The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians (1970)

Well, I don’t know how I’ve managed to live this long without ever seeing this, as a life long classic comedy and vaudeville fan, as someone who grew up on Rankin-Bass specials, and also as someone has actually researched and directed one of the scenes in the show. Captain Obvious, make way for Captain Oblivious! At any rate I stumbled on it a few days ago in the midst of preparing my new book The Marx Brothers Miscellany. I’m glad it exists, I’m glad I saw it and know about it, but I doubt that I’ll be tempted to see it again.

The special was a sort of vaudeville tribute created by Rankin-Bass, and shown as a lead-in to the 1970 Oscars telecast. For fans of the Rankin-Bass holiday specials, it came out in the pocket between Frosty the Snowman (1969) and Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970). The producers clearly had a fondness for old show business veterans. Just as the former show had featured Jimmy Durante and Jackie Vernon, and the latter one had Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney, The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians has the voices of Groucho Marx, George Burns, Jack Benny,George Jessel,Henny Youngman, and Jack E. Leonard. The voices of the long-departed W.C. Fields and and Chico Marx (and the still-living but retired Zeppo) are provided by Paul Frees, which fooled no one (he was a great announcer and voice-over artist but his impressions were generally terrible). Alongside the old timers, there were some more current entertainers like Phyllis Diller, Flip Wilson, and the Smothers Brothers.

I recall seeing a lot of these all-star nostalgic comedy tributes during the 1970s. Most of them were done as live-action variety shows. (You can see a show like this depicted in the movie The Sunshine Boys). This one was animated by a Japanese team headed by Osamu Dezaki, a frequent collaborator of Rankin-Bass. The title evokes Mad Magazine, the movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and the team’s own earlier film The Mad Monster Party. In between “onstage” bits starring the comedians delivering one-liners, there were several extended segments, chiefly Flip Wilson’s “Columbus” routine off a 1967 comedy record, perhaps chosen because it had a similar historical theme to the Marx Brothers’ Napoleon sketch from I’ll Say She Is, also presented. This is of course the scene I was interested in, having directed a version of it nearly a decade ago, and because, if you really wanted to fudge it, you could call it the Marx Brothers’ last appearance, and the first since The Incredible Jewel Robbery, although, as we said, it only featured Groucho. (Napoleon is traditionally associated with insanity in comedy. Whether intentional or not, it helps justify the word “mad” in the show’s title). The special also has a bit concerning Jack Benny and George Burns’ misadventures in Benny’s notorious Maxwell automobile, which had been voiced on radio by Mel Blanc (though someone else does it in this special, probably because it was cheaper). This Burns and Benny bit makes me wonder if the special was partial inspiration for The Sunshine Boys.

Because this is a cartoon, allowing you to do anything, there are depictions of several other comedians and other public figures in the special who are seen but not heard, including Charlie Chaplin,Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (who also had his own cartoon around the same time), The Beatles (ditto), as well as The Munsters, The Beverly Hillbillies,Popeye,Tom and Jerry, Charlie Brown, and Yogi Bear. I think the general idea of such a special was that it would appeal to very young people as well as very old people. And if it didn’t, there was an aggressive (if unconvincing) laugh track to provide an illusion of hilarity.

Anyway, it’s on Youtube, if you’re curious!

For more on the Marx Brothers, please readThe Marx Brothers Miscellany: A Subjective Appreciation of the World’s Greatest Comedy Team — and come see us atMarxfest, May 17-26, 2024!