User Reviews

Nov. 28, 1950 saw 'Uncle Miltie' bring in Lon Chaney to play a mad scientist for a 5 minute sketch that Berle would copy verbatim with Boris Karloff two years later. While Chaney's doctor concocts a concoction to make Berle a more willing test subject, Milt gets spooked by a card playing mummy and a square headed 'Irving Frankenstein' monster that takes one look at Berle and scampers away in fright. A banana doesn't last long with a ravenous ape running circles around Berle, and one sip of the 'concoction' earns this response: "what do you got in there!" (Lon cracks up at the ad lib). Assistant Stanislaus arrives with the other guinea pig, and the audience goes nuts at the sight of crooner Frank Sinatra, hypnotized by the demented doc and placed in a coma: "a Perry Como!" The brain switch is successful, Berle launching into song while Sinatra walks effeminately with hand on hip and speaks with a lisp! The rest of this hour long broadcast might be lost for the ages, Chaney's only appearance on TEXACO STAR THEATRE, and just his second on the small screen, after recreating Lennie from "Of Mice and Men" in 1948 on Ed Sullivan's TOAST OF THE TOWN (a long unseen pilot for THE LIFE OF RILEY starring Lon would not be unearthed until 2018).