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| - The Fabulous Funnies was a one-hour primetime network special that aired on NBC on February 11, 1968, hosted by Carl Reiner. The show was a salute to American comic strips, and featured interviews with cartoonists, including Rube Goldberg, Chester Gould, Chic Young, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Charles Schulz. (en)
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has abstract
| - The Fabulous Funnies was a one-hour primetime network special that aired on NBC on February 11, 1968, hosted by Carl Reiner. The show was a salute to American comic strips, and featured interviews with cartoonists, including Rube Goldberg, Chester Gould, Chic Young, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Charles Schulz. In addition, the show included songs that have been written about comic strips, performed by the Doodletown Pipers, the Royal Guardsmen and Ken Berry. Ken Berry sang a song from the Li'l Abner musical, and the Royal Guardsmen performed their hit single "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron". Other songs featured in the program include "Barney Google (With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)" and "Little Chatterbox," inspired by Little Orphan Annie. The comedy team of Burns and Schreiber also performed a skit about people reading comic strips. In one sequence, Reiner interacts with animated comic strip characters, leading production supervisor David Crommie to brag, "This is, perhaps, the most difficult show that has ever been done for television. Production began in January 1967, and continued until the end of the year. When you combine live action with animation, the impossible takes a lot longer!" The show did very well in the ratings, reaching #7 for the week according to the Nielsen ratings, and garnered a follow-up a decade later. In an article about producer Lee Mendelson, comics historian Mark Evanier says, "The ratings were huge and the folks at CBS, for whom Lee was producing the Charlie Brown specials, said to him, "Why didn't you offer that special to us?" Lee replied, "I did. You didn't think it would do very well and passed so I sold it to NBC." The folks at CBS said, "Well... we want the next one." It was not until 1980 that Lee did the next one, which was called The Fantastic Funnies and yes, it was on CBS." (en)
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