AH-ONE, AH-TWO: Life with My Musical Family

The idiot child of Wunnerful, Wunnerful! (1971). Was ever life more eupeptic than along the champagne trail? But the bubble bursts for Welk and Musical Family when ABC-TV fails to renew their contract despite sixteen years of success. ABC's going All Youth while Welk's music is more arthritic than Guy Lombardo's. What to do? Welk decides to package his own show, sell it to individual stations, and also go on the road. Success gushes from date after play date, Welk is jumped by adoring codgers as if Sinatra or Presley, the product goes nationwide with 30 more stations signed up than when in full bloom with ABC. But there are shadows over the effervescence -- Lawrence pleads with his Family for simpler music -- ""It is simple,"" his production chief cries in a purple flush. -- ""'It isn't simple enough,' I said, so sharply that everyone was stunned into silence. . . ."" But, as Lawrence says, life is funny, and soon the golden sunshine returns, bubbling over Boobsville and the blue euphoria of a date at Lake Tahoe.