Podcast Tuesday: "Nostalgia Kills!"

Alexa Hamilton and Henry Winkler on Happy Days.

Happy Days got pretty decent ratings when it debuted in January 1974. Its status as a nostalgia-driven show set in the 1950s made it something of a novelty and helped it stand out from its competitors in the crowded prime time TV landscape. As Fonzie (Henry Winkler) himself said in an early promo: "Hey, I'm Fonzie. I'm on that new show about the '50s called Happy Days. It'll take you back to some really cool times! Now how does that grab you?" And it must have grabbed people pretty well, since the freshman sitcom made the Top 20 against CBS' Maude and NBC's Adam-12.

Unfortunately, the novelty appeal of Happy Days wore off during the second season, and the show's ratings started to suffer. At ABC's insistence, the struggling sitcom was heavily retooled, with Fonzie becoming a more central character and the entire show being filmed in front of a rowdy studio audience. Miraculously, this revamped version of Happy Days caught on and managed to last another decade, becoming the cornerstone of the network's Tuesday night lineup. 

Over the course of that long (and highly-rated) run, the makers of Happy Days gradually played down the nostalgia gimmick until it was barely part of the show at all. Oh, you'd hear golden oldies on the soundtrack occasionally, and the characters would make some references to TV shows and movies from the past, but Happy Days was otherwise a normal sitcom that could have been set in any era.

In its final season in 1984, Happy Days did the unthinkable: an anti-nostalgia episode! In "The Spirit is Willing," Fonzie falls for a mysterious woman named Nancy (Alexa Hamilton) who shares his love of the past -- the cars, the clothes, the music, all of it. She tries to lure him into a world where it's 1955 forever and nothing ever changes. Fonzie is tempted but ultimately realizes that Nancy is not what she seems and may have a deeply sinister agenda. In short, "The Spirit is Willing," written by Larry Strawther, is a bold repudiation of everything that Happy Days spent 11 seasons building up.

But does that make it a good episode? Find out by listening to These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Tonight You Belong to Me: The Tragedy of Patience and Prudence (UPDATED)

Prudence (left) and Patience McIntyre seem less than thrilled to discuss their past.

Some Patience and Prudence merchandise.

Imagine being a former child star, famous for something over which you had almost no control. You didn't ask to be in the spotlight. It just sort of happened. Would you take pride in your former glory or would those years seem foreign and distant to you, as if your experiences had happened to someone else?

Los Angeles-born sisters Patience and Prudence McIntyre know this situation all too well. In the summer of 1956, when they were 14 and 11 respectively, their father Mark briefly turned them into a successful recording duo. He was a musician himself, having worked with Frank Sinatra, and he thought his daughters' eerily pristine harmonizing -- imagine cheerier versions of the Grady sisters from The Shining -- could catch on with the general public. He was right. Under the name Patience and Prudence, the girls scored two novelty hits in 1956: "Tonight You Belong to Me" and "Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now." Despite numerous efforts, no other hits were forthcoming. The McIntyre sisters kept trying to recapture their initial success off and on through 1964, but the public was simply not interested. By the time of The Beatles, Patience & Prudence had been largely forgotten.

After that, the sisters moved on with their lives, their brush with fame a distant memory. But nostalgia-meister supreme Dick Clark, longtime emcee of American Bandstand, remembered them! In 1978, during a prime time special called Good Old Days, Clark aired a brief but fascinating interview with the McIntyre sisters. The mise-en-scène is astonishing here. The sisters, both in their 30s by this point, are seated in a lovely Hollywood garden, looking as though they are posing for an Impressionist painting. They both wear loose-fitting, satiny blouses -- Prudence's in tangerine, Patience's in lavender. And they both look utterly, supremely bored.

Patience, the older sister, speaks first and with perfect diction: "Making two hit records didn't really mean much to us, because we didn't work for it. We didn't want to be performers. And it's like anything else in life. If you work hard for it, then it's an achievement. But it was just an accident, and it's almost like a dream now."

Then it's Prudence's turn to speak. Looking as though she's fighting the urge to take a nap, she gives us an update on her sibling: "Patience was a marketing executive, and now she's writing a biography." To my knowledge, no book has emerged from either of the sisters in the ensuing 42 years.

"Pru married a great guy," Patience responds, "who's a cinematographer. But he was a recording artist, too. He was with [the garage rock band] The Standells in the '60s. And they live here in Hollywood." You probably know The Standells for their 1965 single "Dirty Water," now a sports anthem. They also guested on The Munsters.

"Probably one of the very few people in this world who has a gold record that's a 78," Prudence says of her husband, making her sister laugh.

And that's it. That's the entire interview. Most people would probably say that this clip is nothing special, and they'd be right. However, I could not help but be intrigued by the aloof demeanor of the McIntyres in this clip and their utter indifference to their own past. Their total lack of nostalgia works against everything Dick Clark is trying to create with this special. Every once in a while, I will revisit this (badly preserved) clip in the hopes that it will inspire me to write a short story or something. So far, it hasn't. But don't these ladies seem like they could be characters in a Christopher Guest movie?



Patience and Prudence do not have a deep catalog of material to explore, but if you like their two hits, I'd recommend The Best of Patience and Prudence from Collectors' Choice Music. The duo's songs tend to be catchy, witty, and well-produced. I'm especially fond of "The Money Tree" and "Very Nice is Bali Bali." Even the 1964 stuff is listenable. They tried to add British Invasion-style guitars to their sound, though this gambit fooled no one.

UPDATE: Two years after I originally posted this article, I was contacted by a reader who had additional information about Patience and Prudence. Though he wished to remain anonymous, he said I could share his alarming email with you.

On that Dick Clark segment, Prudence (who was, and still is, a severe alcoholic) was drunk, rather than apparently casual/dismissive about their career.

When their mother, Audrey Sharp McIntyre (March 6, 1916 - September 20, 2011) was still alive, there were routine police visits to her home in North Hollywood. Address: 4330 Ponca Ave, Toluca Lake, CA 91602-2916. Lots of drama, starring Pru, who often lived on the streets. Pru's daughter (further down the page within the article followed by the asterisk) regularly stayed with her grandmother (Audrey).

Apparently, their dad (Mark**) was extremely hard on them, and denied them the career he'd introduced them to, once they became a hit. Prudence is extremely sensitive, and simply started anesthetizing herself.

There is no record of Patience ever having married. Pru had a daughter with Don Conca (usually spelled "Conka", to make it easier for people to know how to pronounce it). He died of a heroin overdose 9/26/04.

Paige Conca died in July 2020, homeless, in Seattle.

P&P have lived together in various places, from Arizona to Georgia to Minnesota (currently). There is a rumor of a wealthy man who pays them $10,000 to sing "Tonight You Belong To Me" to him, over the phone, on his birthday every year. There are several references to this, but they may be all from a single source, and that may be some troll on the Internet.

**Mark McIntyre was an orchestra leader, pianist, and songwriter, who accompanied Frank Sinatra on piano during the 1940s. In the summer of 1956, he brought his daughters, 11-year-old Prudence and 14-year-old Patience, into the Liberty Records studio in Los Angeles, California. They made a demonstration recording of the song, "Tonight You Belong To Me," which had been a hit for Gene Austin in 1927 and was written by Billy Rose and Lee David. Liberty signed them and immediately released a recording of the girls singing the song as a commercial single, (with the B-side, "A Smile And A Ribbon", a composition with music by Mark McIntyre) and by September the song reached #4 on the Billboard charts and #28 in the UK Singles Chart, and was the biggest-selling record put out by Liberty for two years. It sold over one million copies and reached gold record status.

Patience was born 8/15/1942, Prudence's date of birth is 7/12/1945.

Thank you again to that anonymous reader. He also included a list of links related to Patience and Prudence McIntyre for those who wish to explore this strange saga further:

• http://love.torbenskott.dk/DonConka.asp

• https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/04/homeless-people-on-their-first-night-on-the-streets *

• https://www.annabelclark.com/outside-in-america-guardian

• https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/jungle-sweep-bagshaw-vs-murray/

• https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/last-year-seattles-safe-lots-for-rvs-all-but-disappeared-now-rv-campers-have-created-their-own/

Lastly, he included Pru's senior class photo. "She graduated from Hollywood High School in 1963," my source informs me.

Prudence McIntyre's senior class picture.

POSTSCRIPT: The saga of Prudence Ann McIntyre ended with her death on September 15, 2023. She was 78. As far as I know, her sister Patience is still alive.

Revisiting the 1966 'Batman': What have I learned?

Batman was everywhere in 1966, including the cover of Mad.

A favorite from the cathode ray tube era.

This Saturday night, the nostalgia-based cable channel Me-TV airs its weekly hour-long Batman block for the last time. The network likes to turn over its schedule every now and again, and they've already cycled through the entire 120-episode run of the series. I suppose if I really need my Bat-fix from now on, I could just break down and buy that boxed set of the complete series.

But Me-TV's weekly airings of the 1966-68 Batman were a great way to watch the episodes at a reasonable pace. With a show as stylized and intense as this, two episodes a week are about all I could handle. Any more would be like trying to eat my own body weight in cotton candy. Besides, since the show was airing across the country, it was an opportunity to comment on each episode via Twitter in real time and commune with other Bat-fans. I'll miss that.

I wasn't alive when Batman originally aired, but I definitely saw the reruns on Channel 20, an independent UHF station in the Flint, Michigan area. Channel 20 was one of my main sources of entertainment and enlightenment during my formative years. It's where I saw The Abbott & Costello Show, The Three Stooges, The Adventures of Superman, and Lost In Space. (Coincidentally, Lost in Space will be occupying Batman's old time slot on Me-TV.)

While I had definitely seen episodes of Batman since then—I vaguely remember the show airing on FX or some other, similar basic cable network—I hadn't revisited the series in any kind of systematic way since my early childhood. But now, thanks to Me-TV, I've seen all the episodes a few times over. And here are my thoughts as an adult.

1. Batman is a Zen master. Robin is a hothead.

Peter Deyell and Lyle Waggoner.

Think just anyone could slip into some tights and be the World's Greatest Detective? Think again, citizen.

Batman would have been a very different series if producer William Dozier had gone with the other finalists for the roles of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. Respectively, Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell screen tested for these parts. The contrast between this Dynamic Duo and the familiar team of Adam West and Burt Ward is stark. Waggoner's take on the Caped Crusader is stolid, humorless, and utterly lacking in self-awareness. Isn't that how West played him, too? Well, yeah, but West brought a whole level of stylized humor to the part that Waggoner's interpretation totally lacked.

In the 1999 documentary Hollywood Screen Tests, Dozier's assistant Charles B. Fitzsimmons puts it best: "Adam and Burt were, in our opinion, absolutely perfect. Lyle could have performed it. Peter could have performed it. But it would not have been what it became with Adam."

Outside of Batman, Adam West was at home in purely comedic roles, like the delusional title character on the Conan O'Brien-scripted Lookwell or as the daffy, childlike mayor of Quahog on Family Guy. And then there was his classic appearance in the "Mr. Plow" episode of The Simpsons. His version of Bruce Wayne/Batman is one of the great pop culture creations of the 1960s, a man so totally caught up in his dream of protecting Gotham while dressed up as a bat that he doesn't realize it's ridiculous. Adam West seems to exist almost in a dream state on Batman, detached from reality even when he's supposedly relaxing at stately Wayne Manor. The actor all but croons his dialogue, and his dramatic... pauses, flowery phrasing, and over-pronounced diction might even put William Shatner to shame.

Robin, meanwhile, is often thought of as a wide-eyed, squeaky-voiced innocent, constantly in slack-jawed amazement at the events unfolding around him. ("Holy _____!" is his famous catchphrase.) And that was exactly how Peter Deyell played the part. But that's not how Burt Ward plays it. His Robin is a snarling pit bull whom Batman has to keep on a (figurative) leash. And, yes, I realize the animal metaphors are getting scrambled here. The point is, when Robin threatens to fly off the handle, it's Batman who has to keep him in check. Notice how often Burt Ward punches the inside of his palm when his character is upset. His growly voice is even deeper than Batman's!

Adam West's Batman is a true Zen master, almost eerily calm and reserved. Whereas Robin tends to act on instinct, Batman is contemplative and cool, often thinking three steps ahead of the week's villain. One of my favorite aspects of this version of the character is that he's a true believer in rehabilitation. He honestly believes his enemies can mend their ways, and he wants to see them become productive citizens. Unfortunately, he doesn't get much support from the higher-ups, as we'll soon see.

2. Yes, Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara are useless. But so is every official in Gotham, which is why the city needs Batman so badly.

A pair of do-nothings.

It's a well-known trope of the '60s Batman series that Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara are two past-their-prime do-nothings who spend most of their time shooting the breeze in Gordon's office. Meanwhile, the thousands of uniformed Gotham City policemen largely stay offstage. Whenever there's even the merest inkling of trouble, Commissioner Gordon is quick to call Batman on that fancy red phone he keeps under a glass dome like a freshly prepared pheasant.

But Gordon and O'Hara aren't the only screen doors on the submarine that is Gotham. Warden Crichton, who heads the Gotham City Penitentiary, is a weak, namby-pamby bumbler who has no idea how to keep the likes of Joker or Penguin under control. Prison escapes are incredibly common and incredibly brazen. Joker dips out during a baseball game in the rec yard. Shame's accomplices breach the walls of the penitentiary with an honest-to-goodness tank.

It would seem that, in the Batman '66 universe, the entire government consists of spineless bureaucrats who bow to the merest pressure. Take Mayor Linseed, for example. In "Nora Clavicle and the Ladies' Crime Club," he actually fires Commissioner Gordon at the behest of his wife, when the latter threatens to stop cooking and cleaning for him. That's it. That's all it takes. No mind control. No hostages. Just a tiny amount of nagging. If Mayor Linseed had been able to withstand that, an entire episode's worth of trouble could have been avoided.

Oh, and by the way...

3. Gotham is totally New York.

Mayor Linseed and Mayor Lindsay.

Not much to say here. While Marvel's characters tend to live in real-life places like Los Angeles, DC's characters often hail from made-up locales like Metropolis. And Metropolis, we all know, is DC's stand-in for New York City. But what does that make Gotham? Chicago? Christopher Nolan must have thought so, since he filmed The Dark Knight there. (He actually shot the Joker's bank robbery in an abandoned post office right across from the building where I was working at the time.) In Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Gotham and Metropolis seem to be right next to each other on the map. Go figure.

But if Batman '66 is to be believed, Gotham is definitely New York City. Which makes sense, since "Gotham" is supposedly a nickname for New York. On this show, Gotham is governed by the weak-willed, glad-handing Mayor Linseed. This character is clearly named after John Lindsay, who was mayor of New York from 1966 to 1973. Lindsay, in fact, is both younger and more handsome than Linseed. Usually, it goes the other way in popular culture. And whatever state Gotham is in, its governor is named Stonefellow, a nod to Nelson Rockefeller, the real governor of New York State from 1959 to 1973.

That's all the evidence I need. Gotham is New York. I guess Metropolis must be Pittsburgh or something.

4. In this version, Batman is largely the protector of Gotham's wealthy elite.

A rich guy protecting other rich guys?

The Batman franchise has gone through many, many incarnations since 1939, some more serious, some less so. But one theme has remained remarkably consistent. If the rich people in Gotham are going to have some kind of fancy-schmancy fundraiser or pretentious art opening or whatever, one of the city's supercriminals is going to show up and cause chaos, partly for material gain and partly for the satisfaction of doing it. That happens again and again on Batman '66.

But maybe that kind of thing happens too often on the show. It seems like this Batman spends all his time at jewelry stores, furriers, high-end galleries, ritzy restaurants, and musty mansions. The villains on this show are forever trying to snag expensive trinkets like diamonds or rare books, and Batman is right there to punch them in the jaw. Sure, he'll come to the aid of the rank-and-file of Gotham, too, but that's usually only when a villain is attempting some city-wide scheme like poisoning the water supply. (What is it with bad guys and water supplies?) For the most part, Batman is like an unpaid, extremely violent security guard for Gotham's wealthy elite.

There's a classic scenario that I associate with the Batman mythos. Picture this. An average citizen of Gotham, perhaps an older, gray-haired lady, is walking along one of the city's lonely back streets at night, just trying to get home. Suddenly, this citizen is accosted by a snarling thief wielding a knife. It looks like the old lady is about to get robbed at the very least. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, a bat-shaped shadow appears from overhead. It's Batman! Our hero wastes no time, first disarming the thief and then knocking him out with a well-placed right hook to the jaw.

Stuff like that almost never happens on the 1966 Batman, and I have to wonder why. This version of the character is a little too uptown for his own good.

5. There's never been a hotter TV couple than Batman and Catwoman (or, more specifically, Adam West and Julie Newmar).

The ideal Mrs. Batman: Catwoman.

Long before such "will they or won't they" couples as Sam and Diane on Cheers or Dave and Maddie on Moonlighting, there was Bruce and Selina on Batman.

To my mind, there has never been a more intriguing romantic pairing than Batman and Catwoman on the 1966 Batman. The chemistry between Adam West and Julie Newmar is undeniable. It helps that no one has ever looked as good in the skin-tight Catwoman costume as Newmar. I could rhapsodize about the way she wears her belt! (In short, very low on her hips.)

Newmar's Catwoman is a flirty, clearly well-educated society girl who seemingly commits elaborate crimes just to get Batman's attention and alleviate her own boredom. She's clearly smart enough to make money in any number of legitimate ways. And it would be easy enough to sink her cat claws into some wealthy nitwit and drain his bank account. But she doesn't want any wealthy nitwit, not even Bruce Wayne. She wants Batman.

He wants her, too, but only if she can mend her ways and become a law-abiding citizen. That's the thing keeping them apart: their very natures. She could no more become a rule-following square than he could become a cat-burgling crook. Neither one can change, and so at the end of a caper, they have to part ways. It's almost tragic. He's a Montague; she's a Capulet.

One of my favorite running gags on the show, by the way, is Catwoman's complete and utter contempt for Robin. It's series canon that Robin is somehow too young to appreciate the opposite sex, so he doesn't understand why Catwoman holds such appeal for Batman. Catwoman, for her part, is bored and irritated by the Boy Wonder, whom she sees as an irksome impediment to her plans. I don't think she'd ever actually kill Batman, but she'd gladly push Robin off the side of a building without a second thought.

6. Alfred is incredibly underpaid and just all around awesome.

Give this man a raise!

Alfred Pennyworth, butler to millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, is a major part of just about any version of the Batman saga, and the 1966 series is no exception. In fact, this may be the most integral Alfred yet! This dapper, well-spoken majordomo (played beautifully by Universal contract player Alan Napier) raised Bruce Wayne single-handedly after the little rich boy's parents were killed, and now he manages the sprawling Wayne Manor without apparent help. I've never seen any other servants on Batman; maybe they're restricted to certain parts of the house, a la Beauty and the Beast.

Alfred knows all about Bruce's secret life as Batman, and he's perfectly at home in the Batcave (which he apparently accesses by elevator). And he doesn't just know about it; he actively participates in the crime-fighting enterprise. I mean, he's not literally out there punching bad guys every week, but he'll run risky errands for his boss all over town, sometimes getting himself kidnapped for his troubles. If the need arises, he'll even don the Bat-suit himself and impersonate the Caped Crusader, especially when it's necessary for Batman and Bruce Wayne to be in the same place at the same time.

That's a huge part of what makes Alfred so vital to the operation. He's instrumental in maintaining the Batman/Bruce Wayne illusion. Our hero's life is so complicated, so full of duplicity, that Alfred may be the only other person on earth who can keep it all straight. He's never fazed, this guy. "I'm sorry. Master Wayne is indisposed at the moment." "I'm afraid you just missed Batman, Commissioner Gordon." He even manages to tolerate Aunt Harriet and keep her from snooping around in Bruce Wayne's library. Whatever this guy's making, it's not enough.

One more great aspect of Alfred's character on this series is his relationship with Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. So let's discuss her next, shall we?

7. Batgirl was a great addition to the series, and you doubters can just shut your filthy mouths right now.

Batgirl: Oh, she's a worthy addition all right!

Like the third season of the original Star Trek, Season 3 of Batman takes a lot of heat from fans. and not without reason. ABC had obviously cut the budget by then, so there were fewer elaborate death traps for the Dynamic Duo and fewer full-scale Bat-fights. The writers, too, were grasping for ideas, so they wound up recycling plots from Seasons 1 and 2 or relying on increasingly far-fetched gimmicks. Even Adam West and Burt Ward seem a little checked-out during certain Season 3 episodes. Due to some contractual snag, Frank Gorshin's Riddler doesn't appear during this cycle of episodes. (John Astin briefly fills in for him.)

Nevertheless, I'll say the latter-day episodes are enjoyable, in sort of the same way that lesser-quality pizza is still pizza. The basic elements of the show—the Batmobile, the Neil Hefti theme song, the onscreen sound effects, the extremely arch dialogue, William Dozier's hyperbolic narration ("What's this?!")—are all still there. One of my favorite episodes, "Surf's Up! Joker's Under!," is from Season 3, and that one episode continues to inspire its own merchandise!

The best reason to watch Season 3, though, is definitely Batgirl. As played by former ballet dancer Yvonne Craig, she is a well-needed shot of adrenaline for the series. Whether as Batgirl or as mild-mannered librarian Barbara Gordon, daughter to the police commissioner, she's tough, sexy, and a total charmer, not to mention a fashion icon. She also gets her own cool theme song, co-written by Stan Freberg collaborator Billy May! What's not to like? I even enjoy her interactions with her pet bird, Charlie. Some might try to lump Batgirl in with such tacked-on TV characters as Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch or Scrappy-Doo from Scooby-Doo. Those people are misguided, to put it mildly.

One of my favorite aspects of the Batgirl character is that Alfred knows her secret identity and acts as her confidant and assistant. I could 100% see a Batgirl spinoff working, but I would have set the whole thing in England. Just come up with some reason for Barbara Gordon and Alfred Pennyworth to move to the UK, then have them be an Avengers-like duo, DC's answer to Emma Peel and John Steed. I'd have watched the hell out of that.

8. Sure, I have ideas for villains I'd like to have seen. Don't you?

My pick for Poison Ivy: Edy Williams.

Let's face it. When it comes to Batman baddies, there are the big four—Joker, Penguin, Riddler, and Catwoman—and then there's everyone else. But even here there are strata. Echelons of respectability, if you will. Foes like Mr. Freeze, Clock King, and Mad Hatter were all imported directly from the pages of DC Comics. Others, like Egghead, King Tut, and Bookworm, were created especially for the TV show but were well-received enough by fans to be accepted into the Bat-canon, eventually making appearances in the comic books and getting their own action figures.

When I was a kid tuning into Batman on Channel 20, I was always hoping for one of the big four. (Little wonder that the 1966 Batman theatrical movie includes all of them.) But I learned to appreciate some of the others, too, especially Otto Preminger's fussy, ill-tempered Mr. Freeze. (Perhaps as a result of growing up in Michigan, I was always interested in coldness-based heroes and villains, including Captain Cold and Killer Frost.) During my Batman re-watch, I've become a fan of Roddy McDowall's persnickety, leather-suited Bookworm and Cliff Robertson's befuddled cowboy Shame.

But I can't help wondering why some classic Batman villains from the comics never made it to the small screen. The seductive Poison Ivy debuted in June 1966, just in time to be immortalized on the series, but it never happened. This would have been a perfect role for perennial man-eater extraordinaire Edy Williams. Edy actually appeared on Batman a few times, but never in this part. A pity.

And what about Two-Face, arguably the most famous of the Bat-foes never to make it on the series? Edward G. Robinson might have knocked this out of the park, and it's not unreasonable to think that he'd do it, because he did guest star as himself on Batman once. (He and Batman discussed art!) But if they couldn't get Edward G. Robinson, the obvious choice would have been George Raft, the tough guy actor famous for habitually flipping a coin. How did this never happen?

Scarecrow, too, might have made a decent Batman character. The producers clearly loved using colored smoke bombs on the show, so Scarecrow's "fear gas" would be a natural. And I think Ray Walston, then probably best known for My Favorite Martian, would have done very well with this part. Ra'as al Ghul debuted just a wee bit late (1971) for this show, but I can definitely see Robert Goulet in this part.

To me, though, the biggest missed opportunity in Batman history was that they never got Jackie Gleason to play a villain. He would have been great at it, wearing tacky plaid suits, smoking cigars, and barking orders at henchmen. Jackie's Honeymooners costar Art Carney was tragically miscast as the pseudo-Shakespearean baddie Archer in a Batman two-parter that doesn't really work at all, But Carney would have made a great dim-witted sidekick to a Gleason villain. I'd have had Gleason play some kind of billiards-themed bad guy, spoofing his image from The Hustler (1961). The Pool Shark or Gotham City Fats or something like that. It would have made for some great visuals. Imagine the Dynamic Duo strapped to a giant billiard ball, about to be knocked into the ocean by a pool cue the size of a battering ram. Fortunately, our heroes are able to escape at the last second while Gleason and Carney have one of their trademark arguments. ("Will you get on with it?!")

As you can see, I've put a lot of thought into the 1966 Batman series. Probably too much. It might be a good thing that Me-TV is changing its schedule.

Pointless nostalgia time: 'Meadowlark Lemon Presents the World' (1979)

I didn't hallucinate it. This movie really existed.

The way you can remember the difference between latitude and longitude is that latitude lines are like the rungs on a ladder, while longitude lines look like long telephone poles. Got it? That's a little detail I stored away from a 1979 educational film called Meadowlark Lemon Presents the World, a lighthearted, 17-minute primer on basic geography hosted by a member of the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters. Though I never attended one of their games in person, the 'trotters were nevertheless a vital part of my couch potato youth, what with their two (count 'em!) Hanna Barbera series and innumerable appearances on talk shows and specials, not to mention their utterly ridiculous and unmotivated crossovers with Gilligan's Island and Scooby-Doo. Who can hear "Sweet Georgia Brown" without feeling the urge to spin a basketball on one's index finger? Yeah, the clown princes of the court were everywhere in the 1970s and 1980s, including, it seems the classroom.

I was lucky enough to be around for the last few years of educational films being actual reels of film being threaded through a projector. The transition to VHS and those omnipresent rolling TV carts did not occur until my middle school years. No, if a teacher wanted to kill some time with a movie, he or she actually had to have some rudimentary AV skills. My parents were both teachers, and I can still remember going with my dad to the Flint Public Library when he wanted to check out an educational film. (This was before video stores.) The movies -- 16mm, I guess -- came in these big, flat, grayish-brown boxes, about the size of a small pizza, and they were held shut with straps. I don't know why, but I thought that was neat. You had to go to a special room on the second floor of the library to get them. I thought that was neat, too.

But, anyway, back to the movie at hand. Somewhere around the third or fourth grade, a teacher must have shown our class Meadowlark Lemon Presents the World as part of a unit on how to read maps or something. It was the kind of weird, fun, little movie that just might take up residence in a person's subconscious forever. It certainly did in mine. Interestingly (to me), Presents the World was made by the same group of amiable zanies who did the fondly-remembered Close Encounters parody film Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind in 1980, just a year later: director Rick Harper, writer Bob Rogers, and actors Stan Greiwe and Sandy Stotzer. I imagine they had fun with this assignment. Also in the cast is Mike Jittlov, director, writer, and star of the (unseen by me) cult classic The Wizard of Speed and Time (1988).

Meadowlark Lemon Presents the World, sadly, is not to be found in its entirety on the Internet. A company called Pyramid Media markets a DVD of it, but it'll cost ya: thirty bucks for personal use, ninety bucks for instructional use. If you're planning on buying me a copy for my birthday next month, please choose the $30 option. Happily, there are some clips available online, like this one featuring Stan Greiwe as a detective-turned-superhero and Mike Jittlov as a sinister, black-hatted villain. Enjoy:



What's really weird is the complicated, nesting-doll structure of Meadowlark Lemon Presents the World. It starts out as a film-within-a-film, and before long it becomes a film-within-a-film-within-a-film. You see, the introduction involves a hapless grade school teacher (also Greiwe) showing this movie to his unruly students. Then Meadowlark takes over and shows even more films, like the one above. It's like Inception for eight year olds.

Fuchsia hall of famer: A look back at 'Purple Rain' (with special guest Craig J. Clark)

Has it really been 30 years since Purple Rain debuted? The answer is yes.

"They finally even made a movie about it ... Whenever anything important happens in America, they have to gold-plate it, like baby shoes." 

-Stephen King, Carrie

Prince, as crudely illustrated by your humble blogger.

Is it still legal to discuss Prince on the Internet? I'm pretty sure His Purpleness, a public figure notoriously skeptical of the media, issued a fatwa some years ago strictly forbidding the general public from even invoking his holy name on the web. But we believe in taking chances here at Dead 2 Rights, so we are ignoring the fatwa and presenting you with this brave, defiant review of Purple Rain on the historic occasion of its thirtieth anniversary.

Directed by Albert Magnoli (whose sparse, flop-ridden resume includes Tango & Cash and the gymnastics extravaganza American Anthem) and written by Magnoli with veteran TV scribe William Blinn (Starsky & Hutch, Eight is Enough), Purple Rain served as a vehicle for Minneapolis born rock star Prince Rogers Nelson and marked the absolute commercial peak of his lengthy and prosperous career in show business, an odyssey which continues to this day. Made for a mere $7 million, Rain eventually grossed $80 million, becoming arguably the first true blockbuster to be spawned by the rise of the cable channel MTV and its then-cutting-edge music videos. The summer of 1984 was a busy one: this was the year of such iconic flicks as Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Gremlins. And yet, the R-rated Purple Rain managed to find its own niche in the marketplace, succeeding where the summer's other big musical, Rhinestone, failed miserably.

At the time, it looked like Prince had found a potential second career as a screen idol. This notion was dispelled by a series of unsuccessful follow-ups, including Under the Cherry Moon (1986) and Graffiti Bridge (1990), the latter a direct sequel to Purple Rain. Nevertheless, Prince's debut film remains a landmark for many and has inspired some thoughtful tributes on its birthday. So I thought I'd add to the mix by contributing my own thoughts on the film, along with those of my friend and fellow movie blogger Craig J. Clark.

"The movie" is an important milestone in the lifespan of any pop cultural phenomenon, particularly in America. When some comedian, singer, TV show, toy, or fad becomes really popular with "the young people," you can be sure "the movie" will be coming soon. After all, the youth audience is the most desirable demographic in the entertainment business, so Hollywood wants to give these folks movies about whatever the hell they're interested in this year or this month or this week. Preferably as soon as possible ... you know, before they forget. You know how screwy these kids are. One week it's this thing, the next it's something else. Keep in mind, the pop cultural phenomenon in question doesn't necessarily have to vaporize in the span of a few months, but it just might.

Really, if we are being very hard-nosed about these things, we can admit that A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Cool as Ice (1991) were made for the exact same reason: to capitalize on a teenage fad. Some musical act is hot, so let's get 'em in front of the cameras before they cool off. Couple this desire to "cash in" with the fact that pretty much every singer dreams of being a movie star, and you know what you get? Lots of movies starring pop singers. In a weird way, these movies add a sort of permanence to what might otherwise have turned out to be ephemeral. That's why I started this article with that Stephen King quote. These movies really are like the cinematic counterpart of gold-plated baby shoes. Pop stars might fall off the charts and into obscurity in a few months, and they inevitably will age and evolve over time. But those movies never change. They're in the can forever, preserving the stars in amber just as they were during their zeitgeist-capturing heydays.

Diversifying the portfolio.

Of course, it always helps to diversify one's portfolio (so to speak) in the notoriously fickle business we call show. If a singer shows promise as an actor, he or she might have a whole second career going. Who'd have guessed country crooner Reba McEntire would be the star of a long-running sitcom, for instance? Out of some combination of vanity and stubbornness (both of which are prerequisites for stardom, I might add), Madonna, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, and David Bowie have all flogged away at acting careers, to varying degrees of success, over the years. And then there is the case of Prince Rogers Nelson, the scarily talented and often-just-scary Minneapolis R&B/rock musical genius whose public persona seems to be a combination of James Brown, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, and Captain Hook from Peter Pan.

Prince was hardly a newbie by the time he got the go-ahead to do "the movie" in 1984. He'd been a successful recording artist since 1978, when he was only 20, and had already released such popular albums as 1999 and Controversy by that point. But Purple Rain was Prince's Thriller moment. The film and (especially) its hit soundtrack album, which was #1 for an astonishing 24 weeks, catapulted him from mere mega-stardom to super-ultra-mega-deluxe stardom. I was a little too young for all of it at the time.

I'd have been eight when the R-rated flick came out, i.e. not really in the target audience. Like everyone else who lived in America during the Reagan years, however, I certainly heard Prince's songs at the time and continued to hear them for years afterward. You couldn't really avoid these tunes when they were blaring from car stereos in all directions. But Prince had a distinctly "adult" vibe to his image and career, much more so than Michael or Bruce or Cyndi. Even Madonna wasn't as frankly and threateningly sexual as Prince was at the time. Just saying his name out loud seemed a little dirty to me. I wasn't really into rock music back in '84 anyway. It would take a couple of years and the discovery of nerd-friendly bands like Devo, Talking Heads, and They Might Be Giants to indoctrinate me into that world.

To be honest, I was still a little afraid of Purple Rain after all these decades. The special edition DVD has, as you'd expect, a lurid purple cover. And there you'll find that iconic image of Prince in his Seinfeld-esque puffy shirt and purple top coat, straddling his obscenely purple motorcycle, as his leading lady Apollonia stands in a doorway at the top of some stairs in the background, looking like a vampire hooker. And there's fog everywhere! Citizens, I won't lie. It looks sleazy. I was more than a little embarrassed to be checking this thing out from the local library. I felt sure the old lady behind the counter was silently judging me.

Despite these obstacles, I did manage to watch Purple Rain in preparation for this article. And you know what? The flick is not entirely bad, and if I squint I can almost see why it was an $80 million hit back when $80 million went further than it does now. As a delivery system for the Thing That Is Prince, Purple Rain more than gets the job done. You say want a tiny, androgynous man humping the stage in front of an appreciative Minneapolis audience? You got it, mister! He's on screen, I'd estimate, 80-90% of the time. And for most of that time, he's doing what he does best: singing and playing guitar on stage with his band, the Revolution (whose members portray themselves with varying levels of enthusiasm).

At least three of the songs in this film, the title track, "When Doves Cry," and "Let's Go Crazy," are among those inescapable, indelible Prince hits I mentioned earlier. They'll be with us forever. Someone's listening to those songs right now, I'll wager, playing air guitar and mouthing the words in front of a mirror. I don't know whether or not Prince would approve of that either. But, anyway, these songs are still striking and richly deserve their vaunted place in the pop culture pantheon.

The familiar video for Prince's "When Doves Cry."

Ironically, though, that massive success is the main reason that Purple Rain pretty much fails completely as a narrative. The film is supposed to tell the story of "The Kid," a suspiciously Prince-like aspiring musician on the Minneapolis club scene. Structurally, this means that Purple Rain closely resembles 8 Mile (2002) with Eminem. Both films supposedly give us the gritty, unglamorous stories (tastefully fictionalized, of course) behind the careers of controversial pop stars. We see their early professional ups and downs in their respective local music scenes, plus plenty of ugly, unpleasant family and relationship drama on the side, too. And through all their tribulations and setbacks, these young men are guided by singular desire: to succeed. They know that music is their ticket to a better life, and they're not going to give up on their dreams. Okay, that's great. But somehow this seems a better fit for Eminem than it does for Prince. For one thing, Eminem's turbulent personal history has always been a key component to his music and has been very widely reported in the media.

On the other hand, Prince has been extremely media shy throughout his career, and his lyrics don't function terribly well as an autobiography. So, really, who even knows or cares what Prince's backstory is? Secondly, Eminem has never been shy about presenting himself in a negative light on his albums, and in 8 Mile we get to see his character, Rabbit, crash and burn as a rapper before finally succeeding. But Prince is too cool a customer for that. He is fully formed when he meet him, both in terms of his music and his fashion sense. He enters this movie on a motorcycle which matches his outfit, for God's sake! He seems more like a costumed superhero who fell to earth from Planet Sexy than a mere mortal rock star. It's hard to take any of his problems too seriously.

Prince is never anything other than Prince for even a second. Even when he's talking to policemen after his abusive father's suicide attempt (by gun) or when he's fantasizing his own suicide (by rope), he always seems like he's two seconds away from posing for an album cover. He's posing all the time, in fact. Throughout this movie, people occasionally tell "The Kid" that his music isn't going to catch on, but it's impossible to believe the naysayers because we know the truth. The soundtrack album was #1 for almost half a year, after all. These very songs were burned into America's brain. When we weren't hearing them on Top 40 radio, we were seeing them on MTV. And we're supposed to believe this guy is struggling to make it? Come on! Who do you think you're fooling?

Here is Prince holding a puppet and refusing to act.

Can Prince act? Frankly, I don't know. I've seen a whole movie in which he's the unquestioned star, and I still have no idea whether the man can act or not. What I can honestly say is that he doesn't act in this movie. It seems like a personal choice. He refuses to act. One of Prince's very rare television interviews was a famously stilted appearance he made on American Bandstand in the early 1980s. If you don't have time in your life to watch Purple Rain in its entirety this weekend, watch that American Bandstand clip instead because it basically gives you the whole "Prince acting" experience in a nutshell. At one point, Clark asked Prince how many instruments he played, and the young musician wordlessly held up four fingers as an answer. In this very movie, the members of his backing band, The Revolution, confront him at one point about being such a paranoid control freak and he responds to their complaints via a puppet. I'm not kidding. A puppet! Where'd he get that puppet anyway?

I'm surprised he didn't use that prop in all his other scenes, like the completely tacked-on, perfunctory, and unconvincing romantic subplot. Yeah, "The Kid" has a supposed "romance" with fellow up-and-comer Apollonia Kotero (also playing herself ... sorta), but their conversations largely consist of Prince barking terse, two-or-three-word orders at her. "Get on!" "Give me that!" "Let's go!" That's Prince the silver screen lover. Rudolph Valentino he ain't. (How curious that Prince should have invoked Valentino's memory in his lyrics for the song "Manic Monday.") I guess there's some kind of point being made here by the writer-director, because we're supposed to see that The Kid has learned all the wrong lessons about how to treat a lady from his abusive, slap-happy musician pappy (Clarence Williams III of TV's The Mod Squad) and has picked up plenty of bad habits from his old man, but I found these scenes neither convincing nor terribly interesting or compelling. The script does provide a rather contrived opportunity for the busty Ms. Kotero to go topless for a few seconds, and I'm afraid that's the only reason why she's here. She brings nothing else to the table. Enjoy those few seconds, horny teenage boys in the audience!

Morris Day helps lighten the mood occasionally.

I realize I've spent the last few paragraphs complaining about Purple Rain, but the truth is that I more or less liked this charmingly ridiculous film. It's got an undeniable time capsule quality to it that I appreciated, giving viewers in 2014 a chance to see some flamboyant fashions from a bygone era, and the concert sequences are (and I'm not ashamed to use this adjective when it's warranted) electrifying. They're the real reason to watch this movie now. The director may not have been able to tell much of a story, but he was able to capture the dynamism of his star. Since sullen, taciturn Prince is no fun at all when he's not signing in this movie, however, it's up to the supporting cast to keep the audience entertained between tunes.

I have thus far neglected to even mention the movie's flamboyant yet fun-loving villain, Morris Day, who I guess is portraying some fictionalized version of himself in this film, too. A rival funk bandleader who would have both the Minneapolis club scene and the heart of the fair Apollonia for his very own, Morris is a shameless schemer straight out of Saturday morning cartoons. In fact, he and his sidekick Jerome Benton (also apparently playing himself or some parody of himself) reminded me quite a bit of Dick Dastardly and Muttley from Wacky Races. They're among the few characters in this film who seem to notice that Purple Rain is utterly ludicrous and don't even pretend to take it seriously. In retrospect, that was really the wisest approach all along. This isn't rocket surgery, after all. It's rock 'n' roll. And now, my dear readers, I leave you in the capable hands of Mr. Craig J. Clark, whose excellent and frequently-updated blog (he puts me to shame in this respect) is a mere click away.

Purple Rain, considered: a blunt appraisal by Craig J. Clark

Prince and his iconic sunglasses in 1984's Purple Rain. 

Kristin Scott Thomas & Prince in Under the Cherry Moon.

I have not had a burning need to fill the Purple Rain-sized hole in my film education, but I have long been curious about the abbreviated acting career of the Artist Who Used To Formerly Be Known As Prince But Now Is Known As Prince Again. After all, Purple Rain was a big enough hit that it begat Under the Cherry Moon (which rather improbably provided Kirstin Scott Thomas with her big-screen debut), Sign o' the Times (his one true concert film) and Graffiti Bridge. Tellingly, all three of those follow-ups were directed by Prince (who also wrote Sign and Graffiti for good measure), but only the last one was an actual sequel to the film that, a quarter century later, remains his one true box-office success. 

Even if I didn't see Purple Rain when it first came out (I turned 11 in 1984, so R-rated movies were still strictly off-limits to me), I was able to get the gist of it thanks to MTV's airing of the video for "When Doves Cry" in heavy rotation that summer. (I would provide a link to said video -- which perfectly encapsulates the themes and much of the imagery of the film -- but as Joe said Prince's people have been on a tireless crusade of late when it comes to expunging his material from the Internet. Unless, of course, it's the man himself trolling YouTube and other sites for fans/flagrant copyright violators to report. Based on his control-freak reputation, I actually wouldn't put that past him.) Coupled with my enthusiasm for the videos for "1999" and "Little Red Corvette," I was quite the budding Prince fan but somehow never got around to picking up any of his albums. Perhaps I knew instinctively that if I did there was a chance my mother would ask to listen to one and be scandalized by the likes of "Darling Nikki" (one of the songs that got Tipper Gore's dander up back in the day). Choosing the path of Hall & Oates and Huey Lewis and the News seemed much safer in comparison. 

Then again, even with as many hits as they had, nobody to my knowledge ever asked Daryl, John or Huey (or anyone in the News for that matter) to star in a semi-fictionalized musical biography charting their trials and tribulations on the way to fame and fortune. (To see how such a thing can go horribly, horribly wrong, check out Mariah Carey's Glitter some time... or don't. Only you know how much your own time is worth to you.) More than likely the mere existence of MTV -- which gave bands the chance to make any of a number of three-minute films, biographical or otherwise -- obviated the need for the film industry to craft as many vehicles around the nascent personalities of up-and-coming rock-and-rollers as it had during the '60s boom. (Did you know Herman's Hermits starred in three motion pictures? Three!) Of course, by the time he starred in Purple Rain, Prince was well past the up-and-coming stage of his career, which is why the inevitable comparison with A Hard Day's Night is both apt and misleading at the same time. 

Defining the Fabs as individuals.

Much has been written about the way A Hard Day's Night helped to define John, Paul, George and Ringo as individuals in the eyes of their fans (much as many aspects of Prince's public persona were cemented by his turn in Purple Rain), but the most important thing about their feature film debut was that it was most emphatically about the present, where Beatlemania already existed, and not the path that led to it. That story would be told on film many times in the decades to come, but it wouldn't star the Beatles. And while it's true that Prince is playing a character called "The Kid," which is how co-writer/director Alfred Magnoli tries to get away with the fiction that he's an unknown, struggling artist, it's hard to believe scenes like the one where he slays the crowd with the title song and then angrily stalks off the stage, somehow thinking that he's bombed, only to return triumphant moments later to sing the two closing numbers, "I Would Die 4 U" (which, as producer Robert Cavallo says on the commentary, feels somewhat perfunctory coming after the cathartic "Purple Rain") and "Baby I'm a Star" (which, in all honesty, was never really in question). 

Since the live performances are the most electric scenes in the whole film, one wonders why Prince didn't simply go the concert film route -- à la Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same, Frank Zappa's Baby Snakes or the Rolling Stones' Let's Spend the Night Together -- for his maiden cinematic voyage. Not only was his back catalog deep enough, but he could have easily filled out the evening with unreleased tracks from his vaults and still not broken a sweat. If he wanted to, he could have even kept The Time and Apollonia 6 as support acts, letting them come out and perform "Jungle Love" and "Sex Shooter" the way Talking Heads morph into Tom Tom Club for "Genius of Love" in the middle of Stop Making Sense. As it is, the film opens with The Revolution's blistering performance of "Let's Go Crazy," during which we're introduced to aspiring singer/dancer Apollonia skipping out on a taxi fare and taking a room at a sleazy hotel and Morris Day preening as he prepares for his grand entrance to the club. Then, after the briefest of pauses, The Time jumps straight into "Jungle Love," which unfortunately isn't allowed to play out completely because the film needs to follow Prince home on his motorcycle to look in on his abusive father and wayward mother. (It's almost surreal that his father's biggest complaint about his mother is that she doesn't clean often enough.) 

What follows is a semi-coherent narrative made up of half-scenes and barely functional dialogue full of bald-faced exposition recited by musicians with little to no acting experience who are essentially playing thinly conceived variations on themselves. I'm not sure why Prince would want people to associate him with the character of The Kid, though, since he's kind of a dick. Take, for instance, the scene where he tricks Apollonia into removing all of her clothing and jumping into a freezing cold lake, then keeps scooting his motorcycle away from her whenever she tries to climb on. The Kid is also perpetually late for business meetings and band rehearsals and keeps putting off Wendy and Lisa, two members of his band with songwriting aspirations. (It's after Wendy calls him out on his paranoia, telling him, "You can really hurt people," that he performs his bizarre ventriloquist act.) Overall, though, he saves his worst behavior for Apollonia. 

Apollonia pawns her anklet for Prince.

Apparently determined to top the incident at the lake, Magnoli and his co-writer William Blinn (a TV veteran who wrote Brian's Song and created the series Starsky and Hutch, among other things) draft a scenario where Apollonia -- who, remember, is an unknown who has to stay at a seedy dive because it's the only place she can afford -- pawns her anklet so she can buy The Kid a guitar (which he seems genuinely surprised to get, like it's Christmas morning or something). Then, when she casually announces that she's joining Morris Day's girl group, he belts her one (a real "I learned it by watching you" PSA moment) and then immediately switches gears, inexplicably asking her, "Don't I make you happy? Don't you like the way we are?" Yeah, Kid, I'm sure she's thrilled about getting slapped around by you simply because she wants to have a career of her own. He won't even leave her alone when he's onstage, causing her to burst into tears with the masturbation anthem "Darling Nikki" (which doesn't seem too far removed from her own group's "Sex Shooter" when you get right down to it). Odd, then, that that's the song that inspires the none-too-imposing club owner to tell The Kid, "Your music makes sense to no one but yourself." 

The crux of the matter, psychologically speaking, is The Kid's contentious relationship with his father, a brilliant pianist/composer with anger management issues. I don't know how much of that correlates to Prince's actual family history, and frankly I don't want to know, but I doubt he ever confronted his own father by saying, "I saw Mom up the street. She looked pretty bad. Any idea how she got that way?" That's the sort of line that only rings true to a screenwriter with a tin ear for dialogue. Purple Rain is much better off when it lets Prince's music speak for him.

NOTE: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form at Unloosen.com

My (brief) thoughts on the Monty Python finale

Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland, Terry Gilliam, and John Cleese together for the last (?) time.

I have just returned, my lovelies, from the local cineplex, where I paid $18 for the privilege of seeing a group of paunchy, jowly, sagging septuagenarians shuffle through some ancient sketch comedy for three hours (with a half-hour tea break in the middle). I would not have missed this opportunity for the world. These affable old-timers, you see, were the five surviving members of Monty Python, and the occasion was the British comedy troupe's "farewell" performance, which was staged at London's O2 Arena and then simulcast to movie theaters around the world. The rapidly-deteriorating comedians tell us that this is "it" for the team. Monty Python is no more. Bereft of life, you might say, it rests in peace. Or in pieces.

So how was the big finale? Was it worth $18 of anyone's money? Oh, sure. I laughed throughout the entire running time, which felt good to do even though I'd heard most of these jokes dozens of times. I even got a few chuckles from the 30-minute intermission, during which the screen went blank apart from a clock counting down the minutes and seconds, because the movie-going audience had not been briefed of this in advance and thought for a few minutes that it might be some kind of high-concept prank. (It wasn't.)

An ad for the concert

As for the rest of the program, it was quaint, sentimental, and nostalgic. The innovators and provocateurs of yesteryear are now the established old guard, and this was a chance for them to cycle through their greatest hits and bits. Some of these golden oldies were conflated: "Vocational Guidance Counselor" became "The Lumberjack Song," "Dead Parrot" melted into "Cheese Shop," etc.

The fact that the show was the brainchild of the group's hammiest and most mercenary member, Eric Idle (the self-described "Greedy Bastard"), was plain to see. This was a slick, Broadway-style revue with a heavy emphasis on production numbers and fit, lean chorus girls and boys leaping and tumbling around the stage as the doddering oldsters watched in appreciation.

For me, though, the highlights of the show were the quieter, more intimate moments when the five surviving Pythons (Graham Chapman died a quarter-century ago) simply took pleasure in sharing the stage with one another. The venerable "Four Yorkshireman" sketch, in which a quartet of wealthy old geezers try to outdo each other with outlandish tales of childhood suffering and poverty, has a special resonance in 2014 because the comedians performing it now really are the age of the folks they're parodying.

As you'd expect, the show ended with a group rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian, and I can't have been the only one who got a little misty-eyed during that. After all, Monty Python has been a huge part of my life since the 1980s, when I first saw their BBC sketch comedy series in reruns on MTV. This really felt like a way of saying goodbye to the boys, plus Ms. Carol Cleveland, the honorary female "seventh Python." Perhaps now, they can be packed up in crates and shipped off to that warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.