Imogene Coca Recovered From a Car Crash to Get Tony Nod for “On the Twentieth Century”

This early television star survived a car crash to appear on Broadway in a hit musical.

by Rich Watson 

Imogene Coca achieved her fame as an early television star. As a cast member of Sid Caesar’s Your Show of  Shows, she earned five of her six Emmy nominations and helped pave the way for future TV comediennes such as Mary Tyler Moore, Bea Arthur, and Carol Burnett.

Coca also had a prosperous career in vaudeville and theater. Later in life she came back from a car crash to score a Tony-nominated role in a Broadway musical.

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Madeline Kahn Was an Alien Freak in “Slapstick of Another Kind,” with Jerry Lewis

She was a comedy film queen throughout the seventies, but in the eighties she misfired with this sci-fi adaptation.

by Rich Watson 

This post is part of the So Bad It’s Good Blogathon, a blog event for bad movies with cult followings. At the end I’ll tell you where you can find more posts like this.

Madeline Kahn was a hilarious comic and a talented singer, who died too early, at age fifty-seven. Before that, though, she appeared in some of the funniest films of the seventies: Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety and History of the World Part I by Mel Brooks, and Paper Moon and What’s Up Doc? by Peter Bogdanovich.

Unfortunately, she also made a few stinkers. One of them was a sci-fi movie with Jerry Lewis called Slapstick of Another Kind, based on a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

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That Time When Gracie Allen “Ran” For President

The 1940 presidential campaign was turned upside down when the radio star threw her hat into the ring—sort of.

by Rich Watson 

Gracie Allen was one half of a comedy duo with her husband, George Burns. She was the ditzy one to Burns’ straight man. Their career spanned vaudeville, radio, TV and film for over thirty years.

In 1940, their popularity hit a peak when they engaged in an unusual stunt: Allen ran for president.

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