For this 1968 performance featuring Liberace and a troupe of flower-power performers probably rescued from a cult compound, the set designers of The Red Skelton Hour went all-out with a mod staging of "The 59th Street Bridge Song" (aka "Feelin' Groovy"). It was the perfect thing to watch for people who thought The Partridge Family was too transgressive.
The number starts with seven men and woman — dressed in outfits that look like they were purchased at a government-approved hippie fashion shop in North Korea — cozying up to a white grand piano covered in day-glo flower decals.
The septuplet sings and merrily sways to a Mitch Miller style backing orchestra. After a minute, Liberace himself enters from stage left, swinging his arms like Bigfoot in the 1967 Patterson–Gimlin film. He's wearing a flower trousers, a traffic-cone colored turtleneck, and a yellow plastic vest that looks like it was made from an inflatable life raft.
"Hey man, you're lookin' wild," the cultists trill, bobbing their heads in eerie unison as Liberace shuffles in place. "You're gonna be a flower child. Join the gang, and sing along, we've got a song for feelin' groovy!"
Thrilled to be welcomed into this Manson-meets-the-Mormons Family, Liberace wheezes "Hello young folk, whatcha shakin'? I gotta try that scene your makin'…Liberace's turnin' on. Doodlee doo doo, feelin' groovy!" He then sits down for some piano noodling ripped straight from a 1968 Shakey's Pizza Parlor lounge.
More dancers pour onstage, escalating a brain-melting hippysploitation extravaganza.
A year earlier, Simon & Garfunkel performed their own version on The Smothers Brothers. I can't decide who did it best!
Previously: Portrait made of candy: Mike Douglas as Liberace
