Fans of Jerry Lewis are well aware of his interest in technology, even if the stories of his inventing the video assist appear to distort the truth a trifle. For his part, publisher Al Goldstein’s best-known property was Screw, but he also developed a newsletter called Gadgets that sought to test new electronic devices on the market.

Someone had the bright idea of bringing the two men together for a segment of A.M. New York (a local competitor to the morning juggernaut of the Today program) that ran on February 23, 1976, with the assignment of introducing the viewer to a bunch of expensive devices.

The host at this time was named Stanley Siegel, and the devices are pretty amusing for being ridiculous in the era of the iPhone (which they obviously couldn’t help).

And expensive!! You could get a gold watch with a calculator on the face—for $3,900! (That’s more than $16,000 in today’s money.) How many meetings would have to be saved by instantaneously solving some simple arithmetic problem before that kind of thing would begin to pay for itself? Ditto the briefcase with a phone in it, which was priced at a relatively reasonable $2,200 (nearly ten grand today).

There’s also the most phallic corkscrew you have ever seen and a strange device filled with strips of paper that’s supposed to serve as an oracle of some sort.

Repeated reference is made to some very serious legal trouble Goldstein is in, which is interesting in that the most celebrated legal episode Goldstein was ever involved with, an obscenity trial held in Wichita, Kansas, had been decided in his favor just a couple of years earlier. Meanwhile, Lewis is content to boast about his lavish house.
 

 
via /r/ObscureMedia
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Red, White and Blue Sleaze: Al Goldstein’s infamous ‘Midnight Blue’ cable access program
J.D. Salinger wouldn’t let Jerry Lewis play Holden Caulfield