Monday, December 29, 2003

Sex Writing

Here's an interesting site. Some analysts claim that they've identified certain indicators that tip off the gender of the author of a given piece of writing. The Gender Genie attempts to apply those rules to a hunk of text (preferably 500 words or more) that you upload. I tried ten pieces from my online articles and postings and each time it said they were written by a guy. See if it works for you.

• Posted at 7:35 PM · LINK

The Hank-Dobie Connection

Vince Waldron (a fine author, whose website is a haven for us sitcom fanciers) writes in reference to our earlier item on the series, Hank...

Just saw the Hank piece question, on which I have no more to add. (I think that one may have been before my time.) However, I did have a "wait a minute!" moment when I saw the publicity graphic you included in your listing, which showed Hank pondering one of life's ponderables next to a statue of Rodin's Thinker. Surely I'm not the only fan of old tv who found the juxtaposition of Hank and thinker more than a tad reminiscent of a motif frequently employed in the opening bumper of another series that featured a campus cut-up named Dobie.

Yeah, that's interesting. I don't recall "The Thinker" ever being a part of the TV series. It may have turned up only in that one publicity photo, which Hank star Dick Kallman also used on the cover of a record album he had out at the time. Hard to believe though that no one involved with Hank realized they were replicating a key visual from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which had gone off the air not long before and was still quite visible in reruns.

...although I'll tell you an odd thing. One of the producers of Hank (and I think he directed some of them) was my old boss, Jimmie Komack. And in 1977, when CBS hired Komack to produce a revival of Dobie Gillis, Jimmie enraged Max Shulman, Dwayne Hickman and everyone else involved in the old show by bragging that he'd never seen the original series. Hickman, Bob Denver, Frank Faylen and Sheila James all signed on to the pilot/special because Max Shulman had co-written (with Eric Cohen) a very funny script that was true to the spirit of the original but, I thought, quite accessible to anyone who didn't know the old show. It also struck me as quite contemporary, but Komack decided that everyone involved was too fixated on replicating a series no one remembered and he was worried it wouldn't be modern...so he tossed the Shulman-Cohen script and had a new one written by two other writers who didn't particularly recall the old series.

The result was a deservedly-unsold pilot called, appropriately enough, Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? and if you ever run into Dwayne Hickman and want to see him turn a lovely shade of scarlet, ask him about it. (Actually, don't, 'cause he's a very nice guy. Here's a link to his website, by the way. His autobiography, which you can purchase there, is a pretty good book.)

I guess this really has nothing to do with the Hank photo but in the world of weblogging, if something pops into your head, you post it. By the way, the above story has one of those E.C. Comics endings. A few years later, when Jimmie might have been trying to sell a new sitcom to CBS, he had a teensy problem: The guy you pitched to then was Dwayne Hickman.

While I'm posting: Tom Wittick wrote to ask if I knew anything about Dick Kallman. Well, I know he was a musical performer before and after his time in Hollywood. He spent a lot of time after Hank playing the Robert Morse role in productions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, then he replaced Tommy Steele in the lead of Half a Sixpence on Broadway, then took it on the road for a while. He worked a lot actually, bouncing around between movie and TV parts and stage, plus he also played Vegas a lot. Somewhere in the mid-seventies, performing dried up and he became a dealer in rare paintings and antiques until 1980 when he was killed in a robbery of some of his wares. Sad ending for a pretty talented guy.

• Posted at 4:03 PM · LINK

A Day Late...

Happy 81st birthday to "Smilin'" Stan Lee, guru of the Marvel universe. I hope I have half his energy when I'm his age. Hell, I wish I had half his energy these days. Maybe if I did, I would have gotten around to posting this yesterday, which is when his actual birthday was. I'll try to atone with this quick anecdote: Years ago at a comic convention, there was a very lovely lady who was dressed as a then-popular Marvel character named The Valkyrie. She was stunning, and Stan couldn't resist going up to her and saying, "Hi, I think I created you." The lady was nice but she said, "I think Roy Thomas created me when he was writing The Avengers." Stan was crushed (who wouldn't be?) but then, as he started to walk away in shame, a nearby fan piped up and said, "But Valkyrie used to be The Enchantress, and the Enchantress first appeared in an issue of Thor that you did with Jack Kirby!" Stan brightened up and told the lady, "Ha! I knew I'd created you!"

• Posted at 2:26 PM · LINK

Carlotta Monti

I mentioned meeting Carlotta Monti the other day and a reader made me promise I'd tell how that happened and all that I recalled. It was around 1974, a period when I often found myself in Westwood Village, right outside the U.C.L.A. campus. My Aunt Dot was donating two days a week as a saleslady at the United Nations Gift Shop, which was a charity enterprise that sold globes and flags and little sculptures that you'd never want in your house. When I was in the area, I'd drop in and say howdy to Aunt Dot and one day, she introduced me to another of the women who volunteered their time in the store. When she said, "This is Carlotta Monti," little bells went off in my head and I thought, "Hey, I think this is the lady who was W.C. Fields' mistress." She seemed about the right age (just shy of 70) but I wasn't sure enough to say anything other than, "Oh, I certainly know of you." Matter of fact, I think I changed the subject swiftly and awkwardly and hurried off. Once home, I consulted her autobiography, W.C. Fields and Me and, sure enough, it was the same lady.

I checked with Aunt Dot to find out when Ms. Monti would be there again and took the book up to get it signed. We wound up going to a shop down the street for cola and coffee, and I could see that Ms. Monti was thrilled to have a new audience for her tales of "Woody," as she called him. The way she pronounced it, it rhymed with "moody" and no, I have no idea where the nickname came from. She was proud of the book and upset that "certain people" who knew Fields or defended his memory felt she'd exploited her relationship with him. These "certain people" (unnamed) were also upset that she had sold or was about to sell the film rights...and I recall thinking to myself, "That's one movie that will never get made." Two years later, it was. Filmdom would have been much better off if I'd been right.

She kept coming back to the fact that she was being criticized for writing about her life. Her side of it, which did not surprise me and which I am not suggesting was at all wrong, was that she'd given "the best years" of her life to Fields and received precious little. So selling her life story was her inheritance, and "Woody" would have wanted her to be comfortable in her old age. She said she had plenty more stories...enough to fill several more books, but would have to wait a few years before embarking on one.

I asked her to tell me one of these stories and she mulled several possibilities before telling of an aging prostitute Fields knew. She wasn't sure if "Woody" had ever been a patron but they were friends, and Fields was always trying to find a way to throw her a few bucks since she was too old to get much work in her main occupation. There's a tale that makes the rounds about some guy who's in the hospital, attended by nurses and/or nuns and one day, one comes in, locks the door and begins ripping off her clothes and performing sex acts on his person. This of course shocks the patient who is unaware the nun (or nurse) is a hooker that his friends have hired for this treat/trick. Well, according to Ms. Monti, Fields's friend specialized in such missions and owned all the necessary costuming. Now that she was older, he occasionally hired her for non-carnal nun impersonation. He'd arrange for her to be in some restaurant or other public place when he was with some pals and he'd start verbally abusing this nun and saying foul, vulgar things to her. This would horrify Fields' friends who would try to shut him up but he would persist...until finally, the "nun" would start firing back with even better obscenities, and Fields' cronies would realize they'd been had. According to Ms. Monti, "Woody" loved the reactions.

The other main thing I recall beyond the talk about him wanting to play Scrooge was that she felt Fields's last few years had been squandered by Hollywood. He'd had a bad check-up and from that point on, no studio wanted to start a movie with him in the lead. He was in constant demand for short cameos but many offers fell through and some of what he did film was never released. She made the comment that he might have lived longer if the business hadn't decided prematurely that he was dying.

She didn't have a lot of time that day so we agreed to get together again for a longer chat but never did. And though she lived almost two decades after our chat, she never wrote that second book. I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with her because...well, how often do you get to talk to someone who slept with W.C. Fields? These days, hardly ever.

• Posted at 1:59 PM · LINK