Fractured Flickers

''Fractured Flickers'' is a live-action syndicated half-hour comedy television program produced by Jay Ward, who is otherwise known for cartoons. The pilot film was produced in 1961 (hence the 1961 copyright notice on the animated main title), but the series was not completed until 1963. Twenty-six episodes were produced; they were syndicated by Desilu Productions and played for several years on local stations.

Content

Host Hans Conried introduced short "flickers" pieced together from silent film footage and from other older films, overdubbed with newly written comic dialogue, music, and sound effects. The voices for these were provided by fellow Ward mainstays Paul Frees, June Foray, and Bill Scott.

The earliest episodes have careful dubbing, with the actors and writers taking pains to synchronize the new dialogue with the actors' lip movements. Once the series had deadlines to face, however, the time-consuming dubbing was abandoned, and the later episodes do not bother with exact synchronization. The concept anticipated Woody Allen's comic overdubbed film debut a few years later.

True to the Jay Ward brand of humor, the dialogue was loaded with puns and one-line jokes. One silent vignette was retitled " The Barber of Stanwyck", utilizing scenes from Douglas Fairbanks' 1920 silent classic, '' The Mark of Zorro''. The canine serial Rin Tin Tin was satirized as "Foam, king of the mad dogs." Films, television, advertising, and even the ''Fractured Flickers'' series itself and executive producer were fair game for merciless kidding. (Conried quipped, "This is what we'll be doing for the next several weeks--or until someone finds out!") The show was at its funniest when desecrating early melodramas with "hip" reinterpretations, such as presenting Rudolph Valentino as an insurance salesman or Lon Chaney Sr.'s '' The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' as "Dinky Dunstan, Boy Cheerleader." ( Lon Chaney Jr. was not amused by the latter and attempted unsuccessfully to sue Jay Ward over it.) Many segments were vicious satires of television commercials; a typical "word from our sponsor" would have the announcer extolling the virtues of the item being advertised, accompanied by darkly humorous clips. A fly-by-night real estate development, for example, was illustrated with clips of buildings being destroyed by a cyclone (from '' Steamboat Bill, Jr.'' with Buster Keaton). And "This moment of softness (explosions, wild parties, etc.) has been brought to you by Bee. Bee, the only tissue woven in mid-air by bees!" Regular features were the "Minute Mysteries", featuring a credited Stan Laurel as master detective Sherman Oaks (his scenes "fractured" from his 1925 short comedy, '' Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde''), and the weekly "tributes" to some American city.

Each episode also featured a celebrity guest whom Conried would interview. Most were popular TV or film personalities of the 1960s such as Fabian, Bob Denver, Deborah Walley, Rod Serling, and Rose Marie. Many of them caught the spirit of the show, and answered Conried's scripted questions with tongue in cheek.

Many prominent figures of the 1960s were lampooned, including TV icons such as "Uncle Walt" Disney (after signing off, “Well that oughta hold the little stinkers for tonight”). Bob Newhart's distinctive hesitant delivery was frequently mimicked for droll narration. A segment based on the Kennedy family (and produced long before airtime) was excised from all copies of the series when John F. Kennedy was assassinated so that it was never shown; although a throwaway line to another character named John Fitzgerald slipped through. This segment remains lost to this day.

Guest stars

The following were guest stars:

# Rose Marie 8-1-63
# Fabian 8-8-63
# Gypsy Rose Lee 8-15-63
# Allan Sherman 8-22-63
# Annette Funicello 8-29-63
# Edward Everett Horton9-5-63
# Paula Prentiss 9-12-63
# Sebastian Cabot 9-19-63
# Roddy McDowall 9-26-63
# Vivienne Della Chiesa 10-3-63
# Connie Stevens 10-10-63
# Rod Serling 10-17-63
# Connie Hines 10-24-63
# Cesar Romero 10-31-63
# Diana Dors 11-7-63
# Bullwinkle J. Moose 11-14-63
# Deborah Walley 11-21-63
# Paul Lynde 11-28-63
# Anna Maria Alberghetti12-5-63
# Ruta Lee 12-12-63
# Barbara Eden 12-19-63
# Bob Denver 12-26-63
# Pat Carroll 1-2-64
# Bob Newhart 1-9-64
# Ursula Andress 1-16-64
# Zsa Zsa Gabor 1-23-64
An interview with Johnny Weissmuller was filmed but not used; the interview with the Bullwinkle puppet may have been filmed as its replacement. Co-producer Bill Scott (Bullwinkle's voice) appears briefly in two episodes, one as a delivery man and the other a clumsy stuntman who falls flat on his face.

Home media

The complete series was released on DVD by VCI Entertainment in 2004.

As of 2022, reruns of the show aired on Movies! channel every Sunday morning.

See also

* '' Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection''
* ''Mystery Science Theater 3000''

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, id=0056756, title=Fractured Flickers

1963 American television series debuts
1964 American television series endings
1960s American parody television series
American English-language television shows
Black-and-white American television shows
First-run syndicated television programs in the United States
Jay Ward Productions
Works with sampled silent films
Television series by Desilu Productions