Recently here, we looked at a situation comedy pilot starring singer Vic Damone that was unsold and, in the opinion of many who wrote me, unwatchable. This post is about another, slightly more successful TV series that starred Vic Damone…and I may be one of the few people alive who remembers it. It was called The Lively Ones and it was an unconventional music series that served as the summer replacement for the popular sitcom Hazel for two seasons — 1962 and 1963.
I have not seen this show since 1963. As far as I know, it was never rerun anywhere and if there are videos from it online, I haven’t been able to find them. So what follows here are memories from when I was eleven years old. They may not be completely accurate but I’m pretty sure I liked the show.
Basically, it was thirty minutes of what we’d now call music videos. It was just people singing — often with Damone, sometimes solo — in interesting settings. I don’t think any of them were in studios. It was some popular performer performing a number on a beach followed by some other popular performer performing on a roller coaster or on top of a mountain or somewhere. The music was jazzy and upbeat. Both seasons were before The Beatles had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and American popular music began changing.
It was sponsored by Chevrolet or Ford and the opening and a lot of the music segments involved people driving and sometimes singing while driving fast in open convertibles. There were a lot of young blonde ladies with their hair flapping in the breeze and the whole show was kind of a commercial for buying a convertible and driving around in it with someone young and beautiful.
I remember Allan Sherman appearing a couple of times, singing song parodies with Vic Damone, one involving new lyrics to “Consider Yourself” (from Oliver) while the two men ran all over a navy battleship dressed in sailor uniforms. In fact, I’ll tell you the end of the song — and remember, I haven’t seen this since I was eleven or maybe ten…
Sherman and Damone are dancing all over this aircraft carrier and Sherman is fiddling with some huge gun and Damone sings — and this is to the closing bars of the song from Oliver — “Whatever you do, don’t shoot!” And Sherman sings back, “Don’t worry, my lad — I dig! I’m simply trying to disengage the safety switch!” Then they cut to stock footage from somewhere of a gun firing and it hits another ship and sinks it —
— and then they cut back to Damone and Sherman being dragged off by some sort of military police and the two stars sing the last line: “Consider yourself…in the brig!”
I don’t know why I remember this but I remember this. I also remember noticing a credit for Billy May, who was responsible for some or all of the arrangements and I knew that name because I was already a huge fan of Stan Freberg, and Billy May’s name was on a lot of Freberg’s records.
And I will never get out of my head the theme song to the show, sung by Damone and arranged (I assume) by May. Damone sang it on an album based on the show and I think it got some radio airplay as a single. It seems to be just about the only remnant of the series. If anyone knows of any others, I’d love to hear about them. In the meantime, here’s the audio (only) to that theme…
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