In 1956, I worked on The Kid Cappello Show. You’re not going to find any video of it. We ran less than one season and there’s nothing left of it.
A lot of fellas who worked on it had been with Your Show of Shows at the end of its run, and Kid Cappello’s producer thought maybe we could bring some of that magic to his show. Wasn’t going to happen. Your Show of Shows was lightning in a bottle, and Kid Cappello was no Sid Caesar or Imogene Coca.
He was one of these singing types who also could play the funny okay. He was good enough to entertain a Catskills crowd, but he didn’t have the chops for network TV. And, besides, they couldn’t lure any of the writers over; they had bigger fish to fry. But some of us technical grunts didn’t have much else to do, so what they heck. I could point a camera at Cappello as well as I could at Caesar.
I’d never heard of Kid Cappello before I got the job. And, boy howdy, that first episode was a rough hour. Thing is, Donnie Cappello - that was his real name - had the moxie to go for it. He just didn’t have the goods. The show fell flat. The songs were passable, but the little skits…well, let’s just say he didn’t erase anyone’s memories of Uncle Miltie.
After the first episode ran, the boys had a bet on how many shows we’d last. I picked four. I won that bet. I wish I hadn’t.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Howling Monkey to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.