Brett and Charles -- they were great!
Sunday December 30, 2007
Categories: Culture
Victor Morton, lad, this remembrance of the Match-Game-made-in-heaven pairing of Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly, both of whom passed away this year, is for you....
Filed Under: Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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And Bert Convy. RIP- 1990
As a teen, I remember he was the cute and kind guy.
Such was their repartee that, when I was a kid watching (yes, I know, kids shouldn't have been watching Match Game, but as I've said before, it was the '70s), I thought they were married.
Somers, of course, was married to Jack Klugman, as noted. And CNR ... well, I didn't figure out the Paul Lynde thing on Hollywood Squares, either (much as I found him hysterical), so there you go.
Hail and farewell.
[Victor's heart returns to normal speed]
[Rod's hand moves into the screen ... "Pathetic Post of the Year Award"]
What an awesome essay!!
The greatness of the show was that despite what the NYT writer says (correctly in itself), about the sexuality on display in the show was exactly that a prepubescent boy could still watch it, and enjoy the Brett-and-Charles fag-haggery, without having his innocence violated. Or that he could laugh at how Brett and Gene would naughtily talk about "that motel in Encino" though he wouldn't have had any idea what to do if he was in a motel room with Brett. There's an art to telling a dirty joke that has really been lost.
About Bert Convy ...
He was a completely different style of game-show host than Gene Rayburn, and unfortunately the one that has come to dominate. Convy (you can toss Wink Martindale in here too) was a kind of "slicked-back Max Headroom," to quote a friend, whose point was to come across as a perfectly smooth MC, keeping the game going on schedule under the illusion of perfect order.
But the avuncular Rayburn though correctly saw the show as a silly diversion and went along with it, with his clowning around and indulging Brett and Charles, his imitations of Dracula, old Mr. Periwinkle and others, his creepy lecherousness, his call-and-response questions like "Ugly Edna is so ugly/Dumb Dora is so dumb," etc. ... [Audience: how ugly/dumb is she?]
I'm remembering Bert, the panelist. Your right about the host bit. Completely different. Gene was great for awhile but as I got older he did get a little creepy.
Thank you, Victor ... I think.
FYI, there is now a documentary capturing Charles Nelson Reilly's famous one-man show about his life, called (what else?) "The Life of Reilly." I missed it when it came through Washington, D.C. on a one-week run, but it supposed to be terrific and very moving.
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