Imogene Coca
Also Known As: Emogeane Coca
Biography: Imogene Fernandez de Coca (November 18, 1908 – June 2, 2001) was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows. Starting out in vaudeville as a child acrobat, she studied ballet and wished to have a serious career in music and dance, graduating to decades of stage musical revues, cabaret and summer stock. Finally in her 40s she began a celebrated career as a comedienne in television, starring in six series and guesting on successful television programs from the 1940s to the 1990s. She was nominated for five Emmy awards for Your Show of Shows, winning Best Actress in 1951 and singled out for a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting in 1953. Coca was also nominated for a Tony Award in 1978 for On the Twentieth Century and received a sixth Emmy nomination at the age of 80 for an episode of Moonlighting. She possessed a rubbery face capable of the broadest expressions—Life magazine compared her to Beatrice Lillie and Charlie Chaplin, and described her characterizations as taking "people or situations suspended in their own precarious balance between dignity and absurdity, and push(ing) them over the cliff with one single, pointed gesture"—the magazine noted a "particularly high-brow critic" as observing, "The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly. Miss Coca, on the other hand, is the timid woman who, when aroused, can beat a tiger to death with a feather." In addition to vaudeville, cabaret, theater and television, she appeared in film, voiced children's cartoons and was even featured in an MTV video by a New Wave band. Though her fame began late, she worked well into her 80s. Twice a widow, Coca died in 2001. Description above from the Wikipedia article Imogene Coca, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Birthday: November 18, 1908
Deathday: June 02, 2001
Adult: No
Gender: Female
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Known For:
National Lampoon's Vacation
Overview: Clark Griswold is on a quest to take his family to the Walley World theme park for a vacation, but things don't go exactly as planned.
Genres: Comedy Adventure
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1983-07-29
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The Sound of Laughter
Overview: A compilation of film clips of comedies from 1930's.
Genres: Comedy Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-12-17
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Under the Yum-Yum Tree
Overview: A love-struck landlord tries to convince a pretty tenant to dump her fiancé and give him a chance.
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-10-23
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The Little Match Girl
Overview: Adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen story about a poor dying child who dreams of different uses of a lighted match - the same pack she'd attempted to sell on the street.
Genres: Family Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1987-12-01
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Freddie the Freeloader's Christmas Dinner
Overview: Freddie the Freeloader sets out to have Xmas dinner in a very expensive New York restaurant with his good friend, the Professor. Along the way he stops in a hospital to entertain some children on Xmas. Red Skelton does a couple of songs on his own & a duet with Vincent Price.
Genres: Comedy Family TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-11-01
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Rabbit Test
Overview: Lionel's life turns around after a one-night stand on top of a pinball table... he becomes the world's first pregnant man!
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1978-04-09
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Papa Was a Preacher
Overview: Edwin Porter, a Methodist minister, is sent to a little church in the small town of Sterling, Texas, to try to save it from financial insolvency. The move is sudden and is complicated by the fact that Porter’s wife and eight children are all very comfortable in the large, successful church they have been serving in Dallas.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-09-19
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Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes
Overview: Two con men convince a king that they have woven for him a suit made of magical cloth that only stupid or incompetent people are unable to see. Not wanting to seem dull, everyone pretends to admire the king's new clothes although he is completely naked.
Genres: Animation Family Comedy TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1972-02-21
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The Return of the Beverly Hillbillies
Overview: Jed Clamplett and his backwoods family help solve an energy crisis in their own rustic ways for their Beverly Hills neighborhood they still cannot adjust to.
Genres: Comedy TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-10-06
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Ten from Your Show of Shows
Overview: Ten comedy sketches compiled from the 1950s TV series, "Your Show of Shows."
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-02-23
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Too Easy to Kill
Overview: A nurse deeply involved in the occult is hired to care for a wounded policeman who is secretly setting a trap for a cop-killer.
Genres: TV Movie Horror Mystery Drama Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1975-10-14
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Nothing Lasts Forever
Overview: An artist fails a test and is required to direct traffic in New York City's Holland Tunnel. He winds up falling in love with a beautiful woman, who takes him to the moon on a Lunar Cruiser.
Genres: Romance Science Fiction Fantasy Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-09-06
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Buy & Cell
Overview: Herbie Altman is framed for Stock fraud by his boss when the SEC starts investigating his company. Sent to prison, he helps a fellow inmate successfully invest his money. Soon all the inmates want his help. To manage all the money, he forms CON INC. and runs it from the prison under the noses of the warden and the guards. But when the IRS and SEC begin to investigate this successful company, it looks like he may be in trouble again
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-01-27
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Television: The First Fifty Years
Overview: Trace the history of television and its impact on American culture with clips, newsreels, and exclusive interviews from television greats like Walter Cronkite, Carol Burnett, and Jay Leno.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1999-01-01
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Mel Brooks: Unwrapped
Overview: At the age of 91, Mel Brooks is unstoppable, with his musical "Young Frankenstein" opening to great critical acclaim in London in late 2017. Alan Yentob visits Mel at home in Hollywood, at work and at play.
Genres: Documentary Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2018-02-17
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Dime a Dance
Overview: June Allyson is a cashier in a dance hall and her friend Imogene Coca wants to get a job there as a dance hostess. June advises her she needs to first make herself attractive to men,and gives her a book on the subject. But Imogene, by mistake, picks up the wrong book and reads one on the art of jiu-jitsu. Imogene's first customer is a bashful sailor who gets turned every which way but loose. Hank Henry also appears as a sailor. All four performers had better things ahead of them although,in the case of comedian Hank Henry, not by much.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-12-23
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A Special Sesame Street Christmas
Overview: Leslie Uggams hosts this take on A Christmas Carol, where she and fellow guest stars, Anne Murray, Imogene Coca, and Dickie Smothers try to get Oscar to stop being such a Grouch on Christmas.
Genres: Comedy Family TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1978-12-08
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Promises! Promises!
Overview: After a drunken spree on a cruise ship, two women discover that they're pregnant, and set out to find who the fathers are.
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-08-01
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Hollywood: The Movie
Overview: An ambitious filmmaker sets out to make an avant-garde film but soon learns the only way he can secure financing is if he shows Jessica Hahn's breasts. Also, two old women are magically transformed into young starlets.
Genres: Fantasy Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1996-01-01
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In the Beginning: The Caesar Years
Overview: New interviews with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, footage from the reunion of Caesar's Writers (1996), and sketches from Your Show of Shows (1950) and Caesar's Hour (1954).
Genres: Documentary Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2012-11-13
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Bashful Ballerina
Overview: Miss Klutz is the worst dancer that has ever enrolled at the school ran by Maestro Boris Cobblier, and he is even considering giving her money back to get rid of her, a consideration not to his financial liking. But the owner of a competing dance school has lost her prize dancer and calls on Cobblier with a request to borrow one of his dancers. Seeing a way to kill two birds with one stone---get rid of Miss Klutz and ruin a competitor---he gladly loans Miss Klutz out. But things don't work out just as he had planned.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-09-17
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