User Reviews

This 30-minute live segment of the Armstrong Circle Theatre series is hosted by Fred Allen, who introduces three skits based on stories by star writers Nunnally Johnson, E.B. White, and James Thurber.

Skit 1 is about a riddle told by a secretary (Nita Talbot) in an office. She's fired for wasting time, but then the boss (Allen) obsesses about the answer to the riddle to the point that he re-hires her just to get the answer.

Skit 2 has Allen as a bartender who meets technology in the guise of a robot that accompanies a man (Ernest Truex) into the bar for a drink.

Skit 3 has Allen annoying his wife (Cavada Humphrey) at a cocktail party until she leaves with another man.

Cast includes Barbara Nichols, Charlotte Rae, William Redfield, and Kenny Delmar.

Mild but amusing look at live TV from 1954 with ads for Armstrong flooring. Allen seems to have a lot of trouble reading the cue cards.

This intentionally oddball segment of Armstrong Circle Theatre spotlights the ever-droll Fred Allen introducing and starring in three short skits that are mildly amusing. I was surprised how the subjects included themes still of interest today.

First off, he addresses modern audiences (as of 1954) unwilling to give full attention to even 1/2 hour programs, the answer here being brief skits. Nearly 70 years later the short-attention span issue is still a hot topic, with YouTube and Tik Tok examples of short-short form entertainment taking over. Even more relevant, one dumb sketch is a silly variation of "A man walks into a bar with...", a very old joke. The guy orders two rye whiskeys at a time, feeding one to a funnel in the crudely-designed robot. It's a silly scene, unfunny, but the punchline is based on the robot driving the car home -highly relevant in 2023 when autonomous no-driver cars are being thoroughly tested in several cities and their replacing human drivers will ultimately drastically increase safety on the roads.

Nita Talbot is delightful, featured as a secretary whose mathematical riddle (basically, putting 20 horses into three empty stables, but not having an even number of horses in any of the stables) gets her fired by boss Allen, but frustrates everyone until she has to be rehired. It took me much of the sketch to figure it out, but I was rewarded by having guessed the riddle's secret in time.

Third sketch is a stinker, with Allen merely at a party coming up with ideas to annoy his wife (basically the corny, dated "battle of the sexes" source of humor). It's dumb and largely has Fred making faces. Ugh!

His wife in the dumb sketch is played by Cavada Humphrey, a relatively obscure Broadway actress. She is terrific in the riddle-sketch playing Nita Talbot's sister, an immediate attention grabber in her kooky performance. The repertory here is a precursor of SNL and SCTV but via 1950s Live TV.

I like to identify uncredited players in movies, and was pretty sure it was Mike Nichols in a couple of sketches, but after checking with IMDb, I was wrong- young William Redfield the actual ringer for Mike.