Saturday, January 21, 2006

His Name Not Jose Jiminez

Yesterday afternoon, my friend Earl Kress and I attended another luncheon staged by the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters to honor a veteran of the industry. This time, the honoree was Bill Dana, who is probably best known to everyone for his role as Jose Jiminez, the famous Hispanic played by a man of Jewish and Hungarian ancestry. Most of the talk, however, was about Bill's extensive career as a writer and producer of comedy, much of it non-Jose. On the dais were Jayne Meadows, Gary Owens, Betty White, Tom Poston, Howard Storm, Jack Riley, Hal Kanter and Shelley Berman. Shelley Berman is still one of the funniest, crankiest human beings to ever appear before a microphone.

The luncheon was emceed by the great announcer John Harlan, and began with a video montage of Dana's TV appearances. There were several clips of Jose that prompted an observation by Earl and me and, I suspect, others in the room. It's that Andy Kaufman's "foreign man" character (aka Latka Gravas) was an awful lot like Jose Jiminez with an unreal accent. There was also a very funny clip from the 1963-1965 sitcom, The Bill Dana Show, which co-starred the late Don Adams. Dana wrote most of Don's early comedy material, including many of the catch phrases and stock jokes that later became a part of Get Smart.

Funniest moment of the afternoon: Bill's colleague from many a Steve Allen Show, Tom Poston, was introduced. He got up and said, "They asked me to be here today to say something nice about Bill Dana." And that was it for Mr. Poston's speech. He sat down and never said another thing for the remainder of the event. Later, when Dana was thanking everyone, he finished the joke. He went down the dais talking about each guest but made a point of skipping Poston.

Most touching moment of the afternoon: Jayne Meadows talking about how much her late hubby loved Bill and how crucial Dana's contribution was to Steve's work. She mentioned that Bill had written the best joke ever for Steve's Question Man character. (The Question Man later morphed, without permission, into Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent.) But Jayne was afraid she'd botch up the telling so she left it to Bill to quote the line. The answer was "chicken teriyaki." The question was "Name the world's oldest kamikaze pilot."

Bill Dana has not been in the spotlight much lately. One speaker said that they'd made a movie about the last twenty years of his life: Without a Trace. So it was nice to have this luncheon and remember what a funny, creative man he was and still is. Also, they served poached salmon and it was pretty good.

• Posted at 1:10 PM · LINK

Norm McCabe, R.I.P.

Norm McCabe has passed away at the age of 94. McCabe was born in Great Britain but raised in America. In the mid-thirties, he became one of the most respected animators at the Warner Brothers cartoon studio. In 1941, when director Tex Avery left the studio and moved to M.G.M., that left an opening for a new director and McCabe — who had previously co-directed some cartoons with Bob Clampett — got the job.

The cartoons McCabe directed are all professional but not as funny as those made by his peers. Many of them were "wartime" films such as The Ducktator and Tokio Jokio that dated quickly and so were not re-released or (later) given much TV airplay. In any case, McCabe's time as a director was limited. In 1943, he went into the military and when he returned to civilian life, he moved into commercial work and the production of educational films. In the sixties, he drifted back to his old line of work to animate for Filmation, DePatie-Freleng, WB and other studios. He was one of the animators on the 1972 movie, Fritz the Cat.

In 2000, ASIFA presented him with the Winsor McCay Award. He also received the Golden Award from the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists in recognition of fifty years in the animation field.

Obviously, it is not a huge shock that a 94 year old man should leave us. But Norm McCabe was the last living director from the "golden age" of Warner Brothers animation and one of the few animators from that period who was still around. So along with condolences to his friends and families, we also have condolences to ourselves. We've just about the lost The Greatest Generation of cartoon creators.

• Posted at 12:37 AM · LINK

There She Goes...

The Miss America pageant — booted off network TV and out of Atlantic City — is being telecast tomorrow on the CMT cable channel. It'll be coming to us from the Aladdin Hotel in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada.

The gent in charge of the pageant recently told a newspaper, "We have asked them [the contestants] to respect the values of Miss America and not to be seen gambling."

Got that? It's against the values of Miss America to be seen gambling. But it's not against the values of the pageant operators to hold the event in a casino located in a town built on gambling. One might well assume that the Aladdin gave them a good deal because it was thought that the pageant would promote the Aladdin and lure people to come in and gamble.

(Yeah, I know they have gambling in Atlantic City. But the town isn't only about that, and the Miss America festivities were held at the convention center, some distance from the slot machines. At the Aladdin, they'll never be far from Video Poker.)

So if gambling is contrary to the values of Miss America, why surround yourself with it and promote it? And how come the ladies are only being asked to not be seen gambling? Why aren't they being asked to not gamble? Could it be that the values of Miss America are only about appearance and not about what you actually do?

Naw. Couldn't be that.

• Posted at 12:01 AM · LINK

January 22, 2006 • Current • January 20, 2006