The Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis Collection: Volume Three –
Still Laughing (Passport)
Picture:
C- Sound: C Extras: D Program: B-
Passport
is now up to a third Dean Martin &
Jerry Lewis Collection, this time dubbed Still Laughing and again
offering select episodes from their Colgate
Comedy Hour series. Ten more
episodes of the show featured:
1)
This
June 1951 show features dogs as a theme.
2)
The
second show April 1952 is about the guys traveling to various locations as
other characters.
3)
This
September 1952 show has the duo at a psychiatrist’s convention, so lunacy
follows.
4)
A
life-sized TV screen is the focus of this November 1952 show that also includes
a Tarzan school.
5)
Janet
Leigh, Tony Curtis and The Four Step Brothers make cameos in this May 1953 show
where the boys go from crowded situation to crowded situation in the “outside”
world. Thanks to Universal and MGM,
this was the first-ever TV appearance of Leigh And Curtis.
6)
The
“Mayhem Annual Awards Dinner” is the February 1954 show’s center.
7)
Another
1951 show, ruining a wedding for starters.
8)
This
May 1955 show sends up the early Ed Sullivan Show, when it was called Toast
Of The Town.
9)
That
worked so well, the June 1955 show sends up Edward R. Murrow’s Person-To-Person
series.
10) This November 1955 show sends up melodramas of the kind that were
getting late night TV broadcast of the time.
The shows
have their original advertising, but it looks like Colgate abandoned animation
in spots. What one can see after three
sets is that they were always great and you can see why so many people were
horrified when the duo broke up. This
series could have gone on as long as Sullivan’s did, proved by the later
success of Martin’s own show in the 1960s.
The result is that this set is as good as its predecessors.
The full
frame 1.33 X 1 image is a mix of kinescope/videotaped live action footage and
animation on film for the advertisements, which look better by default. This is very muddy for the most part, but
the content is so good that it is limits that have to be accepted. Whether better copies are out there, who
knows, but the show needs some serious work.
That goes for the sound, the original monophonic sound a few generations
down here in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono.
There are no extras, but the laughs should be enough.
- Nicholas Sheffo
