"Now, until next week, stay happy, and keep a song in your heart. Good night."

You can take the boy out of the bubbles, but not the bubbles out of the boy. Synergy Entertainment has released The Lawrence Welk Show: Classic Episodes, Vol. 1 - 4, a 4-disc, 12-episode collection of black and white kinescopes of ABC's long, long running musical variety show, hosted by that "wunnerful" accordion-playing, baton-wielding maestro, Lawrence Welk, and featuring his "Musical Family" of "Champagne Music Makers." Representing the show during its peak network years (1960-1968), these kinescopes aren't all complete, and they're certainly rough from an A/V standpoint...but baby, that is some sweet, sweet, easy-going music getting laid down here: I'm proud to finally declare myself a born-again Welk-oholic. No extras...unless you count a couple of episodes that still have their vin...Read the entire review

The TV Series:

When confronted with the three-DVD set "That Show" with Joan Rivers, vol. 1-3, my first thought went: "Joan Rivers had a talk show in the '60s?"

But it's true. A lifetime before the Botoxed one slipped into reality shows, jewelry pitches and catty fashion commentary with her joined-at-the-hip daughter Melissa, Joan Rivers and husband Edgar Rosenberg tried to position the youngish comedienne and mother as a daytime talk show host with "That Show", which ran in syndication for a single year in 1968-69. Given the fact that Rivers' humor has gotten increasingly toxic and bitter over the years (as evidenced in the 2010 documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work), it's interesting to see her in this setting as a manic yet friendly Nice Jewish Lady dishing on child rearing, catering, physical fitness and, of course, gossip.

Recorded in August and September of 196...Read the entire review

A hefty, entertaining helping of the Duke. Synergy Entertainment has released John Wayne: Bigger Than Life, a three-disc collection of documentaries, rare TV appearances, and one of Wayne's biggest hits, McLintock!, that add up to over seven hours of the Duke behind and in front of the camera. Documentaries include 1990's John Wayne: Bigger Than Life, 1971's excellent The American West of John Ford, and Wayne's notorious No Substitute for Victory from 1970. TV appearances are courtesy of brief bits on Art Linkletter's People Are Funny, The Colgate Comedy Hour with Jimmy Durante, a fascinating segment of Dave Garroway's Wide Wide World series called, appropriately enough, The Western, and Duke's fondly-remembered 1966 appearance on The Lucy Show. As for that transfer of McLintock!, have no public-domain fears: the anamorphic pr...Read the entire review

A hodgepodge of presumed public domain titles all related to Jonathan Swift's famous 18th century satirical novel, the cleverness and sloppiness of Film Chest's An Ultimate Gulliver Collection is expressed by the title itself. If it's the ultimate collection shouldn't it be "The Ultimate Gulliver Collection" rather than "An Ultimate Collection?" Or does An Ultimate Gulliver Collection refer to each individual copy of the DVD, being part of a larger, ultimate work?

In any case like most public domain releases, caveat emptor. Video/audio quality varies from (suspiciously) excellent to extremely poor, though overall this set shows more care than usual and for a PD release is above average. Included is Max & Dave Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels (1939), which was just the second animated feature ever made; an Americanized Japanese animated feature, Gulliver...Read the entire review

THE SHOWS:

It's sort of funny, how easily Groucho Marx made the transition to television--considering how much trouble he'd had breaking into every other medium he'd tried his hand at. He toured vaudeville for years, with various combinations of family and friends, before he and his brothers finally come up with an act that was any good; they only moved to the "legitimate" stage after burning bridges on the vaudeville circuits, and that was with a thrown-together revue made up of spare parts and songs which no one expected to go anywhere. The Marx Brothers are among our most beloved screen comedians, but their first film, the silent comedy Humorisk, was reportedly so bad that it disappeared after one screening. And though Groucho's rapid-fire wit would seem perfect for radio, he watched several vehicles (both by himself and with brother Chico) inexplicably flop.

So it was wit...Read the entire review