Monthly Archives: March 2009

Today is the last day of March…and therefore the last day for the Creamy Tomato Soup at Souplantation.

Okay, I'm going to tell you a story here that will cause some of you to think my brain has gone condo and I'm suffering from severe delusions. The following, however, actually occurred. If you're skeptical, drop an e-mail to anyone who knows me well. They'll tell you these kinds of things always happen to me. I don't know why but they do. This involves my friend Kristine Greco, a lovely lady who passed away last week at a way-too-early age.

I have a mammoth collection of comedy records. Always have. Some time in the sixties, I began actively collecting the work of the great bandleader, Spike Jones. I've amassed just about everything he ever recorded — that's a lot of 78s and 45s and LPs — and the stuff I don't have on original discs, I have on tapes or (more recently) MP3s. If you're familiar with his wonderful, wacky work, no explanation is necessary as to why I was drawn to it.

I never met Mr. Jones (he died in 1965) but in the seventies, I found myself working with a number of his former associates. Lennie Weinrib and Billy Barty were on several of the shows I wrote for Sid and Marty Krofft. A couple of his former musicians had become film editors and were working down in the basement at Hanna-Barbera. One of his former writers, Eddie Brandt, had worked at H-B before I got there but left to open a nostalgia store, selling old books and old records, and I sometimes shopped there and chatted with him. There were a few others. At the time, no one had done a book about Spike Jones and I started to think I might be in a good position to write one. I put the notion to a friend who was an editor at the kind of publishing house that might handle such a thing.

He promptly threw chilly water on the idea. Said he, "A couple of people have thought of writing a book on Spike Jones but they all gave it up. They couldn't find enough material. Now, if you could approach his family and they'd agree to cooperate, maybe…"

That kind of discouraged me. I didn't know any relatives of Spike Jones. Or so I thought.

As I mentioned here a few days ago when I was saying goodbye to her, I met this wonderful lady named Kristine Greco when we were both working on Welcome Back, Kotter — she as an actress, me as a story editor. A year or two after that, we were going back to her place after a movie…and for some reason, I still remember what it was. It was Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. We were walking into her apartment and I was somehow talking about things I was working on. I said, "I've been thinking of doing a book about a man named Spike Jones. He was a great bandleader back in the —"

Kristine interrupted me and asked, "You mean, Uncle Spike?"

That's what she said. That's what the lady said: Uncle Spike. I gasped, "What do you mean, 'Uncle Spike?'"

She said, "Spike Jones was my uncle. I thought you knew that."

"I didn't know that," I replied. His name had never come up in our conversations and I wasn't in the habit of asking women if they were Spike Jones's niece. (I should have started. I later found out that another actress I worked with, Judy Strangis, was also a niece of Spike's. In fact, Judy's the one who called me the other day to tell me about Kristine.)

It turned out Kristine not only was a niece of Spike Jones but when she was around six, she'd even sung on one of his records. Spike was married to a singer named Helen Grayco. Helen Grayco was born Helen Greco and she "Americanized" her surname early in her career.

Standing there in Kristine Greco's apartment that night, I felt like I'd made a wrong turn at the Twilight Zone and wandered into a Hitchcock flick…but it got weirder. I asked her, "Where are all of Spike Jones's personal papers and such?"

She said, "Well, a lot of them are in my garage. Remember those boxes you just parked your car next to?"

I'd been parking next to those boxes for a year or so when I visited her. We went out to the garage, opened up the top box and right there we found a bunch of animation-style storyboard drawings. Back when he was doing one of his TV shows in the fifties, Jones sometimes employed cartoonists to create visual gags which he and his band used. There were about two dozen of these drawings and many were by the great cartoon director, Tex Avery, some of them even signed. Here's one from a series of gags which had Spike sitting on a piano playing the trombone while his "feet" (actually someone else's hands) played the piano…

The others weren't signed but appeared to be by two other artists. Both had familiar styles and one looked like it just might be the legendary magazine cartoonist, Virgil "VIP" Partch.

"You can have them if you like," she said…and she also loaded me down with old sheet music and programs and Spike souvenirs. One treasure I keep on my desk here looks like a gold-plated railroad spike but it's also a can opener…and it says "Spike Jones" on the side of it.

At the time, I was working at Hanna-Barbera. The following Monday, I took the storyboard drawings in and showed them to my office roommate. My office roommate at the time was Tex Avery.

He was sitting there with an older gent…a visitor I didn't recognize. When I showed Tex the drawings, he did one of those "takes" that the Wolf in his cartoons did when he found Droopy where he didn't expect him. "My God," he gasped. "We were just talking about Spike. I loved writing gags for him."

I asked him if he could identify the drawings done by others. He said most of them were by Roy Williams. Roy was the Disney storyman who appeared on The Mickey Mouse Club as the Big Mooseketeer. "What about this one?" I asked, showing him the one I thought might be by Virgil Partch.

"Oh, that's one of his," Tex said, pointing to the gentleman in his guest chair. "This is Virgil Partch."

That, fortunately, is about where the incredible coincidences end. I wound up going to lunch that day with Tex and Vip — they drank and talked, I ate and listened — and we had a very nice time. Kristine soon introduced me to Spike's son, Spike Jr., who was (and still is) a very successful producer. We lunched and talked about me writing a book and also about other projects, but nothing ever came of any of it. I was too busy to tackle the book or anything else just then. A few years later, I heard that a fine historian-author named Jordan Young was doing a Spike Jones bio so I gave him all the material I'd amassed and he produced a much better book than I would have. You can order a copy of it here.

That's the story.  I told you you wouldn't believe it.

Jake DeSantis just resigned as executive vice president of the American International Group's financial products unit. His "I quit" letter was an open one in the New York Times.

Matt Taibbi, who wrote that outraged/funny piece for Rolling Stone, has a few things to say to Mr. DeSantis. Read one then read the other.

Woody Allen in The New Yorker.

How to describe Arbogast? Bob Arbogast was a comedy writer, a radio personality, a voiceover specialist, a creator of funny commercials and a TV host…and even that doesn't begin to tell you who he was.

His was a voice you heard many times, especially if you lived in the Los Angeles area. He popped up on many shows doing funny bits and around 1967, he and his then-partner Jack Margolis did a very popular Bob-and-Ray style radio show on KLAC. There have been thousands of Bob-and-Ray style radio teams in this country but Arbogast and Margolis were among the best. There was a small ruckus when they were cancelled…with pretty high ratings. Reportedly, it was all because of protests, from sponsors and pressure groups, when they did some material opposing the Vietnam War.

Arbogast later worked solo on radio, both in front of the microphone and for others in that position, and wrote a number of TV shows and a lot of very funny commercials. He also did the occasional cartoon voice, including a stint in the cast of Roger Ramjet.

Among folks who do funny voiceovers, he was kind of a legend. There's a memorial service Wednesday afternoon in Los Feliz and I expect to see a stunning array of talented folks who worked with him…or just admired his work. Here's an obit.

Hey, if you're in New York — or inclined to listen to radio station WABC on the web — take note: Our pal Chuck McCann is a guest tomorrow evening on Mark Simone's popular program, The Saturday Night Oldies Show. The show starts at 9 PM Eastern time and Chuck thinks he'll be on around 9:15. Nobody funnier than Chuck.

Sigh. A lovely lady named Kristine Greco was found dead in her apartment the other day from (as yet) undetermined causes.

Kristine was an actress who later decided she liked it better on the other side of the camera. I met her my first day working on Welcome Back, Kotter in 1976. She was one of the other, non-featured students in Mr. Kotter's classroom. It was more or less "extra" work but occasionally, she got a few lines. I think I wrote the first dialogue she ever spoke on television. Oddly enough, she was often recognized in public for sitting behind John Travolta or the other stars of the show. One night in Westwood, she was practically stalked by an ardent female Kotter fan who wouldn't leave us alone until Kristine gave her an autograph.

Kristine was only on that show a short time but turned up later on many others. For a time, whenever Young and the Restless needed someone to play a hooker, it was Kristine, and she had a very nice role in a not very good movie called Coach, which starred Cathy Lee Crosby, and bit parts in Grease and American Hot Wax. While we were going together, she was also on Happy Days, Emergency, General Hospital, Charlie's Angels and a few others.

At some point, she began to tire of the rat race and the auditions, and she ditched her headshot photo. (That's it up above. I took it in my back yard.) She worked for a time for Goodson-Todman as a stand-in and rehearsal contestant on game shows, then got into script supervising. It was in that capacity that she became enormously successful, working on dozens of movies, TV shows and especially commercials. Among her many credits are The West Wing, Gilmore Girls, Lifestories, My So-Called Life, Dinosaurs, Dexter and E.R.

I have a great anecdote that involves Kristine but it really isn't about her directly so I'll wait and tell it in a couple of days here. Right now, I just want to note the loss of a talented lady with a very large heart and a wonderful smile. We're all a little poorer every time we lose one of those.

Back in this item, I asked if anyone out there could help locate two of the founders of the Comic-Con International in San Diego, Richard Alf and Mike Towry. Both have been located…so thanks to all who helped!