Thursday, January 8, 2004

Paul Keyes

Several people were responsible for the success of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, but a major contributor was Paul Keyes, who died last Friday. Keyes was a writer and later a producer and after he left, the show took such a downswing that Rowan and Martin finally threw down an ultimatum: They would not come back for another season unless Keyes was re-hired as producer and given vast amounts of control. This was done, and it helped. Keyes was a funny man who often said very funny things. He was also one of Hollywood's most active Republicans. Any time you heard something funny come out of the mouth of Richard Nixon, the odds were good that it was put there by Paul Keyes. In the '76 presidential race, recognizing his value, handlers for both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter enlisted comedy writers to do for their guys what Keyes had done for Nixon.

Naturally, Keyes was responsible for arranging Nixon's famous Laugh-In cameo. To Paul's credit, though he loved his buddy Nixon and hated the alternatives, he did not attempt to purge Laugh-In of Nixon jokes. He knew that a comedy show couldn't not make fun of the president and if a joke was good, it got on...no matter how contrary it was to Paul's personal political beliefs.

If you'd like to know more about his career, which included writing for Dean Martin, Jack Paar, Frank Sinatra and many others, here's a link to an obit. But take it from me: He was everything you'd want a comedy writer to be.

• Posted at 11:20 PM · LINK

Fun Sites 2 Visit

Here, recommended to me by Alan Light, is a neat little site. It's called Let Them Sing It For You. Someone has excerpted what must be thousands of songs and selected individual words. You type in a line or lyric and then, assuming it find those words in its database, the program plays back what you typed. The first word might be from a Hendrix record, the second from the Beatles, the third from Sinatra and so on. You have to make the phrase simple but it does work.

• Posted at 6:44 PM · LINK

Happy Soupy Day!

Here's one of those facts guaranteed to make some of us feel ancient: Soupy Sales is 78 years old today. I don't believe it, either. My favorite teevee performer (at least when I was nine) was always the most energetic, vital guy around. You had to be energetic to do that many hours of television per week, much of it quasi-ad-libbed. You had to be vital to do that many dances, take that many falls and, of course, get hit with that many pie crusts full of shaving cream. A Soupy Sales TV show was always like some daring acrobatic feat, and not everything went right but for the viewer, that was a win/win situation. When it went right, it was funny. And when it didn't go right...well, that was funny, too.

In fact, seeing things collapse and watching Soupy dig himself out of the rubble was even more entertaining than watching when it all worked. I don't think all of the live or live-on-tape programs today collectively take as much risk as Soupy did in every broadcast. I posted this article I wrote about him, and it was included in Soupy's autobiography. (Alas, no one corrected one factual error I made: Soupy's 1978 TV series was directed by Lou Tedesco, not Lou Horvitz.) Anyway, last I heard, Soupy was home from the hospital and recuperating from some surgery relating to a nasty fall he took some years back. I don't think he's on the Internet but I have this theory which I cribbed from Peter Pan that if we all send out good thoughts, somehow they'll get to him. So Happy Birthday, Soupy. And sorry again about mixing up the Lous.

Also born on this day: Larry Storch, David Bowie, Graham Chapman, Ron Moody and some guy named Elvis Presley. At least one of those people must have worked with Lou Horvitz.

• Posted at 11:29 AM · LINK