The Phil Silvers Show: Lt. Bilko
11:30 pm - 12:00 am, Today on KICU Catchy Comedy (36.4)
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About this Broadcast
Lt. Bilko
Bilko and the Pentagon slug it out on an issue involving a battlefield commission---and $14,000 in back pay. General: John Boruff. Hall: Paul Ford. Rocco: Harvey Lembeck. Fender: Herbie Faye.
repeat
2011
English
HD Level Unknown
Comedy
Sitcom
Cast & Crew
Harvey Lembeck
(Actor)
.. Cpl. Rocco Barbella
Herbie Faye
(Actor)
.. Cpl. Sam Fender
Paul Ford
(Actor)
.. Col. John Hall
More Information
Did You Know..
Harvey Lembeck
(Actor)
.. Cpl. Rocco Barbella
Born:
April 15, 1923
Died: January 05, 1982
Died: January 05, 1982
Trivia:
Brooklyn-born Harvey Lembeck was a nightclub and Broadway comedian at the time of his 1951 film bow in You're in the Navy Now. The roly-poly, nasal-voiced Lembeck was most often cast as the wise-guy comedy relief in war films, most notably Stalag 17 (1953), in which Lembeck and bearlike Robert Strauss repeated their stage roles as "court jesters" in a dismal POW camp (the two actors would later be reteamed in the 1961 Jack Webb picture The Last Time I Saw Archie, not to mention a series of TV commercials in the mid-1960s). Harvey remained in uniform for a four-year hitch as Corporal Barbella on the popular 1950s Phil Silvers sitcom You'll Never Get Rich. In 1963's Beach Party, Lembeck made the first of several sidesplitting appearances as leather-jacketed Brando wannabe Eric von Zipper, whose attempts to prove his toughness to his fellow bikers always came a-cropper; in Beach Blanket Bingo, for example, he was cut in twain by a buzzsaw, moaning "Why Me?" even as his two halves fell bloodlessly to the floor. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Harvey Lembeck directed several TV sitcom episodes, and also operated a training school for aspiring comedians; carrying on the "family business" after Harvey's death was his son, actor/director Michael Lembeck.
Herbie Faye
(Actor)
.. Cpl. Sam Fender
Born:
January 01, 1898
Died: January 01, 1980
Died: January 01, 1980
Paul Ford
(Actor)
.. Col. John Hall
Born:
November 02, 1901
Died: April 14, 1976
Died: April 14, 1976
Trivia:
After having drifted from job to job--with a wife and five children in tow--Baltimore native Paul Ford decided in his late 30s to give acting a try. He worked with the Depression-era W.P.A. agency in a puppet show project and also wrote shows for the Federal Theatre; his biggest break came when he and his co-workers staged a puppet production for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Radio, stage and film work followed, but Ford wouldn't truly hit the big time until 1955, when he was engaged to play the apoplectic Colonel Hall on Phil Silvers' situation comedy You'll Never Get Rich. For four seasons, TV fans were regaled by the efforts of conniving Sgt. Bilko (Silvers) and long-suffering Col. Hall to outsmart one another. During this period, Ford worked steadily in the theatre, recreating his popular stage role as Colonel Purdy in Teahouse for the August Moon when the play was committed to film in 1955. After Phil Silvers' series was cancelled, Ford continued his stage and screen career, scoring a major success in 1965 in the play Never Too Late, in which he played a fiftyish husband who discovered that his middle-aged wife was pregnant. Never Too Late was filmed in 1967, with Ford once again in the starring role; five years and many lucrative acting assignments later, Paul Ford retired.
