Vital Viewing (How to Succeed in Show Business Without Really Trying Edition)

 Actor Charles Nelson Reilly was born on this day in 1931. He died in 2007, but, as he relates in this excerpt from his autobiographical one-man show Life of Reilly, there earlier had been many unconfirmed reports of his death: 

If there's one thing that's forever perpendicular, it's a blog. My time, however, is limited, so instead of the entire story of Reilly's life (the whole play, in bits and pieces, can be found on YouTube), I'd like to just provide you with a few close-ups: 

"You can't do anything else once you do game shows. You have no career."

That turned out not to be true as Reilly went on to direct plays, including a few on Broadway, direct opera productions, and teach acting at the highly regarded HB Studio in New York City. Still, you can't blame Reilly for thinking his career had come to a kind of dead-end as the 1970s drew to a close. Like Paul Lynde, an actor to whom he's often been compared, he achieved his greatest fame not from any play (not even one for which he won a Tony) or movie, but for portraying a campy version of himself on a game show. And as with Lynde, there are some of us who were around at the time who just love that his career turned out like that, even if he didn't. Lynde's game show was Hollywood Squares, whereas Reilly's was the 1970s version of Match Game. On Squares, Lynde's job was to add a bit of carnal unpredictability to what was otherwise a tightly structured show. On MG, the carnal unpredictability was the structure. Reilly's job was to make sure the actual game being played didn't intrude on the party atmosphere too much. His accessories in this crime against competition were the show's emcee, former Steve Allen announcer/sidekick Gene Rayburn, who had now brought his naughty uncle routine to daytime television, and the outlandish Brett Somers, Jack Klugman's wife and an Actors Studio graduate with a long list of TV credits, but only in supporting roles and bit parts. Her only real claim to fame was as a famous person on Match Game itself. The child sent to the principal's office for being a disruptive influence all grown up, Somers' celebrity panelist forte was talking out of turn to uproarious effect, and the only real contest on Match Game was who would talk out of turn the most, her or Reilly. It was usually a draw, but in the following clip, the victor is clearly Reilly:

Just in case you're wondering...

...that's Tommy on the right, and Jimmy on the left.

OK, we've seen Charles at his most manic. As an actor, was he able to tone it down any?

Let's look at a show where the ambiance is much different than that of Match Game:

Oooh! Scary stuff. Unfortunately, that promo neglects to mention that week's special guest star, the actor playing best-selling novelist Jose Chung:

Mesmerizing.

Even though he was left out of the promo, Charles Nelson Reilly nonetheless got the last word:

The _____ is out there.