Sandra Bernhard was quite good in the unsettlingly funny The King of Comedy*, with Jerry Lewis and Robert DeNiro.
Didn’t she also help Madonna cultivate a bisexual image for a while?
Regards,
Shodan
Sandra Bernhard was quite good in the unsettlingly funny The King of Comedy, with Jerry Lewis and Robert DeNiro.
Didn’t she also help Madonna cultivate a bisexual image for a while?
Regards,
Shodan
(Closed captioned for the HTML-impaired). Sorry about that.
- S
Since we’ve already brought up The Match Game, what about the host? Gene Rayburn, wasn’t it? What did he do?
From the same era, there was a daytime talk show called The Mike Douglas Show (real creative, eh?). I’m pretty sure the host wasn’t the Michael Douglas of the acting family, so who was he?
Um… I guess that’s all I can think of for now.
I saw a documentary on the Marx Brothers a year or so ago, and one of the interviewees (from about 30 years ago) was David Steinberg.
Then I started wondering, “Why do I know him?” Games shows? Talk shows?
Maybe. . . Probably. . .
But I could not recall a single thing that he had ever done, although I’ve been familiar with the name and person forever.
I also didn’t understand why he was one of the people selected to be included in the documentary. Other than being Jewish, I didn’t see any real connection the the Marx brothers. I just suppose the producers went looking for anyone who had ever made any comments on them and shoehorned them into the program.
PS. Gene Rayburn invented some kind of microphone. And Mike Douglas’s real name was Mike Dowd, although I think Douglas was his middle name.
Gene Raybur was, well, Gene Rayburn. He did quite a few game shows. He also invented the telecoping microphone that he used on Match Game. IIRC, he just died about 2 or 3 months ago.
Mike Douglas was, well, Mike Douglas. His show was from Philadelphia for a while, IIRC. He always had a special guest host for the entire week and John Lennon and Yoko Ono were the guest hosts once. He has slipped into obscurity, but I remember the show pretty well.
I thought Brenda Vaccaro was hilarious in “Zorro, The Gay Blade.” I’m not sure what else she’s done, though.
I heard that Bob Eucker somehow got on the Johnny Carson show and managed to pull off that “I’ll brag continuously and straight-faced about my horrible batting average while letting you know how bad I really was” thing that he does so well. Johnny really liked him.
My favorite story about Bob (besides shagging fly balls with a tuba) is from “October 1964”, a book I actually own. The Cardinals posed for their team picture, and Bob ended up sitting next to Bob Gibson. E. convinced G. they should hold hands. No one noticed until after the pictures were developed. So you had two men of mixed race holding hands in a major league sports official photo in 1964. The team was reconvened, and in the picture in the book, the two aren’t anywhere near each other.
Eucker also made a card game called “Ugly” for the players using mug shots supplied by a cop friend. The story is that he had a habit of keeping the real horrible one up his sleeve to play as an ace. He also told a coach on one of the teams, who had a reputation as a real Southern gentleman that the picture was of his mother. The poor guy stammered for a moment, then said, “Well, she’s quite striking, isn’t she?”
Chuck Berry was one of the guests the week that John and Yoko were co-hosts.
They joined in with two numbers that he performed (which I do not recall at this moment.)
In the first, during the song, Yoko let out a screech/scream, and I thought Berry’s eyes were going to pop out of his sockets. But like a pro, he never broke stride and finished the number.
For the next number, though, it looked as though Yoko’s mike had been turned off. You could see her mouth screaming, but unlike the first number, you couldn’t hear it.
Brenda Vaccaro was probably best known for a commercial that she did in which she had a loud, raspy inspiration after each sentence. They later redid the commercial without the wheezy, asthmatic-sounding breaths.
This site gives a very good overview of the Mike Douglas Show. Also, doing a Google search on Mike Douglas Show yields lots of VHS of episodes - he had a lot of the people already on this Thread as guests, and real celebs. John and Yoko co-hosted!
Two things I remember about TMDS are … asterisks … lots and lots of asterisks … as the design theme for the backdrops. The other is when Jimmy Dean was a guest (before sausage, he was a country music singer); Mike had a prankish side, and he took a pair of scissors and cut off Jimmy’s tie a little below the knot. Dean gets a real hurt-serious look and says his dead grandpappy gave him that tie. The mood cooled a bunch.
And Mjollnir David Steinberg was a stand up comedian, a routine I remeber had him as a shrink asking a patient to sit in one of 2 identical chairs. After assuring it didn’t matter, he made a big deal out of the significance of the choice.
David Steinberg also had his own television show for about 5 minutes in the very late 60s or early 70s.
BY ALL THAT’S HOLY!!!
DOES NO ONE REMEMBER ‘GREEN ACRES’!!!
What’s WRONG with you people?
Wasn’t Brenda Vaccaro Goldie Hawn’s nemesis in “Private Benjamin?”
I think that was Eileen Brennan. I think Brenda Vaccaro was a Broadway actor.
Going back a few posts, Charo was Xavier Cugat’s wife and, IIRC, the singer in his band.
My question: Brooke Shields.
I know she’s been in a ton of movies, etc, but where did she come from? She didn’t win any talent contests, I’ll wager.
**
Now there’s a claim to fame.
Re: Brooke Shields. If a person is an actor, that’s why they are famous. I’m talking about the people that are a complete head-scratcher. They are kind of rare, but they are notable.
OK, you people are spending way too much time explaining why we should know why mentioned people are famous. I want more, more, more!!!
I’ll attempt to get things back on track with the voluptuous, air-headed latina Charro!
Yes, she was on TV in the late '70s. But it was on variety shows, where she was introduced as someone we should know. Uh, erm … why?
Game shows featuring celebrities were good places to look for “who are they and why are they a celebrity” types.
Thinking of “Match Game,” I knew about Brett Somers and I actually remember Charles Nelson-Reilly in “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.” But what about Nipsey Russell, whom I recall on there a few times? Or the dippy woman who always sat in the lower right corner and who never got a single match correct? (Her first name was “Patty,” IIRC.)
What were Nipsey’s and Patty’s claims to fame? And just to stop me scratching my head, what was Patty’s last name?
I take your point Milo. I guess I was asking how did this Shields person become famous. I remember seeing her in a movie with George Burns many years ago titled Just You and Me, Kid, IIRC, and remarking that this kid had absolutely no discernable acting ability whatsover, and yet she continued, and continues still, to get offered parts. Although, to be fair, I haven’t seen any of the box office blockbusters she’s been in since then, so maybe she’s learned a little something over the years.
BTW, although I spelled her name differently, I was referring to the same Charro as you were in my previous post. I remember her being married to Xavier Cougat, I know she was a singer 'cause I’ve heard her sing many times, and I think she fronted Cougat’s band.
I’m with Shodan on Sandra Bernhard; I thought she did a good job of being a creepy stalker accomplice in the underrated The King of Comedy.
Brenda Vacarro did a decent job in a small role in Midnight Cowboy.
But why was Pia Zadora ever famous? Or wasn’t she?
Charo’s actually a not-half-bad Spanish guitar player, either. Oh, and is it true that she had her age legally changed to 29? So that she’s like, 29 forever? And just WHERE did she get those bosoms? My Goddess, they’re HUGE, and they sit WAY too high to even have anything at all to do with what Mother Nature gave her to start with. :eek:
I believe Brooke Shields started out as a model. Remember the scandalous “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins” ad she did when she was all of about 15? Me neither, too young, but I heard the old folks talk about it 
I don’t know how it was spelled, but Patty’s last name was pronounced like Deutch or Doitch. I think I’ve heard her (or someone who sounds just like her, God help us) do voice-overs. You know, she has that obnoxious flat, nasally voice, it’s pretty distinctive.
The other regular ditz on the show is that little blond Joyce something or other. Dubont? Dupont? Something like that. Boy, she’s dumb. Why’s she famous again? (Actually, I guess she was a character actress or something; once Gene asked her the name of the movie she’d been in recently and she couldn’t remember if it was Airplane or Airport. Boy, she’s dumb.)
And Fanny Flagg… she’s not the same Fanny Flagg that wrote Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe, is she? If not, then who is she?
I do watch too much Gameshow Network.
There was a big to-do when Brooke Shields starred in a movie about a girl growing up in a whorehouse, “Pretty Baby,” at age 13. So she got an awful lot of publicity right out of the acting gate.
According to this article, Shields posed nude for a photo shoot at age 10. Nice mom you got there, Brooke.