TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "The Pinky Lee Show" from NBC (1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MeditationsBySharri'
Length - 27:23

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

"The Pinky Lee Show" was perhaps the epitome of the manic, unhinged kids show of the 1950s. Pinky Lee began as a vaudeville slapstick comic of the "baggy pants" variety--which was the genesis of his trademark checked suit and hat that he continued to wear in his TV shows. He also carried over from vaudeville the kind of frantic and physical style of comedy that made his early-1950s prime-time variety show and this afternoon kids' show such fonts of nonstop zaniness.

The episode above demonstrates this with the chasing around kissing audience members and jumping into a woman's lap during his opening song. It continues in the Sherlock Holmes parody sketch that follows, where Lee is hunting for clues with a magnifying glass and it turns into a manic dance number. Pinky's regular distribution of "Pinky Pops" turns into yet another crazy song and dance routine, and the zany goes right through the end of the episode, with a number where Pinky brings down several adults from the audience to participate in a sort of dance-line.

Lee's kids' show, which was nominated for an Emmy in 1956, represented the peak of his career. He'd appeared in a few movies in the 1940s and early-1950s, and had both a half-hour variety show and a 15-minute sitcom for about a year each in the early-1950s. But this kids' show, with its audience gallery, its juvenile sketches, and its opportunity for Pinky Lee to demonstrate his strengths as a comic is what he's best known for today.