Blast From The Past #2

Ok, I figured to wait a little while longer, but recently I've been on a new kick of watching old Gong Show clips on YouTube.

For those of you who aren't quite familiar with the Gong Show, it was a talent show that aired in the US on NBC from 1976 to 1980, where contestants, both good and bad, would come from all over American to compete for the grand prize: $516.32, apparently a symbolic value since, at the time, that was the take home pay the Screen Actors' Guild would pay for a day's work. If the performer, or performers, were bad after the first 20 seconds, one or more of the 3 judges would hit the gong behind them, ending the act and disqualifying the contestant.

Below is an example of how bad a bad act can be. One phrase best describes this: "DON'T LOOK ETHEL!!!"



The Gong Show grew such a cult-like following that Barris decided to run with it, brining back a few more popular acts more than once. These acts weren't actual contestants but rather fixtures of the show. You had the "Unknown Comic" who would do a stand up routine with a bag over his head, you had "Scarlett and Rhett" who were 2 people portraying the 2 Gone With the Wind characters, and, you had the grandaddy of all reoccurring acts: Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, who was actually one of the stage hands Barris noticed one day dancing and liked his act so he put him on stage. Whenever Gene Gene's "theme song" would start playing (Count Basie's Jumpin' at the Woodside), Barris would start imitating Gene Gene's moves and the audience and judges would start dancing, and the other stage hands would start throwing objectes onto the stage as Gene Gene would contuinue dancing, oblivious to the debris.

Here's a clip of one of his famous entrances



Again, Barris was simply ahead of his time and, to this day, I've yet to see ANYTHING that tops the zanyness and just total creativity that the Gong Show had.