Best movies like Variety Time

Following a live orchestra opening, emcee Eddie Garr greets the audience and tells them about his trip to Los Angeles, where out-of-work actors are always 'acting' while in their service-industry jobs. What follows is a cavalcade of wild and wacky performances.

Dozens of star and character-actor cameos and a message about the Variety Club (a show-business charity) are woven into a framework about two hopeful young ladies who come to Hollywood, exchange identities, and cause comic confusion (with slapstick interludes) throughout the Paramount studio.

J. P. Courtney wants to update the music on the radio program he sponsors, but his wife, Agatha Courtney, is the final authority and addicted to the classics and won't allow him to replace Professor Bistell and his symphonic orchestra. Conspiring with his daughter Sue and her friends, Marvo the Great, the Andrews Sisters, Anne Payne and bandleader Woody Herman, they devise a sabotage plot that gets rid of Professor Bistell, and a new sound is soon heard on the program.

An all-Black comedy and dance revue with stars of stage and screen.

Acclaimed director John Landis (Animal House, The Blues Brothers) presents this madcap send-up of late night TV, low-budget sci-fi films and canned-laughter-filled sitcoms packed with off-the-wall sketches that will have you in stitches. Centered around a television station which features a 1950s-style sci-fi movie interspersed with a series of wild commercials, wacky shorts and weird specials, this lampoon of contemporary life and pop culture skewers some of the silliest spectacles ever created in the name of entertainment. A truly outrageous look at the best of the worst that television has to offer.

Lewis and Clark, aka The Sunshine Boys, were famous comedians during the vaudeville era, but off-stage they couldn't stand each other and haven't spoken in over 20 years of retirement. Willy Clark's nephew is the producer of a TV variety show that wants to feature a reunion of this classic duo. It is up to him to try to get the Sunshine Boys back together again.

The legendary pinup queen Bettie Page stars in a marvelous burlesque show, alongside '50s icons Lili St.Cryr, Bobby Shields, Chris Le Chris Lynn and many others.

An all-star revue featuring MGM contract players.

Foreign investors converge on a luxury hotel in China to bid on a new kind of radioscope. But, this is a hotel where Burns and Allen are the in-house medical staff, a measles risk sends the whole building into quarantine, and a madcap millionaire crashes dinner in his autogyro. Hotel and radioscope become a stage for an all-star cast of comedians and musicians, from vaudeville to the new generation.

Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carroll's Vanities, someone is attempting to injure the leading lady Ann Ware, who wants to marry leading man Eric Lander. Stage manager Jack Ellery calls in his friend, policeman Bill Murdock, to help him investigate. Bill thinks Jack is offering to let him see the show from an unusual viewpoint after he forgot to get him tickets for the performance, but then they find the corpse of a murdered woman and Bill immediately suspects Eric of the crime.

Acrobat Eddie Marsh is in the army now. His first act is to become friendly with Kathryn Jones, the colonel's pretty daughter. Their romance hits a few snags, including disapproval from her father. Eddie's also plagued by fear of having an accident during his family's trapeze act in the army variety show, which also features a gallery of MGM stars.

A committee investigating TV's first uncensored network examines a typical day's programming, which includes shows, commercials, news programs, you name it. What they discover will surely crack you up! This outrageous and irreverent spoof of television launched the careers of some of the greatest comedians of all time.

When billionaire Jean-Marc Clement learns that he is to be satirized in an off-Broadway revue, he passes himself off as an actor playing him in order to get closer to the beautiful star of the show, Amanda Dell.

A filmed version of the Broadway show starring comedienne Gilda Radner, complete with the characters she made famous on the TV show "Saturday Night Live."

"Hey, kids, let's get together and put on a show!" That's the idea behind this raucous spoof about a vaudeville performer who's sent to college to spy on his bratty son.

A TV Special consisting of various sketches with the titular comedian and fellow comics in guest appearances.

A "Kentucky Fried Movie" / "Groove Tube" kind of sketch comedy featuring skits, parodies and naked women.

Made during the early years of the movie musical, this exuberant revue was one of the most extravagant, eclectic, and technically ambitious Hollywood productions of its day. Starring the bandleader Paul Whiteman, then widely celebrated as the King of Jazz, the film drew from Broadway variety shows to present a spectacular array of sketches, performances by such acts as the Rhythm Boys (featuring a young Bing Crosby), and orchestral numbers—all lavishly staged by veteran theater director John Murray Anderson.

A series of 19 musical and comedy "vaudeville" sketches presented in the form of a live television broadcast hosted by Tommy Handley (as himself).

Stripteasers, baggy-pants comedians, exotic dancers, comedy sketches-- all part of a great tribute to a living art, hosted by Ann Corio, the queen of Burlesque.

A humorous documentary film written by British comedian and well-known car collector Rowan Atkinson, penned as a series of sketches featuring himself driving around London trying to solve his car-fetish, and discussing it with taxi drivers, policemen, used-car salesmen and psychotherapists.

A tribute to British comedian Mel Smith, who died in July 2013, aged 60, featuring home video footage, rare archive material and many classic sketches. Far more than a comic actor, Smith also wrote and edited a host of celebrated TV comedies in the 1980s and 90s. He was a theatre and film director, and as a TV producer he was responsible for several innovative comedy series. Friends and colleagues, including Griff Rhys Jones, John Lloyd and Richard Curtis, talk about Smith's talents, both in front of- and behind the camera. The programme also traces his time at Oxford and, before that, Latymer Upper School, where Smith's talents were first spotted.

To save her family hotel's Christmas show, talent booker Claire must ask for help from her ex-boyfriend Ryan, the lead guitarist of a now-famous band that fired her as their manager years ago.

Extremely rare, never repeated special starring Mary Tyler Moore, Ben Vereen, Doug Kershar, Arthur Fiedler, The Manhattan Transfer. “A special in which the vivacious Mary Tyler Moore acts out her wildest fantasies. Lot’s of big dance numbers reminds us that Mary started her career as a dancer. Moore sings and dances to rock, pop, and classical pieces in a show that's drawn from the Bible and fleshed out with allegory about man's creation, fall and rebirth. The show takes the form of surrealistic dream sequences that range from the fanciful to the solemn, and that have Mary playing the roles of angel, devil and woman." Manhattan Transfer does "Sympathy for the Devil," perhaps worth the price of admission right there.”

A Jewish resort hotel celebrates a pair of longtime customers' fiftieth wedding anniversary by staging an old-fashioned Borscht Belt show replete with singers, dancers, comedians, and impressionists.

An Irresponsible Medley of Song & Dance. Rare footage of British variety artistes including Wilson Keppel and Betty, and Ivy Benson and her All Girls Band. Ted Ray comperes plus many other top variety acts. A nostalgic look at the lost days of British variety. Wonderful routines from stars of the day, including exotic fan dancer, many of whom are still well known with niche followings.

Join Kacey Musgraves for a holiday variety show featuring new songs, time-honored classics, and a rotating cast of celebrity friends.

The former members of a vaudeville team meet up again in a defense plant during WW II.

Peter Brough and Archie Andrews present a variety bill that includes Billy Cotton and his Band, Eve Becke, The Australian Air Aces, Bobbie 'Uke' Henshaw and Sam Barton.

Lynda Carter stars in her fourth musical TV special with guests George Benson, Tony Orlando, and Frank Stallone.

A young woman (Janet Leigh) leaves her small hometown in Vermont and travels to New York City with hopes of becoming a Broadway star.

A group of feisty, talented young performers pool their resources and buy a dilapidated theatre to showcase their acts – but unscrupulous property developers also want the theatre and resort to dirty tricks to disrupt the first night's performance!

AWOL for more than half a century, but now back on parade, this cheery army comedy is a showcase for variety star Hal Monty and a young Max Bygraves. Missing in action for many years, this raucous comedy of army life, which looks back on the latter days of WWII, is a slam-bang showcase for the boisterous variety antics of comedian Hal Monty, seen here in his heyday performing rough and ready slapstick sketches aplenty. He’s accompanied by regular foil Les Ritchie, as his uptight sergeant, and comical crooner Max Bygraves, in his screen debut.

A young executive is trying to convince an airline to sponsor a travel show on television, but he's not getting anywhere. When he tells his fiancé that he may have to postpone their honeymoon, she goes off on him, and as he backs away from her he hits his head on a fire extinguisher and knocks himself out. While unconscious he dreams his own version of the show he's trying so hard to sell.

A documentary that follows the former Tonight Show host. Filmed during Conan’s ”Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television” comedy tour, after his departure from the Tonight Show, taking viewers on an intimate journey of O’Brien’s life.