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🎧 Bruce Vilanch & the Wild World of 1970s Variety TV Spectaculars

The maestro recalls his infamous trio: the 'Star Wars Holiday Special' George Lucas disowned, the 'Paul Lynde Halloween Special' and the 'Brady Bunch Hour'

May 28

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**BRUCE ALMIGHTY** Vilanch with Richard at Ankler HQ on May 4 (top) and in the 1970s, when he began writing for TV. (Matthew Frank; courtesy of Bruce Vilanch)

Bruce Vilanch and the Wild World of 1970s Variety TV Spectaculars

The Ankler Podcast

44:36

For the second episode of Hollywood Stories’ sophomore season, Richard Rushfield talks to the brilliantly profane Bruce Vilanch, known as the longtime joke purveyor extraordinaire for the Oscars (plus the Emmys, Tonys and more). But before he became the go-to for Hollywood galas, Vilanch got his start writing for the big variety shows and specials that peppered the network schedules of the 1960s and ’70s — and represent the height of television’s most flamboyant and unhinged period.

**BEST BETTE** Vilanch in 2007 with Bette Midler, who first hired him to write patter for her in 1974 after he reviewed her Chicago nightclub act. (Jemal Countess/WireImage)

Expanding on some of the wildest misadventures chronicled in his new book, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote, Vilanch takes Richard through three of those song-and-dance spectaculars — the Star Wars Holiday Special that George Lucas famously disowned, the Paul Lynde Halloween Special and the short-lived series The Brady Bunch Hour.

From conjuring musical numbers for graceless Wookiees to putting Robert Reed's Mike Brady in Carmen Miranda drag, Vilanch revels in how right it felt when everything went fantastically wrong. “It was ridiculous, but I had fun,” he recalls. “A lot of these things were conceived in clouds of smoke.”

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