I was so glad to finally get to see
Miss Stardust! It was very cute and cartoony, and there were a few VERY funny lines in it, too! I looked at the other posts above from last June, and that review Patti shared with us was so ridiculous. This episode was so obviously intended to be a silly comedy, and in that vein it was great!
This brought back a sad memory for me, though. I work at UCSD, and did back in 1987, too, when Dick Shawn died here. Here's a little blurb about it I found online:
Once in a while, it seems that fate takes pity on a comedian, and the phrase "he died laughing" springs to mind.
DICK SHAWN died on April 17, 1987
A charismatic entertainer, Shawn was (along with Jonathan Winters) picked to be one of the big stars in comedy when he hit his stride in the 50's. It was all a matter of finding a way to harness his talent for zany characters and weirdly hip free-form. For average viewers, he only succeed twice in the next thirty years: as the horrifyingly zany Hitler in "The Producers" and a distraught hippie in "Mad Mad Mad Mad World."
Although he didn't make many film or TV appearances over the years, Shawn did tour often over the years and periodically performed a one-man show that mixed songs, sketches and even pantomime.
Shawn once said, "I think of my relationship with any audience as a love affair. It lasts only a little while but I always look forward to a happy ending. For both of us." He was performing at the University of California at San Diego one night. He was telling a gag about nuclear war. He was his manic self as he began to imagine the holocaust. Nobody would survive, he explained, except the audience in the little sheltered theater! Then he shouted, "And I would be your leader!"
He fell forward, flat on his face. He lay there while the audience laughed. Shawn's son Adam was in the audience and he knew this was no act.
In writing about Dick Shawn's death, New York Post columnist Cindy Adams recounted what the comedian said about trying to find the right audiences for his brand of comedy: "I can't work places like Vegas or the Catskills where people are belching. Maybe I belong in colleges. At least if I die, I die in front of intelligent people who know what I'm talking about."
My co-worker was in the audience that night, and was so upset by it (felt especially bad that it took everybody so long to catch on) she had to stay home from work the next day.
Vikki
