The Great American Dream Machine

A kid at my high school told me about the show so i watched it several times. Nothing else like it at the time. Would be nice to watch it again as i do not remember much other than that i liked it. I tried to get some other friends to watch it but none did. Later on I found out an old friend used to watch it. The humor was quite a bit different than the usual TV comedy on the network stations. It was out there. I did not know I was watching early Chevy Chase until finding this spot on IMDb. Pretty hard to come up with the required ten lines for this comment when I can barely remember the show in the first place. Hope this will do.

I recall Marshal Efron carefully exhibiting and explaining deadpan various unremarkable objects as would a collector of the rarest of fine art... ''and this is a bicycle wheel I picked up...

But I'm most wondering if anyone else remembers the GADM send-up of a Geritol commercial that features a male talking into the camera about the benefits of the elixir while a very good looking woman enters the room, prances around in increasing stages of undress and movement from the background to the foreground and ends with him confiding...

''She takes two tablespoons a day... My wife... I think I'll keep her...''

I'd love to see that one again...

Few people I know remember Marshall Efron's Great American Dream Machine on Public Television originally broadcast during the Winter of '71 - '72. At the time I thought it was one of the best things on TV, and tried not to miss an episode (even in re-runs on West Virginia Public TV out of Morgantown). My fondest memory is of Carly Simon performing a song. I would very much like to find a source for tapes of the show. I was originally motivated to watch it because of Chevy Chase. I was introduced to his talent at "Channel One", a closed circuit TV theater in NYC around '69. It was really brilliant stuff, too. Was it all in B&W, or is my memory faulty?

I believe the memories mentioned by Dreamscapist and JorgeBlanco are a little off. The playing of the head like a bongo, the Geritol ad spoof ("My wife---I think I'll keep her"), and the cooking show spoof (Freedom Loaf, made with Kramp Easy Lube shortening) were all skits featured in the 1974 movie, "The Groove Tube." Understandable errors, as "The Groove Tube" starred Ken Shapiro (who also directed) and Chevy Chase, both of "Great American Dream Machine." However, Dream Machine *did* feature Chevy (and perhaps Shapiro?) in white face lip-syncing to a jazz instrumental (perhaps on more than one episode?).

ANYWAY . . .

Yes, GADM was a great show! I recall Marshal Efron doing an in-depth report on the FDA rules governing what size description you may assign to pickles! (And it was all true!)

I was in my early teens, just barely aware of political issues. This show was a graspable take on current events that allowed a young mind to achieve a degree of healthy skepticism of 'mainstream' news.

That flavor has served me well with today's similarly insane political climate. Unfortunately, there is no Great American Dream Machine to turn to for perspective.

Many of the bits were clearly anti establishment and it was those that caused the show to have such a short run. I suspect these days it would never even make it out of the PBS boardroom presentation. It throws today's news entertainment in sharp relief.

At very least, this show is an historically important slice of the early '70s when freedom of speech could, for a time, exist even if it was unpopular with the mainstream power structure.