On New Year’s Eve, I aired some selections from music-oriented comedy albums that seemed to be well-received by listeners. After all, who can’t use a good laugh on New Year’s? A hearty laugh is a kind of consolation and always good luck.
For Victor Borge’s birthday (Borge was born on this date in 1909), here’s “the unmelancholy Dane” with some of his classic routines.
A Mozart opera:
With Lauritz Melchior:
From an appearance on “The Dean Martin Show:”
Playing the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2:
Laughter must really be the best medicine. Borge lived until just a few days shy of his 91st birthday.
How good a violinist was Jack Benny? Allegedly a competent one, the owner of a Stradivarius, who mined the comedic potential of “bad playing.”
Benny in duet with 12 year-old Talia Marcus:
Later, he repeats the gag with a young Dylana Jenson, who went on to make that classic record of the Sibelius concerto with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Benny episode (television) featuring Isaac Stern and “Man of 1000 Voices” Mel Blanc as Benny’s music teacher. Note how Blanc’s characterization morphs into Yosemite Sam in moments of pique.
Benny and Stern play Bach at Carnegie Hall to raise money for American symphony orchestras:
Jack Benny Fiddles with the Classics:
Dylana Jenson plays the Sibelius concerto at the old Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Norman Carol is the concertmaster. Ormandy conducts. The RCA recording, made under studio conditions, was issued shortly after.
When opera singers were still a part of the fabric of American popular culture – Beverly Sills with Danny Kaye. Does Bubbles really pay tribute to Jimmie Walker?
Here’s the entire broadcast in color (with Turkish subtitles and intro!). The extracted Sills-Kaye routine begins around the 38 minute mark.
People who knew Dudley Moore only from his appearances in American films (“10,” “Arthur,” “Foul Play,” etc.) are surprised to learn what a talented musician he was. In fact, the piano played a central role in a number of his comedy routines, both solo and with his partner-in-crime, Peter Cook. Revisiting some of these on YouTube astounds, as I reflect, not for the first time, how far we’ve fallen as a society. Don’t get me wrong, Moore and Cook could be as foul as any comedians on the circuit today, but they were also intelligent and educated men who trusted their audiences to “get it” – in part because the audiences actually had the necessary tools.
Moore’s classic parody of a Beethoven sonata speaks for itself:
Here it is again, in 1988. Already, he feels a need to telegraph the jokes in order to hold an audience:
Nowadays, when fewer are familiar with “Colonel Bogey,” much less Beethoven, it would likely have to be “enhanced” by at least one flatulence joke.
Officer Cook stops pianist Moore for “speeding:”
Later in life, when Moore was afflicted with progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare degenerative disorder, he was asked what he missed doing the most. He replied, “Playing the piano.”
