Stamp Act

Interesting event, this morning. As you may have heard, the U.S. Postal Service has issued a set of stamps saluting twenty great shows from early television. The shows are The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, The Dinah Shore Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show, The Red Skelton Show, Hopalong Cassidy, You Bet Your Life, The Honeymooners, Howdy Doody, The Phil Silvers Show, The Tonight Show, Lassie, The Lone Ranger, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, Dragnet, Texaco Star Theater, I Love Lucy, Twilight Zone and Kukla, Fran & Ollie.

Obviously, we could all quibble with the list but it ain't a bad selection. The reason some programs aren't there is that you can't put a live person on a U.S. postage stamp. Your Show of Shows would be there but Sid Caesar is still, happily, with us.

This morn, out at the TV Academy, there was an unveiling ceremony. They invited relatives of folks involved in the honored shows so I got to rub elbows with Clayton Moore's son-in-law, Jack Webb's widow and even a collie from the Lassie bloodline. The two gents in the photo above are Arthur Marx (son of Groucho) and Frank Ferrante, the oft-plugged-on-this-site impersonator of Arthur's father. Oh, and here's a photo I took of Jayne Meadows Allen who, despite a busted hip, wasn't about to miss the debut of a stamp with Steve's picture…

Among the other celebs present were June Lockhart, Barbara Hale (who played Perry Mason's secretary, Della Street), David Nelson (son of Ozzie 'n' Harriet), Gary Owens, Leonard Maltin and the host for the ceremony, Carl Reiner. The attendees were a curious mix of folks who love old TV, and folks who love first day issues of stamps.

Carl Reiner was wonderful. He's getting a bit slower in old age and he kept getting confused as to what he was supposed to introduce next…but he made wonderful, funny recoveries from every error and if he'd kept on talking, that whole audience would still be there listening to him and laughing. After the event, I overheard someone compliment him on his performance at the Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers which aired this past weekend. Mr. Reiner winced and told the man — and enough surrounding people that I feel it's okay to report it here — that it was maybe the most humiliating show of his life. He hadn't realized what he was agreeing to appear on and felt totally out of place. Given that, it's amazing he was as charming and funny on it as he was. (If you haven't seen it, don't…or at least, don't watch any part of it except for Carl Reiner.)

Not much else to report. I had a nice chat with Leonard Stern who assured me that the early sixties' sitcom I'm Dickens, He's Fenster (which he produced) is very close to appearing in the whole DVD treatment. I got to sit with Frank Ferrante and Arthur Marx and heard Arthur joke that he should have gotten a discount on the stamps he purchased. (I pointed out to him that I couldn't go out and buy U.S. postage stamps with my father's picture on them.) On the way out, I came about a half-inch from crashing into the daughter of Phil Silvers. All in all, a nice way to spend a morning…and the stamps looked so good, I may start putting them on my e-mail.