fail, you go around saying "there are no failures" and "failures are the only way to learn". No one picked up this pilot, and I am sure very few potential sponsors even watched it all the way through to that tacky pitch at the end. I can see them puffing away on cigarettes and watching five minutes of it and saying. "OK, Mel, we're done on this one" or something, or "Next?" I can see the panellists slinking away without making eye contact, or maybe making fanning motions to each other as if to dispel a particularly sulphurous fart. I wonder if I could get into the head of that unrecognized comic genius, what he really thought of the whole mess. I have a feeling he saw it as just another gig, a way to get some exposure so that maybe, one day, he could do some real television.
Which, I assure you, is what finally came to pass. (From Internet Archive)
Here's something so bad it makes "Queen for a Day" look like "Masterpiece Theatre". It is an unsold television pilot from 1954, for a game show called "Pass the Line" in which an artist slowly draws a picture in ten steps, and each step is copied by a panel of "celebrities". At the end of the incredibly awful pilot, the host and some other guy directly speak to the networks telling them why they should pick up the series (easily the best part of the pilot).
Run time 27 minutes 17 seconds Production Company Cliff Saber Productions Audio/Visual sound, black and white
Comments and Reviews
I'm a game show lover as well, but there's really no play-along element for the viewers -- it's just watching people copy lines of a drawing. Sure, it has the "shout at the TV" factor, but it's more along the lines of "This sucks!"
This has to be seen to be believed. This is the only thing Cliff Saber has done and it’s easy to see why.
WOW! I'm a gameshow fanatic & this piece of tripe was possibly the WORST I've ever encountered.
BTW, Joe MacCarthy, the piano guy was there to entertain the audience---there would have been one if this had been picked up by a network---while the game paused for station identification and/or commercials.
This program is so bad, like a car wreck, you can't help but feel compelled to watch it.
The host realizes his creation is dying (while he's doing it). He constantly tries to speed up the "celebs"
During the filming of this pilot, you can hear the sounds of the traffic outside of the "studio". Without any doubt this is the most interesting part of this show.
These are things I have discovered, rediscovered, regiffed or whatever. Since I have literally hundreds of gifs on file, I have now come to the point where I can't find anything. I'm trying to separate things out into specific files, and it isn't working because then I discover I CAN'T FIND one of my favorite, favorite gifs of all time, and then I find out the YouTube video it came from has been taken down.
One of my very first TV memories is The Cisco Kid. I was far too young to know what was going on, maybe three or four. And we certainly did not see it in this gorgeous, saturated colour, which brings out the rapturous skins of those eager little quarter horses. In those days actors really did have to know how to ride, just in case they were in a Western. And fence, and speak properly, and other things. I think James Dean killed it.
You know, I don't know what the fuck this is, but boy is it interesting. No doubt it's the intro to some wacky show from the late '50s. That clock, I mean. . . I had one.
This is also completely gorgeous, the pink and the orange, the filthy surface with the lines and splotches. Too bad we can't hear that thunky, staticky sound I used to love so much.
I just like the idea of there being a show called Panic. It looks to be futuristic, and perhaps influenced by The Twilight Zone in its apparent paranoia about technology.
Fuck if I know what this one is either. Oh, forgive my language, I'm in another round of angst about my work. Everyone says reframe your failures as positive experiences. OK then, I'm POSITIVE I'm a failure.
Now this is very, very interesting. The announcer says something like "The following program is brought to you in glorious black and white." Which is, of course, all we had at the time.
One of my most glorious gifs. THIS is how the logo should look, but by the time we got a colour set I don't think they were using it any more. (Note: I think this is some sort of artist's mockup, as it looks too clear and perfect for early TV which went in for garishness. Sort of like early talkies, where everyone shouted at each other and thumped around.)
Double Danderine and Milk of Magnesia Toothpaste. Twilight Zone?
NEWS FLASH: I lied about the peacock. That wonderful but sterile-looking thing with the black background is some sort of abstract. The REAL "in living colour" NBC logo looked. . . something like this.
. . . and here are a few more I just discovered - so low-tech they're magnificent - surely a guy was dragging a piece of cardboard across the klieg lights. This has a fierce, aggressive military look to it, not surprising since the war was still so fresh in people's minds. The glowing lightning bolt in the eagle's beak is an inspired touch.
But look what I found, look what I found! This was, incredibly, at the beginning of an old Popeye cartoon made during World War II. I have no idea what NRA stands for. National Rifle Association? Imagine Popeye and Olive Oyl blowing each other to pieces.
And who knows what happens here. It looks like the Dumont logo is dropped into a wobbly slot or something. Dumont is really the best for Brontosaurus TV, truly paleolithic stuff that quivers greyly like a bad dream at sunrise.
And one more peacock logo, apparently the first one ever used, back in 1957 when NO ONE had a colour set. There was the inevitable announcer intoning "The following program. . . " with the most horrible, doomy, minor-key orchestral music, like the end of the world was coming. It scared the living shit out of me when I was three. Visually, this is the most vivid and effective of all of them, with a mystical, shimmering harlequin look that was later dropped in favour of the blurry stuff that matched the swirling music. Beats the hell out of that doomsday stuff.
There's something fascinating about worsts, especially when they think they're pretty good, or at least passable. God knows how I fall into these things, but it had something to do (as most things do) with Harold Lloyd, and somehow landing on a site full of FREE old movies (and another sister site with hundreds of FREE old TV shows), and finding myself at the very bottom of the failed-TV-pilot barrel.
I quickly discovered that this had been on YouTube all along, though I was the first to leave a comment. I think everyone else was just too stunned. This bizarre thing is an attempt to cash in on the wild popularity of quiz shows in the 1950s: To Tell The Truth, I've Got a Secret, and I forget the rest. These involved people like Gary Moore and Durward Kirby making quips and holding up pieces of cardboard while a bell went DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING (I never could figure out if the DINGDINGDING was good or bad, but maybe that's because I was two), while Kitty Carlisle snuggled in white furs and rattled her jewellery.
In other words, panel shows, the good ones at least, were popular, all in good fun, and even, sometimes, had a touch of class. Bennett Cerf might show up, or Noel Coward, or - oh no, not Noel Coward.
So someone - someone had an idea, an awful idea, for a quiz show that was such a mess that after three or four viewings I still can't figure out what it is supposed to be about. Really, it's about nothing, and about five minutes in, the panellists begin to realize this fact and laugh wildly and make lame remarks to cover the awkward silence. Never has a 26-minute show lasted so many years.
As far as I can make out, the host of the show has brought in his next-door neighbor, probably for free, so that he can function as an Artist. The Artist is supposed to draw a picture in only ten lines. He draws a line, then gives it to the first panelist who copies it, who then hands it to the next panelist who copies it, who - yes, I know it sounds pointless because it is. It is just jeezly bad, from the outset.
Eventually you end up with an incoherent mess of bad drawings with dumb captions. The panelists seem to have been chosen at random - a horse-teethed woman with an ear-shattering laugh, a guy who looks like he's straight out of an SCTV parody, a - but, my God, who's this sitting on the end?
As with so many of these ancient TV treasures, there is, after all, someone on this dog of a show who would go on to be world-famous. And I'm not going to tell you who he is, so there. You have to watch. His presence seems to float, Buddha-like, above the seething swill of bad TV brewing below. He says some truly funny things that drop like shot pigeons because no one is paying attention to the budding comic genius in their midst. They're too busy screaming with fake laughter and making ugly and meaningless squiggles on sheets of paper.
It becomes truly dada-ist at the end of the show when the loser of a moderator starts yammering about how the folks at home are going to want to participate in this fiasco. Sitting there copying a line, then handing it to someone who copies a line, then. . . until no picture is produced. He displays special pads of paper the audience is supposed to buy for this purpose, which they are supposed to then "scotch-tape to the TV screen". You may scream now.
The sight of the (inexplicable - why is he there?) gum-chewing piano player, the awkward crowd standing around as if at a surreal cocktail party, and the producer - I guess that's who he is - nakedly pitching the show to sponsors in the ugliest manner possible - what can I say about this? I think it was Jackie Gleason, about whom I have mixed feelings, who hosted a game show that lasted exactly one episode. It too was about "art", but was called, I think, You're In the Picture (I'll try to find it, I'm sure YouTube has it somewhere). Celebrities had to stick their heads through holes in a fake painting, then ask panellists questions about what painting they were in - or something. Awful, awful.
At least Jackie had the magnanimity to come on the air the next night and offer an apology that lasted one hour. He felt really badly about You're In the Picture and wanted everyone to know it. That kind of candour is rare now. Whatever you do, you cover your ass. You "lawyer up". If you fail, you go around saying "there are no failures" and "failures are the only way to learn". No one picked up this pilot, and I am sure very few potential sponsors even watched it all the way through to that tacky pitch at the end. I can see them puffing away on cigarettes and watching five minutes of it and saying. "OK, Mel, we're done on this one" or something, or "Next?" I can see the panellists slinking away without saying anything, or maybe making fanning motions to each other as if to dispel a particularly sulphurous fart. I wonder if I could get into the head of that unrecognized comic genius, what he really thought of the whole mess. I have a feeling he saw it as just another gig, a way to get some exposure so that maybe, one day, he could do some real television.
Which, I assure you, is what finally came to pass.
Yes, I remember Tom Ewell, who could forget, he was in that movie with Marilyn Monroe, Some Like it Hot, wasn't it, or no, it was The Seven-Year Itch I think. But this is a way weird-ass show because, uh, The Tom EWELL show? Who'd a known.
I don't have dates for these, but I suspect they're 1958 - 1962-ish, because in that era most sitcoms began with stylish but very primitive animation. This one reminds me just a little bit of a later gem, My World and Welcome To It, loosely based on the works of James Thurber. William Windom, I think. I'll never forget his turn, or turns, on Star Trek, sweating and freaking out. Or was it someone else?
You can't tell me there was actually a show by this name on TV. Looks like a failed pilot, or something that maybe lasted a season. Then again. O. K. Crackerby! with Burl Ives was a real show, and it knocked me over to realize it. Notice how they cleverly combined "cracker barrel" (folksy wisdom) with "cracker" (po' white trash, which he was supposed to be in the show, and probably was in real life).
This reminds me so much of another '60s sitcom intro I giffed, that also showed a couple driving home and doing zany things, but now I can't remember either of their names. Peter and Mary ring no bells either.
Love that station wagon.
I've heard of My Sister Eileen, but not as a TV show, and the intro is so bizarre and '60s that I just had to include it.
I don't know why this doesn't say The Weird Brothers. It looks like three Swiss guys, bellringers or something, with bells for hats. A kindergartner using left-handed scissors could have made better cutouts than these, that's all I can say. I said weird-ass, and I gave you weird-ass.
William Windom's finest hour in The Doomsday Machine.
