Beloved Match Game panelist and Tonight Show regular Charles Nelson Reilly charms in his final stage performance

A good storyteller needs only his body and voice to captivate an audience. Standing on a sparsely decorated stage in North Hollywood, Charles Nelson Reilly proves just that, with more vigour and wit than you’d expect from pop-cultural flotsam. After all, in what the elderly refer to as “back in the day,” Reilly was the proto-Hilton — famous for being famous. As the film unfolds, Reilly proves himself more than just a panelist on Match Game and frequent guest of Johnny Carson, but as a warm performer able to spin one helluva story.

Life of Reilly is an abridged version of Reilly’s one-man stage show, Save it for the Stage, and captures his final performance. The original stage production was three hours long, but directors Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson only capture 84 minutes of that set. No doubt, the stage show presented a more expansive version of Reilly’s life, but the film still feels absolutely definitive. Reilly’s recollection of his past remains vivid. As he attacks each memory with gusto and boldness, his gift for detail and humour shines through. This is a man who knows what his audience wants and is more than willing to give it to them.

The film begins with Reilly growing up in the Bronx, the son of a Paramount Studio poster painter and a bigoted nurse so disliked by the neighbourhood that she carried a bat with her whenever she went outside. From there, Reilly explores his path through New York and Hollywood, where he set out to make a name for himself. There’s little talk of his time on Match Game, no wild stories about Carson or of parties hookers and Burt Reynolds — this is a film about Reilly’s life, and his focus is unwavering. Instead, we get a lovingly detailed eulogy of a stage actor, theatre director and teacher performed with a wink by the man himself.

Reilly passed away on May 25, 2007. With his stage show, he proved himself to be more than an obscure answer in Trivial Pursuit. Life of Reilly isn’t some lurid account of celebrity or a wallow in kitsch, but a fitting and loving tribute to a consummate storyteller.