Customer Reviews

Greg Garrison Presents The Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show - Volume 14

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This is a general review of the entire DEAN MARTIN SHOW collection. Dean's show, which ran from 1965 to 1974 was a staple of television entertainment in its time, and by and large it holds up beautifully, even though thirty-odd years have passed.

It was a true VARIETY show: Any given week might bring you comic improvisation from Jonathan Winters, dance numbers by Juliet Prowse or Gene Kelly, offbeat short subjects starring Marty Feldman, Shakespeare as interpreted by Orson Welles, sketch comedy by Dom DeLuise, surprise visits from Frank Sinatra, TV debuts by Flip Wilson and Goldie Hawn, and the beautiful Golddiggers dance troupe, all drawn together by Dean's mellifluous voice, singing standards or one-off gag songs.

Each one of these discs brings you a full sampling of the amazing talents that appeared onstage. A previous reviewer derides the discs as badly edited, "having no rhyme or reason" with "jarring" discontinuities in time. Greg Garrison, the producer, obviously and very intentionally avoided simply releasing episode after episode, instead bringing us Dean and friends in full spectrum, including commentaries. This is top-notch entertainment.

Shockingly enough for Generation XYZers, the humor works even though it avoids vulgarity. It's all-adult, sophisticated, played intelligently to a presumptively intelligent and mature audience, and is never dummed down.

Volume 14 has Dom DeLuise, as Inspector Boddy---and he does---saying to Angie Dickinson, "I suspect there's been foreplay here!" a classic blooper (the script reads "foul play"). He also complains when she sits on his nightstick. The sketch collapses, with Dom, Dean and Angie all in tears from laughter. And if you're not laughing along, then you aren't in the room.

THE DEAN MARTIN VARIETY SHOW COLLECTION takes you to a time and place where showpeople worked at their craft and weren't celebrities simply because they ran red lights drunk and went into rehab every Thursday. Dean's guests are people who possess(ed) true talent and share(d) it with an audience they respect(ed).

This is classy stuff. Where else will you ever see a man in tuxedo sliding down a fire pole?

You don't get entertainment and guest stars like this anymore. I was a kid when the shows these are excerpted from were on NBC. I might have even considered some of the acts corny back then. Maybe a little bit of nostalgia helps. But, it is important to note how good of a comedian Dean was, and how well he worked the TV medium. His former comedy partner, had numerous shows, from prime time variety to Late Night Carson competition, and they all failed. Not Dean.

As for the highlights of this particular edition, I'll take a sexy Angie Dickinson any day. An appreciation of Paul Lynde has grown over the years. Orson Welles is here, and please, my favorite, Jonathan Winters always came through on Dean's show. As a bit of a TV historian, I like the warm, 1960s color videotape image on these DVDs. This is relaxing variety style entertainment of a kind that doesn't exist anymore. If you're nostalgic, or curious, it's a good value.

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.