Mike Douglas -- the Ed Sullivan of daytime TV

Mike Douglas - Moments & Memories / John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Rolling Stones, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Martin: Back in the '60s, there are a hard and fast rule in our house. Nothing but nothing interrupted "The Mike Douglas Show." (Forgive me, Mom!)
Looking back, however, it wasn't as bad of a thing as it seemed at the time. For one, Douglas, who got his start as a big band singer with Kay Kyser, was an easy-going guy who had a knack for bringing on great guests, some of them controversial. Folks like Bill Cosby, Steve Martin, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ingrid Bergman, Marlon Brando, Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield, Groucho Marx, Bob Hope and John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Mike Douglas - Moments & Memories / John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Rolling Stones, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Martin, a new single disc DVD from Kultur International being released March 25, recounts Douglas' story and collects highlights of many of those performances.
The clips are augmented by interviews, including fond recollections from Douglas' widow, Genevieve. (One fascinating fact about Douglas that we learned for the first time from the DVD: He was the voice of Prince Charming in Disney's "Cinderella.")
But it's the clips that are the real attraction here. There's an early rare clip of the Rolling Stones in black and white that is fascinating to watch as the camera alternates from the faces of the gyrating Stones performing to the fans in the audience screaming and carrying on wildly.
Another highlight is a clip featuring Bob Hope, who for years sponsored a major golf tournament in his name, watching a very young boy brought on the show for his early age talent for the game. The boy's name? Tiger Woods.
It's Jack Benny acting naturally and, as usual, making the audience roar with laughter. It's KISS acting up in front of the cameras and showing off their makeup and costumes to housewives who probably had never seen such a sight before. It's Steve Martin, David Letterman, Jay Leno and George Carlin display the early talent that brought them later fame. It's a rare interview with Mother Teresa, who even then brought an aura of saintliness with her. There's so much here to enjoy, including a clip of Douglas performing his Top 40 hit, "The Men In My Little Girl's Life."
One of the main highlights of the disc is the chapter featuring the unprecedented week of shows co-hosted by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It was so unusual to have someone so conservative looking like Douglas allow Lennon and Ono to basically take over the show for a week. But he did and the result was fascinating. Lennon and Ono invited many of their politically active friends to appear -- Jerry Rubin, Ralph Nader and Bobby Seale were among those who showed up. The week also gave Lennon the chance to fulfill a dream -- to perform with Chuck Berry. The clip of the two singing "Johnny B. Goode," which has been passed around on bootlegs for years, is here in crystal clarity. As a Lennon fan ourselves, since the whole week's shows were once on video, we only wish a DVD of the whole week's shows would be released. (Actually, it was in Brazil for a while, but appears to be out of print.)
This is a fun disc that we can't help but recommend. We really hope, like the Dick Cavett and "The Tomorrow Show" series of DVDs, that more releases will come with more moments and memories.

John, Paul, Tom and Ringo -- the Fab Three plus one

If Dick Cavett was the hip big brother of talk show hosts, Tom Snyder was the fuddy duddy uncle who you had to explain everything to. That's quite evident in "The Tomorrow Show With Tom Snyder: John Paul Tom & Ringo", an interesting new collection of vintage interviews of three of the Beatles available from Shout Factory on April 1.

The best of the interviews is clearly the one with John Lennon, which was first shown in 1975 and replayed the night after Lennon was killed with new guests added. It's the replay that's included here. If Snyder comes across a little, let's say, naive, John, in a very accomodating mood, sets Snyder straight. "Were the Beatles before the groupies?", Snyder asks at one point.

The replay includes comments from a still shocked "Double Fantasy" producer Jack Douglas and rock critic Lisa Robinson.

That's not the case with the Paul McCartney interview, originally aired on Dec. 20, 1979. It's Paul and Linda, first, who are then joined by Denny Laine and Laurence Juber via satellite discussing Wings before a show at London's Rainbow Theatre. The interview gets off to a horrible start as Snyder makes an impatient Paul and Linda wait (actually telling Paul to "hang on a minute ... we're not ready yet") for an incredibly long introduction (including a boring technical update of the equipment being used for the interview) and a playing of the "Spin It On" music video. Paul and Linda manage to stay polite, though various comments through the interview give evidence that they did not enjoy the experience. No surprise: Few of the questions rise above the pedestrian level. Despite the success being enjoyed by Wings, Snyder even asks about the possibility of a Beatles reunion. When Juber and Laine join the interview, Snyder has to ask the two to introduce themselves because he clearly doesn't know who is who.

The interview with Ringo, recorded in Los Angeles and first aired Nov. 25, 1981, is pretty run of the mill for Ringo, who seems to treat it like nothing special. It really isn't. Snyder starts off asking the meaning of the title of Ringo's then-current album, "Stop and Smell the Roses" after years of what Snyder calls "turmoil, frenzy and confusion," then following up with how Ringo likes being 40. Snyder also discusses John Lennon, who died less than a year before the interview was taped. Barbara Bach also is interviewed, and the couple discuss their apperances in the movie "Caveman."

The quality of the Lennon and Ringo interviews are excellent, especially the Lennon, which has been a favorite among collectors in copies taken from a long out-of-print video release. The McCartney interview, though not as sharp in quality as the other two, seems to have come from a decent video master. Still, it's surprising the quality isn't better.

Despite the reservations, "The Tomorrow Show With Tom Snyder: John Paul Tom & Ringo" is a set worth getting just for the Lennon interview alone. It's good to see this interview, one of Lennon's best, available again. The McCartney and Starr interviews are worth seeing for archival purposes only, but we all have some of that stuff in our collections, don't we?

Following in the footsteps of the Beatles

The Beatles were quite a world traveling bunch even before they conquered the musical world in 1964. A series of DVDs by Artsmagic retraces those footsteps and gets fans back to where the Beatles once belonged.
The Beatles - Liverpool (Two-Disc Edition), The Beatles London, The Beatles, Hamburg and the Hamburg Sound and John Lennon's New York - A Magical History Tour all focus on Beatles sites in their home country, in Germany where they gained musical experience away from home, and in New York City, where John Lennon spent the final years of his life. Each of the discs features narration by Beatle fans and historians and guest appearances by Beatles associates.
"The Beatles - Liverpool (Two-Disc Edition)," hosted by Liverpool Beatle expert Spencer Leigh and Beatle historian Ray O'Brien, takes you to well-known and little known places in the Beatles hometown and is a pure delight. Along the way, they meet up with Bill Harry, editor of the influential newspaper Mersey Beat, which covered the Beatles early days in print, Allan Williams, better known as the man who gave the Beatles away and Kingsize Taylor, who performed on a Hamburg bill with the band. Harry and Williams have been interviewed numerous times for Beatle history projects, but their stories have an added charm here when coupled with seeing the actual places the Beatles spent their rise to fame. (By the way, all titles reviewed here have been released in two versions, a single "concise" version and a longer expanded. If you're a diehard Beatles fan, go for the longer versions. They're well worth the small extra cost.)

Leigh also hosts "The Beatles, Hamburg and the Hamburg Sound," a special look at the Beatles' sites in Hamburg and their link to British rock 'n' roll. Sites visited include the Indra Club, the Star Club and the Kaiserkeller. The trip concludes with a visit by Kingsize Taylor, now a resident of Hamburg.
In similar fashion, "The Beatles London," takes you around various Beatle-related sites in the British capitol. It's hosted by Richard Porter, whose daily Beatle walking tours take tourists on a magical mystery tour that occasionally have been known to encounter some well-known people. Here, Porter takes viewers to Abbey Road, Decca Studios, where they tried (and failed) to get a pre-EMI record contract, and a few of their earlier homes. He's joined by a host of Beatle experts including Bill Harry, author Keith Badman and special guest Chris Dreja of the Yardbirds. Having led the walking tours, Porter is quite knowledgeable and uses that expertise to guide viewers on the DVD. Lovers of Beatle minutia will love the little-known facts that Porter and friends discuss.
"John Lennon's New York - A Magical History Tour" takes a special trip (over three hours of original footage) around the places in his life that were important to John Lennon during his years in the Big Apple. The Dakota, of course, is included, as is Strawberry Fields in Central Park and the Statue of Liberty, plus many lesser known places. Your tour guides are Trina Yannicos, editor of Daytrippin', and Susan Ryan, editor of the fan fiction webzine Rooftop Sessions. Their guests include photographers Bob Gruen and Allen Tannenbaum, John's Japanese instructor Tamiko Steinberg and musician David Peel, whose interview shows him to be every bit the unique person seen in his music.
Yannicos, in an email to us, commented on the interviews:

Yes, David Peel is quite eccentric. But once you get past that, you see he is a really sincere, nice person and you can see why John and Yoko were friends with him in the early 70s.
All the interviews were fascinating to me. I learned a lot from speaking with each person. The one that stood out was with Tamiko Steinberg. She is a hidden treasure! Here is someone who spent eight hours a day with John Lennon for two straight months. She got to know him quite well and she tells some great stories about her experiences with him.

To sum it up, these are fascinating DVDs. If you've dreamed of getting to Liverpool, London, Hamburg or New York and touring Beatle sites, this is a good way to plan your trip or see what you'll never get to.