Robert Smigel parody of WGN’s BOZO’S CIRCUS
June 19th, 2009 by Scott Marks
On last night’s WGN News at 9, EC’s old pal Dean Richards interviewed Robert Smigel and ran a clip from an unaired Fox pilot that featured a devastating parody of Bozo’s Circus.
I made a note to scour YouTube and when I awoke this morning my work had been done for me. In my Facebook inbox a letter began, “I wanted to send you these links to a pilot my friends created for Fox that not surprisingly got shot down.” It was from my old friend Larry Kapson who is still at Columbia College in Chicago.
Columbia College? Slowly I turned…I remember Columbia College. Isn’t that the film school where the Department Chair once showed a pan-and-scan print of “The Graduate” and praised cuts that were inserted by some geek seated at an editing console and where a certain History of Cinema teacher was browbeaten for not renting an anamorphic print of “Citizen Kane?” But I digress…
Robert Smigel’s TV Funhouse is the funniest thing to play SNL since Bill Murray left the show. (Or am I forgetting “More cowbell?”) The trip to the Disney Vaults is a spot-on satire with enough buried in-jokes to please even the most demanding viewer.
Prozo’s Circus is a pitch-perfect assault on Bob Bell’s Chesterfield’s-throated incarnation of Boz and it’s is the sharpest impersonation of a beloved childhood favorite since Dave Thomas’ Bob Hope or Billy West’s Gen. Larry Fine. Smigel doesn’t miss a beat: Bell’s extreme poses, the slurred boredom in his voice, the “grownups only” stage whispers. There’s even been a third tip added to Prozo’s celebrated candy apple red headdress. Bent over he looks like Bozo the Kremlin.
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Tags: Bob Bell, Bozo the Clown, Bozo's Circus, Chicago, Chicago Memories, Clowns, Frazier Thomas, grand prize game, kids show hosts, kids tv, kids tv shows, prozo, prozo the clown, robert smigel, robert smigel bozo, tv funhouse, Video, WGNFiled Under Rants, Uncategorized
Report of Jerry Lewis’ death is greatly exaggerated
July 1st, 2008 by Scott Marks
No one loses…except maybe a Goddamn National Treasure!!!
It’s a big, wide, wonderful world we live in.
In Big Olly’s Homeric tribute to the “long traditions” of clowns, the topic turns, as it must in all meditations on Punchinellos, to Jerry Lewis.
“I suppose I am drawn more to the maudlin and tedious clownish stylings of the late, great Jerry Lewis.”
Big Olly’s a Clown killer, by golly! When last I looked, Jerry was alive and touring and looking better than he has in years. Where does this heartless galvantz get off planting a beloved actor, producer, director, conductor, mime, singer, dancer, writer…what am I forgetting…author, recording artist, nightclub performer, Broadway sensation, recipient of a little red French thingy you wear on your lapel, humanitarian and National Chairman and Spokesperson for the Muscular Dystrophy Organization? (Emulsion Compulsion is gonna’ have to dig a lot of holes when Jerry eventually checks out, God forbid.)
After B.O. buries Jerry, he gets to the topic at hand: Three Ring Circus. It’s probably the worst of the Martin and Lewis vehicles. For the first time their personal acrimony is visible on screen. The boys barely spend any time together leaving vast, unfunny patches of circus humor and Dean singing solo to the animals.
There is one scene in the film that has continued to give me douchechills since the first day I saw it. Here is Olly’s take:
“Allow me to indulge myself. In “3 Ring Circus” or something, Jerry (along with Dean Martin) is working in a circus, mainly manning those sideshows with maximum hilarious potential for going messily wrong. Jerry falls foul of the traditional drunken, angry clown Puffo who is, for some reason, sacked. On that basis Jerry steps in as “Jericho” the clown and is an instant hit.
The poignant height of his career is when, performing for a group of handicapped children, Jericho realises that his antics have failed to touch one little girl (conveniently seated in the front row). He goes over to her and speaks to her in what I think is a breach of one of the fundamental rules of clowing (sic). He says something along the lines of ‘Come on honey. I know you don’t think I’m funny, but won’t you laugh for me?’
Now I have seen lame begging for laughs at many levels of comedy but that must be the worst. When it predictably fails, Jericho starts to weep, which strikes the child as the funniest thing she has seen in a ‘coon’s age and she laughs up a storm.
I mean to say. Funny or maudlin? I leave the decision to you. Actually, no I don’t. It is maudlin and appalling.”
He’s right about the maudlin and appalling one-two punch. The film was Paramount’s big 1954 Christmas picture. The first Telethon was held in June 1955 at Carnegie Hall in New York. Having not had the privilege of watching hours of Jerry’s private videos, to the best of my knowledge this was his first public reference to dystrophic children and it’s quite a calling card. At no time has it ever been acceptable to paint physically disabled children as monsters, especially by someone like Jerry Lewis who is known to rely on sentiment and pathos. Suddenly this sympathetic, forlorn little urchin is transformed into Rhoda Penmark with leg braces, laughing uncontrollably at the day the clown cried.
The film is a must for Martin & Lewis mavens. Paramount Home Video insists on keeping it from me. Just part of my daily struggle, I guess.
As for you, Olly, I ask that you control your urge to kill. Don’t you want Jerry to live long enough to see The Nutty Professor: The Musical make it to Broadway? And what about Adam Sandler’s remake of Cinderfella?
Links:
Three Ring Circus photos