Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

The fool Podman links to a 1969 video clip from The Hollywood Palace starring Der Bingle and other "big" names singing a ghastly medley of Beatles tunes -- it's not even something you can laugh at Golden Throats style -- and alas I can see why the rep of Gonzaga's heretofore most famous alumnus may never fully recover from the shellackings Gary- and self-inflicted: he does not lip-sync gracefully, he gestures inanely and grimaces painfully and is the definitive 100-percent SQUARE. The whole clip shows the fatal problem with the sainted variety shows of yore: they were almost designed to be corny. We can expect Engelbert Humperdinck to impersonate John Davidson doing a musical game show, or Dick Shawn to look like a singing Senator. But we are told of how très charmante Gwen Verdon was, and she must have been to play a whore with a heart, and here she is très charmanteless, a singing, dancing hairdresser showing off her eyelashes. The real "find" is Bobbie Gentry, whom I mistook for Bing's second wife Kathryn -- she could NOT sing. Really though you can't put it out of your mind how Bing flashes his teeth like dentures. Bob Barker with a voice couldn't have done it better.

Indeed the more I think of it the angrier I get because this sort of senile dementia in song helped destroy pop music, as it painted those who stood for the old verities as COMPLETE IDIOTS, thus allowing scorched-earth acts to denude the ground forever.

(NRO and Crosby date links updated 10/7/07)