Victor Borge Lost Episodes Two Review

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(More customer reviews)This episode was shot at Carnegie Hall, live, possibly as early as 1959. It was created by recording the surviving black-and-white kinescope film onto VHS.
It begins with glorious shots of the full house, audience standing, as a chorus sings an awe-inspiring hymn of praise -- to Borge. And of course, at its height, the hymn collapses into a dissonant musical joke.
Strangely enough, during the entire episode, we never see the orchestra or the chorus. My guess is they would have required more pay, residuals, or that the paperwork would have been too much for a TV Special.
What we do see is GRAND!
A young Mike Wallace interviews Borge, who is performing as Franz Liszt, in a format like the one used by Murrow on Person to Person. That is, Wallace is seated before a TV monitor on which is shown the home of the guest. Wallace talks to Liszt respectfully and proves an able straight-man for Borge, who is barely recognizable in his period wig.
Liszt (Borge) accepts Wallace's offer to play, and performs with his usual virtuosity, with the fluent addition of children's favorites such as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."
Then Borge brings out one of his "students" to play a duet. They sit side by side at the piano and each plays the other's half of the keyboard. And they keep playing, even when one or the other ends up on the floor!
The camera work for the time is breathtaking. There are views of Borge and a colleague on the Carnegie Hall stage sitting at two opposing GRAND pianos, taken from the CEILING of the hall.
The humor shines through the medium. If you buy a VHS, though, try to be sure it was recorded at regular, not extended speed. The regular speed shows up a bit crisper.

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Lost Episodes of Victor Borge Volume 1 (2002) Review

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(More customer reviews)Lost Episodes of Victor Borge: Vol. 1
The original TV special was produced in a studio before a live audience. The orchestra was visibly live too.
Nobody has had more fun making fun of classical music and opera more than Victor Borge. Audiences of all ages have been surprised and pleased to follow the exploits of this gifted concert pianist gone hysterically bad.
To start the ball rolling, though, Borge takes a well deserved poke at the already popular Lawrence Welk. Borge's orchestra plays some nice champagne music. Then a stagehand with wild hair on the sides, and bald on top, with an unruly mustache appears and begins blowing bubbles. The atmosphere of bubbles and music establishes itself. During a long orchestral interlude, Borge conducts, half-heartedly with one hand, drumming the fingers of his other hand on the piano's music stand in a show of boredom. Then he begins eating a snack, still conducting with one hand. Suddenly, all business, Borge rises to his full height, turns his back on the orchestra and begins feverishly conducting the bubble blower!
No one had done anything as funny with an orchestra in the entire decade since the Marx Bothers tried to have multiple, simultaneous conductors in Night at the Opera.
This Collector's Edition includes rare footage, recovered from aging kinescopes and many skits not seen for 40 years. However, the clown prince of the piano is still irrepressibly funny, and arch, and didactic, as ever. He trails off onto amusing tangents, and when necessary, tries to sit on the piano bench and misses it, landing, to his amazement, on the floor! You'll be on the floor with him, laughing.
No one has yet, or probably ever will, combine slapstick with virtuoso piano styling, as Borge did.
Even the Pontiac commercials are funny.
Spurred, no doubt, by the nervous energy of live television, and a cast of hundreds, Borge is on his best/worst behavior here, he mugs, he does pratfalls, and he plays magnificently, for a moment or two. Then he reduces the entire style of a Great Russian composer to a single, loud, dissonant chord.
He introduces a child prodigy who plays, at age 13, better than most pianists can ever play. However, before the kid performs, he endures some hectic, and hilarious, ribbing from Borge.
The writing, the adlibs, the performances throughout entertain so well, fill one with so much life, that one feels empty when the program ends.
This is a collector's item for the serious collector of the not-so-serious.

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Lost Episodes of Victor Borge Volume II (2002) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This episode was shot at Carnegie Hall, live, possibly as early as 1959. It was created by recording the surviving black-and-white kinescope film onto VHS.
It begins with glorious shots of the full house, audience standing, as a chorus sings an awe-inspiring hymn of praise -- to Borge. And of course, at its height, the hymn collapses into a dissonant musical joke.
Strangely enough, during the entire episode, we never see the orchestra or the chorus. My guess is they would have required more pay, residuals, or that the paperwork would have been too much for a TV Special.
What we do see is GRAND!
A young Mike Wallace interviews Borge, who is performing as Franz Liszt, in a format like the one used by Murrow on Person to Person. That is, Wallace is seated before a TV monitor on which is shown the home of the guest. Wallace talks to Liszt respectfully and proves an able straight-man for Borge, who is barely recognizable in his period wig.
Liszt (Borge) accepts Wallace's offer to play, and performs with his usual virtuosity, with the fluent addition of children's favorites such as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."
Then Borge brings out one of his "students" to play a duet. They sit side by side at the piano and each plays the other's half of the keyboard. And they keep playing, even when one or the other ends up on the floor!
The camera work for the time is breathtaking. There are views of Borge and a colleague on the Carnegie Hall stage sitting at two opposing GRAND pianos, taken from the CEILING of the hall.
The humor shines through the medium. If you buy a VHS, though, try to be sure it was recorded at regular, not extended speed. The regular speed shows up a bit crisper.

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