19. "Pink Lady & Jeff" ran for six episodes in 1980, before it was mercifully cancelled. Who or what was Pink Lady?
From Quiz TV's Finest Failures
Answer:
A Japanese pop singing duo who spoke no English
Kei and Mie were two women from Japan who formed a duo named Pink Lady. In their native country, they filled stadia with clamoring fans, and so Fred Silverman, a producer at NBC thought they'd be able to bring American viewers to the TV for an hour every week as hosts of a variety show. He neglected to find out whether they spoke English. When it turned out they didn't, Sliverman was not deterred; he hired stand-up comic Jeff Altman to join them, and do most of the talking, while Kei and Mie supplied a few lines memorized phonetically, plus a song or two learned the same way. Once in a while, they'd sing in Japanese, and the audience got a sense of what Japanese audiences loved so much, but they were less charming when they had no idea what they were saying, and the show fell flatter than one of Jeff Altman's falls into a hot tub, fully clothed in his tux, which was a running joke on the show. Really.