I was surprised to see this pop up on YouTube, since I figured this episode ran once in the 1970s and then never again. It appears as though Game Show Network aired it at least once, bless their raunchy little hearts.
What you're about to see is one of the most amazing clips in the history of network television. If you saw George Clooney's movie CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, you probably have at least a passing awareness of THE GONG SHOW, a wild parody of TV talent shows that NBC aired in its daytime lineup during the late '70s. Created by its executive producer and star, the ebullient Chuck Barris (who claimed in his autobiography that he was an assassin for the CIA), THE GONG SHOW was an intentionally tacky exercise in which amateur performers would do their acts and be judged by a panel of three celebrities. Behind the judges was a large gong, and if any of the judges thought the act was rotten enough, they would bang it, ending the performance in mid-stream.
The Popsicle Twins were THE GONG SHOW's most notorious performers. It was an act so rude, so raunchy, so tasteless, that NBC allegedly received tons of phone calls protesting the act, and the episode was quickly re-edited for telecast in the Central and Pacific time zones. That's according to Barris, although elsewhere it has been written that The Popsicle Girls' segment did air on the West Coast. It was almost certainly, however, missing from all syndicated reruns, although a few seconds managed to pop up in the long out-of-print-on-video THE GONG SHOW MOVIE that played theaters for about ten minutes in 1980.
So who or what are The Popsicle Twins? Well, at first glance, they appear to be a pair of teenage girls who...well, why don't you watch for yourself?
Chuck Barris = genius.
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9 comments:
Very nice Martin. You continue to amaze me with these odd YouTube clips, but this one takes the cake.
Thank you from the bottom of my demented little heart for that. I've been wanting to see this clip since I first read about in Barris' CONFESSIONS about 15 years ago...
So i'm sitting in the computer lab at school, watching this clip, and a couple of my fellow students come in. "hey, whatcha watchin'...?" i had a lot of explainin' to do.
Using the Johnny LaRue moniker? Nice steal from SCTV you twat.
what i want to know: who were these girls, what are they doing today, and do they shy away from the fact they're the popsicle twins?
they knew what they were doing and why they were doing it at the time. given how young they were, were they embarrassed by their display at the time? (it doesn't appear so.)
I am not entirely certain they were as young as they were portrayed.
Stunning bit of TV, though.
The one on the left was Debralee Scott, from Welcome Back Kotter. Never billed, and she denied it, but she was raunchy, and had a wicked sense of humor
not her, sorry
It wasn’t Debralee Scott. I worked with her many moons ago at a restaurant in NJ.
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