Beatles – Page 60 – Prattling before the Pratfall

From The Beatles to Star Trek

Back at this link I showed the comedy duo Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall on the Ed Sullivan show, stuck with the unenviable task of being the lead-in act to The Beatles. I’ll plop it here again, for your viewing convenience.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/JAN/McCallBrill.flv 480 360]

Earlier I said there are two connections to Star Trek in the video. One of them is Sally Kellerman, who did the voiceover for the Pillsbury cake commercial. Kellerman was in the second Trek pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, which I think is, for a sci-fi/comics fan, one of the best hours of TV ever made.

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The second Trek connection is Charlie Brill himself, who appeared as a Klingon agent in one of the most popular of all episodes, “The Trouble With Tribbles”.

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Hey, ya know what? Brill resembles John Lennon in this picture.

Category Crossover: Colbert meets McCartney

Two faves in one post! Stephen Colbert with Sir Paul McCartney…

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Yes, the audio is a couple of frames out-of-synch with the picture. That’s because I used my alternate video capture setup, so the cables can reach from the DVD recorder in the other room. If there’s a fix for this, I haven’t found it yet. Now you know!

I would put the Comedy Central embedded video here, in fact I just did, but they screwed up the markups.

Beat up by The Beatles

A couple of years ago I featured comedian Morty Gunty’s lead-in to The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show from February 23, 1964. This week’s This American Life on NPR has a fascinating segment about the comedy act that preceded The Beatles, before the second set on their first Ed Sullivan Show appearance, February 9, ’64. Click here to listen to it, then watch this video, through the commercial and on to the fab boys. I’m one of those who feels what happened that evening cannot be overstated. And it wasn’t only the kids getting caught up in the excitement. Look for the grown woman in the audience.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/JAN/McCallBrill.flv 480 360]

There are two Star Trek connections in that video. When I tell you what they are I’ll show you Davy Jones, later of the Monkees, who was also on the bill that night.

P.S. According to WordPress this is post #1500, but I actually passed that number a while ago. Unfortunately, nearly 100 posts were lost in the great database debacle in June ’07.

Paul and Mary Poppins

Barely treading water here with the blog, I’m sorry to say. Unavoidable, with Boston Marathon training underway, so I’ll do another quickie post.

Motown Records just had its 50th anniversary. Label founder Berry Gordy made a point of catching up with the Beatles in 1964 before they returned to England to film “A Hard Day’s Night.”

At the movie studio there was some overlap between the filming of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Mary Poppins”. Here’s Paul with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.

A Tale of Two Transfers

Many YouTube videos have such low technical quality as to be barely watchable, so my sister Jean was impressed by an OK copy, despite being a vertically cropped version with the wrong aspect ratio, of the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night doing “If I Fell.” Here’s how it appears and sounds on YouTube…

… and here’s my own transfer, from LaserDisc, captured on a Pinnacle 500 PCI. Better?

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Bingo rhymes with Ringo

As promised last week, here is Terry Hooper, the future husband of Prudence Bury, as the croupier in A Hard Day’s Night. When I was a kid I thought Wilfrid Brambell was an unnecessary extra bit of comic relief, but now I think he was essential to the overall success of the movie.

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