Every week, Kraft Music Hall featured a different host and a different theme. On season eleven’s second episode, comedian Don Rickles hosted and the show was subtitled Don Rickles’ Brooklyn.
The show began with Rickles on location across the street from NBC’s Brooklyn studios, standing at the Avenue M station of the BMT subway line – with a poster of Funny Girl visible on the cement wall! According to a local TV guide description, “Brooklyn-born master of insult Don Rickles welcomes fellow natives Steve Lawrence, [singer] Robert Merrill, comedienne Joan Rivers and former Dodger star Roy Campanella for a tribute to that colorful New York borough. Sketches include Don and Steve recalling their boyhood adventures.”
The highlight of the hour-long show was a film segment from the about-to-be-released Funny Girl movie: Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice singing “Don’t Rain On My Parade.” This kept with the theme of the show since Streisand is a well-known Brooklynite. Following the clip, Don Rickles Brooklyn switched to a live television feed from the New York premiere of Funny Girl at the Criterion Theatre in New York. Streisand was greeted by Mayor John Lindsay. When he expressed his admiration for her by saying, “Actually, it’s a long way from Coney Island to Broadway,” Barbra replied: “Well, it’s not such a long way if you take the BMT and change at Canal Street.”
Below: YouTube video of the opening segment of this show with Don Rickles.
