In keeping with this blog's policy of driving trivial topics into the ground and stomping down on them like a full trash can to get more in, we have even more evidence that the dashing face of Fred Astaire was under that very well-made Alfred E. Neuman mask. The above photo is of the great make-up artist John Chambers putting the finishing touches on his creation. It's from the 71st issue of Cinefex magazine and while the photo itself doesn't prove it was Fred, the article — for which Chambers was interviewed — said it was.
Also, oodles of folks who claim expertise at the style and grace of Mr. Astaire have weighed in to say no doubt about it, that's the guy…and a couple pointed out that the show was called An Evening with Fred Astaire and that NBC press photos of the time say it was Fred. Plus there's this from Tom Brown, who works over at Turner Classic Movies and is one of the reasons that channel is run like it's run by folks who know and love movies…
I forwarded the clip of Alfred E and Barrie Chase to one of Ms. Chase's good friends and fellow dancers, Christopher Riordan. Christopher also worked with Mr. Astaire and Barrie on the Hollywood Palace shows. He's an encyclopedia of dance history, and he confirms that it is Mr. Astaire.
I'm sorry this topic didn't come up back when I met Ms. Chase at one of those Hollywood Shows. I think we have sufficient proof now but it would be nice to add her testimony to the pile.
The thing that interests me most about this whole dance number is that it's from a show that ran November 4, 1959. Alfred had his first prominent appearance on the cover of MAD #30, the December 1956 issue which came out around October of that year. While the magazine was gaining sales steadily at the time, it wasn't that well-known at the time. It was selling around 300,000 copies an issue which wasn't that much and no generations had then grown up on it. Still, the face of Neuman had registered well enough that the folks behind Mr. Astaire's show knew it and figured enough of America would "get it."
This was a pretty big special and Fred Astaire was a pretty big star, especially when he was dancing. It was probably the first indicator of MAD breaking into the mainstream and impacting American popular culture.
A couple of folks have written to me to suggest that the man behind the Alfred E. Neuman mask in yesterday's video link probably wasn't Fred Astaire and was probably Hermes Pan, who was Mr. Astaire's main choreographer. This may well be…but MAD sure seemed to think it was Mr. Astaire, and the book Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire by John Franceschina says it was Astaire. We may never know for sure…
Buster Keaton was one of the greatest comedians and filmmakers in the world until around 1929 or 1930. His work and his life took terrible nosedives then due to problems in his personal relationships, the consumption of alcohol, financial mismanagement, the coming of "talkies' and the decision to leave his own independent production company and make his movies thereafter for M.G.M. Film historians argue as to whether the problem was that the studio didn't know what to do with him or that he didn't know what to do with himself.
It was probably a combination of both but he worked for M.G.M. for four years making movies of varying quality and declining success. In 1934, he found himself out of that huge studio and laboring for smaller companies on smaller budgets. Still, he occasionally, now and then, once in a while managed to make films that almost lived up to his old standard. He made sixteen two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures, which was like Sandy Koufax pitching for a farm team. (I should be able to come up with a better analogy than that but you know what I mean. How about "Gordon Ramsay flipping burgers at a Wendy's?" Or "Laurence Olivier working with Ed Wood?")
When Educational went out of business, Keaton moved over to Columbia where a few other once-great comedians like Harry Langdon and Charley Chase made two-reelers when no other studio would have them. Mostly though, the big stars at the Columbia shorts department were The Three Stooges. It was for Buster yet another notch down and one of these days, I'll link you to a few of those films and you can judge for yourself how good they were.
(A "two-reeler," by the way, was a short film, usually around 16-24 minutes in length. They became less and less popular with moviegoers over the years but for a while, all the great movie comedians made them…somewhere.)
What I have here for you today was probably the best short Keaton did for Educational — Grand Slam Opera. Made in 1936, it spoofed the then-popular radio program, Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and also some scenes in the 1935 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers feature, Top Hat. Grand Slam Opera is a pretty good little film though every print of it I've ever seen obviously came from the same source material with the same frustrating splices. There are a couple of bad ones in its opening song, a parody of George M. Cohan's "So Long, Mary." (Educational refused to pay for the rights to use the tune so Buster paid the fee out of his own depleted pockets.)
This is not Buster at his best but it is him at his best when he was at his worst. That's still better than a lot of comics' best when they were at their best…
The other day, I came across this clip on YouTube. It's Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1936 movie Swing Time, introducing the song, "Pick Yourself Up." I don't recall ever seeing the entire movie but this scene triggered a powerful flashback memory for me. I'm about 99% certain that I was remembering seeing this scene when I was four or five years old. I remember the old black-and-white TV set we had in the living room at our house, I remember this scene on it, I remember singing the song over and over again for a few days after…
…and that's all I remember. But it's one of my earliest memories…
While we're at it, I came across this fragment of a Sammy Davis/Jerry Lewis special that I never saw before but in the first few minutes, they do their version of the song. I liked Fred and Ginger better…
I started going to Las Vegas around 1986, just in time to pay one (1) visit to the Silver Slipper casino on The Strip. I went in and walked around the place, absorbing the sense of Old Vegas that it had then….a sense that is nowhere to be found in that city now. I played a little Blackjack and as was my custom then, left when I was ≈$50 ahead. If you play long enough, you'll eventually lose everything so the trick to winning is to accept a modest win and move on.
The place intrigued me and I figured I'd go back on my next visit to Vegas and explore the Silver Slipper in greater depth…but on my next trip, it was in the process of being demolished. I was momentarily concerned that my big win had put them out of business but I decided that probably wasn't the problem. The land became a parking lot for the Frontier Hotel until the Frontier Hotel was demolished and now both their former sites are empty lots….very, very valuable empty lots. Some super-sized megaresort that costs zillions to build will sprout on that real estate someday.
But the Silver Slipper had an interesting history. It opened in 1950 and for most of that decade, it offered three things that brought players to its doors. It had one of the best buffets — great food at a teensy price, available 24/7. It had the rep, true or not, of offering slightly more beatable games than other casinos. And it had the most popular burlesque shows in town, usually headlined by some woman who was famous for disrobing and some comic who'd been a Top Banana back in the days of Minsky's. The comic was often Hank Henry or Tommy "Moe" Raft and they did three or four shows a night including often one at 3 AM.
Vegas doesn't offer shows at that hour anymore but it did then. All the headliners at other hotels — including Frank Sinatra and Johnny Carson when they were in town — were known to flock to that 3 AM show to watch the top comedians of that tradition.
All was well at the Silver Slipper until 1964 when the place was shut down by the Nevada Gaming Control Board for using "flat dice" at its crap tables. "Flat dice" are gimmicked dice and these were not gimmicked to favor the players. It was one of the very rare instances in Vegas history of an established hotel cheating its customers and all the other Vegas casinos demanded it be stopped and prosecuted.
One of the big selling points for wagering your paycheck in Vegas instead of your local bookie or backroom crap game was that in Vegas, the games were allegedly honest. The other hotels wanted to protect that reputation, as undeserved as it may have been at times. Eventually, new management reopened the Slipper but then in 1968, Howard Hughes bought it which was never good for any casino.
Thereafter, the Slipper struggled to stay competitive with the new hotels that were being built that could offer more comps, hire bigger performers for their showrooms, offer plusher rooms and just seem more modern. In 1977, the big sign at the Silver Slipper that said "BURLESQUE" changed to "BOYLESQUE" and the performers were thereafter female impersonators headlined by a guy who did Joan Rivers. Reportedly, this was good for business but still, the Hughes company sold it in '87 to the folks who turned it into a parking lot and that was the end of the Silver Slipper.
But getting back to those burlesque shows: I have a fascination with that kind of comedian and a regret that I never got to see any of them work in their natural habitats. I can still see Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers — performers like that — at their peak. But very little film exists of the Hank Henrys or the Moe Rafts and what's around is amateurishly produced and obviously not them at their best. (Keaton, by the way, did a few tours of duty in the burlesque revues at the Silver Slipper. So did Billy Gilbert, as well as Joe DeRita in his pre-Stooge days.)
If I could go back in time with Mr. Peabody in his WABAC machine, I think I'd like to see this show that played the Silver Slipper…
Hank Henry…The Girl in the Champagne Glass…and Bela Lugosi, who was (I assume) their "Dracula in person" on the same stage? That had to be one hell of a show. "The Bela Lugosi Revue," as it was called in ads, ran from February 19 until March 27, 1954. Vegas then was a booming town with new homes and hotels being built at a brisk clip. Residential areas were springing up and often, streets were named for whoever was headlining in the town at the moment. There was (and may still be in some cases) a Fred Astaire St., a Peter Lorre St., an Elvis Presley Ct. and, yes, a Bela Lugosi St. That may have been the only honor Mr. Lugosi got out of his time at the Silver Slipper.
It was not a good time for him. He divorced his fourth wife in 1953, married his fifth in 1955 and was in the process of divorcing #5 when he died of a heart attack in 1956. Obviously, he was appearing in a Vegas burlesque show because he wasn't making a living in Hollywood, working only occasionally in movies like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) and a couple of Ed Wood masterpieces. His last really good film — and I mean this, it's a great movie — was Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948.
What did the show consist of? I wish I knew…and unless I get a ride in one of them time machines, we may never know. But it's kinda fun to imagine…
I very much enjoyed the CBS special tributing Dick Van Dyke…and like you, I didn't know who some of those performers were, either. The best part of it was how utterly delighted the Birthday Boy was with every moment of it. I've been around the man enough to know that that was in no way feigned; that he really was overwhelmed and surprised by so much of it.
If you missed it, it's rerunning tonight on CBS and it's also available for viewing on the CBS website.
Last Friday night, I went to the newly-refurbished Egyptian Theater in Hollywood for a screening of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World offered by the American Cinematheque. The film — which I have now seen more times than I've seen my next door neighbors — never fails to make me feel good…even when, as was the case here, it was not the best print and there was an unscheduled intermission when the sound went out during the third reel.
I am going to greatly upset certain movie buff friends of mine with the next part of this post…
I understand the loyalty to seeing movies actually projected on film rather than by digital means but it's starting to remind me of my friend who insists on only listening to recorded music on vinyl. It may be a noble battle in some ways but it's also a losing one. Film prints of great movies on film are becoming scarcer and scarcer and as those prints wear out, it is increasingly not cost-effective (and in some cases, not possible) to generate new ones.
DCP — Digital Cinema Package — is the standard and will be until someone comes up, as is inevitable, with something better. I understand there are only two 70mm prints of Mad World in existence, at least in English. The Cinematheque ran one of them and it had a lot of dirt and scratches and uneven sound, whereas the DCP version I saw a few years ago at the Cinerama Dome was flawless. It will always be that flawless.
The notion that a movie that was shot on film should stay on film — or is at least best viewed on film — is arguable. And if we're arguing, I could argue that a good DCP version of a movie yields a viewing experience closer to how the movie looked at its premiere than most film prints around. If that's not the case now, it will be.
Anyway, I still enjoyed seeing my fave film again the way it's best seen: On a big screen with a big, appreciative audience. But it was also a long night. We got in line at 6 PM, the speeches started at 7 PM, and then the film was followed by a Q-and-A session with Karen Sharpe-Kramer (widow of director Stanley Kramer), Kat Kramer (daughter of Stanley and Karen), Sandy Hackett (son of Buddy), Barrie Chase and our host, screenwriter Scott Alexander. We didn't get out of there until Midnight.
Barrie Chase is the answer to the question, "Who's still alive who was in this movie?" She's not only alive but she's gorgeous even at the age of 90 (as is Karen) and Ms. Chase had wonderful stories about dancing with Dick Shawn…
She seemed to not be able to explain why they'd picked her for the role. I think I know. There were hundreds of attractive women around who could have danced and looked good…but put most of them in a scene with Dick Shawn and they'd have largely disappeared. Shawn was so magnetic and fascinating with every word he said and every move he made. Most dance partners would simply have vanished from the screen.
Dancing is not just about moving. It's about acting with your body, exuding personality, saying things with your hips…and being a presence. At the time this movie was made, Barrie Chase was probably best known for being Fred Astaire's dance partner in a series of TV specials (like this one). My guess is that someone said, "If she can hold her own on a stage with Fred Astaire, she can hold her own on a stage with Dick Shawn."
She did. And now she's The Last Cast Member Standing.
I always enjoyed Olivia Newton-John's music and I wish I had better stories about her than the measly ones I now offer…
The first occurred on the second day I worked on the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter and my first tape date. I have about eighty stories about things that happened that day including the visit of Groucho Marx to the Kotter set, which I've written about several times. This happened about six hours before that. We taped on a stage over at ABC Studios in a building that housed two studios. The two studios shared make-up and wardrobe rooms and three floors of dressing rooms and a few offices. My partner Dennis and I were housed in an office on the third floor.
So at one point, I get in the elevator (alone) to go downstairs and the car stops at the second floor and two people get on, both of them elegantly dressed sort of like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in one of their movies — but it isn't Fred and Ginger. It's Elliott Gould and Olivia Newton-John. An Olivia Newton-John special is taping in the other studio in the building and Mr. Gould is a guest star on it.
The elevator doors close. The elevator car starts down. The elevator car stops and it takes us a moment to realize we are trapped between the first and second floor. Mr. Gould begins frantically pounding on the doors and pushing buttons. Ms. Newton-John is utterly calm. She just says, "Relax. They'll get us out of here. They can't tape the show without us."
So we all relax and we have a very nice conversation about nothing of consequence that lasts until the elevator starts up again and takes us down to the first floor and lets us out. I think we were in there about eight minutes. Some sort of maintenance man apologizes to us and some stars would have screamed their heads off at the guy and demanded someone's firing but Olivia just says, "It's fine…no big deal" and heads for the stage to tape the dance number. I had a high opinion of her as human being at that moment.
It never went down. Ten or fifteen years later, I briefly worked for an animation company that had an office on Melrose Avenue. The office took up the entire second floor of the building and the first floor was a shop called Koala Blue that sold fashionable clothing, much of it from Australia. Ms. Newton-John owned it or owned part of it…or something. I ran into her a few times when I was coming or going and again, she was gracious and friendly and just very charming.
She was genuinely interested in what we were doing upstairs and at one point when I told her we were producing episodes of the CBS Storybreak series for children, she said, "Well, if you ever need someone to sing a theme song or anything, you know where to find me." I'm not sure why we didn't at least see how serious she was about that — I think maybe our producer figured she'd never do it for the kind of money our budget would have allowed — but I wish we'd at least asked her. She was a wonderful performer.
I mentioned here that with the passing of actor Nicholas Georgiade, Barrie Chase becomes the last surviving cast member of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World who had a speaking part. A couple of folks wrote me to say that Ms. Chase did not have any lines in the picture and they're just plain wrong…and probably unaware how many times I've seen my favorite movie. She answers a phone call in Dick Shawn's "pad" when Ethel Merman calls and passes the phone over to Shawn.
Another reader who apparently has never heard of things like Google and The Internet Movie Database wrote to ask me what else she'd done. Barrie Chase had a very long career as both an actress and a dancer. On TV, she gained much attention as Fred Astaire's dance partner in several acclaimed specials.
She was in dozens of movies. The picture of her above is from a memorable bit part in the Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye film, White Christmas. She had a pretty large role in Cape Fear with Gregory Peck, which was in release at the time Mad World was being filmed. In fact, near the end of Mad World when the two cabs full o' comedians are chasing Spencer Tracy's car through the streets of Long Beach, they pass the State Theater and Cape Fear is on the marquee. You need to look real fast to see it but it's there.
Finally, a reader named "Brian12" asks, "Do you know if there is any significance to the character name "Mrs. Halliburton?" That's what her character is named in Mad World and he asks if she and Sylvester Marcus (Dick Shawn's character) are married. No, they're not.
Script material that never made it into the film tells us that Mrs. Halliburton is the wife of an undertaker named Calvin Halliburton. It is inferred that she is at Sylvester's place because she is cheating on her hubby, who is never seen. When Sylvester gets the call from his momma and decides to rush to her aid, he leaps (literally) into the convertible that Mrs. Halliburton drove to his pad and races off in it.
That scene where Sylvester drives off in her husband's car and she screams for him to come back was in the original version of the movie when it was first released but it went away when the film was trimmed down a few weeks later. It is now "lost" but in the highly-recommended Criterion DVD (or Blu-ray) edition of the movie, there are two versions of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — the general release version and a reconstruction of most (not all) of the original release version.
The brief car-stealing scene is represented in the reconstruction by the audio track heard over some production stills of the scene. And if you're listening to the commentary track — as you should — the voice you'll hear describing the scene is mine. Listen to the whole thing and you'll also learn an awful lot more about this movie. Experts Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo join me on the commentary track.
This is a scene from the 1944 movie, Hollywood Canteen. The Canteen was a club during war where soldiers could go to eat, drink and be entertained by some pretty big movie and radio stars and they made a movie about it.
Your admission ticket to the place was your uniform and you never knew who you were going to see performing there. The list included Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Iris Adrian, Fred Allen, June Allyson, Brian Aherne, Don Ameche, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, The Andrews Sisters, Dana Andrews, Eve Arden, Louis Armstrong, Jean Arthur, Fred Astaire, Mary Astor, Roscoe Ates, Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Theda Bara, Lynn Bari, Jess Barker, Binnie Barnes, Diana Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Count Basie, Anne Baxter, Warner Baxter, Louise Beavers, Wallace Beery, William Bendix, Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Ingrid Bergman, Milton Berle, Julie Bishop, Mel Blanc, Joan Blondell, Ann Blyth, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Boland, Ray Bolger, Beulah Bondi, William Boyd, Charles Boyer, Clara Bow, Eddie Bracken, El Brendel, Walter Brennan, Fanny Brice, Joe E. Brown, Les Brown, Virginia Bruce, Billie Burke, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Spring Byington, James Cagney, Cab Calloway, Rod Cameron, Eddie Cantor, Judy Canova, Kitty Carlisle, Jack Carson, Adriana Caselotti, Charlie Chaplin, Marguerite Chapman, Cyd Charisse, Charles Coburn, Claudette Colbert, Jerry Colonna, Ronald Colman, Betty Compson, Perry Como, Chester Conklin, Gary Cooper, Joseph Cotten, Noël Coward, James Craig, Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Xavier Cugat, Cass Daley, Dorothy Dandridge, Linda Darnell, Harry Davenport, Bette Davis, Dennis Day, Doris Day, Yvonne De Carlo, Gloria DeHaven, Dolores del Río, William Demarest, Olivia de Havilland, Cecil B. DeMille, Andy Devine, Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Irene Dunne, Jimmy Durante, Deanna Durbin, Ann Dvorak, Nelson Eddy, Duke Ellington, Faye Emerson, Dale Evans, Jinx Falkenburg, Glenda Farrell, Alice Faye, Louise Fazenda, Stepin Fetchit, Gracie Fields, Barry Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Jane Frazee, Joan Fontaine, Susanna Foster, Eva Gabor, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Betty Grable, Cary Grant, Kathryn Grayson, Sydney Greenstreet, Paulette Goddard, Samuel Goldwyn, Benny Goodman, Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Phil Harris, Moss Hart, Helen Hayes, Dick Haymes, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Sonja Henie, Paul Henreid, Katharine Hepburn, Portland Hoffa, Darla Hood, Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, Lena Horne, Edward Everett Horton, Marsha Hunt, Ruth Hussey, Betty Hutton, Frieda Inescort, Jose Iturbi, Harry James, Gloria Jean, Anne Jeffreys, Allen Jenkins, Van Johnson, Al Jolson, Jennifer Jones, Marcia Mae Jones, Boris Karloff, Danny Kaye, Buster Keaton, Ruby Keeler, Gene Kelly, Evelyn Keyes, Guy Kibbee, Andrea King, Gene Krupa, Kay Kyser, Alan Ladd, Bert Lahr, Elsa Lanchester, Angela Lansbury, Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, Carole Landis, Frances Langford, Charles Laughton, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Peter Lawford, Gertrude Lawrence, Peggy Lee, Pinky Lee, Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Joan Leslie, Ted Lewis, Beatrice Lillie, Mary Livingston, Harold Lloyd, June Lockhart, Anita Loos, Peter Lorre, Myrna Loy, Keye Luke, Bela Lugosi, Ida Lupino, Diana Lynn, Marie McDonald, Jeanette MacDonald, Fred MacMurray, Marjorie Main, Irene Manning, Fredric March, The Marx Brothers, Herbert Marshall, Ilona Massey, Victor Mature, Elsa Maxwell, Louis B. Mayer, Hattie McDaniel, Roddy McDowall, Frank McHugh, Victor McLaglen, Butterfly McQueen, Lauritz Melchior, Adolphe Menjou, Una Merkel, Ray Milland, Ann Miller, Glenn Miller, Carmen Miranda, Robert Mitchum, Maria Montez, George Montgomery, Grace Moore, Jackie Moran, Dennis Morgan, Patricia Morison, Paul Muni, Ken Murray, The Nicholas Brothers, Ramon Novarro, Jack Oakie, Margaret O'Brien, Pat O'Brien, Virginia O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, Maureen O'Hara, Oona O'Neill, Maureen O'Sullivan, Merle Oberon, Eugene Pallette, Eleanor Parker, Harriet Parsons, Louella Parsons, John Payne, Gregory Peck, Nat Pendleton, Mary Pickford, Walter Pidgeon, Zasu Pitts, Cole Porter, Dick Powell, Eleanor Powell, Jane Powell, William Powell, Vincent Price, Anthony Quinn, George Raft, Claude Rains, Vera Ralston, Sally Rand, Basil Rathbone, Martha Raye, Donna Reed, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, Roy Rogers, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Jane Russell, Rosalind Russell, Ann Rutherford, Peggy Ryan, S.Z. Sakall, Olga San Juan, Ann Savage, David O. Selznick, Hazel Scott, Lizabeth Scott, Randolph Scott, Toni Seven, Norma Shearer, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Sylvia Sidney, Phil Silvers, Ginny Simms, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Alexis Smith, Kate Smith, Ann Sothern, Jo Stafford, Barbara Stanwyck, Craig Stevens, Leopold Stokowski, Lewis Stone, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Danny Thomas, The Three Stooges, Gene Tierney, Lawrence Tibbett, Martha Tilton, Claire Trevor, Sophie Tucker, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lupe Vélez, Beryl Wallace, Nancy Walker, Ethel Waters, John Wayne, Clifton Webb, Virginia Weidler, Johnny Weissmuller, Orson Welles, Mae West, Bert Wheeler, Alice White, Paul Whiteman, Margaret Whiting, Cornel Wilde, Esther Williams, Warren William, Chill Wills, Marie Wilson, Shelley Winters, Jane Withers, Teresa Wright, Anna May Wong, Constance Worth, Jane Wyman, Ed Wynn, Keenan Wynn, Rudy Vallee, Lupe Vélez, Loretta Young, Robert Young, Darryl F. Zanuck and Vera Zorina. Guess which one of these brought along his horse…
Back here, we were talking about a 1967 special Hanna-Barbera produced for NBC — a retelling of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. A new part was written in for Gene Kelly, who was also credited as director, though it's doubtful he had a lot to do with the animated characters that were combined with the live-action performers. I thought it was a pretty decent special for what it was but recognize that there are many who did not agree.
My pal Greg Ehrbar is one of the best of the many experts now writing about cartoon history. He is quite familiar with this special and he sent me this…
Master Hanna-Barbera art director and effects animator Ron Dias talked at length about Jack and the Beanstalk. In his experience, Hanna and Barbera usually began a project with very grand plans but when the money was running out, they scrambled to get it done, just as you explained.
Of course, there was nowhere near the budget for a 1967 NBC hour special compared to a 1945 MGM extravaganza like Anchors Aweigh. What frustrated Dias was that H-B used a dry "just add water" blue paint for the blue screen rather than the more expensive liquid paint, which did things like flake off on Gene Kelly's knees if he did a kneeling slide in his dancing, making them disappear.
He also said that he was not thrilled that they hired a less competent processing house to do the compositing, so that is why you can occasionally see the mattes (look for the staircase on the goose). However, he was still fond of the special, and we have to keep in mind that it was the first of its kind and very ambitious, perhaps too ambitious.
I've had the soundtrack album for years and listened to it more times than you've sent back cole slaw after you told them not to include it. I am certain that Leo DeLyon (a singer by trade) and Cliff Norton (who mostly talk sings) are doing the singing in "The Woggle-Bird Song," which by the way, was originally written for Filmation's Journey Back to Oz (which began production in 1962) by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen as "The Woggle-Bug Song."
Dick Beals told me that after he sang for Bobby Riha, Bobby's mother was furious when she learned that Beals took out an ad in Variety, revealing this fact (with H-B's blessing). She wanted to establish Bobby as an all-around talent who could sing, dance and act (he appeared in Disney's The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band the following year, mostly danced and said, "The British are coming! The British are coming!"
According to Joe Barbera's autobiography, Gene Kelly was unhappy with the final show and asked that NBC pull it from the schedule, which was impossible. It turned out to be a huge ratings and critical success (paving the way for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the first TV series to combine live-action with animation unless you count Clutch Cargo). When it won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program, It was Kelly who received the award as the producer of Jack and the Beanstalk (Hanna and Barbera never received any award until Last of the Curlews in 1972 — even the seven Oscars they won for Tom and Jerry and the Emmy for The Huckleberry Hound Show were not given to them, but to those with the "producer" title).
When Kelly accepted the award, he did not mention Hanna and Barbera but instead said that he could not take full credit for the success because there were also a lot of "little hands" also involved. Barbera learned to deal with that because of the Hollywood's precarious effect on people's psyches (perhaps Kelly needed the recognition more than they did) and took it in stride.
Kelly later appeared in the CBS TV salute to H-B, The Happy World of Hanna-Barbera. Their animation also appeared in MGM's That's Entertainment, Part 2 co-starring Kelly and Fred Astaire, which could very well have been by Kelly's recommendation.
Thanks, Greg. (And those of you who want to check out Greg's fine writing about cartoons need only frequent — assuming you don't already — this cranny of the Cartoon Research website.
That's me in the center flanked by Ken Berry and his F Troop co-star Larry Storch at a birthday party for Larry back in 2008. Larry is still with us at the age of 95. Sad to report, Ken died today at the age of 85. I saw it announced on Twitter by his former wife, the wonderful Jackie Joseph.
There doesn't seem to be a good, well-researched obit up yet. I'll link to one when there is and you'll be amazed at this guy's credits. In his teen years, he was touring the country and getting reviews that usually called him the next Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. He was a top song-and-dance man but he also had a good flair for comedy. He gained fame as a performer with "special services" while in the army and his career was even promoted by his Sergeant, who was — believe it or not — Leonard Nimoy. Later, he became a favorite of Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball. Burnett featured him often as a guest star on her popular series and added him to the cast of the "Mama's Family" family.
Before that, he was a star of the famous Billy Barnes Revues (that's where he met Jackie) and that led to many TV roles and to him starring in F Troop as the hapless Captain Parmenter. If you watch those shows, you will sometimes see Berry pull off some amazing physical comedy.
I had the chance to meet him a few times and found him to be very humble…but still a little pissed that CBS had canceled Mayberry R.F.D. back in 1971. That was the successor to The Andy Griffith Show which kept most of that show's supporting cast with Berry plunked into a central role like Andy had. It was axed not because it was unpopular but because it was rural and that was the year CBS didn't want rural shows on its schedule even if they were winning their time slots. He said, "We played by their rules, we won by their rules and then they changed their rules."
Until the last decade or so when he began to have some health problems, he was one of those performers who was always working. If you want to be impressed, go look at the partial list of his TV appearances on his Wikipedia page. You've got to be really talented to work that much and he sure was. If you still don't believe me, take a look at this clip, which I think may be from The Ed Sullivan ShowThe Hollywood Palace. And stay tuned to see some of it again in slow-motion…
Hey, it's the next installment of our play-by-play coverage of the eleven-day trip that I took recently with my fabulous friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 8, you really oughta read the chapters on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, my Philadelphia Addenda and Day 7.
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Let me warn you at the top: This is a real long post. I mean real long.
Dick Cavett once said that when he first moved to New York, he realized an amazing thing about it. You could go to bed there and in the morning when you woke up, you'd think, "Hey, if I walk outside, I'll be in New York!" I still sometimes feel that way when I'm in the city.
On those visits, Breakfast always seems elusive and gets supplanted by Early Lunch. Amber and I met my pals Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin at Sardi's, where Jim's prominence as a theatrical performer is noted with a caricature on the wall. Jim and Steve are a splendid union of two very talented people who seem to know absolutely everyone in their profession, their profession being The Theatre.
The great thing about knowing performers is that I usually don't have to tell you about them. I can show them to you by embedding a YouTube video. Here's nine minutes of Jim and Steve singing about their relationship…
I knew Jim before he met Steve and now cannot imagine him without his longtime partner. The four of us sat and dined and talked and talked and talked and had a very good time.
Because lunch ran so late. I wasn't all that hungry as it neared time to head uptown for our evening's entertainment. Neither was Amber so we decided to each get a slice of pizza to tide us over until after the show. We went to Joe's Pizza on Broadway in Times Square, which many will tell you sells the best individual slices in town. She had pepperoni and I had plain cheese and they were pretty good. Then we took the subway to Lincoln Center and got there with enough time to spare that Amber asked, "Is there somewhere around here where we could get two more slices?"
I had Yelp! show me what was nearby and most of the pizza spots seemed like places where it's a whole pie or nothing. But a restaurant called Francesco Pizzeria on Columbus Avenue was described as a "slice joint" and I thought I recalled it getting a good review from Dave Portnoy, who does those YouTube pizza reviews that I occasionally post.
I was right. He gave it an 8.1 out of 10 and I trust Dave. Unfortunately, his guest reviewer was Dr. Oz who gave it an 8 and I wouldn't trust Dr. Oz to tell me where to buy aspirin. The slices we got there were good — Amber liked hers more than the one she had at Joe's but we got pie that was a lot greasier than what Dave and the alleged Doctor sampled. Mine required two napkins' worth of blotting.
Full of cheese 'n' dough, we strode back to Lincoln Center to see the new revival of My Fair Lady. Dividing line, please…
I was really looking forward to this. The national touring company of the original production of My Fair Lady was the first real Broadway-type show I ever saw. I had the songs memorized by age ten…but that was the last time I saw it performed on stage. It is not a cheap show to do, requiring as it does a very big cast and very lavish sets and costumes. Most local groups simply cannot afford to do it, or at least to do it right.
[CORRECTION ADDED YEARS LATER: I read what I wrote again and realized I'd seen it performed on stage in the eighties. Rex Harrison was doing a "farewell tour" in it so everyone could say they saw him in it…and cringe a bit when he forgot lyrics.]
I enjoyed 97% of this new production tremendously. The costumes and sets were superb. The cast was excellent. Harry Hadden-Paton is good enough as Higgins to make you forget Rex Harrison. Lauren Ambrose is good enough as Eliza Doolittle to make you forget either Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn, depending on which Eliza you have embedded in your brain. The orchestra does full justice to the score.
And it has Diana Rigg as Higgins' mother. I am just the right age to have loved her as Mrs. Peel on The Avengers — the *real* Avengers, not those usurpers of the name led by Captain America. Mrs. Higgins has never been a large part and Ms. Rigg probably learned all her lines in about twenty minutes. But she also scored with every damned one of them and the applause at her entrance made me quite happy.
The show also has Norbert Leo Butz as Eliza's father, the role Stanley Holloway played on the stage and on the screen. Alfred P. Doolittle has two show-stopping numbers — "A Little Bit of Luck" and "Get Me To The Church on Time." The first was fairly routine this time out…charming but nothing spectacular. The "Church" number, though…oh, my goodness. The "Church" number.
This is kind of interesting. The original Broadway version of My Fair Lady in 1956 had no trouble securing a top director, a top production designer, a top costume designer, etc. But it took a while to find a choreographer. Several of the best ones turned it down because it wasn't a real dance show. It was mostly ballroom-style and a little of the English Music Hall style dancing in which Stanley Holloway excelled. There was no number where a choreographer could show off or be particularly innovative.
There is now. I suppose some would quibble that what they did with "Get Me To The Church" is out of character with the show itself, adding in acrobatics and rotating sets and drag queens (yes, drag queens) and extra, extra choruses. They might be right on some level but boy, was that number spectacular. Norbert Leo Butz is an actor first and a dancer second so he doesn't turn into a Fred Astaire wanna-be when he dances. He dances in character and at the end of the song, the place exploded. It was maybe the most exciting dance number I ever saw on a stage and Amber and I were on our feet along with the general consensus.
Everyone in the show is so perfect that you're probably wondering when I'm going to get to the 3% I didn't love. That's now but first I need to insert one of these…
Remember: You've been warned.
They changed the ending. At the end of Pygmalion, the George Bernard Shaw play on which My Fair Lady was based, Eliza and Higgins do not fall in love. She leaves him, though not as an act of defiance or anger. She leaves for a reason that has been valid for any woman at any time in our history: She simply has not gotten any affection from the man.
Shaw wrote the play for a prominent actress of the day, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who as her name would suggest was not a woman of great independence. She did however have a keen sense of what pleased audiences and she decided it would please audiences if Eliza and Higgins wound up together. That was how the first English-language stage performances of Pygmalion went, much to Shaw's surprise.
He does not seem to have stopped this, though he did pen a note that was added to the published version of the play that said that Eliza wound up marrying Freddy Eynsford-Hill (the silly fop who in M.F.L. sings "On The Street Where You Live") and they moved in with Higgins for a time before she opened her own flower shop, a possibility mentioned earlier in the play. Higgins remained a mentor to her and also the "confirmed old bachelor" that he said he was.
Shaw also suggested that Eliza stayed interested in Higgins and had some fantasies about dragging him "off his pedestal" and seeing him "making love like any common man." He also wrote that while her instinct told her not to marry Higgins, it also told her not to give him up and that he would remain "one of the strongest personal interests in her life."
Pygmalion was performed then with many variant endings, some honoring Shaw's views, some not. Shavian scholars have debated for years just what is the proper ending and indeed, the published text of the play was changed at least once during Shaw's lifetime. The 1938 British film starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller had an ambiguous ending, also not approved (but not stopped) by Shaw. Eliza flees Higgins' home to be with Freddy but then returns to Higgins and it is suggested she cannot or will not leave him.
The screenplay, probably more so than Shaw's original play, was the basis for Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady and it ends of course with Higgins realizing he has grown "accustomed to her face," getting off that pedestal as much as any "confirmed old bachelor" can…and Eliza deciding her future is with him. In the new version, she returns to him and it does seem to be leading up to them being a couple, as every audience member who knows My Fair Lady from any venue expects.
But then she runs away from him. In fact, she runs off the set and up an aisle of the audience, the suggestion being that she is running as far from him as is humanly possible. The End.
Advance word on this revival suggested that the traditional ending had to go because it did not match with current attitudes about women and Me Too and such. If you didn't know that was a concern, it's announced clearly when in one scene — and remember this show is set a long time ago in Edwardian London — a completely gratuitous band of women march through a public square with signs demanding the vote for women, which is of course never again mentioned in the show.
There is a separate argument as to whether plays set well in the past should reflect society then or now. Assuming we decide a play should not contain sensibilities we have outgrown, I would argue that the change in My Fair Lady is still wrong and unnecessary. My friend Shelly Goldstein wrote on her Facebook page this morning…
OK, let's really take a deep breath here. My Fair Lady is not sexist. Henry Higgins is supercilious & chauvinistic but he's no worse to Liza than he is to anyone else. The show isn't a romance and it isn't about sexism. It's about language, class and the choices one makes to rise above the station some would insist is your only option.
Professor Higgins in any version of this musical is about as far from a Harvey Weinstein as you could get and still be an asshole. He insists that Eliza be properly chaperoned when living in his home, doesn't show the slightest interest in wanting to touch her and is outraged at the suggestion of her father who is more than willing to pimp her out for money. There are those who have even argued that Higgins and Pickering are "confirmed old bachelors" because they're both gay. That's how total Higgins' disinterest is in molesting his fair lady but there's nothing in the text to indicate that either.
He treats her like a lower class person only because she talks like one and he argues that that alone is the reason she is but one half-notch above a beggar woman. He is anti-female only in the sense that he personally does not want one in his life, which even the most avowed advocate of women's equality would concede is his right. His song, "Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?" is a parody of how foolish some men — most notably, a man who's never really had a woman in his life — can be about the opposite gender…and also about their own.
He makes a deal to pay her for participating in his little wager that he can pass her off as duchess by giving her the elocution lessons which she came to him to get. He could have made the exact same bet to pass her father or any lower-caste male off as a duke.
Her learning to talk like a proper lady was her idea, remember. He keeps his part of their bargain in every way. And in the traditional text of My Fair Lady, the climax is that this arrogant, I-don't-need-anyone person comes to realize that he needs her…and while she could leave him at that point — and has once — she chooses not to. Even in the year 2018, what is wrong with that story?
What to me is particularly amiss with the changed ending is that it just plain doesn't fit. I doubt you can take any decent play ever written, invert the last 10-15 seconds and have it apply. Imagine if in the closing moments of The Music Man, Harold Hill skips town with all the money he collected for band instruments, laughing at what suckers they are in River City. Or if you have a production of Death of a Salesman and every word is the same until the last second, as his funeral is letting out, Willy Loman turns up alive. If you want your My Fair Lady to end as this revival does, you should probably drop "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" and everything else that starts to humanize Higgins in the end.
You should also explain why she comes back to his home at all. The way it plays, she comes back because (I guess) she still has some feelings about him and needs to explore them…or something. But then he is nicer to her than he has ever been before and she responds by, without a word of explanation, sprinting into the audience and (I guess) out of his life.
So what happens next? She left him once and came back. Does she come back again? We don't know. People defending this ending are arguing it's merely restoring Shaw's ending…but Shaw didn't have Higgins expressing anything like the change of emotions he does near the end of My Fair Lady. Shaw's Higgins never changes one bit.
Does she wed Freddy? Shaw said she did but we get no indication that that happens either and even if it did, that's not an empowering act for a woman…marrying a man for whom she has not shown the slightest ounce of affection. And oh, yes — to have a place to live, they'll have to go persuade Higgins (the guy she ran away from like he was Dracula) to take them in.
Does she make something of herself? Does she open that florist shop that Higgins and Pickering were going to help fund? That would sure be a better life for her than remaining a prisoner of the gutters, condemned by every syllable she utters. As is, we don't know she doesn't wind up back there.
This version of the play doesn't say what becomes of her. It just kind of stops…and the audience we saw it with let out a big, unheard collective "huh?" It surprised them but not, it seemed to me, in a good way. Eliza running for dear life away from the man who taught her how to speak like royalty was not what the book Alan Jay Lerner wrote led up to.
We cheered the show of course because everything before that was so splendid. The performers certainly deserved the standing ovations they received…and if they'd trotted out the designers and choreographer and arrangers, we'd have cheered for them, too. I absolutely recommend you see this show if you can…and considering how hard it was for me to get tickets, I suspect it'll be there for a long time.
If you do see it, please write and explain to me how the ending fits that play or even any concept of how women should be treated today. I'm not even sure My Fair Lady should be about how women should be treated today but if it has to be, that wasn't it.
[Note: The following is adapted from a column I wrote for the Comics Buyers Guide in 1995.]
A vicious and untrue rumor is making the rounds that I am the worst dancer in the world. This is absolutely false and I am quite prepared to take legal action against those spreading it.
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, nestled at the foot of the Asir Mountains, not far from the coastal Tahimah plain lies a village comprised of worshippers of the Wahabi sect of Sunnite Islam. One such dweller, a nomadic Bedouin named Kwali Mahal has attained the age of ninety-eight years despite being not only quadriplegic but stone deaf, as well.
Kwali Mahal is the worst dancer in the world. I am a close second.
There are many reasons for my ranking, not the least of which is that I am rather devoid of coordination and deftness of movement. I have feet the size of Chryslers and a Sense of Balance found otherwise only in felled timber. I trip over stray thoughts. And I am about as graceful as a wildebeest in its dying throes.
Set all of the above to music and you have Me Dancing.
Which you will rarely, if ever, see. Long ago, I opted to give the Richter Scale folks a break and refrain from tripping the light — or, in my case — the heavy fantastic.
I won't dance. Don't ask me.
I did once, oddly enough, on TV. Drafted into service as an extra in a sketch on a variety show I was writing, I was fully in costume and make-up on stage when it dawned on me that the sketch ended with all the extras leaping to their feet and dancing. There was no way of getting out of it, graceful or otherwise, and no way of going through with it, graceful or otherwise.
So I danced, ever so briefly on the NBC Television Network for what was surely not one of the peacock's prouder moments. That NBC is still ostensibly in the entertainment biz after airing the sorriest of spectacles (Evanier dancing) is due to the fact that it was a comedy show — so Baryshnikov was not expected — and that I wrote said comedy show. Thus, viewers were few in number and probably didn't believe what they were seeing, anyway.
That was the second time I was ever asked to dance on TV. The first time was when I was nine, That was when my career as a child actor began and ended, quicker than you can say, "Rodney Allen Rippy." Let us begin at the beginning, which in this case was the studio of a Los Angeles photographer.
My parents, being parents, routinely hauled me to this photographer's studio, forcibly combed my hair into an unnatural neatness and had me sit for the kind of photos that most parents want to press in scrapbooks for all posterity. The purpose of these photos was, I suppose, was if some day in the future, I proved to be a colossal disappointment to my folks. Then they could haul out the pictures from when I was a tot, sigh over how cute I was and moan, "Where did we go wrong?"
Unless you count the fact that they raised a comedy writer, my parents never went wrong…except twice. One, which I wrote about here, was the time they enrolled me in Hebrew School. The other time, much earlier than Hebrew School, began one day when that photographer suggested that I might have a career as a child actor.
It was his idea — not theirs and certainly not mine. And it was not a scam, as are most "opportunities" for parents who think their kids are cute and/or talented to pay huge fees for photos and publicity and lessons. (Quick but not unimportant aside: If you ever try to get your child into show business and some "agent" or "manager" suggests any arrangement where you take money out of your pocket, grab the kid and run the other way.)
No one ever asked my parents for a cent…probably because the offer was legit but possibly because I proved to be so inept at acting that even a steel-hearted con artist couldn't bring himself to take money under such false pretenses.
But, more likely, it was all Kosher. The photographer asked if it was okay for him to send a few of the photos he'd shot over to an agent he knew. My parents agreed and for a week or so there, probably pondered the notion that they had given birth to the new Mickey Rooney, except that even at that age I was taller and more mature.
And then they made the big mistake. They signed me up for tap dancing lessons.
Maybe they thought I had some ability for it. Maybe they were just so fearful that I'd wind up doing this for a living that they were willing to try anything. I have no idea and years later, when I asked them why they'd done that, neither could explain why that ever seemed like a good idea; just that it had something to do with that vague possibility that I might have a performing career in my future.
So every Saturday morning for a few months there, they would drop me off at the dance studio and I would squeeze my feet into my little tap shoes and clip-clop across the dance floor in vague approximation to the music.
When you're nine, you don't have to be great. You don't have to be good. You just have to be cute. I wasn't even that.
My actual tap shoes.
I have but two semi-vivid memories of that class. One is of a late runthrough of a routine we were going to do for everyone's parents one evening. We had a five minute routine to the tune of "School Days" that had been continually simplified throughout the learning process, the instructor removing step after step, hoping eventually to distill it down to something our class's Lowest Common Denominator (m.e.) could handle. No matter how simple it got, it wasn't simple enough.
And I can still recall that last rehearsal when we did the combination. I tripped over something (a chalk line, I think) and the instructor started sobbing, apparently anticipating a mob of angry parents demanding that twenty-three tuitions be refunded.
The dance studio bore the name of a famous choreographer of the time and he sometimes taught the advanced classes, which there was no chance of my ever reaching. When he came by to see us go through our paces, it was the second time I'd ever seen the man. The first was when he did a local interview show, shortly after I'd been enrolled, in which he extolled the joys of dancing and explained that dance was not a specialized art reserved for the especially lithe or musical. No, he told the interviewer, anyone on the planet could dance or be taught to dance…anyone!
This was said before he saw me dance.
When he came by that day and saw me dance, he was willing to concede there were possible exceptions.
Some folks dance so poorly, it is said they have two left feet. I had about eleven.
In fact, not only was I unable to dance but it was apparently contagious: No one around me could dance, either. I confused rhythms, led them left when we were supposed to go right and made everyone fear I was going to crash into them…which I also did with alarming frequency. "I will take the lad in hand," the famed choreographer said and he took me into another room for a solid hour of one-on-one remedial tap tutoring. (This was one of the world's great dancers also, let's remember. Him teaching me was a little like Arnold Palmer training a tot to putt the ball into the clown's mouth at the miniature golf course.)
At the end of the hour, not only was I as lousy as ever but the famous choreographer was stumbling and tripping and contemplating a career in Motel Management.
A size comparison with what I currently wear.
Somehow, we got through the recital for parents. It would make a wonderful story to report here that through some miracle and an appeal to the patron saint of Terpsichore, I suddenly, magically became Fred Astaire (or even Fred Flintstone)…but 'twas not to be. The best I can say for my performance is that no one laughed out loud but I did note a few of the parents covering their mouths to snicker…and my own mother and father slinking out of the hall at the close of the festivities.
My other remembrance is of a moment during a class, shortly before I decided to hang up the old tap shoes. I was stumbling over latitude and longitude lines when some official of the dance school ran in, so excited she couldn't contain herself. I thought for a moment that maybe I'd done a step right but no such luck. What it was was that someone had just called from Jerry Lewis's office to see if they could rent some beginning tap dancers for an upcoming Jerry Lewis Special.
Jerry was doing a sketch on said special in which he played a tremulous ten-year-old on his first day of tap class and he wanted some kids like us to people the class. They were sending over a producer (or someone) to watch us tap and to decide if we could play the class around him.
Everyone was excited: "We're going to be on TV," several kids gasped with delight.
Within the hour, the person affiliated with the Lewis show had arrived to take a look at us. I'm under the impression it was Jerry's producer, Ernest D. Glucksman because I had that name stuck in my brain from around that time and where else could I have heard it? Whoever it was, he watched us for three minutes, realized that my attempts to dance were funnier than anything Jerry could possibly do, and departed. No more was said about us doing his show, which I always thought was a shame. Had Jerry seen me dance, he could have started a second telethon.
That was it for me and dancing. To this day, I'm not even allowed to sway in time to the music without a hunting license. (I don't know what that means but doesn't it sound like a joke?)
Speaking of jokes, my career as a child actor finally began and ended with one audition. I'm surprised I made it that far.
My parents got a call one day from a casting director at Twentieth-Century Fox, asking them to haul their son in there at 3:00 sharp to meet with the producers of a forthcoming movie. They were as shocked as I was.
To this day, I don't know what the movie was or even if it was ever made. I don't even know the name of the star but we were told the following…
Someone was needed in the film to play the star as a kid in a scene that flashed-back to his youth. The star decided to personally pick the lad who'd play him and he closeted himself in the casting office for a day and looked at every photo they had of a white male child, approximately nine years of age.
One of the photos taken of me by the photographer had found its way to their office and, when the star saw it, he gasped. Out loud. It looked almost exactly like his mother's favorite photo of him. That's how come I found myself sitting with my mother in the producers' waiting room for what seemed to me like several weeks. Finally, they called me in, deliberately excluding Mom from the proceedings.
What I recall of that session is a lot of questions about my hobbies and my schoolwork until they finally got to the subject at hand…
"Have you ever done any acting, Mark?" asked one of the two producers.
"No, I haven't," I said. (I actually had. The twins next door and I had once put on a stirring, Evanier-adaptation of "Hansel and Gretel" for an audience consisting of their folks, my folks and one neighbor. We charged a nickel apiece and, for a minute there, I thought we were going to get some demands for refunds. I didn't figure the studio guys had that kind of thing in mind when they asked about "acting.")
"Would you like to be an actor?"
I thought for a second and said, "Not really."
The two producers looked at each other. I have a feeling they'd asked this of a hundred kids before me and I was the first one to give this answer.
"You don't want to be an actor when you grow up?"
"No," I said. "I think I want to be a writer. I want to write comic books and cartoons and TV shows." (I actually said that. My current occupation is that I write comic books and cartoons and TV shows.)
"Well, if we want you to act in our movie, would you consider it?"
"I'd consider it."
"Would you do it?"
I considered it for a second and answered, "I'd rather not."
The producers were baffled. One asked, "They why did you come here today?"
I shrugged. "You called and asked me."
They started laughing. Maybe I'm misremembering — it's been a while — but I think they thought this was the nicest, most unspoiled thing they'd heard out of a child's mouth in a long time. Having worked with professional child actors a few times and heard toddlers talk about Mike Ovitz and power lunches at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel and getting a piece of the unadjusted gross, I can guess how they must have felt.
"Okay, Mark," one of them said. "You can go home now."
I slid off the chair, went back to my mother, we went home and I proceeded to grow up the way a relatively-normal kid would grow up.
For that, I have always been grateful. But I was never more grateful than one time years later when I met a former child star. He was about my age and about as admittedly-screwed-up as a person could get.
For about five years there, his world revolved around show business and agents and auditions. He made a lot of money but it was long gone, as was any demand for his services. He got to talking about his glory days. "When I was ten, I had a little electric car," he said. "And a miniature railroad that I could ride around the back yard…and a pet chimpanzee. I could buy anything I wanted…with one exception."
Before I could play straight man, someone else asked him what was the one exception?
"A real childhood," he said. "It's the one thing I've always wanted."
I was lucky enough to have one. And I'm still doing my darnedest not to let it end.
Your recent Fred Astaire video was a treat, but its focus on music and dance made me curious. I think you've written in the past how there are safeties to make sure that no one knows the winner until the envelope is read. And that there are procedures to handle if the wrong person is announced.
So what about those pit musicians there? Do they have a copy of every nominee's theme music on their stands, and do a frantic page-turn as the winner is announced? Did they have to have all those extra arrangements made, parts copied, and tunes rehearsed? That a lot of paper to keep on the stand and not get out of order. I wonder how that was handled.
Yes, they have tunes prepared for every nominee. It's not as many songs as it may seem because if a film gets eight nominations, that one piece of music can serve for all eight possible trips to the stage. And some films (like many documentaries) don't have identifiable music so those winners can take their walks of triumph to one of a few generic tunes the conductor has at his disposal.
Now, if you asked me this a few years ago, here's what the rest of my answer would have been…
The musicians don't have all the sheet music for the evening in front of them. During commercials or clip packages, someone distributes packets covering the next few awards and takes away the old ones. But it still takes a bit of fancy juggling. Not only do they have that music to deal with but you also have musical numbers, music to go in and out of commercials, music to play for the live audience during commercials, play-on music for presenters, play-off music for winners, etc.
But now I'm wondering. I heard a few years ago that was someone was trying to configure a system whereby the musicians would be looking at computer screens instead of music on paper. Has that ever been tried? Does anyone know?
From the 1970 Academy Awards telecast: Fred Astaire and Bob Hope present two Oscars for documentaries and in between them, Fred (age 71 then) does some fancy hoofing. Skip the envelope-opening and watch Fred dance like Fred Astaire…
