It is obvious from readin' Rob's patter that he is one sold-out to Dino kind of dude.
'Specially loves the last line of his Dino-reflections are we used at the tag of today's Dino-gram....
"But Martin’s quintessential boozy coolness and his detached refusal to take any of it seriously keep the whole thing fresh and fun."
Indeed Salem is likes speakin' the Dino-truth. Unlike so many of the other variety shows on the little screen in those days goin' stale after the were shown, The Dean Martin Variety Show is as cool, hip, and ever randy as when the episodes first aired...and of course all the honor and glory goes to our Dino for makin' the Dino-show the timeless classic that it truly truly is.
Thanks to the pallies at "TheStar.com" and particularly writer Mr. Rob Salem for puttin' the accent on our Dino and spreadin' the Dino-message of cool in this way. Truly the world needs our Dino more then ever, and we need great columnists like Mr. Rob Salem who proudly, powerfully, passionately proclaim the wonders of our Dino! To view this in it's original format, just clicks on the tagg of this Dino-message. Dino-loved, DMP
EVERYBODY LOVES SOMEBODY SOMETIME And from 1965 through 1974, the someone everybody loved was crooner Dean Martin, shamelessly ad-libbing, occasionally singing and chumming around with his celebrity friends every Thursday night at 10 on his old-school NBC variety hour, The Dean Martin Show.
After years of litigation over an earlier mail-order DVD collection, there is now an officially sanctioned, traditionally distributed release by Time-Life, hitting stores Tuesday and available in three collectible formats, single disc, two-disc and six-disc compilations.
I would highly recommend the full six-disc set, if only because it alone contains an excerpt from a 1968 episode in which a young Bob Newhart had Martin convulsed with laughter, barely able to get through a sketch based on Newhart’s classic toupee routine, with Martin as a department store returns clerk.
It was this sort of thing more than anything else that defined The Dean Martin Show, as it did its jovially laid-back host.
The thing is, Martin never wanted to do TV. He never wanted to do much of anything, really, except play golf (all of that signature drinking and skirt-chasing were really essentially just part of the act). In 1965, nonetheless, his career was peaking: it had been six years since his breakup with comedy partner Jerry Lewis, five since the Rat Pack heyday of the Sands Hotel and Ocean’s Eleven, four since he won rave reviews for his dramatic performance in Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo, one since “Everybody Loves Somebody” (the TV show’s theme song) knocked The Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” out of the Billboard chart’s No. 1 slot, and mere months after he had filmed his first Matt Helm spy spoof.
But TV just seemed like too much work. The network nonetheless kept pressing and ultimately agreed to Martin’s deliberately outrageous salary demands and insistence on never having to rehearse.
The latter proved particularly significant, as it became clear that the secret of the singer’s TV appeal was his cavalier disregard for the scripted material in favour of salacious asides, deliberately botched cues, and pranks played on and by the crew.
Weekly TV variety does not date well, with its bare-bones production numbers and creaky comedy monologues. But Martin’s quintessential boozy coolness and his detached refusal to take any of it seriously keep the whole thing fresh and fun.
Our Dino did revolutionize TV in that our Dino refused to do take after take. That laid-back style really worked for him and kept the routines fresh before the camera. Over-rehearsal can kill comedy routines -- and songs, too, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteOne factor that made Dino's variety show so wonderful: our Dino knew how to laugh off a mistake with his self-deprecating sense of humor. He didn't take himself too seriously, and that attitude helped the audience and the other performers to relax and to be themselves.
Hey pallie, indeed Miss AOW our Dino certainly did revolutionize not only TV, but any and all sorts of entertainment...our Dino raised the bar hugely by his amazin' cool that no one ever has or ever will come close to bein'....as ever, keeps lovin' our Dino!
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