travsd

The $1.98 Beauty Show: Worth Every Penny!

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You heard it here first, folks! Rip Taylor (1931-2019) and Charles Nelson Reilly have the same birthday! Good lord, what crazy, kookin’, campy stars were alligned in the heavens on that day??? It’s practically a sign of Armageddon!

Comedian, voice-over actor, television personality, and just about my favorite master of ceremonies on earth, Taylor was THE perfect choice to host Chuck Barris’s follow up to The Gong Show, his beauty pageant parody The $1.98 Beauty Show, which ran in syndication from 1978 to 1980.

I learned many valuable lessons as a host from Taylor, not the least of which is that party favors and confetti will cover all multitude of sins. What matter if the jollity come out of a store-bought package? The bottom line is jollity!

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.

One comment

  1. Ah, I fondly remember as a kid watching the $1.98 Beauty Show and thinking it was a really hilariously done version of the beauty pageants that turned up on occasion to interrupt regular network programming. I’ve been afraid to go looking at YouTube clips of it since too often it turns out my kid version watched stuff so stupid I’m amazed his parents put up with it.

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