What I watched: An episode of Fireball Fun-For-All, a variety show hosted by John Olsen and Harold Johnson with supporting players Marty May, J. C. Olsen and June Johnson (John’s daughter). This episode aired on July 5, 1949 on NBC and is available to view on YouTube.
What happened: A man offers us ice as a painted thermometer lets us know that it is “awful hot.” Olsen & Johnson appear in the audience as cops, firing off shots and setting up a plug for Buick. After a fade, we find the ice man wandering the audience, which includes a woman reading a “Torrid Romance” comic. The ice man gets in an argument with an audience member, and the cops have to intervene. Al Goodman leads out his band, who are all fanning themselves. There’s still more commotion in the audience, as a man is trying to deliver eggs to a woman, and another man is carrying an electric fan while coming through taking a shortcut to central park.
We get into more conventional variety fare, with a group of dancers doing a routine about a heatwave, although even that’s interrupted by Santa Claus running through with a “173 days to Christmas” sign, a guy dressed like a dog wearing a cubs jersey, a pair of offensive-looking guys wandering the audience,a man with a cage full of live birds, a guy taking a shower on stage, and a lot more. Olsen & Johnson finally make it to the screen, dressed like prisoners, and fire off a shot which kills a rubber chicken. They do some jokes about a bouncing baby, with both cracking up as they tell them. A man runs on to win a game of tic-tac-toe.
They wander out into the crowd again and introduce Mr. Monroe & Friend, a trampoline act. It’s perhaps the least crazy thing on the show so far. They mix in some gags when one of the performers hits his head and gets dizzy, then takes off his outfit and falls through the trampoline. This is followed by a sketch about Olsen & Johnson running a babysitting service. Naturally, they run it like animal tamers, with whips and cages, and have brought plenty of razors and cigarettes to entertain the kids. They bring the very adult-looking kids onstage, who scream and fight. O&J turn on the radio so that the kids can listen to bedtime stories and gamble. They then prepare the kids’ “formula”, which consists of a lot of sweets and a little booze.
There’s a reprise of “Tropical Heatwave”, including some tropically-dressed dancers, and a guy balancing a drink on top of his head. Everyone shakes some maracas to finish. This is followed by a Buick special where a man sells car raffle tickets to children, and then a more straightforward commercial spot. Afterwards, a guy plays guitar while playing a harmonica hands-free at the same time. It’s very impressive, if also a little unsanitary-looking. A man in a top-hat introduces a “Hopalong Cassidy show”, with a showdown between Vice and Virtue. The audience is carefully instructed on how to respond to each.
The lights go out so they can do a gag where it sounds like someone’s being pushed to suicide but is actually just playing chess. The narrator encourages everyone to wave their handkerchiefs so that there’s “ten million germs in the air.” Hopefully everyone’s wearing their masks. There’s a big Western scene setting up a showdown between sheriff Olsen and Johnson as “Joe from Buffalo.” (Or maybe it’s the other way around.) The townsfolk serenade Olsen with song and kisses to get him to take on Joe. Somehow this ends up as them playing poker with oversized cards. Finally, we get the big showdown, which is interrupted by a bunch of guys dancing in horse costumes – the “Five Lone Rangers.”
We get the finale through the announcer reading the action scene from the pages of a Western comic, sounding like a horse race announcer. Following a brief dance scene, we get the “last stand” in front of a bunch of Buick-decorated igloos. The Lone Rangers stop for ice cream, and are scared away because of a very polite polar bear. This all ends in some vaguely uncomfortable humour about the Inuit, and one more Buick spot.
What I thought: Having seen one previous episode of Fireball Fun-For-All (although still in the future chronologically), I thought I was ready for the chaos that would follow. I was not. The opening segment is one of the most surreal beginnings I’ve seen from a TV show that was not Twin Peaks, and there is something Lynchian in the abrupt cuts between jokes about the heat, police officers firing in the crowd, and a strangely catchy choral performance. There’s an awkwardness to some of the transitions that is likely just an artifact of early TV, but they add to the surrealism on display. Olsen & Johnson pile on the gags. Most of these probably wouldn’t be that funny on their own, but when presented in rapid succession it’s enough to overwhelm even my sense of cynicism.
A good bit of Fireball Fun For All‘s manic energy can be attributed to its orchestra, led by Al Goodman. The band never stops playing, and helps guide the audience through some of the rapid transitions. It’s especially worth paying attention to during scenes such as the trampoline act, where the orchestra helps to provide a narrative to what could otherwise be just a series of flips.
However, the episode can’t maintain the Hellzapoppin style chaos for its entire run, and after the manic opening sequence it gradually returns to a standard variety show with lengthy sketches and performances. The number of extras and props in the opening were probably expensive enough without trying to maintain that potentially exhausting energy for 60 minutes. Still, even at its slowest (the seemingly interminable closing sketch), the show still maintains an energy that isn’t present in, say, Toast of the Town.
TV was still a young medium, but it was already starting to make fun of itself. The closing sketch is introduced as a “Hopalong Cassidy” riff and then later ends with a parade of paradoxical “Lone Rangers.” (Although this episode actually predates the Lone Ranger TV show by a few months.) Of course, the self-evident absurdity of the kid Western, whether on TV or in film serial, made it a ripe target for parody and mockery — I’ll certainly do a lot of it — but there actually isn’t that much genre satire in this sketch. Instead, it’s another platform for Olsen and Johnson to cram in as much stuff as they can.
This episode is framed very loosely around the theme of a summer heatwave, which we’ve certainly been going through as I write this in July 2022. Of course, in 1950 a heatwave was just a heatwave and not signs of the looming apocalypse, but even then it probably felt a little bit hellish. Fireball Fun-For-All is an example of summer TV in its most elemental state, a delirious revel that would never make sense in the sober autumn.
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