Jackie Gleason magic special 2 Dec. 1962

This is a hard-to-get video. Heavens I tried for years. Luckily I saw it shown by Channel 7 in Australia when it first went out on air. You had to memorise what you saw because you were unlikely to see it again. I memorised hard.

I tried and I tried to find it when the Home Video Age happened. Not a hope. A man at a ritzy event at the Natural History Museum in Vienna told me he had this video but he wanted the rights to all of the TV shows I created and performed. No dice.

Finally, it falls into my hands out of the blue and it shows this master in such a good light that it's important to share his wonders with the world. He ad-libbed all of these tricky and complicated routines from the world of magic after just one run-through. One rehearsal. How impressive.

See how much his assistants are loving being part of it. There are even private jokes going on between the star and his helpers. This man was a master of course.

His TV network built this theatre in Florida for him. It was right out the front of his golf course. He would play golf and walk into the theatre and do his show live. Bravo. That's a life well organised.

Ian.