One-Man Show

When Danish-born Pianist-Funnyman Victor Borge did his record-running (849 performances) one-man show on Broadway, union rules demanded that he be assisted by eleven stagehands and four stand-by musicians. The musicians never played, and what the stagehands did remains a mystery. Last week Borge transported his Broadway show, in a cut version and with a few additions, to TV. When all the producers, directors, musicians, stagehands, boom pushers, scenery movers, cameramen, set painters, carpenters, copyists, audio and video control men were counted, it was clear that network TV's first one-man show called for more than 200 people to get it on the air.

In moving from the stage to TV, Borge's show suffered a loss of the intimacy that the unmelancholy Dane's comic style demands. The hilarious mood of Comedy in Music was also seriously damaged by an overlong potpourri of Tchaikovsky melodies, played by a full orchestra and conducted by a Borge suddenly turned serious maestro. But despite everything, his comic talents survived the screen, and he got his deserved laughs as he coughed his way through Debussy's Claire de Lune, tangoed his way through Jealousy while sitting at the piano, doublecrossed the studio audience by playing Tea for Two off key while the audience was humming it, took his bows with the stagehands.

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