Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Jerry Lewis (Almost) Smashing Vases

[post 223]

Here's how this here blogopedia works: I come up with great ideas for posts much faster than I can research and write them. (Yes, I have a life.) For every post you see, there are five in some stage of development, which may or may not see life. The sidebar item, "Coming Soon-ish or Later-ish on the Blogopedia," is merely the tip of the iceberg.

I mention this because..... my most recent post on that Jerry Lewis documentary included this quote from the NY Times:

This physical comedy is beautifully illustrated by a scene from “The Patsy” (1964), in which Mr. Lewis’s character knocks over an assortment of expensive-looking vases and catches each one just before it hits the floor. Mr. Lewis says he broke hundreds of vases in the process of rehearsing and shooting the scene.

As that post revealed to my utter shame, I'm too poor white trash to actually afford cable tv and therefore view that documentary, BUT somehow I managed to come up with the $11 to buy the DVD of Patsy (not available on Netflix) just to check out the vase scene. And here it is, co-starring the late, great Hans Conried. Vase business + chair business = quick post. My $11 Christmas present to you all. Now to the rest of my shopping...

3 comments:

Chris Michael said...

This is a really interesting sketch. It great material - really well executed catches - and the back and forth in the singing at the end is clowning by numbers. Does anyone else find it a bit slow?

Jonathan Lyons said...

Thank you for posting this. It was the scene from the Lewis documentary I was most interested in seeing whole.

jt said...

Yes, kinda slow, plus the explosive ending just seems too abrupt, not built up to.