Customer Reviews

The Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show: Volume Three

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This is a review of the complete 'Best of Dean Martin...' sets. I'm not critiquing any specific volume, so I apologize in advance that this review is found on every one. However, since my review is for all buyers and not just those of a certain volume, this seems necessary.
'The Dean Martin Show'(1965-74) was a favorite of mine as a child &, outside of the vaudeville slapstick, it still holds up pretty well. As for the packaging, however, Martin's longtime assistant, Greg Garrison, has edited this whole thing together with no consideration to content or style: on e. volume, excerpts from all nine seasons are poorly tossed together, with the jump from time periods being extremely jarring & the style of the show completely lost. Included are reminiscences from guest stars of the show, but these are poorly edited into the format, looking more like cheap quality early 80s videos. A friend of mine, who also likes 60s TV, was just horrified when he saw this mishmash.
So, basically, if you're someone who just wants to see the show and has no concerns on how you view it, these'll possibly be fine. Contrarily, if you have fond memories of the show and its style, which Martin worked hard on, you'd probably do better waiting for a better package. A season by season release, as most TV offers now, is long overdue.
The real culprit here is Guthy-Renker, who has the rights to the show. It's an extremely dated company that does this very same thing to all programs to which they received the rights, such as 'The Carol Burnett Show' & 'Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In'. I believe 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' has had this same problem, but handled by a different mishandler.

DVDs of THE BEST OF THE DEAN MARTIN VARIETY SHOW (2001) were once available from GUTHY-RENKER via a TV infomercial. There are 30 individual one-hour compilations in this series, which has since become somewhat of a collectible. (Note: these are highlights only, not complete programs.)

Title card seen here was also used as THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW LP cover. Audio is clean mono. Colors in these dubs of well-preserved tape excerpts are vibrant.

CONTENTS for Volume 3--
Opening monologue and "The Birds and the Bees"
Dance lesson from Juliet Prowse, "Cheek To Cheek"
Orson Welles on his radio days, then skit: "Johnny Pistachio, Private Eye," starring Orson, with Dean as SFX man
Dom De Luise intros Dean with Gina Lollobrigida
Dean: mystery voice contest (piano tops)
With Peter Sellers in doctor skit
Peggy Lee: "Little Girl Blue"; producer/director Greg Garrison on Peggy, as she and Dean sing duet
George Gobel plays guitar and sings "A Hole in the Bucket" with Dean
Dean's lyric one-liners with Ken Lane at the piano, then "Welcome To My World"
De Luise intros his first Martin Show gig, as magician "Dominick the Great" (with Dean)
With Jimmy Stewart; Jimmy tells MORTAL STORM story then plays piano for duet with Dean: "Ragtime Cowboy Joe"
Hair stylist skit wth Jimmy, Dean and Orson; they sing parody of "Personality"
"Look For The Silver Lining" - credits

I bought this for my brother for Christmas, since he is hard to please. He has enjoyed it, but I was a little disappointed, in that you had to buy several to get a season. They only have a small selection of the show, on one DVD.

There are some really funny bits on this DVD but unfortunately, like the rest of this series, it is a heavily-edited compilation from several shows. I loved Peter Sellers (it's almost worth it alone to see him doing a crazy Irish doctor) and much of the rest but would have preferred to see entire shows.

I made a mistake and ordered Volumn #3, when I really needed Volumn #2 of Dean Martin Variety Show. Have tired to contact someone and try to exchange it but have not had any sucess in doing so. Any one who knows how to go about this, please let me know. Thanks so much. My order came fast and in good shape, however I did not play it to see if it really works good. I need some help. Thanks Wouldn't mind ordering more if I could get this straightened out first.