Sunday, October 21, 2012

We Break for Tea with Dean Martin and Phil Harris


The Dean Martin Show also known as The Dean Martin Variety Show is a TV variety-comedy series that ran from 1965 to 1974 for 264 episodes. It was broadcast by NBC and hosted by crooner Dean Martin. The theme song to the series was his 1964 hit "Everybody Loves Somebody."

Development

Martin was initially reluctant to do the show, partially because he did not want to turn down movie and nightclub performances. His terms were deliberately outrageous: he demanded a high salary and that he need only show up for the actual taping of the show. To his surprise the network agreed. As daughter Deana Martin recalled after meeting the network and making his demands Martin returned home and announced to his family, "They went for it. So now I have to do it."[1]
Martin believed that an important key to his popularity was that he did not put on airs. His act was that of a drunken, work-shy playboy, although the ever-present old-fashioned glass in his hand often only had apple juice in it. The show was heavy on physical comedy rather than just quips (he made his weekly entrance by sliding down a fireman's pole onto the stage.) Martin read his dialogue directly from cue cards. If he flubbed a line or forgot a lyric, Martin would not do a retake, and the mistake — and his recovery from it — went straight to tape and onto the air.
The Dean Martin Show was shot on color videotape beginning in 1965 at Studio 4 Stage 1 inside NBC's massive color complex at 3000 West Alameda Avenue in Burbank, California. The same studio was used for Frank Sinatra's yearly TV specials in the late 1960s, and Elvis Presley's 1968 "Comeback Special". Studio 4 is currently one of two used in the production of the soap opera Days Of Our Lives.

Source: Wikipedia

Phil Harris (born Wonga Philip Harris;[1] June 24, 1904 – August 11, 1995) was an American singer, songwriter, jazz musician, actor, and comedian. Though successful as an orchestra leader, Harris is remembered today for his recordings as a vocalist, his voice work in animation (probably most famous later in his career for his roles as bears, one being Baloo in Disney's The Jungle Book, and as Little John in Disney's Robin Hood). He also voiced Thomas O'Malley in Disney's The Aristocats. Harris was also a pioneer in radio situation comedy, first with Jack Benny, and then in a series in which he co-starred with his wife, singer-actress Alice Faye in eight years.

 Bandleader

Harris was born in Linton, Indiana, but grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and identified himself as a Southerner (his hallmark song was "That's What I Like About the South"). His upbringing accounted for both his trace of a Southern accent and, in later years, the self-deprecating Southern jokes of his radio character. The son of two circus performers, Harris's first work as a drummer came when his father, as tent bandleader, hired him to play with the circus band.[2] Harris began his music career as a drummer in San Francisco, forming an orchestra with Carol Lofner in the latter 1920s and starting a long engagement at the St. Francis Hotel. The partnership ended by 1932, and Harris led and sang with his own band, now based in Los Angeles. Phil Harris also played drums in the Henry Halstead Big Band Orchestra during the mid-1920s.
In 1931, Lofner-Harris recorded for Victor. After Harris recorded for Columbia in 1933, he recorded for Decca in 1935. From December 1936, through March 1937, he recorded 16 sides for Vocalion. Most were hot swing tunes that used a very interesting gimmick; they faded up and faded out with a piano solo. These were probably arranged by pianist Skippy Anderson.
On September 2, 1927, he married actress Marcia Ralstone in Sydney, Australia; they had met when he played a concert date.[2] The couple adopted a son, Phil Harris, Jr. (b. 1935), but they divorced in September, 1940.
In 1933, he made a short film for RKO called So This Is Harris!, which won an Academy Award for best live action short subject. He followed with a feature-length film, Melody Cruise. Both films were created by the same team that next produced Flying Down to Rio, which started the successful careers of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Additionally, he appeared in Thunder Across the Pacific (1951), alongside Forrest Tucker and Walter Brennan, and The High and the Mighty with John Wayne in 1954.[2]

Source: Wikipedia 

TTFN CYA Later Taters
Thanks for watching.

Donnie/ Sinbad the Sailor Man

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