Pat Paulsen's Half a Comedy Hour was a mid-season replacement series that bowed on ABC in January 1970, but lasted just 13 weeks. Viewers, for whatever reason, just couldn't get into Paulsen fronting his own show. A non-descript, average comedian who aspired to be President, and made a run for the White House in 1968, Paulsen's lone mistake was going with the 30 minute format, rather than a full hour like other variety and comedy shows of the day. Future Grammy winner Steve Martin was a writer, as he was for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, from whence Paulsen had also gained his first fame.
Paulsen was more than willing to be a foil, as demonstrated in interviews with a pair of Looney Tunes legends, Foghorn Leghorn & Daffy Duck. This video also appears over at Saturday Morning Archives.
Hard to picture Daffy and Porky Pig doing an act in Las Vegas, but......!
One episode I scoped on Hulu demonstrated that some of the best ideas that Martin and the other writers had didn't translate well on screen, and that Paulsen was lacking something.
Rating: C.
No comments:
Post a Comment