Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Bugs Bunny Merrie Melodies cartoon, the 1948 Hot Cross Bunny directed by Robert McKimson.
The song Bugs dances to trying to amuse the doctors in the stands is the same one Daffy Duck dances to in Show Biz Bugs.
The folks at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour advised you to begin filling out your Christmas cards last week. This week we encourage you to get your Christmas cards out soon. You've got to hurry to avoid the rush - The week of December 16 - 22 is predicted to be the busiest mailing, shipping and delivery week, when nearly 3 billion pieces of First-Class Mail, including greeting cards, will be processed and delivered, (the more cards you send, the more solvent the USPS remains.) While you're looking up your Aunt Millie's address, we like to continue our foray into the Rat Pack.
Tonight, we'd like to share with you a relatively unknown recorded Rat Pack concert. Back in June of 1965, Frank Sinatra and a slew of his friends performed at the Kiel Opera House in St. Louis in a benefit for Dismas House (St. Dismas was on of the thieves crucified along side Jesus Christ, hence making him the patron saint of reformed thieves,) a national halfway home for convicts. The event was held in the main theater of the Opera House, but the overflow audience also filled a dozen halls nearby where tickets had been sold for viewing rooms where the concert was broadcast on closed circuit television. It was the only time the Rat Packs' famous Sands show was televised. (Back in 1998, I worked on a television special, broadcasting the concert for the first time on cable television.)
So, as is always our want, we would like you to sit back (quick, find the most comfortable seat on the sofa,) get a snack and a beverage, (preferably a martini in this instance,) and join The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour in watching this very rare televised example of the famous Rat Packs' Sands show, The Frank Sinatra Spectacular.
As you have just seen, show is something closer to a documentary than a polished concert film, with some of the usual Sinatra glow stripped away. We easily see the scar on his right cheek that makeup and lighting usually soften. We hear the occasional stray note that never would have made it onto a recording or feature-length film.
The gentlemen from Bensonhurst were so moved by our themes concerning Frank and Dino that after much stregga and threatened 'kisses of death', for the sixth year in a row, I have be persuaded (forced at gunpoint) to have another Mobbed Up Christmas this year.
(This is not to say that any of these singers are in anyway associated with organized crime.) It's just that Frankie Lupini, Molluschi Vincenzo, Joey Carrozza, etc, 'requested' these songs.
Merry Christmas Baby Dion -
Shake Hands With Santa Claus Louis Prima -
The Christmas Song Tony Martin -
Do You Hear What I Hear? Bobby Vinton -
O, Holy Night Jerry Vale -
After many shots and plates of scungilli, baccalà alla vicentina and fried calamari, the boys want to wish everyone Buon Natale!
Demand Euphoria!
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