Show Business Their Way: Catching the last “Vegas singers”

I’ve had the pleasure over the past 10 months of seeing a quintet of performers who could easily be called “Vegas’s old men.” Each one of the shows was uniquely entertaining; each one had an aspect of humor about it. For one thing that remains with the Vegas entertainers of yesteryear is the ability to not only entertain with music but also to celebrate one’s own achievements while also maintaining a sense of humor about having been a “sex symbol” of the Sixties or the Seventies. 

The shows in question began with a marathon of a celebration, namely Tony Orlando’s Farewell Concert on March 22 at Mohegan Sun.

First, the bizarre situation surrounding my attending the show: the Mohegan Sun casino decided after the pandemic was over to not resume bus service from NYC and Philly to/from their casino in Connecticut; they decided that people with cars are their only desired audience. I found this out after I had purchased tickets, so I had to resell the tix bought for friends (for much less than face value) and had to book a stayover at a hotel two towns over, plus Amtrak trips to/from the town with the hotel. Thanks, Mohegan Sun — never again!

And to make my attendance a bit more colorful: I saw the concert while trying to control a persistent cough. What it turned out to be was that lovely lab-leaked COVID, the one and only time I contracted it after having avoided it for the “miseri annos” (’20-’22). Thus, what was truly a fever dream of a lengthy concert (three hours and twenty minutes) was seen by me with… a fever. 

That was no big deal when the show was on. I’ve been seeing Tony O over the last few decades every few years doing his solo stage thing, and once with Dawn at an Xmas show at Westbury Music Fair. He always put on a great show (now in the past tense) and has in recent years taken the pulpit he has on NYC AM radio (on WABC, Sat nights at 10:00 p.m.; mp3s available here) to celebrate the other gentlemen mentioned in this article.

Tony performed his farewell at the “tender” age of 79, but he soon turned 80 after it and has done entire episodes of his radio show saluting his colleagues who still are on the road performing after 80. The rockers I already knew about, but it was more interesting to hear him sing the praises of his ex-Vegas chums (of course, one of them is still playing Vegas and perhaps will until he is no longer on this mortal plane), putting them in the company of the very “big dogs” who have been gone for decades (Frank, Dean, Sammy, and, of course, Elvis).

Back to the farewell show. I’ve seen Tony perform in different venues, ranging from the much-missed Bottom Line to the casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario. This farewell show — he has quit touring and live performance, but remains on the radio and in public life — was quite different, though, since it was planned as an extravaganza with other acts being given stage time by Tony. 

As a fan of his Seventies “ragtime follies” hits (and even solo music), I’d, of course, rather have seen a full show of just Tony singing. But Tony can’t resist shining a light on his friends, and so he pretty much ceded centerstage to them after the first half of the show, singing a scant few songs after that point. 

The best part of the non-Tony section of the concert was when he had on his pals Andy Kim and Jay Siegel singing their Sixties hits; I was much less enthused about a young TikTok performer from Australia (who had covered “Yellow Ribbon”) who was flown to Connecticut to sing at the show. It was a Tony Orlando show, though, so I expected him to host other performers; over the years he’s given solos to his band members and certain guests who were in attendance. (At these points Tony went back to his mid-Seventies persona as a variety show host.) 

But enough carping about the non-Tony section of the show — suffice it to say that Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the U.S.A.” is not my personal groove and never will be. The Tony portion of the evening was generally all that I’d looked forward to (and gone through all the flaming hoops that Mohegan Sun presented — again, will *never* return to that venue). 

Tony in general has avoided singing his earliest hits, “Halfway to Paradise” (Carole King and Gerry Goffin, 1961) and “Bless You” (Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, 1961), in concert, but he always made good on performing his hits with Dawn. For this particular show, the trio were reunited, as Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson were present to do and Tony & Dawn reunion. The trio sang five of their big hits from the Seventies, as well as “Abraham, Martin, and John,” with a story about the last-mentioned — how they sang it on their variety show to respond to hate mail that CBS received upon them hitting the air. (Their show was the first hosted by an interracial act.) 

This part of the show was exactly what the doctor ordered (before I even knew I was suffering from the pesky Omicron). Tony and Dawn have a nice little dynamic going not only musically but comedically, as Telma (who has starred in countless sitcoms since her days as half of Dawn) comes equipped with put-down lines for Tony; it’s part of their shtick, like Sonny and Cher (and Louie and Keely).

The first half of the show was indeed the reason to attend. Tony did his favorite songs from the past five decades, including Neil Diamond’s "America.” Having seen Diamond do the song (at MSG, no less) I can say that Tony’s version lacks only the flag being unfurled at the time it’s mentioned in the lyrics. (Neil had a giant one come down from the MSG ceiling.) 

Otherwise, in terms of showmanship, Tony gave us his usual high-energy act. His voice has turned raspy over the years, but he has all the moves and, especially since this was his final concert performance (and he’s seemingly in good health), the audience ate it up with a spoon (with many ladies cheering on Tony, the heartthrob of their youths). 

Although a bunch of celebs were in the audience (including a number of present and former Fox News people), the biggest name who got the biggest audience reaction was Priscilla Presley, who declined to say anything to the audience (and didn’t come up and perform). There were many other friends of Tony seen on video. Since I have the room here, I will herewith present Paul Anka’s rewrite of “My Way” for Tony. (Mind you, he already did a full rewrite of the song for Tony back when Tony was returning to performing after having kicked his drug problem many years ago.)

This pretty much says it all, in terms of both Anka and Tony’s devotion to performing after so many decades. This version is more free-form with the rhymes than Paul’s first rewrite was, but it's definitely up there with Sammy Cahn's "special material" for the Rat Pack and Lil Mattis' similar lyric-smithing for Jerry Lewis. (Best rhyme by far comes in the "panache"/"mustache" verse.)

“Why stall

Tony, it’s Paul

I can’t be with you all

You understand, though.

Cause we, we often must be

where the marquee

says Anka

or Orlando.

And so, although you know

That you’re loved so

In no unsure way

For all you do

This one’s for you

Here’s “My Way” your way.

Onstage, you’re all the rage

A musical sage

You’re so admired

Among the greats

Who have sung,

You’re way too young

To be retired.

I must fawn

The list goes on

Tony Orlando and Dawn

Was yet one more way

Big screen or small,

You did it all

Uniquely your way. 

A New York boy

You never quit

Spreading your joy

With hit after hit

For pure entertainment

It’s well known

says Mohegan Sun’s genius,

Our buddy Tom Cantone,

Shows with panache

And that great mustache 

The fans love you

Their way.

Some strife, in this journey called life
But with Francine, your wife
Fate saw you through

Heaven knows

The Dad path you chose

Kids John and Jenny Rose

No need to cue them.

With pride, they’re quick to confide

With you and Fran as their guide

Hope is the sure way

They learned that’s true

By watching you two

You taught them your way.

Part of your loving legacy

Tie that yellow ribbon ’round

The old oak tree

Unending kindness, you display

There to remind us, every day

Each well-earned bow

has shown us how

You bless us, your way.”

What more can I add to that? Except that this particular concert led to my journey this year to see as many of “Vegas’s finest” before they stop touring, or possibly leave this mortal coil.

I shot some videos from the show on a digital camera I have, but certain YT posters put up more pristine footage of the show. Here is Tony’s take on Neil Diamond’s “America,” which is geared toward saluting veterans.

Here is the moment that he was joined by Dawn, and they sang “Yellow Ribbon” for the last time.

 

“He Don’t Love You” with Dawn.

 

“Abraham, Martin and John.”

 

This was in the second half of the show where Tony sang once again, sections of a Beatles medley:

 

Wayne Newton on June 17 at the Flamingo, Las Vegas. The furthest I traveled to see a show this year — sparking a trip with friends to celebrate a certain-numbered birthday of mine, as well as see the other sites of Vegas (including numerous specialty museums, incl. the Punk Museum, the Atomic Museum, the Mob Museum, and the two hands-down faves, the Liberace Garage and the Neon Boneyard).

Wayne was 82 at the time of the show, which took place in the smaller “Bugsy’s Cabaret” at the Flamingo. I figured I needed to see him before he books that big showroom in the sky, and so was very glad to check out his show to usher in my being another year older (“...and deeper in debt”).

Wayne’s show is called “Up Close and Personal,” and it’s more of a storytelling show than a musical experience. I’d estimate that more than 50% of the show consists of Wayne providing stories of his rise in show biz and reminiscences of his famous friends, with around 10 songs being sung in the 105-minute running time. 

Ordinarily this might be a problem, but since I was seeing Wayne to get whatever “Vegas energy” I could, his visits to the past were very welcome. The show in fact began with tapes of Jack Benny and Bobby Darin (read about my piece about his acting career here) endorsing Wayne as a fine young talent. Considering that Jack and Bobby left us around a half-century ago, this was an auspicious beginning for someone wanting to hear about the Ghosts of Vegas Past.

First off, Wayne is not a performer who ignores his audience. In fact, he looks at all quadrants of the room throughout the show. And while his singing voice is not what it once was, he has seemingly boundless energy and continually jokes about the viewers’ reaction to him.

His wife is his cohost for the show, and she also serves as his interviewer. She asks questions that were seemingly asked by the audience (how one gets a question to Wayne, I have no idea). One suspects these are all prepared questions but, again, this is show biz, folks, and one doesn’t have qualms when one is asking to be dazzled. 

Wayne talks about how he began as part of a double act with his brother and how he made subsequent connections with Jackie Gleason and the aforementioned Benny and Darin, which moved him up the ladder. He dotes on his appearance as himself in Vegas Vacation (1997) and runs footage from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) while singing his biggest hit, “Danke Schoen.” 

As noted above, Wayne sings only a finite number of songs, but they are carefully chosen for maximum Vegas-ocity. His opening medley includes “Viva Las Vegas,” and he closes with “My Way.” He does a medley of his hits and also plays pedal steel guitar at one point. Photos and videos of him with his departed superstar friends are also interspersed. Glenn Campbell gets a very nice lengthy tribute, and we hear stories of Wayne’s friendships with Elvis and the Rat Pack as well. 

Your humble narrator
and the very image of Vegas.

Probably the most Vegas thing he did in the show is his tribute to the late, great Sammy Davis Jr. This is a rather interesting choice, as Wayne talks about Sammy, and then does a “duet” with him, by showing video of the two of them together at what looks to be the turn of the ’70s and replacing his own voice back then with his voice now.

This is a brave move, as Wayne’s voice now is very different from what it was back then, and Sammy in the clip is at his wildest, doing his customary “howls” toward the end of the song. (Sam was in his mid-40s when the clip was shot.) The song they’re performing? “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” a ubiquitous number among the Vegas performers of the Sixties and early Seventies.

Most of Wayne’s current act is present for posterity below. I’m pretty surprised that his management are okay with the bulk of the show (which runs 1:45) being placed on YT. But, in the meantime, feast!

 

And, with a (very) little bit of searching on YT, I found the conclusion to his show posted here:

 

After seeing Wayne, I was ripe for more Vegas glitz. My friend Jim noted that both Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck still tour; I also saw that Paul Anka is still heavily in the game, doing gigs across the U.S. Over the following months I saw all three of them, so for the moment I have fulfilled my Vegas mission. But there might be another stray Vegas figure out there touring – and from what I saw in the last three shows, I’m pretty sure those gentlemen will be back around in some months. (These guys will surely keep performing as long as they’re able to stand on a stage.) 

The third show I saw in this unofficial “series” was Tom Jones on September 17 at the Brooklyn Paramount. Jones had, hands-down, the most interesting repertoire, as the numbers he did moved from his Sixties hits to a bunch of newer numbers by singer-songwriters and bands. 

First, his appearance. At 84, he has aged quite well, sporting a beard and only betraying his age when he had to walk from one side of the stage to the other. (The legs and the knees in particular are the first to go.) Aside from the shuffle-steps he took from place to place, he was tightly focused and still has a terrific singing voice.

That we found out as he moved from “It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat?” to songs by Dylan, Randy Newman, Prince (all but the “Think I better dance now...” part), Ry Cooder, Michel Legrand, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and others. He sang one song about age (“I’m Growing Old”) and another about death (“One Hell of a Life” by Katell Keineg). 

He expressed enthusiasm for the songs, making it clear that he enjoyed challenging himself, whether it be with an old tune he didn’t have a hit with (“The Windmills of Your Mind”) or something new ("Talking Reality Television Blues”), as well as other, surprisingly darker items.

Two other items about the concert: first, whoever was programming the video “wall” behind Jones was working overtime, as prepared images were interspersed, along with images of Tom singing live, resulting in familiar images (a jukebox) and just plain trippy compositions on the screen above Jones singing live. Secondly, yes, the ladies screamed for Tom and at least one pair of panties was indeed thrown at him.

Inspired by my friend Steve Korn’s recording live performances, I started doing so myself with the Tom Jones concert (thus, the “beginner’s” jitters here during the instrumental passage). Here, one of Tom’s finest latter-day covers, Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song.” Leonard’s joke line about his own singing voice works un-ironically for Jones.

Bonus clip: Steve’s great posting of Tom doing Todd Snider’s “Talking Reality Television Blues.”

Second bonus: Tom’s current update of his classic dramatic hit “Delilah,” as shot by my friend Steve. Steve's account for music performance clips is here. 

Paul Anka on November 15 at Westbury Music Fair. I wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy Paul Anka, but enjoy I did, as he is a sprightly guy onstage (at 83!) and while he stays rooted in the past, he does move around enough genre-wise to supply surprises.

This is best illustrated by the fact that he sings his initial spate of teen-idol hits (had when he was an early teenager) but also performs his “comeback” hits from the Seventies, hauls out evergreens like “More” from Mondo Cane (which is a personal fave and is pretty much ignored in the pantheon of Popular Standard reprises), and covers a pop classic he wrote for Buddy Holly.

It must be stressed that Anka is in incredible shape for his age. Of the five figures covered here, Anka was the only one to almost plunge himself into the audience, where he is nearly swarmed on by older ladies who have been fans of his since his teen idol days. He’s a svelte little dude in a tailored suit who has a very tight setlist and a very open way with the audience, allowing his female fans to shout out song titles and even the names of other entertainers. (He answered one older lady's request for a song in Italian and even sang it directly to her; I noticed he wasn’t as forthcoming when a male fan yelled out a song title, though….)

Like Wayne, Anka also places “My Way” near the end of his show. Anka has the home-field advantage of having written the song’s lyrics and intro’s it with memories of pitching it to Frank himself. 

The Westbury Music Fair stage used to revolve but no longer does, so the performer has to basically turn to all four corners while onstage. Anka had this covered, making sure that each quadrant got part of a song. Like Wayne and Tom, he also has a video component to his act that presented the young Anka and his encounters with the people he told anecdotes about.

It is this last aspect that introduced a rather fascinating part in the last third of the show where he, like Wayne, “duetted” with Sammy Davis Jr. Wayne may have muted the audio on a vintage video and sung live in those sections, but Anka took a video of Sammy singing a song he wrote for the 1973 “Sammy” TV special and interspersed his own current interpretation of some of the lyrics in between the sections of Sammy singing (during which photographs were shown instead of the original video of Sam).

Both of these duets were mind-benders. I got into “the wham of Sam” for real after he had died, so I never saw him live. Seeing his former colleagues salute him in this devoted a manner was quite heartening and also emphasized just how much of an impact he made on his fellows during his years onstage. I wonder if there is a third older performer out there who does a "duet" with Sammy — both of these current tributes to him are a helluva lot more involving than the various Rat Pack cover acts that play in Vegas and Atlantic City.

My video of the clip, which would be muted if I embedded it in this blog (copyright!), is located here on Facebook. 

My friend Steve Korn shot this video of Anka doing a country medley centered around “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” the very memorable song he wrote for Buddy Holly. (The other songs are “Oh, Lonesome Me” and “Bye Bye Love.”) At moments like this, Anka’s “Vegas guy” mask descended, and we got a glimpse of his songwriter/musician guise, which explained how he’s remained a big name in the biz for 67 (!) years.

.

Here is the most unusual song he sang at the show, his theme for the 1962 war film The Longest Day (in which he appeared as an actor). Before he sang it, he told a story about Daryl F. Zanuck initially saying that he didn’t want music for the film but then relenting and calling him to see if he would write something for it.

 

And it wouldn’t be an Anka show if he didn’t do his big “comeback” hit of 1974, “Havin’ My Baby.” The song was controversial at the time it came out, as is documented on the full “Midnight Special” episodes that are being uploaded on that YT channel — feminists objected to the lyrics declaring that the woman having the baby is doing it to show her love for the man.

In any case, however his lyrics may be received, Anka does have the gift of crafting catchy melodies and so “Havin’ My Baby” remains a song that can’t be forgotten. In this case, he had the conductor of his band play the woman in the song (a part played by the singer Odia Coates on the original single).

 

 

Bonus clips: One that Tom Jones left out of the old-hits portion of his show, and one that Anka wrote, “She’s a Lady.” This can be found on my Instagram account, @mediafunhousetv. (I couldn't embed these IG clips without getting a whited-out thumbnail that demanded the user sign in to Instagram, which looks awful.) Performed here with the ladies in the audience going wild over Paul.

One of the more unusual moments in the show happened when Anka took to the piano. First,  he performed “Do I Love You?” a song of his that was a moderate hit for Peter Lemongello (!). Suddenly, Paul switched from that to… “Purple Rain”!

I have to admit that I was immediately put in mind of Tony Orlando’s cover of the same song at his concerts in the 2000s and 2010s. His version rates a notch higher on my imaginary scale of covers if only because Tony put the song into a medley with “Fire and Rain.” (Consistency counts!) The video is here. 

The last, but certainly not least, of the “Vegas singers” that I saw in 2024 was Engelbert Humperdinck on December 8 at the Westbury Music Fair. As with Anka, this was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. I have clear memories of hearing Engelbert’s ballads on AM radio in the Seventies and never would’ve thought I’d check him out in concert. I’m glad I did, though, since he is a very endearing performer and has a good sense of humor about himself. 

This sense of humor came out when he referenced his age — he is 88, making him the oldest of the singers discussed here. He made repeated references to his age, all in good humor and most with him nearly halving his age (“I can’t do that anymore, I’m 49!”). He’s the opposite of Anka when it comes to the female audience members (security staff were posted at four corners of the stage), but he did make references to his days as a heartthrob (and one pair of panties was thrown at him, but the woman leading his band claimed they were hers).

One of the most enjoyable bits of business Engelbert indulges in is to have different chairs and stools brought out on stage for him to sit in. I saw a show that was half his greatest hits and half Xmas music, so he decided that he’d pretty much stand and shuffle around for the hits and sit during the carols and wintry music (he did have a bit of stiffness when moving around during certain numbers, but engaged in small dances on others).

This bit of shtick reached its peak during the Xmas half of the show, when an office chair was brought out so that Engelbert could recline in comfort — and also use his feet to turn the chair around so he was facing each side of the audience.

My favorite tune in the show hands down was “Quando Quando Quando,” the Italian pop classic that is heard in the great 1962 film Il Sorpasso. I know it’s not his “signature song,” but this for me was the highlight of seeing EH in concert. (As with Anka singing “More,” where else are you going to see older performers singing songs from Sixties Italian films?) 

 

Engelbert’s biggest hit, “Release Me,” is still his big dramatic moment. At various points he let us know how long he’s been doing certain songs. With this one he noted, more than once, “57 years!”

 

From the Xmas half of the show. His tribute to Elvis with “Blue Xmas.” 

 

Bonus clips: It may not be “Quando Quando Quando,” this tune is also pretty damned catchy, the 1967 hit “The Last Waltz.” It can be seen on Instagram here.

Engelbert in his office chair moving 360 degrees while singing the Eagles’ “Come Home for Christmas.” How can you not like an older performer copping to wanting to sit down but doing it in such a stylish way? See it on Instagram here.

And a final bonus, EH paying tribute to a sexy singer long gone, as he does Barry White's "You're the First, the Last, My Everything." To haul out the stats, Barry died in 2003 at the age of 58; Engelbert is currently 88. The link for this video on Instagram is here.

I should mention in closing that not one of these gents did a lip sync to a recording. (There are few things sadder and more bizarre-looking than the vids of Frankie Valli miming to a pre-recorded song.) All five of them give their all in concert and had the right amount of inter-song patter to engage the audience, whether or not they used video as an additional supplement.

Each one of the “Vegas singers” had/has (gotta put the past tense in there for Tony O) his own specialty in concert. While Wayne Newton is still the ultimate act to catch in Las Vegas (and the most glitzy), Tom Jones has the best repertoire (and definitely the strongest voice, post-80), Anka the best musicianship (and the only songwriter in the bunch), and Engelbert the most charming laidback demeanor. And Tony O gave me a bunch of very pleasant memories with his shows over the years. (His WABC radio show links to all things Vegas probably better than anything else out there, even when he’s not touching on the topic of Vegas per se.)

Jerry Lewis, the unreliable narrator: Notes on ‘From Darkness to Light’

Jerry Lewis was a lot of things to a lot of people in his day. One of those things was the least reliable narrator of his own life story. In the time that I’ve spent absorbing writings about and by Jerry (and many interviews with the man) during the 31 years I’ve been paying tribute to him on the Funhouse TV show, I’ve discovered that Jerry often changed stories to make them more dramatic, fabricated greater and greater lies as he grew older (one small example: him suddenly saying he slept with Marilyn and trying to pass it off as a real story), and was often woefully deluded about the parameters of his talents.

Thus, the documentary From Darkness to Light, which was shown on TCM a few nights ago, presents a “different side” of Jerry, as he tells us that the long-sought-after, unfinished, unedited film “The Day The Clown Cried” was “bad work,” which he realized after shooting much of the film — a rare admission of defeat from a world-class egomaniac. The documentary, directed by Eric Friedler and Michael Lurie, offers scenes from the unfinished film, following the plot as best it can when it’s pretty evident that Jerry was altering the script (or scripts, as various revisions existed) as he went along and was doting on certain things (his character being a sad but noble clown) while leaving other things out (namely any additional dimensions to all the other characters).

In order to complete this piece after freshly watching the documentary, I’ll introduce some points as they are, just so this doesn’t become a treatise on a documentary that itself covers a lot of ground — some of it excellently, some of it not as well. 

Names/words that are missing. There are certain invaluable voices heard in the doc, including those of the Swedish cast and crew, the late filmmaker/clown Pierre Etaix (who acted in the film), and the late filmmaker Jean-Jacques Beineix (Diva, Betty Blue), who assisted Jerry on the production’s shoot in France. [UPDATE: These interviews came from an earlier doc made by Friedler; see note below.] 

Certain words and names, though, are never uttered in the 113 minutes of the doc. There is no narration for the film, so all statements are attributed to the talking head saying them, the most notable of whom is Jerry himself, who sat for a full interview about “Clown” explicitly for this documentary. 

The biggest missing word is “ego,” as “Clown” was clearly a major act of ego; Jerry and others skirt around this, but no one wants to lay it on the line and note that Jerry was always his own biggest fan and could’ve possibly delivered a misguided but still watchable film if he hadn’t chosen himself for the lead role. 

Jerry and Pierre Etaix.

“Drugs” is another missing word. Jerry did admit in his later years that he was addicted to painkillers for decades (and it really shows in his work of the Seventies; check out his bleary eyes in Hardly Working). Besides the fact that he had an immense regard for his own talents, he also was “enhanced” by chemicals; his son Joseph (in a famous National Enquirer essay) blew the whistle on the amount of cocaine that was found in Jerry’s personal bathroom. 

The names of the original scripters of “Clown” are also surprisingly absent in the doc. Joan O’Brien and Charles Denton wrote the first drafts of the script and Jerry made all kinds of alterations to transform his character from an unlikable sort who undergoes a transformation in the concentration camp into a suffering “hysterical” clown who is always sympathetic.

O’Brien is obliquely mentioned as the unnamed original “author” who didn’t want to sell Jerry the rights to her story once she saw his film. (This was contradicted by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz telling us that Jerry’s son Chris said O’Brien *was* willing to sell the rights; Chris was an employee of his father, working on his website among other things — he seems like a lovely guy but is always there with a diplomatic contradiction to differ with something stated about his father, who of course disinherited him and his brothers.)

The final name that isn’t uttered is that of Frank Tashlin. There is a section of the documentary that explores Jerry’s filmmaking. It includes quotes from admirers including Martin Scorsese (who is interviewed by Wim Wenders!). There are claims made about the vibrant color palette that Jerry used, his facility with gags, and the visual style of his work. 

Frank Tashlin and Jerry.

Jerry’s first six films do indeed have deliriously wonderful images and stylization, but the more one sees of the films of Frank Tashlin (one of Jerry’s mentors and the one he most borrowed from — lock, stock, and barrel), the more one sees how Jerry’s own talent was overlaid on top of lessons he learned from Tashlin. The documentary is so intent on erasing Tashlin’s importance, in fact, that they credit the film Cinderfella to Jerry, when it was directed by Tashlin. (Although unreliable narrator Jerry claimed on the DVD commentary track for the film that he directed the best scenes in the picture and ascribes the worst scene, which he acknowledges is the worst, to “Frank.”)

Contextualization that shows other comic filmmakers getting it right. An early segment of the film shows comedies that mocked the Nazis beautifully: Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, and Mel Brooks’s The Producers. The last-mentioned is incredibly important in terms of discussing “Clown” since only briefly is it mentioned (by Harry Shearer) that Jerry’s films from the late Sixties and early Seventies were bad movies that made very little money. 

By 1970 when Jerry was making a film as truly dreadful as Which Way to the Front? (which has a whole Nazi humor section and looks like a bad sitcom episode), Mel Brooks was already on the scene making much more accomplished comic films (as was Woody Allen, who has uttered only a few lines about the Nazis, but his films from Take the Money and Run to Love and Death were absolutely sublime and examples of where comedy filmmaking went in the Seventies, which was straight past Jerry). 

The producer as villain. The documentary basically places the lion’s share of the blame for the film’s production ending suddenly on its producer, Nat Wachsberger. He apparently stopped paying the crew, ceased communication with Jerry, and let the rights lapse to the original script by O’Brien and Denton, thus making the entire production “illegal.” 

Jerry “walked away.” The talking heads seen in the film are very reverent on the topic of Jerry Lewis. Thus the phrase “walked away” is used to describe his departing the set in Sweden. If one reads between the lines, it sounds more like Jerry abandoned the cast and crew. (Although it is noted here and is verified in some sources that he did put a few million into the production itself, he clearly did not want to pay the salaries of the cast and crew.) 

Was Harry Shearer lying? The documentary focuses on the production of the film and its plot; the cult that has developed around the notion of the film is only briefly referred to. That cult began with an article in Spy magazine in which Harry Shearer talked about having seen a tape of the full movie.

All the stories we’ve subsequently heard about the film have mentioned that it was never assembled by Jerry into a coherent feature. Although — and this is nowhere mentioned in the doc — it was indeed also seen in a supposed 75-minute compilation that French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli showed to various people, including a former editor of the Cahiers du Cinema, Jean-Michel Frodon. 

Frodon has noted that what he saw was a “rough, preliminary edit,” and that is what we see scenes from in the documentary (as the doc-makers add film leader in between some shots to show some images are not present [or were never filmed?]). What is notable about what is included in the doc is that it seems to cover the much-discussed-but-never-seen ending of the film, in which Jerry’s clown character ushers children into a gas chamber. 

Clown looks badly paced, poorly acted, and has a low-budget look and tone. In the years since the Spy article, countless speculation has appeared about what “Clown” would be like. What the documentary ends up showing is a film that looks cheaply produced, has questionable casting decisions (the most important of which is Jerry himself), and it looks to have deadly dull pacing — hardly the camp masterpiece that people have been waiting for for years now. And more like the episode of “Ben Casey” in which Jerry played a doctor who acted clownish to entertain his patients; his performance in these clips most closely resembles the “Casey” episode and his super-“sincere” turn in a TV version of “The Jazz Singer.” 

The major revelation of Darkness is viewing the scenes with the children, which should be stunningly offensive or unintentionally hysterical. Instead, it’s just more of Jerry thinking whatever he did was instantly funny. He conceived of himself as a classic clown in the mode of his silent-movie heroes (which did not include Keaton, whom he was always rather rude about) and circus clowns, whom he felt a kinship to (and in fact stole his clown makeup from the design worn by Emmett Kelly for decades).

The moments with the children are revelatory, though, since talking-head Jerry says that he didn’t care for them — “Where’s the comedy?” he bellows to Friedler, convinced four decades on (his interview was conducted seemingly in the early 2010s) that he could have, and should have, made the film funnier. This is a killer example of Deluded Jer, showing that he didn’t understand the lesson that Benigni obeyed in Life Is Beautiful: Don’t get too carried away with big gags once the characters are inside the concentration camp!

The makers of the documentary clearly admired Jerry and wanted to honor his memory, so they don’t pursue the cult that has evolved around “Clown,” including the staged readings that were run by Patton Oswalt and David Cross. I saw one of these in Manhattan, where Jay Johnston did a terrific turn as the Clown by *not* at all impersonating Jerry and just playing the character in a totally straightforward way. For their part, Cross and Oswalt kept overselling the jokes that they recited from Jerry’s handwritten notes in the script. 

Friedler and Lurie clearly didn’t want to pursue at any length the strong notion that one gets from the testimony presented in the film — that, despite the alleged crookedness of the producer, Jerry also sank the project from the beginning by casting himself in the lead role and rewriting what O’Brien and Denton had written. His final hasty departure from the set is presumably the reason Harriet Andersson (who has been quoted as saying that she was never paid for her work on the film) is not interviewed.

But the documentary does succeed in conveying the essence of “Clown.” That essence is that the film’s non-existence as a finished work is most likely a just finale for the project (despite the financial screwing of the cast and crew), since the one time here that Jerry most decidedly is not an unreliable narrator is when he declares the damned thing “bad work!”

UPDATE (12/20/24): I discovered after posting this piece that Darkness was essentially a reworking and an update of Friedler's preceding 2016 German TV documentary on "Clown" called Der Clown. It was for that doc that Friedler shot the interviews with Jerry, Etaix, and Beineix, and it was there that the clips from "Clown" were first seen by the public. (Via a fan who bought a mail-order copy of the German doc and posted the scenes from "Clown" to Vimeo.)

The 2016 doc also contained some of the surviving actors (none of them being Jerry) recreating lost scenes. In Darkness those scenes were replaced by (credited) footage from a doc called The Last Laugh, about humor concerning the Holocaust, and some newer reflections by the Swedish cast members. I'm not certain if the interview about the discovery of the "Clown" footage in the Swedish studio was present in the original 2016 doc.

Note: For those who would like to see the entirety of the interview Jeanne Moreau conducted with Jerry about "Clown," click here. (Subtitles in English by yrs truly) Thanks to Jon Whitehead of Rarefilmm for helping me see this doc.

A time of unity, and mockery (The Thanksgiving Ritual)

It’s a time of division in our country. The recent election illustrated quite clearly how this country is moving along on parallel tracks, some people steadfastly believing in one party’s divinity while others believe in the other party’s “correct” stance. The U.S. is a nation locked in conflict, with people looking for answers. They want them so much they follow terrible leaders down miserable paths (the only ones we’re allowed, Coke and Pepsi) and are either heartened or demolished when their chosen demi-deity is either triumphant or vanquished.

What can be done about this? Well, one can keep true to the one true faith: American mockery. 

Robert Vaughn is disgusted by what he sees.

The kind of mockery that could be found when people volunteered to hold balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade dressed as clowns. The kind of mockery that ensnared one of the most dead-serious actors ever, Mr. Robert Vaughn. 

Skeptical but
undaunted.

I invite you to rewatch the moment when Mr. Vaughn, a Most Serious Thespian, read the preamble to the Constitution and was mocked by people dressed as clowns. 

Look seriously at the man from U.N.C.L.E. (stroking your chin), wiggle your nose at him, or just carry a balloon that says “Hi Mom!” But for the sake of sanity in the country, mock the serious man reading the Constitution. 

That way, things will all be all right. (And, to quote Tom Lehrer, we will all go together when we go.) 

Gifts my mother gave me

My mother in
Ireland. Not a great 
photo of her, but one
she loved.

My mother was a square. That’s not a nice way to start a tribute to a parent who recently departed (on Aug. 29, at 85 years of age), but when I decided to write about the tastes that my mother passed on to me (as I did with my father eight years ago), I came up against the fact that, in the rock ’n’ roll era that she grew up in, my mother was generally into “square” music, meaning popular standards (called more grandiosely “The Great American Songbook”) as opposed to rhythm and blues and its flashier stepchild, rock ’n’ roll. 

But there was a greater beauty in the stuff that my mother enjoyed. I only understood it from my 30s onward, when I began to actively listen to the popular standards my mother loved and delve into the different singing styles, and the exquisiteness of some of the songs. You see, my mother was lucky in that she always wanted to be a wife and mother (this was a part of her Eisenhower-era Catholic training) and so, she was blessed to raise me and my sister for a bunch of years at home before she did have to go back into the workplace (the late Seventies were difficult for everybody). 

And while my father led me to the golden age of movie comedy, comics, pulp thrillers, and most importantly, foreign film, my mother did have more staid taste. That said, I did pick up some cultural items from her that have stayed with me lo the many years. I’ll start off with a few movie/TV things (because generally that was my dad’s area for cool-stuff indoctrination) and then tackle the whole musical issue.

Champagne for Caesar (1950). My mother did like certain kinds of screwball comedies — not the rowdier ones, but movies that were cleverly scripted. In this regard, she turned me on to this light comedy that tackles the TV quiz show world just as it was taking off.

It’s a smart little satire of these shows and also their viewers. It features Vincent Price in a great role (one of his own personal faves), as the quirky owner of a soap company that Ronald Coleman is trying to bankrupt via the game show that the company sponsors, called “Masquerade for Money.” The smart casting extends all the way down to the pet that the film is named after, an alcoholic parrot named “Caesar.” (Voice courtesy of the inimitable Mel Blanc.) 

 

Ah, the mysteries! My mother also loved carefully plotted Christie-type whodunits. She never read ol’ Agatha (in the second half of her life, she became addicted to the work of Mary Higgins Clark, though), but she, along with her brother, my Uncle Neil, was a definite fan of the clever-detective-unlocks-the-“perfect murder” type of murder mystery. (Her absolute fave of these was Rene Clair’s And Then There Were None, 1945.) 

Her primo fascination in this regard as far as TV detectives went was the best of the bunch, hands down — that being Lt. Columbo of the LAPD. The show was indeed the best-written mystery show on the air for two reasons: The first was the fact that its creators, Levinson and Link, decided to invert the murder-mystery formula and let the viewer see who the killer was — the mystery then became how Columbo could figure out the culprit and apprehend them. (The fact that he would often entrap them with what seemed like flimsy circumstantial evidence didn’t matter, as the killer would usually have a flip-out when accused and could then be arrested; the matter of whether these cases would hold up in a court of law was beyond the purview of the show.) 

The second reason that the show (which wasn’t a regular weekly series; it was instead a sequence of TV movies with some great haughty murderers) remains so indelible is, of course, because of Peter Falk’s timeless and brilliant performance as the Lieutenant. Blending a deceptively sloppy facade with a razor-sharp mind, in every good episode (there were only a few real clinkers — most of those came in the ABC reboot from the ’90s) Columbo constantly surprised the killer by figuring out their “perfect crime” and proving that ratiocination (the ultimate Holmesian phrase!) didn’t need to be exercised while wearing an attention-getting mustache or a deerstalker cap. 

 

And my mother truly got me into Hollywood musicals. While my father steered me toward the Marx Bros, Laurel and Hardy, and W.C. Fields, as well as more serious films by Orson Welles and Jean Cocteau, my mother did prefer a happy ending. Thus, her love of MGM musicals (most decidedly of the Arthur Freed unit vintage — and the “A” titles, not those “B” musicals).

She had two heroines as a girl: Margaret O’Brien and Esther Williams. (One identifiable for a kid; the other aspirational for a girl going to the pool in Astoria Park.) Her all-time favorite MGM title was their Little Women (1949), but aside from that one dramatic foray into Alcott-land, she primarily watched and rewatched the musicals starring Gene, Judy, Fred, and Debbie. 

The best among those is arguably Singin’ in the Rain, which remains fresh and lively every time it is viewed, and also sported some crazy-ass colors in the “Broadway ballet” that featured athletic and acrobatic Mr. Kelly and the sensuous and slinky Ms. Charisse.

The film was often seen on TV, but for the moviegoing experience, nothing was as impressive as seeing musicals at the now defunct Ziegfeld Theater, where That’s Entertainment (1974) premiered and which later had programs of classic MGM titles. As was the case with Disney movies (which I never got hooked on — sorry, Ma!), my mother brought us to these screenings in the hopes that we would like what we saw, but also to rewatch the films that she had loved from her childhood and teen years. 

As a teen my mother really loved Eddie Fisher. Yes, the same Eddie who is mostly known to show-biz fans for leaving Debbie and wedding Liz, only to have Liz publicly humiliate him with Burton the way he had humiliated her with Debbie. (Later in the Sixties he married Connie Stevens but there wasn’t much humiliation [that we know of] in that relationship, so it’s not much talked about.) 

My mother was a member of the Eddie Fisher fan club, Astoria, Queens, division. She described the meetings to me once — there was another teen girl in Astoria who loved Eddie, too, so they sat around and talked about him and played his records. But they were given “official” status!

Oddly enough, my mother didn’t have any LPs of her favorites saved from her child/teen years. But she did have some 45s, and one of them was this “Italianate” tune from 1954 that sounds moderately operetta-ish and significantly from the school of fake Italian songs that gave us “Come On-a My House.” (My mother also loved Rosie.)

The songwriters of this opus were Bennie Benjamin (a Black songwriter who gave us both “Wheel of Fortune” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”), George Weiss (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” “What a Wonderful World”), and Al Bandini (a jazz trumpet player). The song is not one of Fisher’s greatest hits, but it kinda mesmerized me as a kid, since it seemed like a gibberish tune back then (I loved novelty tunes and still do), but catchy. Now I’m grown up and it’s still gibberish and just as catchy.

 

The big discovery for me as a kid, though, was my mother’s love of Nat King Cole. The odd thing was, again, that she had just one surviving single of his (I’ll get to that), and I was first hearing his songs via an album of Jerry Vale’s that my mother loved where he covered Nat’s hits. (Yes, this is a very “square” way to find out about Nat.)

But my uncle had extra pristine-condition LPs at his house and ended up gifting my mother with a greatest hits record by Nat that had a number of his romantic ballads. I didn’t really wanna hear them all the time as a kid because… well, I was a kid. But they got into my subconscious and, as of my 30s, I did realize how singular and beautiful Nat’s ballads were. They remain so, and always will be.

This song is from 1952 and was written by Jimmy Van Heusen (a regular supplier of great fare for Sinatra) and Sammy Gallop (“Wake the Town and Tell the People”).

 

The interesting part about my mother’s love for Nat’s music is that the one 45 she had of his was this one, which is one of the times that Nat tackled rhythm and blues. Thus, this was one of the rockin’-est singles my mother had in her possession. (I enjoyed the Crewcuts “Sh-Boom,” but I had no idea that was a whitebread cover that just kept the hook and got rid of the soul.)

The song was released in 1957 and was written by Ollie Jones (a member of the doo-wop group the Cues, who backed up Nat on various tracks). 

 

My father passed on to me a fascination for radio as a medium, since he was of the generation that thrived on the theater of the mind that is now quaintly called “old time radio” (although they still have radio comedy and dramas over in the U.K.). My mother was of the TV generation, and while she had dim memories of some of the major radio shows of the Forties, she had major reminiscences about her and her brothers rewatching “the Million Dollar Movie” (which aired one movie every day for a week, twice a day).

She therefore was more familiar with radio as a medium for deejays playing music. And one of the most velvet-voiced of that breed, in NYC at least, was the late, great William B. Williams. Willie B. hated playing anything that wasn’t the Great American Songbook, but WNEW-AM played MOR “soft rock” for more than a decade — and that’s when I got into listening to it, to hear the new songs and also the patter by the deejays (Klavan in the Morning, Willie B., Julie LaRosa, Ted Brown, Jim Lowe, what a bunch!).

My mother felt Willie B. was the best of the group, thus this aircheck from around the time we had it playing around the house. It sounds just like AM radio, since it goes in and out at points. And though Willie got to play his beloved American popular standards, you’ll notice that he also plays Linda Ronstadt (in her soft-rock heyday), Carly Simon, and the Association’s “Windy.” (One of the interesting things was that WNEW was still playing Sixties hits in the Seventies.) This is a joy to hear, for those who used to listen to Willie B.

 

I move from the radio to the music it played, and the music my mother played around the house. Her album collection contained no old LPs from the Fifties, but it did contain original cast albums of Broadway shows. And so I was “drilled” on this music by her playing it on record. Once I hit upon the kind of rock I wanted to hear (which did move back and forth from singer-songwriter stuff to “new wave” and back again), I said goodbye to the popular standards. 

But in the Nineties, people were unloading their albums like crazy. A store I used to shop at (which was directly across from my dotcom office at the time) had what seemed like the full discography of Sinatra LPs going for 50 cents to 3 dollars a pop. I ended up buying all of them and then (while retaining my love of singer-songwriters and certain bands very much) falling down the rabbit hole of American popular standards. 

At various points, I realized I was now listening to “my parents’ music.” But I didn’t care because the songs were so fuckin’ beautiful. (Really, when you’re into Tom Waits, how can you not go back and listen to Sinatra’s “suicide” albums?) I credit my mother for this part of my musical taste, since she was so entrenched in that area.

And I turn here to a singer she didn’t particularly care for, but who does here a simply perfect rendition of a song that I’m sure I heard first from her record collection. You see, she had this original cast album for a show called “All-American” that flopped on B’way in 1962. The show is notable for two things: its lovely score by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams (Bye Bye Byrdie), and for the fact that it was the only B’way show to ever have an original libretto by Mel Brooks.

Duke Ellington thought the score so good that he released an album of his versions of the tunes. And vocalists began to record the beautiful “Once Upon a Time.” Sinatra did a very solid version of it, but I prefer this particular version by Bobby Darin because there is a palpable sadness and yearning in his voice.

It could be attributable to the fact that his marriage to Sandra Dee had ended (he left her in May of 1966 and this concert was taped in November of the same year; their divorce was finalized the following year), or it could just be that this emotional version (seen in a British TV concert by Darin called “Something Special” that never aired over here) found him in a reflective mood. Whatever the case, it’s one of the best renditions of this big song from a flop musical.

 

One of the performers I was able to get my mother into from the raft of singer-songwriters I loved was the great storyteller Harry Chapin. Harry is an acquired taste because his songs were so long and the best ones among them were indeed short stories in song form. At his best he crafted these terrific little narratives that were remarkably emotional, yet contained, as in the song below. 

Of all the Chapin songs to choose to celebrate my mother I choose this one because she also had a secret desire to be a children’s book author. She wrote little stories for the family to read about myself and my sister, or the holidays, or memories she had of this or that incident. (My father used to draw the illustrations for them. I have none of these particular stories — but the tale behind that is a long and thorny one, as many of my mother’s final years were a sadly thorny situation.) 

My mother was drawn to Chapin because I would listen to his albums and she noted that they “sounded like a Broadway show.” He did indeed have a short-lived 1975 Broadway show made from his songs, The Night That Made America Famous; he appeared in the show along with his two brothers and other cast members — at that time I was too young to be into his music. She was unfortunately busy the one night that I saw Harry (at Carnegie Hall!), but we attended tributes to him together after he died.

The song below is a very beloved one among Harry’s fans (along with the exquisite “Better Place to Be” and “Corey’s Coming”); it talks about a real-life individual in a fictionalized manner. Harry read a brutally terse review of a man’s singing debut at Town Hall in Manhattan. He decided that his song would provide the man’s point of view, but also give us the review, and the aftermath, which is quiet and very touching. It is a gorgeous parable about how the arts “make us whole.”

 

And because if you’re going to talk musicals, you might as well go for the big guns: I close out with what I believe was the last Broadway show I saw with my mother. You can’t surpass Sondheim, he was truly the end of classic B’way musical-writing, and Sunday in the Park With George was one of the musicals that had a book that didn’t “let down” his absolutely impeccable songwriting. 

The best songs by Sondheim have a deeply emotional core; the best thing about the songs here is that he split the topics between the act of creation and the act of loving (and how they’re really the same thing). In this case, James Lapine’s book was split into a flawless first act (showing the creation of a painting piece by piece, which in itself is a marvel) and a somewhat bumpier second act, but one that added the notion of being “in fashion” in the art world and how raising money was a key part of the artistic process in the 20th century.

Sondheim and Lapine.

I’m trying to remember if we saw the show with both leads intact — one of my mother’s favorite topics of conversation about Broadway shows was how many “follow-up” stars she saw in lead roles, after the original lead performers have taken a hike. I believe we saw both original leads in it. In any case, this play was thankfully put on PBS and made available for the world to see. It wouldn’t’ve made a good movie (and it’s good that one time they left things at the level of a stage play, where the magic actually was).

There’s absolutely no better place to end this tribute to my mother’s “gifts.”