Forget Justin Bieber. Here’s Dean Martin’s celebrity roast of Jackie Gleason, featuring roasters Art Carney, Gene Kelly, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Foster Brooks, Nipsy Russell, and others.
If you were watching NBC in February of 1975, you may have caught this as it originally aired. If not, here’s your chance to watch it anew – a Dean Martin roast from start to finish.
These were considered classic TV moments as they were happening, let alone years later as compiled clips on infomercials. There was a pace to the evening of bad jokes, inside humor, and insults. We like our roasts uncut.
There are quite a few of these available to watch, but for this weekend we’ll focus in on a roast of Jackie Gleason. Watch as the old pros do in a friend.
This should be fairly clean, language-wise, but I’m betting at least a few of the jokes are quite dated by now. Laugh for historical purposes only.
https://youtu.be/WjnglgT4Q3Y
Foster Brooks
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Foster Brooks. What an act. He slays them with just a raise of an eyebrow.