Remembering Joan Rivers: Joan and Lucy

It takes a great comedienne to know one, as we see here from the great camaraderie between Joan Rivers and Lucille Ball, circa 1984, on these two appearances on The Tonight Show:






In 1973 Joan Rivers made a guest appearance on an episode of Here's Lucy playing Lucy's fellow juror:

Remembering Joan Rivers: "The Girl Most Likely To" from 1973

Fans of 1970's era TV movies will very fondly remember the terrific little dark comedy penned by the late Joan Rivers (and Agnes Gallin, story by Rivers) entitled The Girl Most Likely To, from November of 1973.  Starring a twenty-year old Stockard Channing in her first major movie or TV role and co-starring Ed Asner and a slew of comic (and non-) actors such as Jim Backus, Chuck McCann, Ruth McDevitt, Joe Flynn, Carl Ballantine, Larry Wilcox and Warren Berlinger, TGMLT is a classic revenge comedy played to perfection by its expert cast.

Stockard plays ugly duckling Miriam Knight and what happens after she gets into an automobile accident and undergoes restorative plastic surgery is what The Girl Most Likely To is all about.
The movie got a DVD release a few years ago though many of us already held this one in our hearts and minds all these years in a special place.  It's a favorite of many, including Christopher Laverty's Clothes on Film blog which celebrated one of Stockard's costumes in the movie and Bobby Rivers on his blog where he writes about the movie here.

For those of you who don't have the DVD, we are pleased to present The Girl Most Likely To right here.  Enjoy this terrific example of Joan Rivers' savage wit and keen perceptions about humanity:

The Last of Errol Flynn, As Seen on TV

The release of actor Kevin Kline's new biographical movie about the aging Errol Flynn (1909 - 1959) entitled The Last of Robin Hood brings to mind the charismatic matinee idol's long and entertaining career. He was heartbreakingly handsome as well as immensely talented despite a breezy exterior that may have made it seem as if he didn't take his gift seriously.  He certainly didn't take himself very seriously, living life with a gusto and perpetual wanderlust that made his off-screen antics surely as memorable as anything he played in the movies.

Those antics belied the other side of Flynn, the side that loved the sea, science, politics and lots of other things besides drink and romance.  He was a fascinating guy, a man's man and also a lover of the ladies, lots of them, right down to his final romance depicted in The Last of Robin Hood.

Here's the trailer to the new film.  Honestly, Kline is a bit too old for the role even considering Flynn's rambunctious lifestyle and slight dissipation; Flynn still looked pretty darn good even though he looked older than his actual age.  And one thing that no actor can match is the twinkle in Flynn's eyes, but Kline tries::




Towards the end of his career TV came along and provided him with a few more chances to perform, though he had surely spent the best years of his life already and looked older than he should have.  But the Flynn charm never left him and the audience goodwill he had accumulated over the past twenty years of film stardom kept his name alive, that and the scandalous aura that remained from his rape trial in the early forties.

In 1952 Flynn -- hard to believe he's only 43 years old here -- guest-starred on an episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour:




In 1956 Errol lent his name to and served as host on the dramatic anthology series The Errol Flynn Theatre which ran for 26 half-hour episodes.  (He also starred in two of the episodes):






In June of 1947 he appeared with former co-star Ann Sheridan -- they had starred together on the big screen in Dodge City, Edge of Darkness and Silver River -- John Ireland and Julie London in a Playhouse 90 western entitled "Without Incident":




In early 1957 he made a couple of appearances on variety series The Steve Allen Show, including this comedy sketch spoofing contemporary game shows:



In March 1957 he was one of the panelists on the popular game show What's My Line?:




In December 1957 he was the Mystery Guest on What's My Line?:




Errol Flynn became involved in the Cuban Revolution.  In January of 1959 he was a guest on Canada's Front Page Challenge where he was interviewed about his experiences with Fidel Castro (if the video doesn't show up please click on this link):




The plot of the new movie The Last of Robin Hood deals with this period in Flynn's life, when he took up with much younger actress -- jailbait, in fact -- Beverly Aadland and they appeared together in Flynn's last movie Cuban Rebel Girls and on TV on The Red Skelton Show (no clip available, alas!):




He also lent his presence to a documentary Cuban Story: Truth about Fidel Castro Revolution which disappeared after its Moscow premiere in 1959 and finally resurfaced in 2001,  It was his last screen appearance:




As for Flynn's very last personal appearance anywhere, here's a weird little story from Canadian TV:




I highly recommend reading about Flynn and watching his classic films -- he's magic, unlike any other movie star and simply the best of the best.