In today’s clip, which I assume is from some sort of Thanksgiving Day parade pregame show, Phil Hartman gives us a bird’s eye view of the parade route from the cockpit of a helicopter. This was back in 1996, post-SNL, when Hartman played Bill McNeal on News Radio.
The video quality is not fantastic and some of the banter is a little weird and stilted, but dammit, Phil Hartman is bulletproof in my book. He’s one of my favorite comedic actors ever, and I’d listen to him read the telephone book, if only he was still around to do so. Gone too soon. Try not to think about the fact that he only had a little over a year to live when this video was made, even though I’ve just put that thought in your head.
Bonus Hartman! A Thanksgiving-themed SNL sketch from 1988, featuring John Lithgow, Fargo accents, and some window-rattling burps.
While trawling through the interwebs looking for videos of yesteryear, I stumbled across this one from 1993 that said it featured comedian Elayne Boosler singing a song from Once Upon a Mattress. My first thought was, Ooh boy, do I have the nerve to click ‘play’? When I think “Elayne Boosler,” I think “1980s standup comedy boom” and “blazers with enormous shoulder pads and rolled up sleeves.” I do not think “Broadway magic.”
As evidenced by this clip, however, it turns out that Ms. Boosler has a lovely voice. Shame on me for doubting her. Nonetheless, it begs the question: Why was comedian Elayne Boosler asked to sing a song from a Broadway musical, a musical that she did not appear in, and was not even being mounted on Broadway at the time? Did she casually mention her singing chops to someone at NBC, or was it a cold call? “Looks like I picked the ‘Elayne Boosler’ card out of this hat. Guess I have to give her a ring and see if she knows any showtunes.”
It is one of the most baffling things about this parade, as I’ve said before. It’s not good enough to invite celebrities; they must be gussied up in costumes and belting out a song. Keep in mind, this clip comes from the same year that Laugh In alums JoAnne Worley and Ruth Buzzi had to do much the same thing. In Little Bo Peep costumes no less, the poor bastards.
Maybe the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is just an elaborate, expensive session of celebrity karaoke. But instead of a dark bar serving overpriced Sapporo, they get to do it on national TV while donning frilly dresses.
Elayne Boosler’s song stylings were not a disaster, but the 1993 parade had plenty of other ones. That year, winds whipped at 20 mph and wreaked havoc with handlers’ abilities to control the balloons. In this clip, you’ll see a dinosaur balloon violently bite the dust when he collides with a lamppost and splits down the seam. You will also see the vinyl corpse of Sonic the Hedgehog slumped on the pavement, covered with a large sheet to maintain a modicum of dignity. Oh, the inflated humanity!
Most of my youth, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was hosted by preternaturally gleeful souls like Willard Scott or Matt Lauer. Morning people, through and through, with orange juice and low-octane coffee running through their veins.
Apparently, t’was not always so. In this clip from the 1981 parade, Ed McMahon is your host. You know, Johnny Carson’s affable sidekick. Ed was more of a night owl, if you catch my drift, and boy does he show it here.
McMahon looks woefully ill equipped to be awake and outside at this early hour. He was supposed to arrive on the back of a rollerskating elephant from the Big Apple Circus (!), but after five minutes on the beast’s shaky back he could take no more. So he stumbles out from behind a red curtain, trembling and breathing heavily, and literally pushes his way past two lines of Rockettes to begin his opening monologue. And if you can follow that monologue, you and Ed must speak a special sidekick twin language. Individually, all of his words make sense, but they don’t quite add up to a cohesive whole. It’s like a verbal clearance bin.
McMahon eventually throws things over to “NBC’s newest morning talk show host,” Regis Philbin. Reeg engages Ed with his usual rapid-fire Regis-isms, then switches gears to wax nostalgic over the Thanksgiving parades of his youth and his alma mater, Cardinal Hayes High School. It’s weird to hear a somewhat solemn, subdued Regis Philbin, since I don’t think he’s been able to lower his voice below Shout Level for the last 20 years or so. My theory is, at some point he became confused over where Dana Carvey’s impression of himself ended and the real him began.
After a brief commercial break (McDonalds and an awesome windup motorcycle I kinda want right now), things end on a sour note, as we get a glimpse of the rollerskating elephant. The poor thing totters unsteady on the pavement, moving gingerly. It looks like the unhappiest animal on the planet. Good thing PETA didn’t exist back then, or the Big Apple Circus would’ve gotten a big bucket of red paint in their faces.
UPDATE, 11/19/2012: The original video I shared here has been removed from YouTube by people who hate our freedom. You can, however, get a brief glimpse of what was described above from the clip now posted below, which includes the very beginning of NBC’s 1981 parade coverage. The quality of this video is not fantastic and you will only hear a tiny piece of Ed McMahon’s rambling monologue. However, you will still see Ed almost run over a couple of Rockettes.
Just for laughs, here’s the old link, on the off chance it is restored some day. Courage!
In today’s clip, which I assume is from some sort of Thanksgiving Day parade pregame show, Phil Hartman gives us a bird’s eye view of the parade route from the cockpit of a helicopter. This was back in 1996, post-SNL, when Hartman played Bill McNeal on News Radio.