You never quite forget the things that blew your mind as a
kid. It could be real-life experiences or things in the media that seem not to
follow the rules and speak directly to you. As a Catholic school student who
was losing the faith pretty quickly in my grammar school years, one such
experience was the oddball children’s show Marshall Efron’s
Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Sunday School. It was a
wonderfully off-kilter comedy show that retold stories from the Bible, but in a gloriously threadbare, gag-filled manner.
The show was the brainchild of two great comedy writers:
Alfa-Betty Olsen and her partner, the late, great Marshall Efron, who died at
81 three weeks ago. Efron seemed to be everywhere in the early Seventies — or
maybe it was just that he inhabited “the cool places” on television and in the
movies. In the Sixties, he had come to the attention of comedy fans in NYC on a
radio station that VERY sadly left the airwaves around the time that Marshall
died, WBAI-FM, which was part of the fabric of our lives here in town. (I can
personally list several important life-changing moments I heard on WBAI, and
the importance of its shows to friends and my father; the station's local programming has been supplanted for the present by national Pacifica shows.)
BAI mixologist Peter Bochan included two clips of Marshall in his “All
Mixed Up” mix for Oct. 7, found here. The first is at 35:05; the second
at 36:45.
Once Marshall jumped into the movies (after appearing in a
NYC-shot short with a then equally-unknown Charles Durning, found here), he
played a number of small roles in memorable pictures that were part of the
“maverick” movement of the early ‘70s. The first of these titles was Robert
Downey’s wonderful absurdist comedy Pound, in which every
character is a breed of dog in human form. It’s one of those films that could
only have been made in that time (1970) in that place (NYC) with a killer cast
of character people and a truly deviant theme song.
Check out the theme music at 48:56 and one of Marshall’s best
scenes at 9:12:
The most celebrated film Marshall was in at that time was
George Lucas’ feature debut, THX:1138 (1971). He also had a supporting role in the well-remembered drama, starring Robert De Niro and Michael
Moriarty, Bang the Drum Slowly (1973).
While he was playing supporting parts in films, Marshall was
also doing regular segments for the legendary (and still terrific to this day)
PBS series The Great American Dream Machine. Although the
show lasted only two seasons (1971-73), it was a phenomenal creation that mixed
short documentaries with smart comedy sketches, song and dance segments,
animation, and short comedy films — all created by top talent in their
respective fields: Albert Brooks, R.O. Blechman, the Alvin Ailey dance company,
Kurt Vonnegut, and… Marshall, in segments co-written by himself and Alfa-Betty
Olsen.
Marshall’s segments on the show are priceless. Some were
more generic “lectures” on absurd topics:
But most of Efron’s contributions were “consumer guide”
segments, in which he would compare similar products — usually to show how
awful some (or most) of them were. Or he would prepare a meal:
After he was involved in the ‘70s comedy “boom,” Marshall
remained busy and duly employed by doing a number of cartoon voices in the
Eighties. He participated in several high-profile cartoon shows as a voice
talent, and thus his friendly, bizarre range of voices is probably rattling
around in the heads of those who were kids during that era.
I’m a bit older than that generation, so I have strong and
very affectionate memories of Marshall’s Seventies Sunday School series,
about which there is little info on the Net. I’d like to rectify that by making
available two episodes on the bottomless pit that is YouTube and providing
brief quotes from one of the more prominent articles that was written when the show was
on the air (which is cited in various places as ’73-’77, but a complete list of
episodes is available nowhere online).
Marshall's only comedy LP, "Neutrino News Network." |
The show was generally intended for younger viewers, but it
also was a lot of fun for adults. I originally saw the series when I was a kid in
the Seventies but was lucky enough to catch it again in the Eighties, at the
time I had (finally) scored a VCR. It was then I realized why I remembered the
show so fondly — firstly, because it was so charming, and secondly, because it
was indeed filled with oddball references that Efron would toss into otherwise
pretty faithful retellings of Biblical tales. For instance, the moment in the
video below where he has the Jews in Exodus declaring “Oh, show us the way to
the next waterhole, oh don’t ask why...”
The tie-in book by Marshall and Alfa-Betty |
“The show is a sometime thing, airing with no fanfare at all
on occasional Sunday mornings when channel-hopping children might encounter it
and become enmeshed in its zaniness. (It will be visible for the remaining
Sundays of April on CBS at 10:30 A.M. ET.) Although it was created as
entertainment cum uplift for kids, Painless Sunday
School has a hard-core following of adults with a yen for sketch
comedy and a taste for the mildly irreverent.” (“Marshall Efron’s Painless Sunday
School,” TV Guide, April 12, pp. 15-16).
Hickey discusses the show’s audience, saying that “Some of
the most enthusiastic responses have come from the Bible belt. A number of
orthodox Sunday schools time their own classes so that the children can watch
the show as a group and then discuss the Bible stories afterward. Other church
groups ask CBS for tapes of the show.” (ibid)
Marshall and Alfa-Betty |
I’m very happy to share these two episodes of the
Sunday School with fellow fans. I recorded a scant few of
these shows, and these are two that work on their own (at one point, Efron did
the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors for something like three
shows). It may or may not work for today’s youngsters, but for those looking
for even more evidence that the early Seventies were a very wild time in the
media, this show fits the bill.
The first episode features the story of the Exodus and
Zacchaeus the tax collector. The second contains the story of King Solomon’s
wisdom (you know, the bit about cutting the kid in half) and the “parable of
two debtors” (with a film piece about the twelve apostles that is definitely the most normal thing on the shows).
Fare thee well, Marshall. You were a better religion teacher
than I had in 12 years of Catholic education….