Saturday, December 16, 2006

Tonight's TV: Happy Holidays With Bing and Frank (1957)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS WITH BING AND FRANK is a wonderful 25 minutes of Christmas music. This 1957 TV special, in which Bing comes to Frank's for a Christmas meal, has snippets of dialogue that are a little hokey, but the show is wonderfully "retro" in appearance, and you can't beat the almost nonstop singing of the two great masters of 20th Century popular music.

Old Time Radio Experience recently had a nice post on this program.

This special is available on DVD (see subject link). Extras include a commentary track (the late Bill Miller, Frank's longtime pianist, is one of the commentary participants) and video of a Museum of TV and Radio panel discussion about the show with Frank's daughters.

Potential buyers should be aware that the run times on the box (90 minutes) and at Amazon (60 minutes) are incorrect. The program itself is 25 minutes long. Perhaps they were including some of the extras in the running time, which isn't standard practice.

Regardless of running time, this is a show that really adds to the Christmas mood, and fans of Crosby and Sinatra, in particular, will want it in their DVD collection for annual viewing.

2 Comments:

Blogger Wolf Flywheel said...

I've seen the show ,but not the extras. Absolutely wonderful to watch. Could you think of any of today's popular "artists" who could pull off something so wholesome and impressive? I need to get this so I can see the extras. Thanks for the tip.

11:50 PM  
Blogger Irene said...

This is one I'd like to get. I really miss the old Christmas variety shows that used to be on TV like Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Perry Como, etc. I'm really dating myself :)

1:12 PM  

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