''Fractured Flickers'' is a live-action
syndicated half-hour
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...
show that was produced by
Jay Ward
Joseph Ward Cohen Jr. (September 20, 1920 – October 12, 1989), also known as Jay Ward, was an American creator and producer of animated TV cartoon shows. He produced animated series based on such characters as Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bul ...
, who is otherwise known for cartoons. The pilot film was produced in 1961 (hence the 1961 copyright notice on the animated main title), but the series was not completed until 1963. Twenty-six episodes were produced; they were syndicated by
Desilu Productions
Desilu Productions () was an American television production company founded and co-owned by husband and wife Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. The company is best known for shows such as ''I Love Lucy'', ''The Lucy Show'', ''Mannix'', ''The Untouchabl ...
and played for several years on local stations.
Content
Host
Hans Conried
Hans Georg Conried Jr. (April 15, 1917 – January 5, 1982) was an American actor and comedian. He was known for providing the voices of George Darling and Captain Hook in Walt Disney's ''Peter Pan'' (1953), Snidely Whiplash in Jay Ward's ''Dudle ...
introduced short "flickers" pieced together from
silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...
footage and from other older films,
overdubbed
Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...
with newly written comic dialogue, music, and sound effects. The voices for these were provided by fellow Ward mainstays
Paul Frees
Solomon Hersh "Paul" Frees (June 22, 1920November 2, 1986) was an American actor, comedian, impressionist, and vaudevillian. He is known for his work on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Walter Lantz, Rankin/Bass, and Walt Disney theatrical cartoons during ...
,
June Foray
June Foray (born June Lucille Forer; September 18, 1917 – July 26, 2017) was an American voice actress. She was best known as the voice of such animated characters as Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick, Lucifer from Disney' ...
, and
Bill Scott. The earliest episodes have careful
dubbing
Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production sou ...
, with the actors and writers taking pains to synchronize the new dialogue with the actors' lip movements. Once the series had deadlines to face, however, the time-consuming dubbing was abandoned, and the later episodes do not bother with exact synchronization.
True to the Jay Ward brand of humor, the dialogue was loaded with
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic ...
s and
one-line joke
A one-liner is a joke that is delivered in a single line. A good one-liner is said to be pithy – concise and meaningful. Comedians and actors use this comedic method as part of their act, e.g. Jimmy Carr, Tommy Cooper, Rodney Dangerfield, Norm ...
s. (One silent vignette was retitled "
The Barber of Stanwyck", utilizing scenes from
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including '' The Thie ...
' 1920 silent classic, ''
The Mark of Zorro''.) Films, television, advertising, and even the ''Fractured Flickers'' series itself were fair game for merciless kidding. (Conried quipped, "This is what we'll be doing for the next several weeks--or until someone finds out!") The show was at its funniest when desecrating early
melodramas
A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exces ...
with "hip" reinterpretations, such as presenting
Rudolph Valentino
Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred ...
as an insurance salesman or
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Leonidas Frank "Lon" Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) was an American actor. He is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of cinema, renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and affli ...
's ''
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
''The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'' (french: Notre-Dame de Paris, translation=''Our Lady of Paris'', originally titled ''Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482'') is a French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. It focuses on the unfortunate story o ...
'' as "Dinky Dunstan, Boy Cheerleader." (
Lon Chaney, Jr.
Creighton Tull Chaney (February10, 1906 – July12, 1973), known by his stage name Lon Chaney Jr., was an American actor known for playing Larry Talbot in the film '' The Wolf Man'' (1941) and its various crossovers, Count Alucard (Dra ...
was not amused by the latter and attempted unsuccessfully to sue Jay Ward over it.) Many segments were vicious satires of television commercials; a typical "word from our sponsor" would have the announcer extolling the virtues of the item being advertised, accompanied by darkly humorous clips. A fly-by-night real estate development, for example, was illustrated with clips of buildings being destroyed by a cyclone (from ''
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
''Steamboat Bill, Jr.'' is a 1928 silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. Released by United Artists, the film is the final product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers. It was not a box-office success and became th ...
'' with
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression ...
). And "This moment of softness (explosions, wild parties, etc.) has been brought to you by Bee. Bee, the only tissue
woven
Woven fabric is any textile formed by weaving. Woven fabrics are often created on a loom, and made of many threads woven on a warp and a weft. Technically, a woven fabric is any fabric made by interlacing two or more threads at right angles to on ...
in mid-air by
bees
Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamil ...
!" Regular features were the "Minute Mysteries", featuring
Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson; 16 June 1890 – 23 February 1965) was an English comic actor, writer, and film director who was one half of the comedy double act, duo Laurel and Hardy. He appeared with his comedy partner Oliver Ha ...
as master detective Sherman Oaks (his scenes "fractured" from his 1925 short comedy, ''
Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde
''Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde'' is a 1925 American silent, black-and-white comedy film, directed by Scott Pembroke and Joe Rock (also the producer).
The film itself is both a spoof of the previous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde films (e.g. ''Dr. Jekyl ...
''), and the weekly "tributes" to some American city.
Each episode also featured a celebrity guest whom Conried would interview. Most were popular personalities of the 1960s such as
Fabian,
Bob Denver
Robert Osbourne Denver (January 9, 1935 – September 2, 2005) was an American comedic actor who portrayed Gilligan on the 1964–1967 television series ''Gilligan's Island'', and beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on the 1959–1963 series ''The Ma ...
,
Deborah Walley
Deborah Walley (August 12, 1941May 10, 2001) was an American actress noted for playing the title role in ''Gidget Goes Hawaiian'' (1961) and appearing in several beach party films.
Early years
Walley was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut to Ice ...
,
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator/on-screen host, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series ' ...
, and
Rose Marie
Rose Marie (born Rose Marie Mazzetta; August 15, 1923 – December 28, 2017) was an American actress, singer, comedian, and vaudeville performer with a career ultimately spanning nine decades, which included film, radio, records, theater, night ...
. Many of them caught the spirit of the show, and answered Conried's questions with
tongue in cheek
The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a serious manner.
History
The phrase originally expressed contempt, but by 1842 had acquired its modern meaning. Early users of the phrase include Sir Walter Scott ...
.
Many prominent figures of the 1960s were lampooned. A segment based on the
Kennedy family
The Kennedy family is an American political family that has long been prominent in American politics, public service, entertainment, and business. In 1884, 35 years after the family's arrival from Ireland, Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy be ...
(and produced long before airtime) was excised from all copies of the series when
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
was assassinated so that it was never shown. This segment remains
lost
Lost may refer to getting lost, or to:
Geography
*Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland
* Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US
History
*Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...
to this day.
The entire series is available on a DVD set from VCI Entertainmen
As of 2022, reruns of the show aired on
Movies!
Movies! (also known as simply M!) is an American free-to-air television network, owned by Popcorn Entertainment, LLC, a joint venture between Weigel Broadcasting and the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of Fox Corporation. The network's prog ...
channel every Saturday morning.
Guest stars
The following were guest stars:
#
Rose Marie
Rose Marie (born Rose Marie Mazzetta; August 15, 1923 – December 28, 2017) was an American actress, singer, comedian, and vaudeville performer with a career ultimately spanning nine decades, which included film, radio, records, theater, night ...
8-1-63
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Fabian 8-8-63
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Gypsy Rose Lee
Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper and vedette famous for her striptease act. Also an actress, author, and playwright, her 1957 memoir was adapted into ...
8-15-63
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Allan Sherman
Allan may refer to:
People
* Allan (name), a given name and surname, including list of people and characters with this name
* Allan (footballer, born 1984) (Allan Barreto da Silva), Brazilian football striker
* Allan (footballer, born 1989) (Al ...
8-22-63
#
Annette Funicello
Annette Joanne Funicello (October 22, 1942 – April 8, 2013) was an American actress and singer. Funicello began her professional career as a child performer at the age of twelve. She was one of the most popular Mouseketeers on the orig ...
8-29-63
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Edward Everett Horton
Edward Everett Horton Jr. (March 18, 1886 – September 29, 1970) was an American character actor. He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons.
Early life
Horton was born in Kings County ...
9-5-63
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Paula Prentiss
Paula Prentiss (née Ragusa; born March 4, 1938) is an American actress. She is best known for her film roles in ''Where the Boys Are'' (1960), ''What's New Pussycat?'' (1965), ''Catch-22 (film), Catch-22'' (1970), ''The Parallax View'' (1974), a ...
9-12-63
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Sebastian Cabot 9-19-63
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Roddy McDowall
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall (17 September 1928 – 4 October 1998) was a British actor, photographer and film director. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in ''How Green Was My Valley'' (1 ...
9-26-63
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Vivienne Della Chiesa 10-3-63
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Connie Stevens
Connie Stevens (born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia; August 8, 1938) is an American actress and singer. Born in Brooklyn, New York City to musician parents, Stevens was raised there until age 12, when she was sent to live with family friends in r ...
10-10-63
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Rod Serling
Rodman Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator/on-screen host, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series ' ...
10-17-63
#
Connie Hines
Connie Hines (March 24, 1931 – December 18, 2009) was an American actress best known for playing Alan Young's wife, Carol Post, on the 1960s sitcom ''Mister Ed''.
Biography
Hines was one of four children born in Dedham in Norfolk Coun ...
10-24-63
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Cesar Romero
Cesar Julio Romero Jr. (February 15, 1907 – January 1, 1994) was an American actor and activist. He was active in film, radio, and television for almost sixty years.
His wide range of screen roles included Latin lovers, historical figures in c ...
10-31-63
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Diana Dors
Diana Dors (born Diana Mary Fluck; 23 October 19314 May 1984) was an English actress and singer.
Dors came to public notice as a blonde bombshell, much in the style of Americans Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren. Dors was pr ...
11-7-63
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Bullwinkle J. Moose 11-14-63
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Deborah Walley
Deborah Walley (August 12, 1941May 10, 2001) was an American actress noted for playing the title role in ''Gidget Goes Hawaiian'' (1961) and appearing in several beach party films.
Early years
Walley was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut to Ice ...
11-21-63
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Paul Lynde
Paul Edward Lynde (; June 13, 1926January 10, 1982) was an American comedian, actor and game show panelist. A character actor with a distinctively campy and snarky persona that often poked fun at his barely closeted homosexuality, Lynde was well ...
11-28-63
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Anna Maria Alberghetti
Anna Maria Alberghetti (; born May 15, 1936) is an Italian-American actress and soprano.
Biography
Born May 15, 1936, in Pesaro, Marche, in central Italy, she starred on Broadway and won a Tony Award in 1962 as Best Actress (Musical) for ' ...
12-5-63
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Ruta Lee
Ruta Lee (born Ruta Mary Kilmonis; May 30, 1935) is an American actress and dancer who appeared as one of the brides in the musical ''Seven Brides for Seven Brothers''. She had roles in films including Billy Wilder's crime drama ''Witness for th ...
12-12-63
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Barbara Eden
Barbara Eden (born Barbara Jean Morehead; August 23, 1931) is an American actress, singer, and producer best known for her starring role as Jeannie in the sitcom '' I Dream of Jeannie'' (1965-1970). Other notable roles include Roslyn Pierce opp ...
12-19-63
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Bob Denver
Robert Osbourne Denver (January 9, 1935 – September 2, 2005) was an American comedic actor who portrayed Gilligan on the 1964–1967 television series ''Gilligan's Island'', and beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on the 1959–1963 series ''The Ma ...
12-26-63
#
Pat Carroll
Patricia Ann Carroll (May 5, 1927 – July 30, 2022) was an American actress and comedian. She was known for voicing Ursula in ''The Little Mermaid'' and for appearances in CBS's ''The Danny Thomas Show'', ABC's ''Laverne & Shirley'', and NBC' ...
1-2-64
#
Bob Newhart
George Robert Newhart (born September 5, 1929) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery style. Newhart came to prominence in 1960 when his album of comedic monologues, ''The Button-Down Mi ...
1-9-64
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Ursula Andress
Ursula Andress (born 19 March 1936) is a Swiss-German actress, former model and sex symbol who has appeared in American, British and Italian films. Her breakthrough role was as Bond girl Honey Ryder in the first James Bond film, '' Dr. No'' (1962 ...
1-16-64
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Zsa Zsa Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor (, ; born Sári Gábor ; February 6, 1917 – December 18, 2016) was a Hungarian Americans, Hungarian-American socialite and actress. Her sisters were actresses Eva Gabor, Eva and Magda Gabor.
Gabor competed in the 1933 Mis ...
1-23-64
An interview with
Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller (born Johann Peter Weißmüller; June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) was an American Olympic swimmer, water polo player and actor. He was known for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century. H ...
was filmed but not used; the interview with the
Bullwinkle puppet may have been filmed as its replacement. Co-producer Bill Scott (Bullwinkle's voice) appears briefly in two episodes, one as a delivery man and one as a stuntman.
See also
* ''
Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection
''Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection'' is a 1985 syndicated television show produced by the comedy troupe the L.A. Connection. Every episode is a spoof of a classic movie where the video is the original (although edited to fit the show's half-hou ...
''
* ''
Mystery Science Theater 3000
''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (abbreviated as ''MST3K'') is an American science fiction comedy film review television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on KTMA-TV (now WUCW) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. ...
''
External links
* {{IMDb title, id=0056756, title=Fractured Flickers
1963 American television series debuts
1964 American television series endings
1960s American satirical television series
American parody television series
Black-and-white American television shows
First-run syndicated television programs in the United States
Jay Ward Productions
Silent film
Television series by Desilu Productions