Several years ago I proclaimed the French series THE NECESSARY MINUTE OF MONSIUER CYCLOPEDE “the oddest TV show of all time.” Comprised of self-contained one minute segments in which comedian Pierre Desproges expounded on topics like “How to Euthanize A Kamikaze” and “How to Soundproof An Andalusian,” the show was indeed plenty weird, but not, it turns out, entirely novel.
YOGI AT THE MOVIES, put together by the veteran baseball publicist Tom Villante, was a mini-program that ran from 1987 to (I think) ‘89 (it being Villante’s second attempt at a sports-themed program, the first being the Tommy Lasorda headlined radio chat show LASORDA AT LARGE, which ran from 1983-85). It was broadcast once a month during commercial breaks on around 65 US TV stations, and featured the late Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra (1925-2015) as the world’s least likely, and least qualified, movie critic. As with THE NECESSARY MINUTE OF MONSIUR CYCLOPEDE, each episode of YOGI AT THE MOVIES lasted roughly a single minute, and was on balance just as strange.
The show consisted of a tired and decrepit looking Berra, seen in medium shot in front of a nondescript background, being peppered with questions about a current movie by an off-screen voice (supplied by Villante). Berra’s not-always-coherent, baseball-infused replies (of 1988’s BETRAYED he said “it’s a thriller like striking out your own sister”) were followed by a commercial for the show’s major sponsor Stroh’s Beer, after which Berra summed up his feelings via “Yogi’s Scoreboard,” giving the movie a “score” of a single, double, triple or, at the extreme ends of the spectrum, a strikeout or home run.
Villante claims he first conceived of the show back in 1946, while working as a batboy for the Yankees: “The players would ask Yogi, ‘Hey, Yogi what movie did you go see?’ And he would give the most interesting reviews, probably better than the movie itself. This got to be a daily thing, and I remember thinking that I was going to do something with it someday.”
That it took 41 years for the “something” to occur probably had something to do with the popularity of televised film critics in the mid-1980s. It was then that Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were hosting the Disney produced series SISKEL & EBERT & THE MOVIES (having leveled up from their previous gigs as PBS hosts), while Gene Shalit garnered fame with his pun-filled movie talk-ups on THE TODAY SHOW, Leonard Maltin did the honors on ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT (back when that program was still a big deal), and the KABC based Gary Franklin provided the “Franklin scale” 1-10 movie ranking (which was quite coveted, and frequently utilized in newspaper ads, by movie studios).
Yogi Berra, whose attitude toward the film medium was adequately summed up by his claim that “I love movies, if I like them,” obviously wasn’t in the same league, critically speaking, as Siskel, Ebert et al. Furthermore, Berra wasn’t initially sold on YOGI AT THE MOVIES, although his wife Carmen convinced him—as Villante recalled, “(Yogi) says to me, ‘We’ll see,’ and his wife says, ‘What do you mean, we’ll see? I need a new kitchen, of course you’re gonna do it.’”
The show, unsurprisingly, was said to have been “incredibly easy to film,” with Villante picking the movies and Berra providing his unrehearsed thoughts on ‘em. The vibe was set in the inaugural episode on FATAL ATTRACTION, about which Berra said “I only get scared when it’s scary” and praised its star “Glenn Cove” (second takes evidently weren’t utilized).
Other Yogi-isms (as collated by the L.A. TIMES) were made about GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, with Berra raving about its star “Roger” Williams; CASUAL SEX, which inspired the observation that “No sex is safe, unless you’re over 85”; THREE MEN AND A BABY, a film that “Proves three men can be just as good as one woman”; and BILOXI BLUES, which “reminded me of being in the Army, even though I was in the Navy.”
These days, in light of the popularity of the 2022 documentary hit YOGI BERRA: IT AIN’T OVER, it seems the time is right for a revival of YOGI AT THE MOVIES. Alas, it seems most of the episodes are now lost, with just three surviving online. Two of them can be found on YouTube, one devoted to MOONSTRUCK, whose star Cher “got the Golden Glove award,” and the other to MASQUERADE, the ending of which Berra claims he couldn’t guess, although “towards the end you could.” The third is contained at mlb.com, in which Berra talks about A FISH CALLED WANDA, or as he calls it, “A FISH IN THE WATER.”
Standard critical judgements don’t apply to YOGI AT THE MOVIES, as it can’t be called “good,” and nor is it entirely “bad.” What it is is oddly addictive, meaning I sincerely hope those lost episodes are found, and found soon.