What a unique 18 minute short this is:
Last night I wasn't at 100%-don't worry, nothing serious-I am back to normal now; subsequently, it seemed right to see something that did not require a lot of time. Thus, an 18 minute comedy sketch which most Americans will likely not be familiar with but the main reason why this review is being posted at this hour of the day is for all the Europeans who follow me... this is an institution in Germany and several other countries in Europe.
Until earlier in the month, I had no knowledge of this. It took the Firefox browser and its habit of recommending various random articles to a story several years old on Mental Floss. What a fascinating story it is-this was filmed in 1963 live on what was then West German television, a British sketch-also done by the likes of Red Skelton and Lucille Ball-presented in English (the first two minutes are a German man explaining it in his native language so the German crowd as a general idea as to what's going on) where two old English actors act out a scenario where a 90 year old woman has a birthday tradition of having dinner with four friends-only they are all dead. Henceforth, her butler acts the part of all four deceased men at the dining room table... this requires him to have four glasses each of four different wines presented during the four course meal.
As probably would be obvious, the butler becomes more and more inebriated; the reason why the crowd loved the sketch in a language most likely weren't familiar with: it was filled with physical humor presented in several different running gags, including his continued tripping over a tiger throw rug. This was why I found the sketch to be pretty funny-I typically enjoy pratfalls, visual gags and what have you. It was filler until 1972 when the NDR-the greatly named Norddeutscher Rundfunk-started showing it each New Year's Eve (or Silvester as it's known over there) and the rest was history. In Germany and several other countries on the continent it is a huge deal-as it resonates with many and is shown on the same day each year, that must have been how it became a tradition. Not too bad for random English actors Freddie Fenton and May Warden... actually, both did a marvelous job here-they had done this bit for years so there was no problem nailing it for live television.
It's a fascinating story I was glad to discover. In the United States the holiday tradition (at least for movies during the Christmas season) is It's A Wonderful Life... mainly because back in the day it was public domain-as a kid I remember it being on all the time on different stations, black and white or colorized, and different lengths, meaning of course that some of them were edited. That was eventually fixed yet NBC has shown it each year since 1996 and hopefully that trend never dies. I've read about what else is popular on TV around the world during December, and it's mainly programs I have no knowledge of. Oddly enough, apparently Trading Places-of all movies-is a big thing in Italy during that time of year; who knew?
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