Jackie Gleason's My-Show-Sucked Rant
On Jan. 20, 1961, Jackie Gleason hosted the pilot episode of the CBS game show You’re In the Picture. The show was received so poorly that on the following week, instead of doing it again, Gleason talked to the audience from a stripped-down set and ripped his own program for the whole broadcast. Video from this turned up on TV writer Ken Levine's blog.
According to Wikipedia, Gleason's crack about "Chock Full O' Booze" coffee lost him the sponsorship of Kellogg's for future episodes, which became a talk show for the rest of its short run. But Gleason, who died from colon cancer and liver cancer at age 71 in 1987, sure sold the hell out of L&M Cigarettes.
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This blog has been published since Nov. 7, 1999 (a span of 8,943 days).
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