Widescreen: King Kong vs. Doc Severinsen (Let them fight!)
He has a cool mustache, cool threads and he plays cool music. And I probably shouldn't have been watching him on television when I was still in elementary school.
Doc Severinsen led "The Tonight Show" band for Johnny Carson, whom I would stay up to watch pretty much every school night. Doc didn't get as much screentime as Johnny's couchbound sidekick Ed McMahon, but he always made the most of it.
Johnny retired in 1992 and died in 2005, but Doc Severinsen is still going - the jazzman was still touring the country after his 90th birthday!
Now 93, the trumpeter is the subject of a new documentary called "Never Too Late: The Doc Severinsen Story," premiering at 9 p.m. Friday on WTTW Channel 11 as part of the "American Masters" series. (It will air again midnight Sunday into Monday morning, and will be available on the PBS app.)
The film features recent footage of Severinsen's concerts, classic clips from the Carson show and interviews with performers including current "Tonight Show" bandleader Questlove. But let's be honest: Doc's weird outfits are gonna be the best part.
It was beauty killed the beast:
Eighty-eight years after his first screen appearance, King Kong is fighting Godzilla this weekend in movie theaters and on HBO Max. In 1976, he was making life difficult for Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin in a remake from "Towering Inferno" director John Guillermin. That film, long overshadowed by Peter Jackson's acclaimed 2005 remake, is coming back to home video next month in a collector's edition from premium Blu-ray label Shout Factory.
"King Kong" includes a bevy of new features, among them an interview with makeup wizard/Hollywood legend Rick Baker, who created the Kong costume and performed the role himself. The most tantalizing reason to buy: A second disc includes a three-hour "extended TV broadcast cut" that runs 46 minutes longer than the theatrical version.
Big fans of the big ape can preorder their copy now at shoutfactory.com.
• Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who has watched Steve Martin's "Great Flydini" bit from the Carson show about a thousand times.