“This takes a lot out of an artist — it don’t bother me too much": Deceased Artiste Carl Ballantine

Carl Ballantine, the first great “comedy magician,” died this week at 92. His obits spoke about how he popularized the art of doing a terrible magic act (I vividly remember the drapery “made by mother” which proclaimed him “World’s Greatest Magishen”). Ballantine was a staple on Sixties variety and talk shows, but was best known as a regular on McHale’s Navy for the four seasons (1962-’66) that it was on.

The most interesting note in the obits was that he transformed the act from an early one in which he was billed as “the River Gambler” (Riverboat?), doing straight card tricks. Take a glimmer here at someone’s wretched but priceless VHS recording of his misbegotten magic act off some special hosted by Peter Graves (could this have been “Circus of the Stars”?):



Ballantine performed the act for over 50 years, and revived it for countless TV shows including the dreaded Eighties Cosby show and Donny and Marie (and yes, I realize that with my Mackenzie Phillips entry and this one, I’ll now have linked to Donny and Marie clips twice in one month….):



One of those oddities that YouTube is populated by, a nightclub puppet act that had a “Ballatine the Great” puppet:



And here’s a scary TV history, the Charles Nelson Reilly Saturday morning kids show parody, Uncle Croc’s Block, on which Ballantine guested as “Sherlock Domes”:

Newman and Cohen British TV documentaries online

British TV documentaries about the lives of celebrities routinely offer excellent “frames” for their biographies, which often include a portrait of the locale the subject lives/lived in (the Brits are heavy on context, and cities provide the most picturesque sort of context), or an “essay” on the impact the person’s work has had. In the links below, British documentarians tackle two of the most talented singer/songwriters alive, two gents who have always had name recognition but have never had Top 40 singles (except in the case of one “novelty” success….). The subjects are Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen. The Newman docu is a fan’s love-letter to Randy, who acts appropriately cranky and off-handed during the interview segments; the fan in question is Jon Ronson, who wrote the book that inspired the new movie The Men Who Stare at Goats and directed the documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes. The docu, found on the World of Wonder site, is called “I am, unfortunately, Randy Newman”:



Randy can be found here.

The portrait of Leonard Cohen isn’t as blissfully musical as Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, but it does supply a good short-form intro to the cult of Leonard and its acolytes (of whom I am one). I recently sat in the nosebleeds at Madison Square Garden to see Len, and he gave one helluva show, offering three hours of solid classics (and the deft handling of a very fine hat).



Leonard can be found here.