RIP Robert Goulet

aww great story

RIP SMOOTH DUDE

Easily one of the best Simpsons cameos ever, on top of everything else.

"Soliloquy" from Carousel, 1967

he was born in the same town as my dad.

i did not know that.

Part of some documentary on him.

Classic for seemingly inspiring half of Bill Murray's schtick, his bit in Atlantic City, and, of course, as Quentin Hapsburg in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear.

He is... was Lancelot. The only one. Ever.

good ol' Bob Goulet, that scene in Atlantic City was great
http://www.movieactors.com/freeseframes-1026/AtlanticCity101.jpeg

first knew him from innumerable Carol Burnett Show appearances.

also was the punchline to a long, good joke David Johansen told Johnny Carson.

I seem to recall a Miami Vice episode where his name was offered up by Emo Philips as part of an answer to a question about Elvis Presley, a television and a firearm on a gameshow within the show .

When he had surgery on a split femur in the mid-1990s, he asked the surgeon if he would be able to dance afterward. The doctor said yes.

“That’s good,” Mr. Goulet said, “because I couldn’t dance before.”

i like this guy

Best commercial ever.

I used to work two overnight shifts a week, and a co-worker and I would often pass the time singing favorite `choons in the voice of Robert Goulet. We envisioned starting a band wherein we'd play post-punk hymns and sing exclusively in that voice. We'd have called the band: GOULET DIVISION.

Not The Groovy Goulets?

Oh snap that's brilliant

Thanks. I keep in practice over here

The part of the NYT obit that coleman quoted is awesome.

A trouper:

"If you can't laugh at yourself, you're a fool," Goulet told the Orange County Register in 1996. "I don't like those who pat themselves on the back. My job is to entertain, not to go out there and be myself."

Added Goulet: "I wish I knew the secret of my endurance. Perseverance, maybe. I want to be better than I sound. You can be tired or in pain, but you must perform for those people. You give it your best shot."

never reduced himself to doing one of those Shatner / Anka hipster stroke albums, either

"Judy Garland called him a living 8X10 glossy and Truman Capote described him as the 'poinsettia of botany.'"

Interesting

Just watched Goulet as the Mystery Guest on a 1965 episode of What's My Line? and after he is identified (by Dorothy Kilgallen) it's mentioned that he's about to go to Maine to sing the National Anthem at the Ali vs Liston championship fight. Goulet then makes the point that many singers botch the words to the National Anthem and that it's hard to sing, which is funny because it was that very gig two days later where Goulet infamously botched the words.

In that same discussion Dorothy Kilgallen predicts that Goulet's performance of the anthem will last longer than the fight, which very nearly came true since the fight ended with a 1st round KO.

I thought he was Canadian?

I mentioned him in connection to the SNL anniversary show--what would anyone under, I don't know, 30 (maybe even 40) make of their Robert Goulet/Lennon Sisters sketch? Not that knowing who Robert Goulet was made it any funnier...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Ip2GsqeK0

I totally thought he was Canadian too, which threw me when on What's My Line? a panelist asked him if he was US-born and he said yes. It turns out he was born in Massachusetts but at age 13 moved to Canada (and did have French-Canadian ancestry).

I mentioned him in connection to the SNL anniversary show--what would anyone under, I don't know, 30 (maybe even 40) make of their Robert Goulet/Lennon Sisters sketch? Not that knowing who Robert Goulet was made it any funnier...

It's a double-pronged thing: Will Ferrell used to do a Goulet impression on the show, notably in an retroactively viral sketch about him collaborating with Jay-Z (https://www.instagram.com/leedzedu/reel/CmPY3mZgRth/); and then Fred Armison & Kristen Wiig were known partially for their Lawrence Welk/Doonese sketches during their tenures on the show (sketches which, even SNL diehards will admit, are pretty stupid). So the SNL50 bit was just bringing those eras together.

FWIW, Lawrence Welk reruns were staple filler programming on PBS up until about five or six years ago. So that's where younger folks might have heard of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZADLxuhWnE

It's a double-pronged thing
Much like the crown of The Green Manalishi!

Lawrence Welk reruns were staple filler programming on PBS

Baseball writer Bill James once expressed complete befuddlement at this. Wish I could look up what he wrote--it was on his defunct website--but the gist was that LW was already hopelessly antiquated by the early '70s and wondering who exactly they were thinking might watch this in 2015.

^^Old people, mostly, and perhaps kitsch-loving youngsters who liked the Dooneese sketches, which--dumb as they are--earn points for being such lovingly detailed recreations of the cheesy Welk aesthetic. I think Welk's estate had a deal worked out with PBS to rerun the shows for cheap.

I should point out that Welk is probably more well-known today for those sketches than for the original show or his records.

I mean, there are probably millennials and Zoomers posting on Reddit TIL threads/boards that Lawrence Welk was a real person with a real show and not something made up for SNL.

North Dakota quietly produced some giants of 20th Century entertainment: Lawrence Welk, Peggy Lee, Angie Dickinson...

I think James's point, though, was that he was old people when he wrote that--65 or so--and he found it baffling.

65 in 2015 is boomer old. I'm talking about silent generation and even before that. Even somebody born in the mid-1930s had formative tastes set and hard-wired before the Rock era, so something like those shows would be up their alley. I believe these things were even used as memory care in retirement homes. But as those folks died off, the rerunning the series became fairly pointless these last few years. I think around here they stopped airing around 2019 or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EalIXbQsLCA

#onethread