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Join celebrated television game show personality GENE RAYBURN as he takes you on a 90 minute laugh-filled trip down television's memory lane to spend an evening with some of the funniest comedians to ever appear on your television set. All the greats are here in this unique collection filled with little known facts, trivia, out-takes, bloopers, and live television sketches as they were originally broadcast. Young and old are sure to enjoy this tribute to these early pioneers of TV comedy for many years to come. This extraordinary collection contains classic comedy routines featuring skits and sketches from 14 of America's most loved comedians and comedy teams from the golden age of television comedy. Great for Film, Radio and Television Classroom use, too! Includes the following: Jack Benny, Steve Allen, Burns & Allen, Sid Caesar, Danny Thomas, Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball, Martin & Lewis, Red Skelton, Ed Wynn, Bob Hope, Allen & Rossi, Milton Berle and Groucho Marx

One of America's most beloved entertainers divulges his personal tricks of the trade (trills, octave vibrato, "fake runs," blues riffs etc.) and shows you how to build arrangements and spice up jazz pieces with a variety of easy techniques.

In his only instructional lesson, Steve Allen covers basic blues, boogie woogie, stride, walking basses, the use of 10ths, descending bass lines and more, while he plays and analyzes "Honeysuckle Rose," "Spring Is Where You Are," "I'm Confessin' That I Love You," "You Can Depend On Me," "A Time For Love" and other jazz standards.

You'll get inside tips about the musical contributions of several jazz masters too, including Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie and Art Tatum in Steve's entertaining and informative overview of jazz piano. A great springboard to further jazz studies!

Critics raved about the first edition of "DUMBTH"--a work that one described as "the ultimate how-to book." Now updated and expanded with twenty new ways to think better, this is Steve Allen's humorous and provocative examination of the increasing American tendency toward muddle-headedness and ineptitude, which Allen uniquely defines as "dumbth." After cataloguing a host of hilarious and sometimes alarming personal encounters with shoddy workmanship, bad service, failures to communicate, and the general breakdown in the capacity to reason, Allen offers 101 solutions to this widespread problem. He recommends that we add a fourth "R"--reasoning--to the traditional reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. Always witty and thought-provoking, 'DUMBTH" makes a compelling case that thinking well, like any skill, requires study, practice, and application.

CLASSIC COMEDY TEAMS The Greatest Comedy Teams Deliver Great Laughs Steve Allen hosts this compilation of classic scenes starring the screen’s greatest comedy teams, following them from their roots in vaudeville, burlesque, and nightclubs to their verbal and visual gems on film and TV. Meet early pioneers like Amos & Andy, Wheeler & Woolsey, and Clark & McCullough, and come to the Hal Roach Studios, where Our Gang and Laurel & Hardy successfully made the transition to talking pictures. See Stan and Ollie’s first pairing, the Three Stooges with straightman Ted Healy, the uncut version of Abbott & Costello’s "Who’s on First?," and rare footage of the Marx Brothers, Hope & Crosby, and Burns & Allen. From the silent antics of the Keystone Kops to the early live TV appearances of Martin & Lewis, this one-of-a-kind documentary offers teamwork of the funniest kind, with entertainment for families and collectors alike. Produced by SANDY OLIVERI & PAUL HARRIS Directed by DAVID BERGMAN A MOVIETIME INC./BERGMAN-HARRIS PRODUCTION Approximately 110 minutes Color and Black & White UTOPIA See Laurel and Hardy in Their Final Film In their final film, Laurel and Hardy inherit a yacht docked in Marseille and an island in the South Seas, but when they try to sail one to the other, they are shipwrecked on a nameless atoll that rises out of the Pacific. Accompanied by chef Antoine (Max Elloy), a "stateless man," and Giovanni Copini (Adriano Rimoldi), a stowaway, Stan and Ollie establish a tropical paradise using Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as their guide. Soon, Eden gets its Eve in the form of Chérie Lamour (Suzy Delair), a vivacious French singer fleeing a failed romance, who brings an unwelcome note of temptation and competition into their little island fraternity. Also known as Atoll K, Escapade, and Robinson Crusoeland, the film was shot in France in 1950, but its release was delayed for several years due to the controversy surrounding blacklisted codirector John Berry. EXPLOITATION PRODUCTIONS INCORPORATED Presents STAN LAUREL * OLIVER HARDY "UTOPIA" Also in the Cast SUZY DELAIR * M. ELLOY * M. DALMATOFF * A. RIMOLDI Screenplay J. KLORER * F. KOHNER * R. WHEELER * P. TELLINI Directed and Based on an Idea by LEO JOANNON Dialogue JOHN KLORER * MONTY COLLINS * I. KLOUCOWSKY Gags by MONTY COLLINS Music by PAUL MISRAKI Approximately 83 minutes Black and White

"If you have ever turned on the TV after the 11 o’clock news and laughed, you owe Steve Allen a debt of gratitude." That’s how Entertainment Weekly described Steve Allen’s enormous contribution to American popular culture in a tribute to the legendary entertainer after his death on October 30, 2000. Steve Allen created the Tonight show—America’s longest running entertainment show and most successful late-night TV show. In so doing he led the way for other American icons: Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, David Letterman, and Jay Leno. The formula we all now take for granted did not exist before Allen: the desk, the opening monologue, breezy chats with celebrities, wacky stunts, comedy sketches, cameras roaming down the hall and outside the theater, off-the-cuff interviews with passers-by, and ad-lib banter with the studio audience. It’s all great fun and it’s all due to the incredibly witty, incurably silly, musically gifted, and ever-likeable Steve Allen.

Based on exclusive interviews, Ben Alba has produced this wonderful history of the first Tonight show, complete with terrific photos from the show and revealing insights from over 30 entertainment legends who knew and worked with Steve Allen—including Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Tom Poston, Bill Dana, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams, Tim Conway, the Smothers Brothers, Diahann Carroll, Eartha Kitt, and Bill Dana. In addition, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Bill Maher, Bob Costas, and other TV veterans reflect on Allen’s contributions.

Starting with Allen’s early career in radio, Alba shows how the young radio talent developed many of the elements that would soon light up late-night television. He then highlights Allen’s many innovations that made the Tonight show so appealing and enduring: the single-guest and single theme shows, road shows and live segments from across the country, Broadway shows visiting Tonight, creating a forum for jazz artistry and a groundbreaking showcase for African-American talent, musical tributes, and the use of the studio audience as a comedy goldmine.

Alba has created an invaluable, entertaining, and revealing behind-the-scenes look at the birth of an American television institution and its brilliant inventor, whose influence continues to make America stay awake and laugh—night after night.