[78-L] Mr. Magoo

[David Breneman]

  From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>


> An album that's nowhere near as funny as you wish it would be, as I recall. 
> Like the Bob and Ray Stereo Spectacular, or Lord Buckley's Hipsters 
> Flipsters, 
> or Allan Sherman's Peter. RCA's sense of humor was sometimes very hard 
> to 
> detect. (Defend 'em all you want, but I have never laughed at any of those 
> albums.)

Re Magoo in Hi-Fi -

I have a very nice copy of it, which I bought because I always thought I
loved *everything* Jim Backus did (with the exception of Gilligan's Island).
It's pretty unimaginative stuff.  Magoo is building a Hi-Fi.  He reads 
that he needs woofers and tweeters, so naturally he goes out and gets some
dogs and birds.  The jokes go down hill from there.  All this inanity is
commented upon by his doofy nephew Waldo - and that's insipid doofiness,
not comic doofiness.  

Re "Why Don't You go Home for Christmas" -

It's a monologue by Backus, delivered to his apparently shrewish wife,
emploring her to go spend Christmas with her parents "So *I* can have a
Happy New Year."  ("If you had any class, you would go by bus.") You
can almost imagine him in a smoking jacket, hoisting a martini and leaning
against a console stereo, as he begins "Every year, about this time, Old
Jingle-Bells-Ville..."  Much more humor in three minutes than the whole
Magoo LP.