Some things are better art when they’re not shown as they were performed. For instance, speeding up the tape enhances Bert Park’s performance here (and it is then INTENTIONALLY funny):
PERSONAL NOTE: I have a story about Bert Parks. When I was in high school I spent several summers in the Amity (High School) Theater Music Workshop. We put on musicals and the most talented and ultimately famous student actor of the group was one William Knight, aka character actor William Atherton, whose talent shone through in every single student production he was in. He was a total pro with attention to detail and a role model for anyone in the group who had even a passing thought of doing student or professional acting.
Why does this relate to Bert Parks? TMW (not to be confused with this site, TMV) used to ask actors in the area (we had summer stock and the Long Wharf Theater, plus the Shubert Theater in New Haven) if they’d come in and talk to us. The highlight one year was a young Liza Minnelli (summer of 1964, when Atherton had the lead in TMV’s production of Music Man) who agreed to come in and talk to us (and sing to us) on the condition that there were no questions about her mother Judy Garland. She gave us a wonderful talk, sang a sont or two — a wonderful up and coming performer and a wonderful person.
One person the group tried to get was Bert Parks. But his rep said he would only come and talk to us if we could get something in the newspaper about it. We couldn’t guarantee it, so he never came. On our field trips we also got to meet John Astin (the old Adams Family show) and a few others. But Parks was the no show since he had conditions we had to meet and we couldn’t meet them.
Even so, I loved the way he hammily sung the Miss America song (I can’t find it on You Tube). When I interned on The Hindustan Times in New Delhi during my senior year at Colgate from January – May 1972 I brought an audio tape of Parks singing “OH, THEEEERE SHE IS..MISS AMERICA…” and played it over and over and over. One of the sons in the Indian family I lived with pleaded with me to stop.
I loved Parks’ performance and kept playing it and he seemed ready to call Amnesty International.
UPDATE: I did find this 1991 clip where an elderly Parks sang Miss America for the last time live. It’s at the end. He starts at 3: 19. ENJOY:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.