Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: The Comic  (Read 1194 times)

whewfan

  • Member
  • Posts: 2000
The Comic
« on: January 06, 2021, 09:24:08 PM »
I realize that this is only loosely game show related, but I just finished watching the Dick Van Dyke movie "The Comic", which has a brief uncredited cameo by Geoff Edwards. Steve Allen also has an appearance as himself, and I swear one of the other guests on Steve's show looks like a young Peter Bonerz, but IMdB doesn't list him.

For those that care, here's my take on the movie. Dick Van Dyke plays silent film star Billy Bright, a sort of blend of Stan Laurel and Harry Langdon. Carl Reiner, the movie's director and writer, conceived of this idea for an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, but held on to the idea until 1969, a few years after Dick Van Dyke went off the air. The film starts with Billy's funeral, where Billy speaks from "beyond the grave" about the guests that came to pay their respects. Most of the movie's story is told through silent movie clips that pay homage to classic silent movie films. Michelle Lee, a HS semi-regular, played his first wife. Mickey Rooney plays "Cockeye", a character with one crossed eye... perhaps a nod to character actor Ben Turpin, with the same facial feature. (The so called crossed eye was a prosthetic, as Rooney couldn't cross his eyes! When Carl found out, he quipped "this is a guy that could do EVERYTHING, sing, dance, act... but he can't cross his eyes!") The movie ends fairly abruptly, and kind of sad, as Billy Bright watches one of his last films which closely mirrored real life. The "older" Billy Bright is depicted with very thinning hair, which thankfully hasn't happened to Dick Van Dyke in real life, who as far as we know, still has most of his hair!

To sort of bring this back to game shows, Geoff did tell me years ago that his part was larger, and was cut shorter.