People Are Funny: Season One (1955/Art Linkletter/Synergy/Film Chest DVD Set)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Episodes: B
Art
Linkletter is one of the most successful entertainers in the early years of
modern media you could think of. A massively
successful host of a variety of shows, he was a big radio personality before TV
arrived, then continued onto television with even more massive success working
on his own (he had five hits shows on at one time) and even in very successful
collaborations with Walt Disney. Though
it began on radio, People Are Funny became
one of his biggest TV shows and now, we finally have the debut 1955 Season One set on DVD, though records
list its debut as 1954.
We get 16
episodes over three DVDs which is the largest release of the show in any form
to date. The show is as if Punk’d was a smart show with heart,
soul and a true sense of humor, though it actually began on radio back in 1942,
making this an 80th anniversary released for all intents and
purposes. Too bad no radio episodes are
here as a bonus. NBC ran the TV version
from 1954 (though this is again listed as 1955) to 1961 and even inspired Paramount to do a feature
film comedy in 1946 with Jack Haley and Rudy Vallee with Linkletter playing
himself. It was a big success.
Shot on
film, Linkletter (who at one point had five hit TV shows on at one time while
this show was in production) shows up on a set (including the Hollywood &
Vine street sign since their theater is there, near the Capitol Records building
to be) in front of a live audience talking about the amusing prank or wacky
idea they will try out next. This goes
from seeing if people will help total strangers to actually taking a couple’s
rental home and “stealing” it as part of a contest (they have it dug out and
transported “somewhere” in the only gag that goes beyond two episodes) for them
to get a better home if they find the current one. Linkletter is actually a hoot at times and it
is a shame this was not revived in the spirit of the original by now
considering all the idiotic revivals we have.
Spoofed
in the 1959 Warner Bros. cartoon People Are Bunny with Daffy Duck
forcing Bugs Bunny to go to a TV station so Daffy can win prizes on the show,
with Mel Blanc voicing everyone but “Art Lamplighter” voiced by Daws Butler. Now that I have seen a good number of the
episodes, this already hilarious classic will be funny all over again. Hope we see more sets of this show soon.
The 1.33
X 1 transfer can show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a
transfer versus what we might get if these were kinescopes (filmed off of a
picture tube), but they are on the soft side overall and there is still print
damage. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
is also a bit limited, coming off of the optical mono on the film prints. The combination is still very watchable and
worth dealing with the imperfections. There
are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
