Last August, I wrote this item here about Joe Pyne, who was kind of like what Saddam Hussein would be like if he had a radio show and less charm. Pyne's radio and TV programs were festivals of insults, and his producers often kept them that way by trotting out looney guests and people who couldn't help but annoy the host. Pyne's shows were disguised as forums where important issues of the day could be discussed but it was pretty much all wrestling, with audiences tuning in to watch the anger and occasional bloodshed. I happen to think there's a certain amount of that in most of what passes for our punditry today. Anyway, here's three minutes of one of Mr. Pyne's TV shows. For those of you who never got to see him, this is just about all you have to experience...
Animation World News has a nice obit on Lennie Weinrib that lists some (just some) of his career highlights.
Tiny points: They picked up a small error I made here when I said Lennie died at his home in Chile. His daughter Linda informs me that he actually died in a nearby hospital, apparently from a stroke. The obit also should have said that Lennie is also survived by his wife Sonia and the two daughters he had with her, Heidi and Grace.
Linda and I, by the way, are talking about organizing a public memorial event in Los Angeles, probably not for at least a month. I'll post details here when there are some.
Here's a stunner: Theodore Olson, who I believe was a thoroughly dishonest, partisan Solicitor General of the U.S., writes a wise and cogent explanation of why reporters need to be able to protect their sources. It pretty well summarizes the way I feel...which since it's Olson makes me wonder if maybe I'm wrong.
In the meantime, a lot of Conservative columnists (like Charles Krauthammer here) are arguing for an amnesty for Iraq insurgents. I have no opinion if this is a good idea or a bad one. But I do think that if this had first been proposed by Democrats, all the same right-wingers — including Krauthammer — would be arguing that it was disgraceful and dangerous to be coddling, forgiving or doing anything but trying to wipe out a band of people who'd murdered American soldiers.
And here's Glenn Greenwald with what seems to me a good analysis of today's Supreme Court decision.
Out today is the new issue of Solo, a DC Comic which spotlights a different artist each time. This one features my longtime collaborator Sergio Aragonés with silly stories. Some — the more realistic ones — are wholly from his imagination. Others — the unbelievable ones — are true stories from his life, including the tale (which I forced him to include) of how he killed comedian Marty Feldman. Way in the back is a weird Batman tale which I wrote but don't let that stop you. Pick up a copy.
A delightful, unexpected surprise from the Supreme Court saying that the Bush administration has overstepped its authority with regards to "enemy combatants." But why do I think the reaction from the White House will be that they're still going to do what they think is right, no matter who tells them it's wrong?
On the matter of the New York Times revealing the government's finance-monitoring program, Keith Olbermann did an interesting report the other day. It can be viewed here...but if you don't have the seven minutes to watch, I'll summarize. Basically, Olbermann claims that everything the Times revealed has been talked about before, including by George W. Bush, and offers clips to prove much of this assertion. I don't think the people calling for Times editors to be strung up will care. With the war going as badly as it is, they need someone to blame besides themselves and their chosen administration...and the press is always handy for that.
Lastly, and still on the topic of Olbermann: His ratings are up and Bill O'Reilly's are down. Yesterday on Countdown, Olbermann did a very funny but childish nyah-nyah-nyah speech. Haven't seen an online link to a clip but if you do, you might get a chuckle out of it.
Back in the seventies, networks loaded down their Saturday morning schedules with public service spots. This one's from a series of them on ABC where a little guy named Timer taught nutrition tips. The voice of Timer in these was performed by our departed pal, Lennie Weinrib...
That's Lennie Weinrib on the left, playing insult comic Jackie Brew-Brew in an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. You remember that one. In this shot, he's asking Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon), "Do you pluck your scalp?"
It was a remarkable performance, all the more so because the show filmed at 7:00 on a Friday evening and Lennie was hired at 2:00 that afternoon. The role of the insult comic was written for (and rehearsed all week by) Shecky Greene who somehow ran afoul of the law and had to go off with some nice policemen. Suddenly, producer Carl Reiner found himself without the guest star in the episode they were filming that evening — a nice cause for panic — but he knew what to do: Call Lennie. And Lennie came in, learned the role and played it to perfection. He did a couple of other episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, as well...and of just about every situation comedy that was on the air in the sixties.
Lennie was an actor, a writer, a producer, a director and — most lucratively — a voiceover specialist. He originally came to prominence working with Spike Jones and later in the Billy Barnes revues that launched many a career in the early sixties. There was a time there when everyone wanted to hire him for everything but especially voiceover work. In fact, he made so much money doing commercials and cartoons that he neglected all his other skills...to his occasional regret. One of the last times he was seen on camera to any extent was in the 1977 kid show, Magic Mongo, which was a segment on the Krofft Supershow. Here, let me show you the opening of an episode...
That series was another "last minute fill-in" by Lennie. The producers, Sid and Marty Krofft, wanted Lennie for the role but the network wanted someone else. I think it was Alex Karras. Anyway, shortly before taping was to start, there were contractual disputes with whoever ABC favored and Lennie got the part. He was wonderful in it. He was wonderful in everything he did. The Kroffts knew that, which is why they wanted him. Lennie had been the main writer of their first TV series, H.R. Pufnstuf, along with providing the role of the title character and many others.
I worked with Lennie on another of the Kroffts' shows and we became instant friends. He was just a funny man to be around...although he had one habit I must admit I didn't like. He was the master of practical joke phone calls. You may remember another episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show he was in. He played Buddy Sorrell's accountant who, for a gag, called up Rob Petrie and got him to dismantle his telephone...then told him to put all the parts in a brown paper bag, go out on his lawn, swing it over his head and "Scream like a chicken!" One of the reasons Lennie was so convincing in the role was that the script was based on a trick he'd actually pulled on people. And believe me. If Lennie had called you and tried the same trick, you'd have been out on your lawn, waving pieces of your phone and screaming like a chicken.
He was brilliant at putting people on. One time, we were driving somewhere in his lime green Rolls Royce (I told you he made a lot of money) and he said, "Listen to this" and phoned Gucci's on Rodeo Drive. Without even taking his hands off the wheel, Lennie — adopting an accent from no known country — convinced some General Manager to open the store an hour early the next morning so that the Ambassador of Frammistram could shop undisturbed and select a gift for the upcoming coronation. We arrived at the restaurant before he could take the prank to its logical conclusion, which probably would have involved the entire staff standing out on Rodeo, swinging Gucci bags over their heads and screaming like chickens.
I don't like tricks like that. But I had to admire the skill and, of course, I liked Lennie.
At some point in the eighties, Lennie got bored and unhappy with the industry. A close, trusted associate cheated him out of more money than some of us will ever see. His mother became very ill and then died, and the stress got to him. He married a lovely woman from Chile named Sonia and suddenly, almost overnight, decided he'd be happier there in retirement than here in show business. He quickly sold his magnificent home and that green Rolls, moved to Chile and purchased what I suspect was an even nicer home. There, he and Sonia were very happy and had two daughters — "the goils," Lennie called the three of them — and he spent an awful lot of time on the Internet, e-mailing jokes to everyone he knew.
When he departed L.A. and Show Biz, his friends were stunned and even his agent called me and asked, "Is this a joke?" No, it wasn't. Lennie spent the last few decades in Chile, staying in touch with his old friends by phone and Internet. We either spoke or e-mailed almost every day. I'm going to miss that a lot.
I just got the call that Lennie Weinrib, one of the great character actors and cartoon voices (he was H.R. Pufnstuf, among many others) died this morning at his home in Chile. I'll write a longer message later today. Very sad news for those of us who knew him and loved his work.
This is another one that's way outta sync but I can't find an online version that's right and it's too good to skip. A few years ago, the Loews Theater chain had the Sesame Street division of the Muppet operation prepare a short film to be shown in theaters. The idea, I guess, was to educate moviegoers — the young ones, especially — how to behave in a movie theater. There was also a sequel which may just be tomorrow's link...but for now, here's the first one. And once again, I apologize about the sync. If you'd like to download a smaller but correct version in QuickTime, give this link a try. Otherwise, click below to watch it here...
Here's Dana Milbank on how ridiculous the proposed amendment about flag-burning is.
You know, everyone says this is an attempt by Republicans to play to their "base" and of some Democrats to try to woo that same group. I think if I were part of that constituency, I'd be insulted by my leaders pandering to me over something so far down on my list of what's important.
On this matter of newspapers printing information about secret government programs, the best article I've read — or at least, the one I most agree with — is this piece by Glenn Greenwald. As usual, government officials are screaming "it's anti-American" whenever the press refuses to spin the news their way.
I would also call your attention to an article by Matt Yglesias. It basically says that no matter how much you think the "Global War on Terror" is costing us in terms of dollars, your estimate is way low.
Today, we have a ton of links for you but you'll have to hurry. Over on Google Video, a number of the clips that ordinarily cost a buck or two per download are free "today only." You can, for example, watch eight half-hours of Rocky and Bullwinkle. You can enjoy the adventures of Roger Ramjet, Felix the Cat or The Mighty Hercules.
The non-animated section includes a couple hundred episodes of The Charlie Rose Show. You might enjoy the interview with Stephen Sondheim or the chat with Dick Cavett or the conversation with Jay Leno or the hour with Donald Rumsfeld. In fact, if you scroll through the list of Charlie Rose episodes, you're bound to find a couple you'd like to watch.
I don't know how they're defining "today" so I don't know how long you'll be able to access all this stuff for free. I do know that you probably won't be able to watch it all today but some of you may figure out that you can use KeepVid to download the clips for later viewing. Copy the URL of the clip you crave into the appropriate window and you'll be able to save it to your harddisk as an FLV file. (You'll need an FLV player but there are plenty of free ones around...like this one, for instance.)
(Quick tip: If it doesn't work, go to the URL you pasted in and delete whatever search terms may have been appended to the web address. They usually start with an ampersand. Delete the ampersand and everything to the right of it and see if that works. And if it doesn't, just remember that Google Video has done free days before and may well do them again.)
In the meantime, here's yet another McDonald's commercial. This one is only interesting because it features the great comedy actor Frank Nelson. I was fortunate to work with Mr. Nelson a year or two before he left us and I wrote that story up and posted it here. He's the guy in the conductor outfit in this spot...
Lyle Stuart, often described as a "renegade" or "maverick" in the world of book publishing, died on Saturday at the age of 83. As delineated in the New York Times obit, Stuart was a colorful figure in his trade, putting out books that no other publisher would touch and becoming embroiled in controversies and fights. It was said that he actually enjoyed being involved in lawsuits and feuds, and that he would sometimes do things to deliberately fan the flames of a battle.
Unmentioned in that obit is the role he played in comic book history. Stuart was a close friend and advisor to William M. Gaines, publisher of EC Comics and Mad, and he served for a time as EC's business manager. The two men met when Stuart was publishing the tabloid mentioned in the Times piece, a direct assault on the then-powerful New York columnist, Walter Winchell. Mad had only been around for a few months and was just beginning to develop a following. When Stuart ordered some back issues, Gaines recognized the name on the order form and sent them with a note that said how much he admired Stuart's courage in taking on the megalomaniac Winchell.
They soon became friends and then Gaines engaged Stuart to help him on a part-time basis in running the company. This was a mixed blessing because Winchell, who'd been attacking Stuart in his column, then began hammering his foe's connection to a publisher of "filth" (i.e., EC Comics) and predicting that the lot of them would wind up behind bars...and indeed, Stuart did. One day, apparently goaded by Winchell, New York police raided Gaines's office, charging that the comic books he published were indecent. Stuart was aware that the fragile Bill Gaines could not handle going to jail so he told the publisher to hide, then got the police to arrest him, instead. The case was eventually thrown out of court but the incident cemented a lifelong friendship between Gaines and Stuart.
According to some accounts, whenever Gaines had a problem in his life, the first thing he would do was to call Lyle. For example, when Mad's original editor Harvey Kurtzman demanded control of the company, it was Stuart who advised Gaines to get rid of him. Earlier, it was Stuart who'd advised Gaines to be a voluntary witness in front of a Senate subcommittee investigating alleged links between juvenile delinquency and the kind of horror and crime comics that Gaines published. The former advice was probably good, the latter was disastrous.
Among the many books Stuart published was the 1972 The Mad World of William M. Gaines by Frank Jacobs, an official biography. It was perhaps the least controversial book to ever come out of Lyle Stuart Publishing but it was reportedly one of Stuart's favorites — partly because of his friendship with the subject and partly because he was mentioned often in it.
Two minutes of Laurel and Hardy to start your week off right. The deep bass voice you'll hear in this one belonged to actor Chill Wills, who was probably best known for dubbing in the sound of Francis the Talking Mule.
No, I'm not back in the hospital. I'm visiting somebody who is...and in a hospital so fancy that every room has a high-speed Internet connection and the meals are prepared by a Wolfgang Puck kitchen. That is not a joke. It's a private hospital and one that, like the most exclusive of restaurants, you can't get into unless you know somebody...or unless an ambulance brings you here because it's the closest emergency room when you're in trouble. Which is how the person I'm visiting wound up here...in a room so nice, it almost makes you want to be sick. Notice the "almost."
I've stayed in Courtyards by Marriott that weren't as plush as this place. I have some time to kill while tests are being conducted so I couldn't resist trying to blog from the in-room Internet hook-up. (It's a clever little device — an LCD screen and keyboard on a swivel arm so it can be moved into position for someone in the bed or swung over to a nearby chair for a visitor. The screen toggles back and forth between the World Wide Web and a full line-up of cable TV stations, plus you can listen to XM satellite radio, plus it's also a telephone. Wish I had one of these for my house...though I'm not sure the web is ready for me blogging from bed.)
And, oh yeah — they seem to have doctors and nurses who know what they're doing and who aren't overburdened with too many patients. I guess that's impressive, too.
What happened to all those people on the TV series, M*A*S*H? What did they all do after the war? Well apparently, most of them wound up selling computers for IBM.
We may (note the emphasis on the word "may") be looking at an opportunity to end the Iraq War sooner rather than later, and in a way that will enable American prestige to go relatively unsullied in the process. Read this blog post by Kevin Drum.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a fascinating movie. I'm not sure if it's a good fascinating movie or a bad fascinating movie or even if the distinction matters. In some ways, it's so bad it's good and in others, so good it's bad. I do know it's about one-tenth as much fun to watch when you aren't in a hip audience with a great sense of humor...so in a way, the new DVD is disappointing. It doesn't come packaged with a hip audience with a great sense of humor.
The film was, of course, made by the grand lecher, Russ Meyer, with a script by Roger Ebert, who could match him leer for leer. It started out to be a sequel to the original Valley of the Dolls (which also just came out on in a new DVD deluxe edition) and then turned into an unrelated parody, not just of Valley of the Dolls but of everything else that occurred to Meyer and Ebert at the time. Some of the parody is so expertly done that you aren't certain all the actors even knew they were in a spoof, and there have been filmgoers who've watched the entire movie without realizing it.
First time I saw BVD, as everyone calls it, it was on a double feature with Valley of the Dolls at the old Criterion Theater in Santa Monica. It was a matinee and the place was filled with little old ladies and others who didn't "get it." It was one of my strangest moviegoing experiences because I was the only one laughing and others were turning around, telling me to shhh. Like I was ruining this fine dramatic film for the rest of them.
I knew it was funny but I didn't know how funny until I attended a late screening at the NuArt one evening. The place was packed with people who "got it" and Russ was there with a couple of starlets and — to use the kind of descriptive term I usually hate — the NuArt rocked that night. We all had the best time, savoring every little oddment, howling at every cliché and every line of deliberately unnatural dialogue. It was like reading a good Kurtzman Mad comic for the second or third time, noticing things you hadn't noticed the first time through. When folks laughed in the NuArt, others would suddenly get a joke they hadn't realized was there.
I've seen it a few other times with good audiences, including a time up at U.C.L.A. maybe a dozen years ago when they brought in Meyer, Ebert and all the major cast members who were willing to show their faces. There was a miserable splice-filled print and that almost added to the fun. The great cartoonist Carol Lay and I were seated behind star Dolly Read and her husband, Dick Martin, who were in hysterics. Their laughter bolstered ours — you know how that works — and for a time there, I thought the Martins, Carol and I were going to have to take turns administering C.P.R. to each other. After nights like that, watching the film alone, as I just did on DVD, is just disappointing.
I purchased the DVD mainly for the special features, which include "making of..." documentaries and two commentary tracks — one by Ebert, one by a bevy of cast members. I thought both tracks were disappointing. Ebert's especially was dry and only occasionally informative. You can learn a lot more about the making of the movie by reading this article that he has up on his website. If you'd like to order a copy of the DVD, you can do so here...but I warn you: This is only a great movie when you see it with a big audience. Viewed alone or with a small group, it can be rough going.
Although I worked a few times for Aaron Spelling — and almost worked for him a few more times — I didn't know him well enough to write anything of real substance about the man. In our brief encounters, he seemed to me like a down-to-earth guy who just happened to have more money than everyone else in his zip code, combined. Like many other TV producers with mega-hits, he was well aware that this was a temporary state; that the day would come sooner or later when no one at the networks would take his calls, so he had to enjoy (and milk) the success while he had it.
It has always struck me that most men in his position — note the word "most" in there — are a little baffled as to why these three of their projects made them zillions whereas these eight over here crashed and burned in spectacular failure. But of course to keep the transitory success alive as long as possible, they don't often admit their puzzlements out loud, at least to potential customers. The one time I had any sort of extended conversation with Mr. Spelling, he had just had a TV-Movie air to disastrous ratings and near-libelous reviews. I don't recall which one it was but I do remember him looking at some Nielsens, shaking his head and muttering, "Gee, I thought that one would work." Fortunately for Spelling, enough of them did work that he made out just fine.
Before we get to today's fun, two of the commercials I linked to in the last few days have been "corrected" by their uploader. He has thoughtfully fixed the sync problems in them and I've replaced my links with the new versions. Click here to go back and see the fixed version of the Speedy Alka-Seltzer spot with Dick Beals and click here to see a more in-sync version of the Post Raisin Bran commercial. (I don't mean 'N Sync is performing it...but isn't that kind of where those guys are headed?)
For today, we have another McDonald's commercial. It's some time in the early eighties and the chain needs an energetic guy who can sing and dance to appear in commercials for their newest concoction, the McDLT — a major scientific breakthrough in hamburger creation. It's a burger with lettuce and tomato on it but they've invented a brilliant way to keep the burger warm and the lettuce and tomato cool: It's a package that keeps them separate until you buy the thing and put the lettuce and tomato onto the hamburger. Must have taken them years to think of that.
Anyway, they need a guy for their commercials so they scout about and come up with a kid named Jason Alexander...
So who are the actors in the McDonald's commercial I posted last night? I asked if the manager was Vern Rowe and several of you (like Eric Tublin and John Nelson) say it's John Wheeler. Marty McKee and Doug Puthoff (and others) seem pretty sure Johnny Haymer — who appeared a few times on M*A*S*H, among other shows — is the guy who sings, "Put a shine on the floor." I've received mixed opinions as to whether the black guy is John Amos. (Tublin thinks it is, Jon Delfin thinks it isn't. I don't think so...but then it still doesn't look like Barney Martin in that raisin bran commercial to me.)
And is that my old pal Bob Ridgely in there, as many people are suggesting? I think so, now that I look at it. He's the guy singing about how clean his burger machine is, and that threw me off. The Ridgely I knew would never sing about cleanliness. Were he alive today, he would have been in The Aristocrats and he would have grossed out everyone in the picture, Bob Saget included.
A couple of folks have asked if that's Anson Williams in there, too. I debated mentioning that because Anson played an employee in at least a couple of McDonald's commercials from this era but I'm not sure he's in this one. I've just sent him an e-mail to ask. Here at news from me, we get to the bottom of the important questions. Never mind the War in Iraq or Global Warming. We want to identify the performers in old commercials.
In honor of my probably never eating at one again, here's a 1971 commercial for McDonald's that almost everyone who was around at the time will remember. Apparently, the chain did some sort of marketing survey to determine why people who weren't going to McDonald's restaurants weren't going to McDonald's restaurants. They discovered that a lot of people who'd never been in one had the idea that they were just "roadside hamburger stands" and as such were rather grungy and unhealthy.
This reportedly outraged the company head, Ray Kroc, who was obsessive about cleanliness at "his" establishments. Kroc had been a travelling salesguy for restaurant supplies and in that capacity, had visited hundreds of little eateries and been appalled at the condition of their restrooms and kitchens. When he began franchising McDonald's, he went all Felix Unger on everyone and demanded a new level of hygiene. He was known to walk into a McDonald's unannounced, go directly to the restrooms to inspect and if he found anything amiss, he made the manager go in and tidy it up himself.
So the ad boys went to work and came up with this commercial to tell the world that McDonald's were cleaned and recleaned constantly. I believe my old pal Howie Morris directed this. At least, he directed a couple of the commercials in this series, then went on to become the director (sometimes) and a voice (often) in the early McDonaldland commercials. (And hey, is that Vern Rowe as the manager?) Here we go...
For the those of you scoring at home (or even wagering), here's the latest: It's been four weeks since I underwent Gastric Bypass Surgery and so far, I've lost...twenty-eight days!
No, actually, I've lost forty pounds and I still can't get over how good it feels to be rid of them and how little discomfort I've had in the process. There are occasional pains — I think my posture is changing and some muscles are now being taxed in different ways — but there were greater pains and problems involved in carrying around that weight. So far, it looks like a great trade-off.
I also can't quite get over how little I eat or crave. I have not been hungry since the surgery despite a diet that would starve a supermodel. In fact, near the end of the day, I'll sometimes think, "Gee, there was something I meant to do and forgot...what was it? Oh, yes! Eat!" And then I have to force myself to down a protein drink or one of the semi-solid foods I've begun eating. This afternoon, I had a piece of baked halibut about the size of a tin of Altoids, accompanied by a third of a potato knish. And I couldn't have been more stuffed if I'd gone to Hometown Buffet and done a swan dive into the steam tables.
Yes, I seem to have found a protein drink I can live with. Some were too sweet, some too bitter, some too chemical, etc. Many were part of the insidious plot to make me imbibe artificial sweeteners. It finally dawned on me that I could mix protein drinks and get the best of two varieties. I'm now using Healthy 'n' Fit Bodybuilder 100% Whey Pro-Amino, which comes in vanilla or chocolate and which I purchase at my neighborhood Vitamin Shoppe. It's flavored with Stevia and taken by itself, it's tolerable...but I've learned how to improve it. I take a full portion of this, which is alleged to contain 45 grams of protein, and add in just a dash of 40-30-30 Total Balance Drink Mix, a protein drink which also comes in vanilla or chocolate and which they sell at Trader Joe's. The latter contains fructose — too much for me to tolerate a whole drink made out of it — so I use it for flavor. I figure it also adds another 5 grams of protein and fifty grams is around two-thirds of the protein I need for a day.
Still wrestling with doctor and hospital bills...though the burden was lightened by some generous readers of this site who kicked in a lot more than I dared to imagine. I thank each and every one of you, and will be writing personal notes shortly. I've been busy with another means of paying off the docs: Selling my old trousers to Cirque du Soleil. Next time you attend one of their shows, look around as you enter the Grand Chapiteau tent. If you see something that looks like a pocket and it says "Rochester Big and Tall" on it, welcome to my pants. Between that and what I stand to save on groceries and restaurant bills, I could wind up showing a profit on this surgery thing.
But I still have to say: I don't recommend it to everyone. I recommend looking into it if you're in that category that someone charmingly named "morbidly obese" but I'm certain roux en y is not right for some people. I'm just becoming convinced I'm one of the people it is/was right for. My doctor — who I've trusted with my life and would do so again — thinks I oughta do a book about the whole experience, explaining all I've learned, and I just might.
In the meantime, thanks again to all who've sent nice messages and/or PayPal offerings. I'll keep you posted.
Tonight, Turner Classic Movies has two airings of Billy Wilder Speaks, a 90-minute interview with the great director, edited out of a series of interviews he did for German television. How can that not be worth watching? The interview airs at 5 PM and again at 8:30 on my satellite.
The other day here, I mentioned voice actor Dick Beals and his most famous role...that of Speedy Alka-Seltzer. Our featured video today is a cute commercial starring Mr. Beals as Mr. Alka-Seltzer.
One of the things that impressed me about Dick the few times we worked together was how he manages to be highly versatile even though biology has trapped him in the higher vocal ranges. If you have six minutes, you can listen to or download his voice demo tape from this link. It represents a pretty tiny fraction of the work he's done.
Boy, it's weird how topics evolve on this weblog. The other day, I linked to this Post Raisin Bran commercial and a lot of you wrote in to say you thought the lead actor was Barney Martin. I thought it wasn't. I still kinda think it isn't even though I now have eyewitness testimony from a trusted friend who says it was.
Turns out, an old and dear pal of mine, Jim Brochu, was also in that commercial. In the above photo, Jim's the raisin on the far left. In the commercial itself, Jim's the raisin on the far left also, seen in profile. He says they shot this in a studio at 106th and 2nd Avenue in New York around 1973. He also says the guy in the front is definitely Barney Martin. I say it still doesn't look to me like Barney Martin but I'll take Jim's word for it. He and Barney were good friends.
Also in the commercial is the very fine character actor, Ken Olfson. In the above photo, Ken's on the far right and I don't know where he is in the commercial. Jim says David Doyle was in another commercial in this series (there were four made in all) but wasn't in this one. And while we're identifying people, Frank Buxton says the voiceover at the end is by William Redfield, a fine actor who was probably best known for his work in the movie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Anyway, I think it's amazing: I link to this silly little commercial and later find out a friend of mine is in it. Eventually, everything in my life will be connected to everything else in my life.
Hey, lemme tell you what Brochu is up to. Jim is a maddeningly versatile gentleman whose knowledge of The Theater puts mine to shame. He's an actor, a director, a playwright, an author, a producer, etc. He's been putting a couple of those job descriptions together as the writer and star of a forthcoming one-man show, Zero Hour, based on the life and times of his old pal, Zero Mostel. The play debuts July 7 (I will be there) at the Egyptian Arena Theatre in Hollywood and will play through August 13 before heading for New York. More info and a link to purchase tickets can be found here. Based on what Jim's done in the past, I expect to have a very good time. In fact, this may turn out to be the best play ever done by a former raisin.
Before 1980, if you drove your vehicle into a Jack-in the-Box drive-thru, you had to give your order to a big, plastic jack-in-the-box. I guess a lot of people felt silly doing this...though if you were eating there, it's not like you had a lot of dignity to lose. Nevertheless, '80 was the year they took out those jack-in-the-boxes and did a not-ineffective advertising campaign announcing they were "blowing up the clowns." This is a commercial from that campaign. The elderly lady you see in Nedra Volz, who turned up at one time or another in every single situation comedy of the late seventies and throughout the eighties. At one point, she had recurring roles on three different TV series — Diff'rent Strokes, The Dukes of Hazzard and Filthy Rich. Not bad for someone in their seventies. The gent who plays the manager of the Jack-in-the Box is our old pal, Chuck McCann, who's been in even more TV shows. Here they are...
There's a new book out by Ron Suskind called The One Percent Doctrine. It makes some pretty amazing claims about how the Bush administration has pressed the case for the Iraq War. They're summarized in this review by Barton Gellman.
Quite a few of you are suggesting that the lead raisin in the previous video is Barney Martin, who was probably best known as Jerry's pa on Seinfeld. And I see that a number of websites say that he played a raisin in a Post Raisin Bran commercial along with a couple of other actors who later somewhat well-known — David Doyle and Ken Olfson. I've looked at the spot a few times and it doesn't look like Barney Martin to me. He may be one of the other guys in the bowl or he may have been in another commercial in the same campaign. If you want to believe it's Barney Martin though, don't let me stop you.
Been kinda busy lately. Today, I visited my Public Storage lockers for the first time in about a year and discovered a roof leak had damaged about twenty boxes of goodies, including a crate of the first few issues of Groo. Hope that doesn't mean God is not a Sergio fan.
Last night, I went back to my friendly neighborhood Sav-on Drug Store which, to the confusion of elderly patrons everywhere, is becoming a CVS Pharmacy. A sign out front promises that the new establishment will have "More convenient hours." Since the place is now open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, I can't wait to see how they manage that.
I was there to pick up a renewal on a prescription and the man behind the counter fetched it and announced, "That'll be $91.88." I said...well, here. I'll let you listen in on what I said...
ME: What? I've been getting that prescription for two years and it's always been ten bucks.
PHARMACIST: (after consulting his computer) You're renewing it ahead of schedule. Your insurance doesn't pay unless you're within seven days of running out.
ME: And when will I be within seven days of running out?
PHARMACIST: (after consulting his computer again) June 20.
ME: It's 11:54 PM. In six minutes, it'll be June 20.
PHARMACIST: And in six minutes, it'll be ten dollars.
ME: I suppose there's no point in mentioning that I'm not going to be taking that pill tonight. I am just as "out of it" as I will be in six minutes.
PHARMACIST: Right. There's no point in mentioning that. At this moment, it's $91.88.
I went to the end of the line and saved eighty bucks. Makes you wonder what the mark-up is on these pills. And the funny/sad part of it is that this particular drug is also sold over-the-counter without a prescription for $23. I'd hate to think there are uninsured people out there who don't know that and are paying the $91.88, but I'll bet there are.
By the way, I'm told by several folks that not every Sav-on is becoming a CVS. Good for them. This conversion is already becoming way too traumatic for me.
This is a commercial for Post Raisin Bran starring a whole bunch of actors who had to go around for the next few months and answer the eternal actor question — "What have you done lately?" — by saying, "I played a raisin." I seem to recall that at least one of the thespians in this spot later became quite famous but I can't recall who it was, nor can I recognize anyone. But I do remember some rather successful actor on some talk show admitting to having been in this commercial.
I do recognize but cannot put a name to the lead singing voice which I'm pretty sure did not belong to the man on-camera mouthing to it. There was some New York-based vocalist who sang in hundreds of radio and TV commercials, and also on a lot of the kids' records done by one of several singing groups that went under the name of The Sandpipers. Isn't that same guy heard on the famous "Mighty Mouse" record that Andy Kaufman used to use in his act? I think so. As we learned back here, this batch of Sandpipers consisted of Mike Stewart, Ralph Nyland, Dick Byron and Bob Miller...so I'm going to throw caution to the wind and guess that one of them is the voice of the lead raisin in this spot. Give a listen.
My pal (and the hardest working man in the comic community, this time of year) Gary Sassaman finds an interesting example of an old pulp cover that was ripped-off for a classic cover on Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. Mort Weisinger was the editor of Olsen at the time and Gary wonders if Mort had a hand in the creation of the original version, which appeared on the pulp magazine, Thrilling Wonder Stories. Answer: Yes. Thrilling Wonder Stories was published by Standard Magazines, and Weisinger was its editor from around 1936 through 1940. This is the July, 1940 issue so it was probably one of his last issues.
Betcha the Jimmy Olsen cover came about as follows. Weisinger used to use the children who lived in his neighborhood as a kind of unofficial "focus group." He'd take crates of comics home from the office and hand them out every Saturday afternoon at some specified time. But before he gave out the comics, he'd ask the kids which covers they liked, what they'd like to see Superman do, etc. One time, one of them said, "I wanna see Superman fight King Kong" and when all the others chimed in that that would be neat, Weisinger made a note to go to the office and order up a cover of Superman fighting a giant ape who was climbing a building. The script was later written around the cover.
So my guess here is that Weisinger had a copy of that pulp around and showed it to the neighborhood tots one Saturday. When he got an enthusiastic response, he took the pulp into the office, handed it to artist Curt Swan and said "Here, draw this but make the monster Jimmy Olsen!" Which would explain the similarities not only in idea but in composition. Swan was not the kind of artist who would have copied someone else's cover design in any way unless ordered to do so.
Quite a few pulp covers morphed into comic book covers, though usually not that blatantly. Quite a few comic writers were former pulp writers so a lot of ideas were recycled that way, as well. I'm sure there must be examples of some of those comic book ideas that came from the pulps going on to become a videogame or some other 21st century concoction. What goes around comes around and vice-versa.
A week or two ago, I linked to a clip from one of the Night of 100 Stars specials — a rather nice dance number filled with great dancers. Here are two more clips from what I believe is the same special. (And if so, I'm curious as to why Bob Fosse was in the one where the stars just walked out instead of the one where they danced, at least a little.) These are both more along the lines of most of the numbers on these specials as I recall them, with celebrities just coming out and receiving applause for doing darn near nothing besides showing up...although I must say that putting Burgess Meredith in a kick line is the very definition of Entertainment.
The first one I'll link to is a cavalcade of male celebrities to the tune of "One" from A Chorus Line. As I watched this, I was thinking that it was a slight misuse of that song, which was intended to spotlight the backup dancers and chorus and not a star...and of course, here it's used to spotlight nothing but stars who are being carried by the chorus. Notice how many of the celebs don't even know which way to walk until they are guided by their smiling Rockette partner. Anyway, I thought this was a perversion of the song "One" until I noticed that one of the guys who wrote the tune is among the stars...so I figure if it didn't bother him, it doesn't bother me. This is the clip in which Mr. Fosse appears, strutting out to the big song from a musical that he reportedly loathed with all his might. I won't tell you who the other people in the number are because the surprises are most of the fun. Here it is...
And now, here's another clip, this one featuring lovely female celebs of the day ('85, it says) modelling fashions and jewels. It's a nice segment even if it does look like some of the ladies are thinking to themselves, "What the hell am I doing here?" If this was taped the same day as the other number, I'm guessing that Fosse hit on at least half of them.
Continuing with our festival of great commercials, we have a musical minute for Ajax, the Foaming Cleanser...and no, I don't know who did the singing. Thurl Ravenscroft provided the bass voice in some of these but I don't think that's him in this one. The voiceover at the beginning and the speaking voice of the fat elf are by Paul Frees, and the little elf is June Foray. I'm working now with June on her autobiography and it's amazing how many things like this she did and can barely remember. Once you jostle her memory though, she can usually recall doing it. I'll try showing this to her in the next week or so and I'll let you know what, if anything, I learn.
Sorry but I just spotted this. The Sundance Channel is abandoning its reputation for quality programming! In about six hours (9:20 AM Eastern, 6:20 AM Pacific) they're running The Gong Show Movie, Chuck Barris's 1980 somewhat autobiographical and taste-numbing motion picture. Some of you will probably curse that you missed this chance to record it...and while it doesn't seem to be scheduled again, we'll keep an eye out and see if it is.
In the meantime, if you checked in here before bedtime and rushed to set your TiVo or VCR, just appreciate what a valuable service this website can be.
We all have the public issues that rankle us. One of mine is the ongoing (and increasingly successful) attempt to do away with the Inheritance Tax. I not only think it's wrong and unfair but I believe the argument for eliminating it is built on a structure of deliberate and calculated lies...starting with calling it "The Death Tax." In this article, Ellen Goodman explains why that's a dishonest way to put it and why the whole thing is a rotten idea.
And I'll link to an old article which ran in Slate and which did not prompt one rebuttal that I saw. Michael Kinsley wrote about how it's a lie to say that money taxed by the Inheritance Tax is money that's been "taxed twice."
I understand why very, very rich people are in favor of its repeal. If I stood to inherit billions, I'd sure prefer that no tax be paid on that money. Heck, I'd prefer that no tax be paid on the check I'm expecting from DC Comics and I'm sure the guy who cuts my lawn would prefer not to pay taxes on the money I pay him each month. But us non-billionaires don't have the clout and connections to ram through our exemption from taxes. So not only don't we get it but we'll probably end up paying in many ways for the tax cut for the super-rich.
Not long ago over lunch, back when I ate lunches, I got into this discussion with one of my more Conservative (and not rich) friends. I said that if the U.S. government was going to forgo a trillion dollars (or whatever eliminating the Inheritance Tax will cost us), I'd prefer that the cuts be spread out over the entire population and not all given to the family that owns Wal-Mart. It seems to me that people who actually work are at least as deserving of tax relief as people who inherit it. My friend came back with the usual accusations that "my side" (I was talking about just me) loves taxes, would raise them as high as we could, wants to soak the rich, blah blah blah. I don't get why he feels this way. Isn't cutting taxes for everyone still cutting taxes? Apparently not. It's only a tax cut if it goes to people who don't need the money.
Last April, we had a brief discussion here and also here about the origin of the oft-bootlegged office poster with the laughing guys asking, "You want it WHEN?" A consensus emerged that it was the work of cartoonist Henry Syverson and that it probably derived from the laughing characters he drew for years, chuckling atop the cartoon page in each issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Well, Russ Maheras has just sent me the above scan from the March 29, 1958 issue. The heading is credited to Mr. Syverson so for me, that pretty much proves it. Thanks, Russ.
The next few days, I think I'm going to be linking to old commercials here. Today's is a spot produced by and starring the great Stan Freberg. Stan didn't exactly invent the funny commercial but he perfected the form to the point where other ad agencies used to (and may still) talk about doing "Freberg style" spots for their clients. No one else could ever quite pull it off because along with the more obvious shortcomings, they lacked Stan's courage and confidence. Who else could talk a sponsor into making a huge investment in commercials that didn't even mention the product's name out loud? But he did, as you'll see...
The Sav-on drug stores which dot Southern California (and elsewhere) are all turning into CVS Pharmacies. The parent company of the latter purchased the former and I don't think they've gotten as far as changing the signs outside but legally, the change was official a few days ago.
Yesterday afternoon, I went into a store that said Sav-on on the outside and Sav-on all over the insides. I'm guessing that if you went around the store and counted, you'd find the name "Sav-on" at least a thousand times. Over the pharmacy, for instance, there was a huge, six-foot sign that said "Sav-On 24-Hour Pharmacy." Absolutely nothing else had changed except that taped to all the cash registers were little paper signs that said, "This is now a CVS Pharmacy," and then under that in smaller type, the signs explained that if you pay by check, you have to make the check payable to the new name, not the old.
Ahead of me in the one checkout line was a woman, perhaps seventy, who was utterly confused by all this. She had purchased a tube of Vagisil (I think it was) which her doctor told her to get at Sav-on. She'd found it on the shelf and carried it to the register...where she'd discovered, much to her horror, that she was not in a Sav-on. I had to stand and wait through about ten minutes of conversation, the last part of which went roughly like this...
LADY: Why does it say Sav-on if this is a CBS Pharmacy?
CLERK: CVS Pharmacy, ma'am. And it used to be a Sav-on but now it's a CVS Pharmacy.
LADY: Well then, I can't buy this here. My doctor told me to buy it at a Sav-on.
CLERK: This is the exact same store it always was.
LADY: If it's the exact same store, why isn't it a Sav-on?
CLERK: Because Sav-on was sold. And anyway, you can't buy it at a Sav-on. There are no more Sav-ons. They're all CVS now.
LADY: (getting panicked) But my doctor said I needed this and I had to buy it at a Sav-on...
At this point, I decide that if I'm ever going to make it out of this store, I'm going to need to step in and clear things up.
ME: Excuse me. Your doctor doesn't care where you purchase this item. It's the medicine that's important, not where you buy it. This is the exact same product they sold here when this was officially a Sav-on.
LADY: Then you think it would be safe to buy it here?
ME: Absolutely. For all intents and purposes, this is still a Sav-on.
LADY: Well, in that case, I'll buy it here. Thank you. [to Clerk:] I'm going to need to write a check.
CLERK: Certainly. Please make it out to "CVS Pharmacy."
LADY: But this man said this was still a Sav-on!
At this point, I gave up and went to another register. In a Walgreen's.
Hey, for today's video link, how about a cartoon? How about a Tex Avery cartoon? This is Jerky Turkey, which was released to theaters on April 7, 1945...like you couldn't guess the approximate date from all the World War II references. It's another in the endless (for a time) stream of attempts to create a new Bugs Bunny by having a hapless character chase a crazy, carefree animal character who has the ability to defy all laws of physics and to pull explosives out of nowhere. Tex did a few of them, none of which evoked the magic he'd achieved with the wabbit in A Wild Hare.
One source gives the voice credits as Harry E. Lang and Leone Le Doux...but Leone Le Doux was a lady and I don't hear no female voices in this cartoon. The voice coming out of the turkey call and one or two other lines sound to me like Frank Graham, who was featured in a lot of Tex's cartoons, including the ones he made before and after this one. Other sources say that Bill Thompson, who was the main voice of Droopy, did the pilgrim but I'm not sure about that.
Preston Blair, who we wrote about here, did a lot of the animation of the doughy pilgrim. And this particular print seems to have a few frames clipped out in and around some of the more "violent" jokes but I can't help that.
I've always found it interesting that these cartoons "work" for people too young to get a lot of the phrases and gags. The lineup to purchase cigarettes, of course, had to do with wartime shortages. The billboard that asks, "Was this trip really necessary?" is derived from the advertising campaigns at the time encouraging Americans to save gas and to ask, every time they travelled, "Is this trip really necessary?" I wonder if very small kids even know what the "1-A" notice means. I hope they never have to experience it first hand.
Ira Matetsky points out in an e-mail that Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia has a photo on his official website of himself with Stephen Colbert.
So what do we think? Did he not get that the interview he did with Colbert (this one) made him look like a clueless politico who can't get anything done? Or did someone in his office perhaps not watch it and put the pic on his website? Maybe they just think, "Heck, a celebrity's a celebrity." Beats me. All I know is if I were Congressguy Westmoreland, I'd want everyone to forget a.s.a.p. about that Colbert interview.
116 years ago today in Ulverston, England, a couple named Arthur and Madge Jefferson celebrated the birth of their son, Arthur Stanley Jefferson. When he turned to performing, he became Stan Jefferson and later, Stan Laurel. When he teamed up with a man named Oliver Norvell Hardy, he became immortal.
As I've written many times on this site (here, for instance), there's really nothing I enjoy watching more than Laurel and Hardy in their natural state, which is on film. And I don't even like slapstick all that much. I just like watching them: The way they move, the way they gesture, the way they react, the way they talk (if they talk), everything about them. Their gag men, with Laurel as lead gag man, crafted brilliant jokes and situations for them...but Stan and Ollie are even fascinating to watch when they're standing still.
Nothing I'm writing in this item is new or unique or unusual. Audiences have loved Laurel and Hardy since they first teamed and people yet to be born will love their films well into the future. But I noticed today was Stan's birthday and I thought I'd note it here. Because even writing about these guys is fun.
Jim Henson graduated from the University of Maryland. Not long ago, that institution decided to erect a statue of Henson and his froggy alter-ego on campus, and they produced a little fourteen minute documentary about it and him. Parts of this film are more about the statue than about Henson but it features a lot of people at the school and some of the Muppeteers talking about Jim and what his work meant to them. And the statue looks pretty neat.
Lunch in elementary school could be traumatic. In junior high and high school, it was no problem: I brown-bagged it, bringing in a paper sack into which my mother had inserted either a meat loaf sandwich or a tuna sandwich or a peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jelly sandwich (something of the sort) and a little baggie containing three Nabisco Chocolate Chip Cookies. Today, they call them Chips Ahoy but back then, they were just Nabisco Chocolate Chip Cookies. I'd eat, toss the bag and that would be it.
Not so easy back at Westwood Elementary. Back there, if you didn't have a cool lunch box...well, forget it. You might as well paint a big sign on your butt that read "Mock me unmercifully." I don't recall if a bagged lunch suggested you were poor or low-class or boring or just why it was such a social faux pas. All I remember is that whenever my old lunch box had to be retired, I had to get the new one before the next school day. I didn't dare go to class with my eats in a sack.
Lunch boxes had to be replaced with alarming frequency. (So did our Student Teachers.) On our schoolgrounds, both got battered about a lot — enough that I'm amazed any lunch pails from that period still exist, let alone in "collectible" condition. But what was really vulnerable about them was the thermos bottles. Today, I'm told, they're like the black box on an airplane. Back then...drop one and it was history. Heck, just nudge one and it was goner. You'd shake it, hear the inner lining rattle about like broken glass and then pitch it into a trash can. So what did you do if the thermos in your Porky's Lunch Wagon lunch box (I had one) busted? Well, you didn't replace it with a generic thermos; not unless you wanted snide remarks from your fellow pupils. Instead, you had to get your parents to buy you a new lunch box with matching milk container.
This was how it was in first through third grades while I was at Westwood. In fourth grade, they began having someone sell milk at lunchtime — a little carton for a nickel, sold from a cart behind the cafeteria building that they'd been building since I was in Kindergarten. This simplfied the process since you no longer needed a thermos at all. This not only spared you replacing the whole lunch box every few weeks, it enabled all our mothers to pack more into our lunch kits. Mine took to adding in fruit and small packets of Laura Scudder's Potato Chips. I think each packet held about four chips.
Then in fifth grade, they finally got the cafeteria building up and running. I'll write about that wrenching experience in the second part of this post, maybe later today, maybe tomorrow.
If you didn't see last night's episode of The Colbert Report, you missed seeing Mr. Colbert make a Georgia Congressman look like...well, let's just say that if you were running against this man, an interview like this would be your fondest fantasy. The video's a bit fuzzy and it starts a bit slow but stay with this one until the end.
Nathan Newman, in a weblog post, raises an interesting question. Thanks to this morn's Supreme Court decision, it's now Kosher for police to enter your home without knocking or announcing their presence. But there are also laws in some states that say that if an unknown person comes crashing through your door, you have the right to shoot first and ask questions later. So of course, one of these days, someone's going to shoot a cop and offer the latter law as a defense. This strikes me as a set of laws that can't help but clash...and often.
And the Supreme Court decision strikes me as one of the many times Justices who say we should look to the "original intent" of the Constitution and interpret it as per the mindset of the Founding Fathers, have ignored that because it wouldn't have led them to where their present-day guts wanted to go.
I feel almost dirty writing something here about Ann Coulter. It strikes me that all her invective and "controversial remarks" have but one purpose: The financial enrichment of Ann Coulter. There are people out there who hate Liberals and will shell out good money (or tune in talk radio) to enjoy them bashed and attacked...and I don't think most of them even care if the attacks are fair or the facts are accurate. They just want to see "the enemy" slapped around. A similar marketplace is growing with regard to beating up on George W. Bush but it hasn't yet proven to be as lucrative. Judging by the polls, it may still get there.
The section of Coulter's new book that's making headlines and getting her on highly-rated TV shows is her attack on a small group of 9/11 widows whose main sin seems to be that they made commercials for John Kerry. (Has anyone asked her if she'd object to 9/11 widows making commercials for Bush-Cheney?) The premise here is that Democrats — or maybe it's Liberals she's singling out — trot out "victims" to make their cases and then argue that victims are sacred and that the opposition isn't somehow allowed to respond to them.
Seems to me that, first of all, Ann Coulter has no problem responding to victims. So if there's a problem there, her gripe is with folks on her side who allow that to intimdate them. Or maybe they don't respond because some of them think that you lose more than you gain when you attack someone like a 9/11 widow or a mother whose son died in Iraq. Certainly, we see a lot of right-wingers this week who think Coulter's doing more harm than good to their cause. It also seems to me that the unseemly action for a woman whose husband died in the 9/11 tragedies would be to just take the settlement money and go shopping, rather than to try and change the system or demand investigations.
It especially seems to me that George W. Bush and those who support him have done a darn good job of wrapping themselves in victims and other sacred heroes. Bush does it every time he invokes 9/11 in response to some criticism or gets himself photographed with grieving families or surrounded by uniformed firefighters. His supporters do that every time someone faults Bush or Rumsfeld and the rejoinder is, "You're attacking our troops." Same trick: Instead of debating issues, you hide between someone who's considered inviolable. If I thought Ann Coulter was out to get everyone on both sides to knock that off, she'd be my new hero...but I don't. I think she just wants to stir hatreds to sell books.
Last night, Jay Leno had Coulter on, paired with George Carlin for what NBC press releases promised would be mano a mano combat. But that was a false promise because Carlin, even if he thinks Coulter is utterly wrongheaded, is not about to fault someone too much for saying things that some find offensive. He kind of makes his living doing that, after all. Leno offered a feeble challenge to her views but since she's good at this kind of thing and since her supporters packed The Tonight Show audience to cheer her, she came off as a superstar, at least to the kind of viewer likely to ever buy her book. I suppose Jay and his producers thought it was worth it because of the ratings they'd get with the great Carlin-Coulter Slap-Off...but they didn't even get that. The numbers for last night were about average for a Wednesday, maybe even a few tenths of a point off. I'd like to think it's because America, like me, is already bored with this bogus controversy.
There are a lot of "impersonator" plays around these days. I guess it started before Hal Holbrook did his Mark Twain show and before James Whitmore was out there bringing back Will Rogers...but those two spawned a lot of imitations done by imitators of other famous folks.
I guess the format is irresistible. First off, you can usually do these shows with a cast of one, or perhaps a cast of one plus a few musicians. You don't need sets or a lot of costumes. And you start with a lot of great material because you pick one of the famous dead people who left behind writing and monologues and songs, plus there's also the subject's biography which will probably yield some good anecdotes. Plus, you have that Big Star Name. People won't go to An Evening With Ira Lipsitz but they might turn out for An Evening With Someone Famous(as portrayed by Ira Lipsitz).
Some of the ones I've seen have been very, very good (Frank Ferrante as Groucho, for instance). And even the worst of them (I won't name names) had a fair amount of entertainment value, even if it derived from the person being imitated, not from the imitator.
I won't pass judgment on the show being promoted in today's clip, which runs around four minutes, since I haven't seen the whole thing. But I will say it's rather an odd choice of Famous Person to replicate...
A quick one today. It's Mel Blanc's commercial for the American Express card.
Mel told me that it got him more recognition (in terms of people knowing who he was visually) than everything else in his career combined. He also said that it made it impossible for him to use any credit card anywhere without people making remarks. If he used his American Express card, they said something about it — "So this is the famous Mel Blanc American Express card!" And if he used a Visa or MasterCard, of course, they said, "What's wrong? You leave home without it?" But he was very happy he'd done the spot. Here 'tis...
I thought last Sunday night's Tony Awards ceremony was rather unremarkable. The lack of a central host gave the proceedings an impersonal feel and while nothing particularly awkward or uncomfortable occurred, nothing all that memorable did, either. I sure didn't get the feeling that most of the live audience in the hall cared that much who won so one can imagine how hard they were sweating out the results in Idaho. It seemed to me that Jersey Boys probably sold a lot of tickets with the number they presented on the telecast and that no other show did anything that would send audiences stampeding to the box office or even the TKTS booth.
But the broadcast did okay in the numbers. Ratings were up a bit, a fact that may stem from the fact that (a) unlike many years past, the show was not up against some blockbuster competition and (b) the total number of awards shows on the networks has declined, thereby making each one that remains a bit more special. And Broadway is probably happy that unlike most past years, the Tony Awards have not been followed — so far — by a sudden rash of shows announcing that they're closing. So maybe the ceremony does have a place on network television after all...a view that was hotly contested just a few years ago.
The Silent Movie Theater is getting new ownership and a new policy that will include talkies. This article tells all about the changes.
As explained in this piece I wrote some time ago, the venerable film palace was an important part of my teen years. Still, I'm past the point of being outraged over any changes made to it. I have a certain skepticism about anyone ever being able to make a go of it so I feel they should try whatever they think might make it viable. It's in a bad location (no parking) and it's small and now that most classic films are available on DVD, I'm not sure there's much of a market for showing old movies. Still, I like the idea that the institution John Hampton erected is still there, still showing great films, so I wish the new owners well. I'm sorry that I just don't seem to get there often, even though I could practically walk to the theater.
I was disappointed with Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman. That's the new documentary about You-Know-Who that debuted this evening on the A&E Network. It pretty much drives home the fact that to the folks who now control the property — and who obviously controlled the documentary to the extent of making its latter segments an infomercial for current TV and movie projects — the comic books are an incidental sidebar in the character's history. Every TV, movie and radio appearance was mentioned but the comics got a surface treatment, barely epidermis-deep. Although a few writers like Mark Waid and Elliott Maggin were interviewed about the character's history, I don't think anyone after Jerry Siegel was mentioned as having written 60+ years of Superman comic books and the artists didn't fare any better. No mention of Curt Swan or Wayne Boring or Al Plastino or any of them.
For that matter, as the history was recounted, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had the vision, did the first stories and were thereafter unworthy of further mention. What became of them? We heard a lot more about the fate of the men who portrayed Superman on screen than we did about the men who created him. Of course, some of this was because of current litigation and long-time corporate embarrassment...but I suspect most of it was because Time-Warner is pushing the Smallville series and the new Superman Returns movie. The other stuff can be mentioned for historical context but only as it sets up the current product as the culmination of all that has gone before.
I also thought the documentary ginned up a lot of vague, unconvincing reasons for Superman's enduring popularity. The explanations seemed flimsy and forced. I know some of the people interviewed have deeper, personal affections for the character. It would have been nice to hear more along those lines and less from the producers of the current movie...which, if we are to believe the documentary, already has people flocking to it even though it has yet to open.
And this may just be a personal prejudice of mine from having seen too many of these. There seems to be a law among documentarians that if your subject spans the sixties and seventies, you must include news footage of the J.F.K. assassination, Viet Nam protests and Nixon's resignation. Not only that but you must draw some sort of line, however forced, between those events and your story. In this case, the throughline seems to be that the murder of Kennedy caused the mass disillusionment of a generation and led to things like race riots and war protests...and this, in turn, made Superman — as a defender of the status quo — seem irrelevant. I think both premises are questionable or, at best, gross oversimplifications.
Finally, I think Kevin Spacey may be the best actor working today. Isn't it amazing that as a narrator, he's monotonous and unable to sound the least bit interested in the topic at hand?
Maybe I shouldn't carp because these specials are usually even farther off the mark. But so much work went into this one that, I dunno, I somehow was expecting something with a bit more substance. As it was, I guess it was a nice collection of clips...especially from films and TV shows that Warner Home Video has coming out.
The Vallely Archives, a weblog devoted to the work of illustrator Henry E. Vallely, recently found an example of how Bob Kane (or his ghost of the moment) had swiped a memorable panel in the first issue of Batman from Vallely's work. Shocking? Maybe...especially now that they've found another example.
Did I ever mention here that after a slow start, I've warmed to The Colbert Report? Never miss an episode. It and The Daily Show form the strongest back-to-back comedy bloc I've ever seen on television. In fact, I find myself reading the news now and sometimes thinking, "Boy, what Colbert's going to do with that." He oughta have a field day with this story.
John Derbyshire, who has been one of the leading Conservative pundits of the last few years, feels that everyone who supported the War in Iraq ought to start apologizing.
These people say the world's funniest joke was written by Spike Milligan. I'm not dubious that it was written by Spike Milligan...only that it's the world's funniest joke.
Okay, I'm satisfied that the gent in the photo (in this post) was not Whitney Ellsworth and that it's almost certainly Harry Gerstad. The above pic shows Mr. Ellsworth on the set with George Reeves and as you can see, it's a different guy. In fact, it's a different guy who looks a lot more like Whitney Ellsworth did when I met him in 1968.
Whitney Ellsworth was an interesting figure in comic book history. He was a cartoonist and a pulp writer in the thirties and when those two forms merged to form the great American comic book, Ellsworth became the chief editor at DC Comics. As such, he spent most of his time not editing comics. That was done by underlings while Ellsworth watched over the company's licensing and their deals for movies and radio shows based on their characters. In the fifties, he relocated from New York to Los Angeles to supervise the George Reeves Superman TV show and never left. He stayed in L.A. trying to sell other shows and to represent the company's interests on programs that did get sold.
He was the first person in comics I ever interviewed and I got absolutely nothing out of him. I don't think that was because I was new at interviewing. It was because he was horribly nervous, even facing a 16 year old kid with a tape recorder. He didn't want to talk about Superman in the forties because that might have meant mentioning Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and he didn't want to talk about them. He didn't want to talk about Batman because...well, I'm not sure but I think it was because he was afraid we'd get near the topic of what Bob Kane actually did and why didn't Bill Finger get credit? He didn't want to talk about Wonder Woman because he was afraid of angering the estate of William Marston, who created the character. I think the big scoop I got out of our chat was that Aquaman sometimes talks to fish...and even that, he briefly tried to put off-the-record. DC was then going through major upheavals and I think he was terrified he'd say something impolitic, I'd print it in my little 300-circulation fanzine...and someone at DC would read it and use it as an excuse to terminate his position.
I didn't think that was him in the other photo but it's nice to know for certain. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, especially Brad Ferguson, who sent the above pic.
We have a triple feature for you today. In 1977, Three's Company debuted on ABC. I was never a fan of the show but every so often, I'd catch an episode or part of one and note some fine comedic acting, especially by John Ritter. What a lot of people don't know is that Three's Company was a thrice-made pilot. All three versions had Mr. Ritter playing the not-gay roommate (though his character's name changed) and all three had Audra Lindley and Norman Fell as the Ropers, but the first had two different ladies playing Ritter's cohabitants. It also had a very different script — reportedly a much more adult approach.
You may be surprised to learn that Larry Gelbart wrote the script for that first pilot. He's credited with the words, "Developed by..." in this clip, which is the opening of that version...
ABC — which at the time meant Fred Silverman — liked some things about the pilot but not that writer's approach and not the two ladies. So they got new producers and a new script and they recast the ladies. Here's the opening of the second pilot...
Close but no, as they say, cigar. It's rare for a pilot to be filmed or taped three times. All in the Family was but those attempts spanned two networks. In the case of Three's Company, Silverman liked one of the new stars but not the other so the producers went hunting for a new Chrissy. When they found Suzanne Somers, they taped the pilot yet again and it was deemed buyable. It debuted with a short order (six episodes) in March of '77, became a hit and didn't leave the air until September of 1984. Even then, there was an attempt to spin off Ritter's character and keep things going. Like I said, I was not a fan but there were times — especially when Don Knotts joined the cast — when I couldn't resist tuning in. Here's the opening from the first season...
I received about twenty messages from folks answering my query about the man in the photo in the previous item. Some said it was definitely Whitney Ellsworth, some said it definitely was not and some in the latter group offered different names. The consensus — and it's not overwhelming — is that it's a gentleman named Harry Gerstad, who was a film editor on the show and later a director.
Alfred Walker, who thinks it's Gerstad, also reminds me that the A&E Network is debuting a two-hour special tomorrow night entitled Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman. It's a documentary about the Man of Steel and it airs tomorrow night at 8 PM East Coast time, 5 PM West Coast time. Then it reruns four hours later and runs again on later dates. I have no idea how it'll be but the TiVo is set.
Who is this man? No, no...I know the one on the right is George Reeves on the set of the Adventures of Superman TV show. But who's the guy on the left? Someone sent me this photo and asked if it was Whitney Ellsworth, who produced the show for a time after serving as Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics for many years. I only met Mr. Ellsworth once and that was in 1968, so I'm a bit fuzzy on what he looked like. He looked something like the gentleman in question but I'm not certain...so I'm wondering if anyone else is.
Several folks have written to point out to me that Stevia is a natural sweetener, not an artificial sweetener. They're right. I don't particularly like it but it is from a natural herb. At the moment, I don't have much of a sweet tooth so I may not be the best judge.
Jim Korkis sends this link to a good interview with Dick Beals and notes that Dick's autobiography, Think Big, is available on Amazon. True...but I'm going to order my copy from the address on that interview page so Dick makes a few more bucks off it. The man has had an astounding career, popping up in the darnedest places. The other day, I was watching an episode of the TV series, Captain Nice, and there was the sound of Beals in the theme song.
Two people wrote to ask why I didn't also mention that Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) did the voices of the Chipmunks in that commercial. Well, I'm not sure he did. He probably did at least one of them but contrary to popular belief, the sounds of Alvin, Simon and Theodore were not all done by Mr. Bagdasarian with a sped voice. I used to think they were all him, and perhaps some articles said so...but folks who've slowed down Chipmunks records and TV shows have noted others in there, even in the original hit, "The Chipmunk Song." And it isn't always even consistent within one project. I'm told (I haven't studied this myself) that Bagdasarian is usually Alvin, frequently Simon and rarely Theodore. Or sometimes he does the singing voices of all three but the speaking voices of only one or two — this, along with doing David Seville in his natural, unsped voice.
As a P.S. to the above item: I never really appreciated the skill Mr. Bagdasarian put into those recordings until I decided to have some characters on Garfield and Friends sing and talk in sped voices. It takes a fair amount of engineering skill and creative direction to blend voices in that situation and to keep them understandable. There have been a lot of imitations of The Chipmunks over the years and I never thought any of them were as good because, among other reasons, they didn't have someone with Bagdasarian's skill as a record producer and performer.
As a P.S. to the above P.S.: When we tried speeding up Lorenzo Music on the Garfield cartoons, we discovered that his voice sounded like the same guy. It just plain refused to speed up.
I really, really enjoyed the new Lewis Black special last night on HBO. It reruns many times to come.
Lastly, a continued thanks to the folks who've sent in cash donations this weekend. I'm quite stunned by both the volume and by some of the amounts. I'm thinking of having a big party when I hit the "100 pounds lost" mark and inviting everyone who helped. If we do, we'll hold it in my old pants.
Do they still make Soaky toys? They did as of a few years ago. I have a plastic Scooby Doo on my desk filled with bubble bath — Sergio gave it to me because he thought it was a great bit of sculpture — but it's not a Soaky-brand toy. Soaky toys were a line that came out from Colgate-Palmolive — plastic cartoon character figures filled with bubble bath. I guess the idea was that once they were empty, you could play with them in the tub...but I recall that some of them had a little groove where you were supposed to take a knife, cut a slot and then use the toy as a bank. I also recall having a batch of these toys when I was a kid, though I don't recall ever taking a bubble bath.
Anyway, here's a commercial for one of the most popular Soaky lines — Alvin, Simon and Theodore, aka The Chipmunks. In the spot, the voice of the Soaky Kid is done by Dick Beals, who is still working and who can still sound like a seven-year-old boy. This is because Dick is still about the height of one. Over the years, he's done hundreds of cartoons and commercials, and was even used often to dub voices for children in live-action movies. His most famous role was probably Speedy Alka-Seltzer but he was also Ralph Phillips in several cartoons that Chuck Jones directed for Warner Brothers. And he was a regular on Roger Ramjet and on Frankenstein Jr. and The Little Rascals and all sorts of other shows. I worked with Dick on a few shows and he's a real pro and, of course, one of the great unsung voice actors of television and movies.
This weblog post neatly summarizes how I feel about the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'd like to believe it will do something to diminish terrorism but I suspect it will do that about as much as the passing of Colonel Sanders ended the frying of chicken. And I will always be at least a little uncomfortable at the celebration of anyone's death, even when the anyone is murdering scum. Which is not to say I don't understand why people are cheering.
I received a number of donations overnight, many of them from folks who want to hear more about my Gastric Bypass surgery. Send me cash and I'll write about almost anything...
It's been fifteen days since a skilled surgeon did his magic and I'm down 25 pounds. I haven't yet reached the stage where the change is noticeable to folks who don't see me often but the ones who do are amazed. Sergio is already figuring he'll just go back to his old caricatures of me...which will work fine since I have most of those clothes in storage and will be wearing them again.
People want to know what I eat and the answer is "not much." I have almost zero appetite. My brain tells me I'd love an In-n-Out Burger with onions and a side of well-done fries...but my stomach isn't much interested. For two weeks, I've dined on chicken broth from Canter's Delicatessen and protein drinks...and lemme tell you about protein drinks, people. It's rough out there for a guy who doesn't like artificial sweeteners. I have genuine concerns about the effects of Aspartame, Sucralose and other such chemicals on the body but I don't have to decide for certain. That's because I long ago decided that even if they aren't harmful, I don't want them in me. When someone tells me that Diet Coke is indistinguishable from The Real Thing, I look at them like they're telling me the Earth revolves around the Moon. Sometimes, I even offer to bet them large sums of cash that I can tell the difference in a blind taste test. (This was before I gave up carbonated beverages completely, which I did last February.)
Over the years, this distaste always inhibited my attempts to find a workable diet. I went to several professional dietitians, each of whom was incapable of grasping the phrase, "I don't want to take artificial sweeteners." The nutritionist who worked out of my previous doctor's office stared at me like...well, like I stare at people who say Diet Pepsi tastes just like Real Pepsi. Yeah, like fake breasts look and feel exactly like real ones.
A diet without artificial sweeteners? It was as if I'd asked this nutritionist lady to write me a novel without using vowels. She apparently decided to just pretend I hadn't said what I'd said and proceeded to recommend things loaded with Nutrasweet, Splenda and all the things I'd just said I couldn't stand. I reminded her of my requirements and she said, "Oh, okay. Then try these..." and she handed me another list of foods filled with toxic sugar imitations. You'd be amazed how often this has happened to me. It's almost like, "If you don't like Nutrasweet and Splenda, try Splenda and Nutrasweet." There are times when life is way too much like the Monty Python "Spam" sketch.
Most of the protein drinks seem to have but one goal: To make you think you're drinking a real milk shake...ergo, the vast quantities of Sucralose. After trying about a dozen, several of which reaffirmed my distaste for Splenda, I finally settled on Jay Robb Whey Protein. It contains Stevia, a relatively benign artificial sweetener which I also think does not taste anything like sugar...or even its ubiquitous successor-in-interest, high fructose corn syrup. Tastes a bit unnatural but I can get it down, which is what counts. To mix these alleged beverages and to purée upcoming foods, I bought one of these...
Yes, it's the Magic Bullet, star of every third infomercial currently running on TV. It's a small blender with interchangeable blades and cups, and it works...barely. If I get a little healthier, I'll be able to stir faster than it can. Still, it's handy to have around. The protein drink is a bit more tolerable when it's made with cold water and whipped 'til frothy. I don't recommend the machine for most kitchen uses but it serves my purpose.
This is about when I'm supposed to be sneaking more solid foods into my diet. Last night, I ate a neat thing they now sell at Trader Joe's — a package containing four egg whites which scramble right in the container, right in your microwave. I had no problem eating and digesting this. Today, I used my Magic Bullet to pulverize canned tuna (with a dollop of Miracle Whip) into something resembling baby food. The daily goal here is to get enough protein. The guidelines they gave me at the hospital said that for a guy my height (six-three), I should shoot for 125 grams per day. This is physically impossible. One of those protein shakes, each of which contains 24, and I'm full for hours. My surgeon and doctor each said I'd be okay with a minimum of 50 but 75 would be better. This will be easier when I reach the stage of eating solid foods — still two or three weeks away — but I'm coming close.
None of this is meant to sound like a great hardship. I feel great and as I say, without hunger or headaches. It's just odd to be eating only because your doctor said you had to. This must be a little like it feels in the early stages of anorexia. I'll write more about my experiences when I think of something or when some more people send me money and say they want to hear about it.
I had a very good time last evening reading the first two volumes in what I hope will be a long series from Craig Yoe — Arf Museum and Modern Arf. These are nice books from Fantagraphics in which Craig has picked out interesting items of comic art from his, and I suppose some other folks' collections. There are panel cartoons, stories, illos...diverse material that is somehow united by Craig's mere celebratory selection of it. It's hard to explain why. It may be no deeper than that Mr. Yoe likes the same kind of stuff I do. Anyway, I suggest either ordering them or at least paging through them at a store or convention, which will lead to you wanting to buy them. Great stuff.
Above and beyond the fascinating contents, there's something else very nice about these books: They're beautifully designed and totally legible. Lately, those two virtues have seemed mutually exclusive in the book world. I've gotten a lot of books that were quite lovely to page through but at some point, I found myself unable to actually read some extended section of text. Somehow, it was more important that the designer put a busy color pattern behind a flimsy type font or something...and you can almost hear someone say to someone else, "It's okay. There's plenty of other text here they can read if that's what they want."
The other day, I received a printed copy of a book for which I wrote an article and I cannot read my own text. I have 20/20 vision and I kinda already know what it says...but I still can't make out what I said in some paragraphs. This is not a trivial complaint, nor is it particularly arguable. The last time this happened to me, the company's art director had all sorts of defenses. Apparently, the aesthetics of unified thematic composition required a certain page layout and the fact that it rendered some of those pages unreadable was just nitpicking on my part. I felt so foolish.
Anyway, that's not a problem with Craig's books. Just one of the reasons you'll enjoy them.
Like I said, I haven't been to New York in quite a while. As a result, I haven't seen The Wedding Singer, a new Broadway musical based on the Adam Sandler movie of the same name. You probably haven't seen it, either. So here, for the both of us, is a little "screen to stage" promotional film that gives us a quick glimpse of the show.
[NOTE: This is an IFILM link. It's a great site but their embedded links don't seem to work well in a lot of browsers. If you have one such browser, you can go directly to the clip by clicking here.]
I have a whole bunch of things I need to post here and I'll get them out of the way in one item...
An attention-getting topic on this website some time ago was my encounter with a crooked tow truck driver. I got an awful lot of e-mail from folks who said they'd had experiences not unlike mine and had come to the same reluctant conclusion: That there was very little a swindled person in that situation could do. I'm happy to report (and to direct you to an article that Dana Gabbard sent me) that something is finally being done about this racket. Read all about it. The company that ripped me off is not among those named in the article but it's among the indicted, as I found out today by calling the office of one of the detectives who'd advised me at the time of the offense. I am quite happy about this and am rethinking my reservations about the Death Penalty.
Since I haven't been to New York in a couple of years, I have limited interest in this Sunday's Tony Awards ceremony. But the TiVo's set and I look forward to a nice sampler of what's currently playing on and around Broadway. As you can see here, there doesn't seem to be a lot of doubt as to who will win, so the big suspense may be whether the broadcast will be any good. I suspect its producers are erring by not having a central host this year. In the immortal words of Rocket J. Squirrel, "That trick never works."
My pal Joe Bevilacqua has been doing wonderful things with audio comedy for XM Satellite Radio. Now, he's making the inevitable transition to video. You can see a promo at this link.
In the text accompanying this morning's video link, I made reference to a very old Van Johnson. Actually, he wasn't that old at the time. He was 69. Some of you may be surprised to learn that the actor in question is still with us. He's ninety years old and is now a very old Van Johnson.
A very public thank you to Tom Stewart, whose keen articles have appeared in a number of TwoMorrows magazines lately. Tom sent me one of the nicest gifts I can recall receiving — a hardcover copy of Moss Hart's Winged Victory, autographed by the author. Tom is a fine scholar of comic book history and I'm glad to see his reputation has survived the accusation, once made by a primary industry figure, that he was just a pseudonym for me.
Lastly, speaking of people giving me things: After a long drought, this site is again receiving donations. This comes just in time because I'm just starting to receive the bills for the Gastric Bypass Surgery I had two weeks ago today. The first bill was for $73,282.87 and this does not (repeat: NOT) include doctors. That's just for the operating room, the room in which I spent two nights and so on. Additional fees, including the tests I had to have to qualify for the procedure, will kick the whole thing over the 100 Grand mark...and while insurance will take care of most of it, I'm still going to have to come up with a fifth to a fourth of it. Given how good I feel, it may be the best bargain I've gotten in my life but it's still nice to log in and see that a reader of the weblog has sent a gratuity. So thanks to those of you who have and if you'd like to kick in, this link will gladly accept your PayPal contribution. If you're attending this year's Comic-Con International, you might want to show your gratitude for the fact that the convention hall will seem less crowded with a skinnier me in it.
This one runs almost nine minutes and if you start watching, you may have trouble tearing yourself away from it.
Back in 1982, producer Alexander Cohen whipped up a three-hour special for ABC called The Night of 100 Stars. It was quite an event with well more than a hundred stars appearing in songs and production numbers...though as I recall, some of them just walked onto the stage, received a round of applause and left. The bulk of them, in fact, just performed for a few seconds and then split...but there was still something kind of exciting about a three-hour show where every few seconds, a new surprise guest star appears. (This ties in with our discussion the other day of something I miss — genuine surprises on television. The Night of 100 Stars may have been the first show on TV with too many of them.)
It did so well that Cohen produced two more — in 1985 and 1990. Again each time, there were a lot more than 100 stars on the premises though in these two shows, the definition of "star" was lowered a bit. There are even a couple of people I never heard of in the clip below, which is from the '85 outing. Fortunately, almost everyone is identified by a chyron of their name and a number that represents a running count on the number of stars in the special. A couple of people — like Dick Van Dyke — aren't labelled this way because (I'm guessing) they had already appeared and been counted earlier in the show.
So here's a dance number with an incredible cast. Keep your eye out for a very young Christopher Walken and a very old Van Johnson.
One of the most-accessed articles on this website has been my piece on Rod Hull, a comedian who was popular in Australia and Great Britain. Rod, who died in 1999, worked with a grotesque but very popular bird puppet named Emu.
I'm happy to learn that Emu is back in business, now operated by the arm of Rod's son Toby. Here are the details with a thank you to Rob Rose for letting me know about this.
George Kashdan, who worked as an editor and writer at DC Comics from around 1946 until 1968, died last Saturday, apparently from complications relating to a stroke. He had been depressed for some time because of his failing health and that afternoon, he laid down for a nap and never woke up from it.
Kashdan was born May 17, 1928 in The Bronx. He got a B.A. at the University of Chicago and promptly secured a staff editorial position at DC Comics where his brother Bernard was among the most important people in the business division. DC put George to work editing, writing and rewriting scripts, mostly for back-up features (Congo Bill, Captain Compass, Green Arrow, Johnny Quick) but he got an occasional shot at Superman and Batman. Through the early sixties, he worked under editor Jack Schiff (and sometimes, Mort Weisinger). In a book like Action Comics, which featured Superman in the front and strips like Congorilla and Tommy Tomorrow in the back, it was not uncommon for Kashdan to edit the back-up features while Weisinger took care of the cover and lead story.
In 1961, one of the back-up strips he'd long helmed, Aquaman, graduated to his own comic and Kashdan became a full editor, soon taking on House of Mystery, Tales of the Unexpected and several others, including a strip that was a particular favorite of his — Rip Hunter, Time Master. Later in the sixties, he presided over the launch of Metamorpho and Teen Titans, and began the "team-up" format in The Brave and the Bold. Other comics he edited at times during the sixties include Blackhawk, Sea Devils, Bomba the Jungle Boy and Hawkman. He also found time to write several scripts for animated shows produced out of New York such as The Mighty Hercules (1963) and for DC's television projects, including The Superman-Aquaman Hour which was produced by Filmation in Southern California and which aired on CBS's Saturday morning schedule.
In 1968, as part of a program of editorial restructuring, Kashdan was let go by DC. Several people who worked with him said it was because he was "too nice" and had occasionally clashed with management in arguing that freelancers should be paid and treated better. Others suggested that his tenure was ended because of upper-level dissatisfaction with his work. Either way, he was let go and Dick Giordano was hired to take over most of his books.
Kashdan returned primarily to writing, most of it for the New York office of Western Publishing Company. He wrote dozens of stories for Gold Key Comics like The Twilight Zone and Grimm's Ghost Stories. He did extended stints for them writing Flash Gordon and Star Trek, and also penned several childrens' books for Western's non-comic divisions, along with freelancing for other publishers (comics and otherwise) and even doing a couple of scripts for DC. In the eighties, his freelancing slowed due to failing health and several personal tragedies. He relocated to Los Angeles to be near his remaining family.
I have to insert a personal note here. When I was a kid, I would often buy the new comics at a little store called Parnin's Pharmacy located on Westwood Boulevard near Olympic in West Los Angeles. One day in 1966, while waiting in line with my purchases, I paged through the new Aquaman I was about to buy and saw — to a numb amazement I can recall to this day — that the editor had published a note from me in the letter column. I was 14 years old and it was the first time I'd ever seen anything I'd written in print with my name attached.
This sounds very trivial but anyone reading this who's ever made a buck as a professional writer can probably relate to that thrilling moment. The editor who printed it was George Kashdan, who was then far off in New York City. But — and I swear this is true — Mr. Kashdan lived his declining days in a retirement home located in West L.A. on Westwood near Olympic...directly across the street from where Parnin's used to be.
A number of us historian-type people found him there a few years ago and he was extensively interviewed by phone. I talked to him at length...and for a man who was recovering from a stroke, he had an amazing memory for most things, though not the passage of time. Every time we spoke, I had to run over a list with him of who among his old associates was still alive. He kept hoping to recover enough to get to a Comic-Con International some day and see some of them, especially his old pal Arnold Drake, who remained in touch. My friend Jim Amash taped several more extensive talks with him and they'll be turning up soon in Roy Thomas's fine publication, Alter Ego. (Thanks to Jim for helping me with this obit, by the way.) Even though I drive by that retirement home two or three times a week, I never got to go in and visit Mr. Kashdan in person. He just never felt up to receiving visitors that way.
But I did tell him via phone how much I'd enjoyed so many of his comics. I even told him about the one I really didn't like, which was the super-hero revamp of Blackhawk in 1967, and he didn't seem to have liked it much, either. He sounded like a charming and bright man, and even though I never got to drag him out to lunch down the street at Junior's Delicatessen, as we often discussed, I feel like I've lost a buddy.
News from the world of show business falls into two categories. Some new projects are announced because they're actually about to happen. Others are publicized because they aren't. The people behind them have some of the elements necessary to make their new endeavor a reality but not all of them. They're lacking financing or a star or distribution or something...and they hope that the announcement will cause the missing piece(s) to materialize. If you look back at an old Variety, you'll see items about movies that are about to start shooting or which were "already in production" but never, in fact, went in front of any camera...or TV shows that were "a definite go" and which were never heard of again. These are the "partway-there" projects that were presented as if actually happening by someone hoping to find whatever was necessary to make them actually happen.
It's sometimes easy to tell the real announcements from the hopeful ones, sometimes hard. And of course, there are projects in the second category that do eventually manage to become real...but they weren't at the time they were announced. To survive in and around this business, you have to develop a decent sense of what's definite and what's wishful. I've had pretty good luck turning down involvement in things that weren't going to happen. That's because I follow an old Show Biz maxim that I made up: If it's at all doubtful, it's highly doubtful.
Today, it was announced that a musical comedy version of the Jerry Lewis movie, The Nutty Professor, is "heading for Broadway" with Jer himself directing. Here's the announcement and I'm putting this one in the "wishful" category. It's actually not a bad idea at all for a musical but look at where they are. They have no composer or lyricist. Those are not minor details when you're putting on a musical. They also aren't announcing the name of the book writer(s) yet, which does not suggest Mr. Lewis is working with anyone with any experience at all in doing a musical. They hope to do a tryout at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2007 but apparently, no one's bothered to tell the Old Globe about this. It's a little late to be booking for '07, plus a brand-new musical by new people will probably need more outta-town tryouts than a few weeks in San Diego before it'll be Manhattan-ready.
If this show is ever going to happen — and I'm not saying it can't — it's going to have to take on some heavyweight investors and some producers and other behind-the-scenes people with Broadway chops. Since it seems to have neither yet, I'd say the announcement is intended to perhaps shake some loose, get some interested. It will especially need a director who's done this kind of thing before. Mel Brooks did not direct the stage version of The Producers, after all, and he had more stage experience than Jerry Lewis.
Let's watch how this one develops. It just might...but it's got a long way to go before it gets anywhere near the Great White Way.
Here's a connection to the entire Bill Bennett interview on The Daily Show. I don't like Bennett very much. He's always struck me as a guy who can gin up moral outrage over anything sexual and/or done by minorities or poor people...but apart from the occasional token reference, he seems incapable of seeing anything wrong in anything upper class people do to make money. When the Enron scandal broke, I saw him cornered into talking about it and he seemed to have to force himself through clenched teeth to say there was anything immoral about swindling employees out of their pensions.
I happen to think legal gay marriage is inevitable in this country. It may take quite a while to go nationwide and it may be called something other than "marriage" here and there for a while. But I think Jon Stewart is right in his comments that this kind of thing only evolves in one direction. What's more, I think men like Bennett and Jerry Falwell know that it's inevitable. They just want to see what they can get for themselves in terms of cash and power by manipulating one segment of the population before this particular "hot button" goes cold.
It's another nugget from Your Show of Shows. This one features Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris as The Haircuts, a musical group they occasionally played on the series. The Haircuts were pretty popular for about an hour there and actually released a record or two. The clip's a little under six minutes and it demonstrates how the three of them could not only do dialect and talk funny but also move funny. Their songs were written primarily by Head Writer Mel Tolkin, who later claimed he penned most of them in under three minutes. Their moves were perfected by watching kinescopes of "real" groups, especially The Crewcuts, from whence they got their name. Enjoy.
A funny online chat with my favorite standup comedian, Lewis Black. It's on the Washington Post site so you may have to register. Thanks to Bruce Reznick for letting me know about it.
Funniest thing I've seen in days: The last half of Stephen Colbert's interview with Stone Phillips. Here's a link and I'll warn you it's a link to Comedy Central's website where such things don't always work. But if it does, you'll enjoy it.
Jerry Beck is very happy — and I know Jerry so I know how happy — to announce that the hurdles have been cleared: Popeye is coming to home video. Eventually, just about everything will be on DVD but it's always nice when something really good gets there. Here's the full press release.
Okay, I rewatched the Daily Show segment with Jon Stewart hammering Bill Bennett and I see that I misunderstood: Stewart did not say Bennett would be on the following broadcast, as well. What he did was tell Bennett, "We're going to split this into segments...and you'll be the whole back end of the show." He did not mean the interview was being divided over two programs. He meant it would be edited so it could run two segments in that night's show.
What I think happened was this: The show has three acts. I believe they taped comedy spots for the first two acts and then the Bennett interview was supposed to just be Act Three. During it, Stewart and/or his producers apparently made the decision that it deserved more time so they let it run long enough to fill two acts. Then they went back afterwards and taped Stewart welcoming us back from commercial. Afterwards, they dropped out whatever they'd taped for Act Two and positioned the Bennett interview as Acts Two and Three, using that "welcome back" to get us back into the interview at the top of Act Three. That caused the awkward edit right after the "welcome back," and I think there was another jump cut in there, probably also because they were reconfiguring one segment to span two.
It was an interesting interview, in part because Bennett's a smart man and he knew he was losing badly. You can see portions of it over here.
This one will take a little more than seven minutes of your life but it's worth it. It's a sketch from the old Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris. They don't make 'em like this anymore...
A lot of folks — friends and total strangers alike — seem to want periodic reports on how I'm doing since Gastric Bypass surgery. I'm doing great...that's how I'm doing. It's been eleven days and I've lost two pounds a day with amazingly little discomfort. I really don't want to become a walking commercial for this procedure so let me state that my comments apply only to my experiences and may not be typical. I'm still on liquids, ingesting a calorie count that would starve a supermodel...but I'm not hungry. In fact, tonight I had dinner in my favorite Chinese restaurant with a friend of mine and while he gorged on an entree that I would have loved twelve days ago, I was quite content to sit there and sip broth. I'll be segueing to semi-solid foods around the end of this week but I'm in no great hurry to get there.
Twenty-two pounds is not a huge deal. I've lost these pounds before...several times, in fact. But somehow, it never felt this good before to be rid of them. Aches that I had accepted as permanent parts of my life have gone away and I can feel others starting to fade. At the moment, I'm wearing a pair of pants I haven't been in for at least two years. (Fortunately, I saved a lot of the clothes I outgrew on the way up. I expect to be working my way back through my wardrobe for a few months.) My primary physician gave me the once-over on Monday and said things could not be going better.
I may set up a separate page here for those who are interested in the topic but for now, I just wanted to answer lots of e-mails at once and say I'm doing fine. It's all very new and yet it feels a lot more normal that I would have expected. I'll write more about the experience as I gain a bit more perspective on it.
Anyone here see tonight's Daily Show With Jon Stewart? Stewart got into the topic of gay marriage with Bill Bennett. It's very difficult for anyone debating the host of a show to win or even tie. The host has home court advantage and he's the one who frames the discussion. If you go on The Daily Show, you also have to cope with the studio audience (naturally on Stewart's side) and the fact that the host is probably a lot quicker and funnier than you are. Still, Mr. Bennett lost the debate by a pretty wide margin...at least in the show as aired. It looked to me like there were at least two edits in the discussion — something I've never seen The Daily Show do before — and then Stewart said they'd tape more with Bennett and air more interview with him tomorrow.
[UPDATE, ADDED LATER: I've changed my mind about what happened. See this later message for the new theory.]
Following up on our earlier item about Bob Kane (or one of his ghosts) swiping on early Batman stories, a couple of message boards — this one, for instance — are discussing to what extent Mr. Kane could draw at all. It's no secret that after about 1946, everything published in comics under his signature was done by someone else. He may occasionally have drawn or redrawn a panel here or there but it was all substantially the work of men like Lew Sayre Schwartz or Sheldon Moldoff. Kane also employed ghost artists on at least some of what he "drew" for other venues. During the "pop art" craze of the sixties, which I believe lasted about an hour and forty-two minutes, he suddenly was out selling oil paintings that he'd allegedly done, blowing up old Batman panels a la Roy Lichtenstein. Soon after, he was sued by a lady who claimed she'd actually painted them...meaning that Kane hadn't even taken the time to project, trace and color in the panels — something a high school art student could have done.
But was it that Kane couldn't do the work or that he just didn't want to expend the effort? There's a big difference there. Based on my own encounters with the man, I'd say it was both with the emphasis on laziness. Once upon a time, the man did support himself as an artist in comics. He wasn't great but back then, not many were. What separated Kane from many others was that he seemed to figure out that drawing comics day and night only led to drawing more comics day and night. You couldn't get wealthy that way (Jack Kirby sure didn't) and even if you could, some people just don't want to spend 80 hours out of every week at a drawing table. To become something more than a comic artist required better drawing than Kane could muster so he hired assistants, all of whom drew better than he did, and let them make him look good. It worked pretty well, at least as far as he was concerned...and then later on, he figured out that he could do as many syndicated comic strip artists did, which was to go out and play and let the hired help put in the 80 hours.
I first met Kane in 1968 when I was fourteen years old. The story is told in my book, Wertham Was Right, and also in Gerry Jones's excellent Men of Tomorrow. The quick version is that Kane met one of our comic book club members at a comic rack in a Los Angeles grocery store and invited him to come visit him. A half-dozen of us made the journey and then I went back later on my own and learned an awful lot of comic history.
On our first trip, Kane acted like he drew Batman with the aid of a few assistants. That was until I let him know that I knew otherwise, whereupon he confessed to what I guess was about 80% of the truth. I'm still amazed he was that candid. Anyway, he did sketches for us all. Everyone else asked for Batman and Kane whipped out a couple of them — obviously stock sketches, largely identical to one another. Most artists, even the great ones, have a little repertoire of head shots they can replicate with their eyes closed. I think he had two Batman images, one profile and one full-face. The full-face looked a lot like the drawing in the "Batman for President" in the photo above. Kane had done it for a photo session a few weeks earlier. He gave us all autographed copies of the photo and on my second visit, he gave me the original to the poster he was holding in it.
I was the last one to get a sketch from him that first day. Just to throw him a curve and to see what would happen, I asked him for something other than Batman...a drawing of The Penguin. Kane gave a me a little grin as if to say, "You troublemaker," but he picked up his marker and did the drawing you see above right. If you're interested in the question of whether Bob Kane could draw, know that he produced it right in front of me, all by himself. At least, I didn't see Shelly Moldoff under the table. Kane did it straightaway in marking pen without any preliminary underdrawing in about two minutes and I still think it's pretty decent — especially for a guy who was way outta practice. Then again, I suspect it also represented the upper end of his ability.
A website called News Corpse is putting up online videos of Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points" commentaries...but with a few clever modifications. Take a look.
I probably won't get around to reading Ramesh Ponnuru's new book, Party of Death, online excerpts of which strike me as another of those "let's make money by telling the right wing what it wants to hear" tomes. But I was interested in this review by John Derbyshire, who is an accredited Conservative (he even shares blogging rights with Ponnuru over at The Corner). I don't agree with a lot of what Derbyshire writes so I was intrigued to find some areas of agreement, particularly about the Terri Schiavo case. It all makes for an interesting view on the "Right to Life" movement.
In 1964, the Post cereals people — who practically owned Saturday morning TV, advertising-wise — decided to stop having their commercials interrupted by irrelevant programming. They funded a series called Linus the Lionhearted, starring the character who was then famous only for appearing on the box and in the commercials of their cereal, Post Crispy Critters. In fact, the whole show was filled with faces that adorned Post cereal boxes and ad campaigns...Lovable Truly the Mailman was selling Post Alpha Bits, Little So-Hi appeared for Post Rice Krinkles, Rory Raccoon was the spokesanimal for Post Toasties and Sugar Bear was always hawking Post Sugar Crisp.
Oddly enough, the series was not bad at all...cleverly-written and well-animated...at (reportedly) a budget three times the size of what Hanna-Barbera was then spending to make a cartoon. The great animator Irv Spector was in charge of production and it shows. He also tapped Hoyt Curtin, who did such a fine job providing music for H-B shows, to do the honors for Linus.
And they got some great people to do voices. Sheldon Leonard, best known for his on-screen gangster roles and his behind-the-scenes producer status on The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show and many others had been portraying Linus in the commercials. He kept on doing so and brought along Carl Reiner to voice many of the supporting characters. I'm guessing they also had something to do with the occasional appearances on the show by Jonathan Winters, who popped in, usually to play an evil giant in a So-Hi cartoon. Most of the other characters were voiced by Bob MacFadden (who was sometimes referred to as the Mel Blanc of the New York cartoon voice community) and Gerry Matthews, who did the Bing Crosby imitation as Sugar Bear.
Linus the Lionhearted made it through its first season or two without too many people wondering aloud if it was good to have a kids' show where it was difficult to tell where the commercials stopped and the entertainment content began. The show shifted to ABC in '66, by which time no new episodes were being made. By 1969, the F.C.C. was cracking down on childrens' shows that blurred the line between ads and programming, and that pretty much was the end of the Linus the Lionhearted series even in reruns. Years later, this policy was reversed, which made possible the informercial, televangelists and shows funded by toy companies to promote their wares, such as G.I. Joe and The Transformers.
Featured here today is the opening to the Linus show, followed by a commercial spot. Leonard does the voice of Linus and I'm not sure who did the voice of Billie Bird, the obnoxious fowl who hangs around with him. Carl Reiner did the voice of Billie in some cartoons but that's not him. It may be Ed Graham, an ad agency guy who produced the series and who turned up in several episodes playing different characters. It might also be Jerry Stiller who, with spouse-partner Anne Meara, provided occasional voices. Lovable Truly, So-Hi and Rory Raccoon are all voiced by MacFadden and Sugar Bear was, as noted, Gerry Matthews. Oh — and if you listen to the theme song, you may pick out one of the singers...the legendary Thurl Ravenscroft, who provided the voice of Linus's arch-rival, the other great cereal-selling jungle cat, Tony the Tiger. Let's roar...
The season finale of Deal or No Deal managed to take what would have been a rather interesting game had it run 45 minutes, and stretch it to ninety. That's one of the problems the game has. The first part of every round is pretty repetitive as each contestant struggles and sweats and finally decides to reject the early offers that every contestant rejects. As a result, every game seems padded. Another problem is that no one's gotten too close to the top prize and the way the game is structured, it may be a long time before anyone does.
Yet another problem for me is that the show is so heavily edited that it often loses the sense of a real event. In fact, the producers don't seem to care all that much about reality. Tonight's episode began with an armored car, flanked by police cars, driving through Hollywood to the NBC Studios in Burbank and unloading the supermodels with their little briefcases. The suggestion was that there was five million dollars in cash in the armored car so it needed serious protection. But of course, there was no cash in that truck, nor were the models in that truck. In fact, that truck did not even go to a Deal or No Deal taping at NBC. Deal or No Deal doesn't tape at NBC. They do it down at the Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood. The whole thing was so bogus that at the end of the show, a disclaimer was flashed so quickly that Barry Allen couldn't have read it. It said...
In the opening sequence, the statements about and portrayals of a police escort for the briefcases, and that the briefcases contained cash delivered from a bank to NBC Studios, were fictitious and included for dramatic purposes.
I dunno...it seems to me that once viewers start feeling that reality is being manipulated, it makes the game part of the show less exciting. Still, the show's doing well in the ratings and tonight's — hyped with a five million smacker top prize and a surprise appearance by Celine Dion, all leading into the season finale of The Apprentice — should do spectacular numbers. So maybe that kind of thing doesn't matter to viewers these days.
While I'm carping about things that bug me about the show — which, by the way, I enjoy in spite of all this — let's talk about that "surprise" appearance by Celine Dion. I guess it was a surprise to the contestant at the taping but NBC hyped the heck out of it in advance. Even my TiVo listing told me that Celine Dion was making a surprise appearance. As they led up to it during the show, we all saw it coming ten blocks away.
I used to love surprise appearances on TV shows. I love it when things happen that you couldn't have expected and lately, they occur about as often as Halley's Comet cruises by. When I was writing variety shows, I couldn't even make one happen.
Around 1978 or whenever the movie Grease was big in theaters, I was hired as Head Writer for a big CBS variety pilot that was supposed to capture the excitement of that film and convert it to a weekly series. We booked as guest stars, several "oldies" stars and several people who'd been in Grease, and CBS was still pressing us to get bigger names for the show.
So one day during pre-production, I was walking across the studio lot and who should I run into but John Travolta? I knew John from when I'd worked on Welcome Back, Kotter a year or two before, and we had a nice reunion. He told me about a script he was considering called Urban Cowboy. I told him about the pilot we were taping in a week or so, ripping off his previous movie. I don't recall if I suggested it or if he did — I think he did — but he agreed to do a cameo guest appearance on our show...and for scale, meaning the minimum money. Wasn't that nice of him? I haven't spoken to the man in a quarter-century but I'd like to believe he's still that nice. He agreed to tape a spot for our show and the only condition was that it be a genuine surprise appearance...not in the ads, not in the TV Guide listing, nowhere.
Naturally, when I told the producers, they were unhappy that John could not be advertised but they figured that an unbilled Travolta cameo was better than no Travolta cameo. A day later, our CBS Publicity Department Rep came into my office. On his previous visit, he'd counselled me on various ways we could get a lot of promotion for our show. At the time, we were working on two possible sketches for our big comedy spot — one, a parody of Frankie 'n' Annette beach party movies; the other, a motorcycle gang skit in the genre of The Wild One. The network guy informed me that CBS especially loved attractive women in bikinis in their promos these days, and that if we'd get some into our show (and if he could come to the taping), we'd get 25% more advance publicity. I called the other writers and told them to stop working on the motorcycle sketch.
When he came by to ask about the rumored Travolta cameo, I told him it was true but couldn't be advertised. "I promised him we wouldn't publicize it in any way or announce it in advance or anything like that. Do I have your word you won't promote him?"
The Publicity Guy snapped into a boy scout salute and proclaimed, "Absolutely, yes. Cross my heart, word of honor."
I sighed, "Good. I was afraid someone there would put him in the promos."
Still holding his Boy Scout salute, the Publicity Guy said, "Oh, he'll be in the promos."
I replied with something witty. I think it was "Huh?" Something that clever.
The man explained: "Everyone at the network will swear on the lives of their grandmothers that they won't put John Travolta in your promos. They'll sign documents in blood and have them notarized. But I'm telling you, when those promos hit the air, Travolta will be in them. That's just a fact of life."
By now, I was sputtering like a real cheap outboard motor. The man from CBS Publicity continued, "Look, I won't put him in there and no one in my department will put him in there, or at least admit to putting him in there. But John Travolta is hot right now and he can help your ratings...so he's going in. And you'll never know who did it. It may well be one of those people who signed the blood oath they wouldn't do it. I just want you to know this going in so you don't get pissed at me." And he told me an anecdote that illustrated the principle: Someone had promised no advance publicity to get a superstar to appear on some show and then, once the spot was taped, promptly reneged. He shrugged, "What was the guy going to do about it? Sue us?"
I called John, explained the situation to him and he said, "In that case, I'd rather not do it." I didn't blame him one bit.
Since then, I've become especially aware of surprise appearances on TV shows and how rarely they occur. These days, the promo guys are willing to give away everything if they think it'll bring in another hundred thousand viewers — plot twists, shock endings, even who wins. If you've watched the promos for Gameshow Marathon, you already know which celebs advance to the final round, week after next. I don't know if this is commentary on the cutthroat nature of network television or on some variety of attention deficit disorder on the part of the viewing audience which has caused them to need every possible reason to tune in. All I know is that I stopped going to as many movies as I once attended because between the trailers and the clips on talk shows and all the rest of the routine hype, I felt many of them had been ruined for me. And I sometimes feel that way about television programs, as well...which is not to say I expect it to ever change.
These days, everything on TV seems to need a big SPOILER warning. Come to think of it, so does my life.
Before I head off for beddy-bye, I want to link to this article by Andrew Sullivan, a gay Conservative if such a thing is possible. It's about the way Bush and Cheney have treated gays in the past. It may or may not remain Sullivan's viewpoint after Bush's reported plans this week to start pushing that Federal Marriage Amendment that everyone seems to agree has no chance of passing. Which makes you wonder why he's suddenly getting behind it. The more right-wing end of his base won't be fooled into thinking that support for a constitutional amendment that won't happen is any sort of substitute for the things on their wishlist that they still might realize during his term of office. Bush sure doesn't need to look ineffectual about one more of his stated goals and to look like more of a "divider" to the middle-of-the-road crowd...so why get behind this movement now? I don't get it.
I decided not to post any more of the Forbidden Broadway scenes since I can just send you to this page and let you watch a much better-edited version of 'em there. There's a Demo Reel, which is mostly a commercial for the show, that runs a little under eight minutes and there's a reel of "Symphony Highlights" that runs almost twenty and is well worth the time. The video clip I posted yesterday was the first half of this.
So today, we have three minutes of Lewis Black plugging his HBO special which debuts next week. I dunno how the special will be but just about everything Mr. Black does amuses me greatly. So did this three minutes even if the video aspect ratio is a little screwy.
One of the panels we'll be doing at the Comic-Con International in San Diego this year will be about Batman comics from the beginning through the 1964 "New Look" makeover. The dais will include — and this is a sad comment on the passing of time — three of the only four artists still alive who pencilled Batman stories before '64.
Among the topics I want to zero in on is how much Bob Kane did on the early Batman stories. We all know he did next to no artwork whatsoever on the comic books or strips after about 1946 but some people have — wrongly, to my understanding — declared he never did any of it. No, the man could draw...not well, perhaps, but there were certainly worse people drawing comics in the early forties. He also did a lot of swiping, we must note, copying poses out of pulp magazines, newspaper strips and elsewhere.
There's a weblog devoted to the illustrator Henry E. Vallely that has made an interesting discovery. What was probably the single most famous panel Kane "drew" in comics — a panel from the story in Batman #1 — was copied from a drawing Vallely did for a then-recent pulp magazine. Take a look and see.
A birthday shout-out to my longtime friend, artist extraordinaire Wendy Pini...who with her hubby Richard created Elfquest, one of the great enduring comic art creations of the last few decades. I have known Wendy for mumble-mumble years — since before she met Richard, even. At my first comic and science-fiction conventions, she was the individual that everyone followed about...the ideal mate insofar as most attendees were concerned. All the other attendees were guys, after all, and what more perfect life-partner for a fan than a beautiful, smart woman who could draw?
Wendy was nice to everyone but every guy she refused to marry — which at the time was all of them — wanted to go out and throw himself off the roof of the Sheraton. When she met Richard a few years later (yes, via a comic book letter page), they forged an important and perfect partnership in all ways visible to their amigos, and she remains among the sunniest presences on this planet. If you love Elfquest — and everyone who's read it sure seems to — you have only to meet the people responsible to know why. I just phoned Wendy to wish her a happy Wendy day but she's not answering. Hope she's out doing something fun and will accept a blogged birthday greeting instead of a personal howdy.
Yesterday, we plugged our favorite Los Angeles comedy troupe. Today, we have a nine minute sampler of Forbidden Broadway, a New York-based institution which is usually among my stops when I hit town...and it has also been known to tour. It's parodies of show tunes and scenes by four talented performers. (The cast is constantly changing. Jason Alexander was in an early company. First time I saw it, one of the players was Brad Oscar, who went on to star in The Producers on Broadway.)
This clip, I should warn you, ends abruptly in the middle of a number. Don't blame me for this. I didn't do it. But it's worth watching anyway. I'm not 100% sure of the gents' names so I won't say...but the two ladies featured are Suzanne Blakeslee and Christine Pedi. Suzanne can now be heard in many cartoons and Christine had lately been appearing in her own shows, often with her killer impression of Liza. (I wrote about Christine here.) They're not in any current Forbidden Broadway show as far as I know but the franchise has a way of attracting other, very talented folks. Anyway, here's nine minutes of what the whole thing is about...and I hope you like it because I may be linking to more of this over the next few days.
My pal Elliott Maggin, who wrote Superman for a long time, has written a nice little op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. He compares Jor-El (Superman's pa) warning of the destruction of Krypton to Al Gore warning of the destruction of this thing we live on. Fortunately, Elliott doesn't carry the comparison too far. Give it a read, even though the L.A. Times may make you register.
Quick "heads up" to the folks watching the hoary What's My Line? reruns on GSN. The show that airs tonight (i.e., tomorrow morn) is the one from 3/15/64 and the Mystery Guest is Allan Sherman, then pretty much at the peak of his brief stardom. Mr. Sherman, as you may know, got his start in TV as a behind-the-scenes guy at Goodson-Todman, producers of game shows including What's My Line? So this appearance was probably a very satisfying moment in Mr. Sherman's life.
Then the next day, GSN should run the episode from 3/22/64 in which the Mystery Guest is Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong. Brief story. Armstrong then had a huge, unexpected hit with his rendition of "Hello, Dolly." He'd been hired for megabucks to go on a prime-time program — The Perry Como Show, I think — and give the first TV performance of the song. Among the many ironies of Satchmo's career was that after decades of making next-to-no bucks on wonderful, authentic jazz, he made his fortune and much of his fame with something as mainstream Wonder Bread as "Hello, Dolly." Anyway, he was to receive the largest check of his life for doing it for the first time on TV for Mr. Como's audience.
Then What's My Line? wanted him as Mystery Guest for the Sunday night before. Como's producers had the right to block this due to an exclusivity clause in his deal but the Goodson-Todman folks went to them and said, in effect, "Hey, it won't hurt you to let us have him. We'll plug his appearance on your show and it'll help your tune-in." Perry's producers said, "Well, that makes sense. But he's not going to sing 'Hello, Dolly' on your show, right?" The What's My Line? folks said, "Of course not. We're a game show. People don't sing on our show. We don't even have a band on stage." With that assurance and the promise of a juicy plug, the Como crew said fine.
So Sunday night, after Louis was unmasked, panelist Arlene Francis said to him, "Louis, dear...do give us a little of 'Hello, Dolly.'" And Armstrong, responding to the audience cheering and forgetting about the Como show's exclusive, started singing his hit song, a cappella. The producers of The Perry Como Show were not happy.
We're big fans of the Totally Looped improv troupe that performs every Thursday night up on Melrose in West Hollywood, in the building next to the Improv. I admit to bias: I'm friends with the director and many of his players but so what? They're still funny, still marvelously creative.
The whole field of improv comedy took an odd turn when Saturday Night Live became a smash. Around the time Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner began getting multi-million dollar movie offers, every up-'n'-coming actor in the country suddenly thought, "Aha! That's the new route to stardom." Suddenly, everyone was taking improv comedy lessons and trying to get into troupes so they could get discovered for SNL or one of its many clones. I would guess maybe 20% of those folks really got the idea of how to improvise on stage. The rest seemed to think it meant you have to quickly write your own script, which is not what improv is all about. Around 1984, I was an occasional substitute teacher for one local improv class and of the thirty or so people in the room, I think maybe three really wanted to use it as anything more than a stepping stone to Eddie Murphy's career. The whole art of improv has suffered as a result...less so in the last decade but the damage has still not been undone.
So I love to see real improv, where the performers are performing in the moment and are almost as surprised by what comes out of their mouth as is the audience. Totally Looped is real improv.
Director Vince Waldron selects video and movie clips...and I can assure you there's nothing prearranged with the cast. They have no idea what Vince has picked before they're called upon to dub in new dialogue live, right on the spot. Every time I've been to the show, there have been some amazing bits of on-the-fly brilliance. If you don't believe me, go some Thursday night. The details are over at their website.
I'm not sure this clip does justice to the show but it'll give you the idea. And if you like what you see, you'll really like seeing it in person.
The other day, I linked to this article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that makes the case that the 2004 presidential election was stolen by Bush, especially by rigging the voting in Ohio. Over on Salon, this article by Farjad Manjoo rebuts Kennedy's article. I want to read them both over again — and maybe see what others will toss into the discussion — before I decide which one (if either) to believe.
I think reading a piece in Salon still requires one to subscribe, purchase a day pass or watch a mess of advertising. I subscribe and would like to suggest you consider doing so. The online magazine has been attacked in some quarters for its Liberal stance and the contents probably do lean that way most of the time. On the other hand, they occasionally publish articles like this one that tell (or try to tell) their target demographic something those readers would rather not hear. When you look at all the media that has any sort of political attitude — websites, magazines, radio programs, cable news outlets, etc. — you don't find very many that will ever risk trampling on those precious Urban Legends that their audience wants to believe. Would that more of them were, like Salon, willing to do that.
We are pleased to see that Wen Ho Lee has won a cash amount — and therefore, a court declaration of having been wronged — in his lawsuit against the government and five major news organizations that accused him informally (meaning, the government never charged him) of espionage. I'm all for reporters protecting their sources but in this case, the reporters allowed themselves to be planted with phony information and they printed it. It was largely a plot to pressure Lee into confessing guilt to a crime for which he should never have been arrested in the first place. The New York Times, which was one of the organizations that got suckered into bolstering the phony charges, printed a major mea culpa but everyone who spread the story owes the man an apology.
Seven days ago at this very moment, I was lying on an operating table at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. I'd been "out" for maybe fifteen minutes and I'm guessing someone had just shaved my stomach in preparation for the surgeon who was about to perform a roux en y Gastric Bypass. About fifty hours later, I was home, feeling much better than I'd expected...and right now, I feel pretty much as I did before the surgery, only lighter.
How much lighter, I'm not sure since my scale doesn't work. But last Wednesday, I had a follow-up exam and the scale in my surgeon's office had me down eleven pounds. That's in five days. I'm guessing I'm down fourteen by now. Yesterday, a dancer friend of mine came by and she asked me how much I'm expected to lose. I told her and she remarked, "That's more than I weigh."
Frightening in a sense. And yet, exciting.
I'm already feeling better in many ways, mostly my legs and feet. I can tell circulation is improving.
I'm not going to dwell much on this, here or in future posts. Other folks' medical info can be very boring. But I wanted to tell all my friends I couldn't be happier with how it's gone and how it's going. Thanks again to all for the many well wishes.
For no visible reason, I'm going to tell a story from my past. It's about the above candy bar (and I'm using the noun "candy bar" very loosely) and the article can be read here.
Las Vegas will soon have more Cirque du Soleil shows than it does cheap shrimp cocktails. Opening today in previews at the Mirage, is Love, a dance/acrobatic experience based around the music of The Beatles. I have no idea how it'll be but as you can see from the video preview called "B Roll" on this page, it settles the old question of whether "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" is a reference to LSD or to a child's drawing. Apparently, it's neither. Apparently, Lucy is a trapeze artist.
I've been enjoying my several-times-a-week drop-bys at Craig Yoe's arflovers, a weblog for lovers of both good and odd comics. If you are one, go visit. Craig is a clever writer/designer/artist who does some pretty good (and odd) comic stuff himself...but he also collects and appreciates work by others. And best of all, he shares.
Quite a few members of Congress of both parties are howling about the F.B.I. raid of the office of Congressman William Jefferson on May 20. I don't know if I agree with their position or not. Haven't made my mind up on that one.
However, I have to note that many of these Congressfolks have been defending the wiretapping of American citizens and insisting, "If you're not doing anything illegal, you shouldn't have a problem with the government checking on you." Wouldn't that be a good argument in favor of letting the F.B.I. search their offices?
I'm bailing on Gameshow Marathon, a sad attempt by CBS to create a multi-week event. The premise must have sounded great in the meeting: Revive a batch of old, classic game shows and bring in celebrities to play them, the winners of each show advancing to later rounds. At the end, the finalists play a big game for the championship and they win...well, I'm not sure what they win. It was explained but I'm afraid there's a bit of disconnect between the prizes and the contestants' interest in winning them.
At the moment, I'm watching (though not for long) tonight's episode and I see Leslie Nielsen as a contestant on Let's Make a Deal. If there was an appeal to the original Monty Hall version of Deal — and obviously, there was; it was on forever — it was that winning meant so much to the contestants. Going home with a new car seemed like a life-changing event to one of them and that moment on the show was perhaps the high point in his or her life, perhaps the only time the person would ever be, albeit briefly, a TV star. Great...but Leslie Nielsen used to make a couple million dollars a year to star in TV shows and movies. Winning two motorcycles means zip to him and if he doesn't care, why should I?
Later this week, George Foreman is playing. Do you know how much money George Foreman has made off those grills? It's something like a hundred million dollars. I'm sure America is going to be eager to see if George wins a new refrigerator. (Yeah, he'll be playing for a charity and maybe a home viewer but they're barely mentioning that and anyway, that makes the winner even more remote.)
So there's one of the problems with Gameshow Marathon. Another is that the celebrities aren't, for the most part, people we care much about, either — not even Mr. Nielsen who, at age eighty, is sadly showing his age. Yet another is that though hostess Ricki Lake is working hard, she's in an impossible situation. Most of the shows being re-created here — which include The Price is Right, Match Game and Family Feud — had a nice feeling of "family." We tuned in to see people play the game but we also tuned in to see host Monty Hall and model Carol Merrill and announcer Jay Stewart. Gameshow Marathon won't be around long enough for any of that to establish itself.
The audience had been stoked up to an excitement level that seems phony. The show has also been heavily edited. Segments where the game didn't seem that entertaining have obviously been dumped. Edits in a game show may seem like a way to keep things moving but you sense them and they create the feeling that you're not watching reality.
So I'm giving up on the marathon. The first night didn't do all that well in the overnight ratings and I'm betting that after tonight, we'll discover I'm not alone. People wonder why game shows died out in this country and needed million dollar prizes to generate any interest. I think it has a lot to do with a loss of personality among the hosts and celebrities, and that with the fancy effects and editing, any interesting people and/or reality got lost. Let's see if the audience for Gameshow Marathon doesn't get lost, too.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes the case that the 2004 presidential election was rigged in favor of Bush and especially in Ohio.
I am not big on conspiracy theories and have linked here to well less than 1% of the ones people have e-mailed me and urged me to promote. This one, at the very least, should be taken seriously...if not as proof that Kerry really won, then as appalling evidence of how sloppy our election process is. Even if no cheating went on, there should not be these many reported anomalies, these many questions.
I lost a good friend after the 2000 election. The fact that he was happy Bush won (or, more accurately, that Gore lost) was not the problem. I have plenty of good friends who felt that way, many who still do. But when I suggested that we ought to clean up the process — standardize ballots and provide paper trails and clarify, for example, how to handle military absentee ballots that arrive late — my comrade got hysterical. To him, any such efforts were a slimy attempt to cast doubts on an election that pleased him greatly. When I said, "But wouldn't you have been happier if Bush had won without all these questions about chads and butterfly ballots and qualified voters who weren't allowed to vote?", his reply was, "No, because there are no questions. Bush won and that's that." And then he got so personally insulting on the topic that...well, I never thought I'd be accused of subverting democracy for suggesting that after the ballots were counted, everyone ought to be satisfied that the vote was honest.
I am not saying that I believe that a calculated plot to suppress and miscount the vote is why John Kerry ain't in the White House. But I sure believe our elections could be a lot cleaner and more accurate. And just for reminding us of that, I think Kennedy's article is important.
Maybe once a week, I read some news story that just makes my jaw carom off the linoleum. This one may hold the trophy for some time. Here's part of it...
New York has no national monuments or icons, according to the Department of Homeland Security form obtained by ABC News.
That was a key factor used to determine that New York City should have its anti-terror funds slashed by 40 percent — from $207.5 million in 2005 to $124.4 million in 2006. The formula did not consider as landmarks or icons: The Empire State Building, The United Nations, The Statue of Liberty and others found on several terror target hit lists. It also left off notable landmarks, such as the New York Public Library, Times Square, City Hall and at least three of the nation's most renowned museums: The Guggenheim, The Metropolitan and The Museum of Natural History.
Yeah, there's not much chance terrorists would ever want to strike at New York City. Let's put the money where it may do some good: In Sacramento.
A month and a half ago, I linked to a commercial that Sony did for their Bravia TV line. If you don't remember the spot, here's a link to my link and you might want to go back and refresh your memory.
Then you might want to view this parody of it done by the makers of the Tango fruit drink line. And you might want to read this page allegedly from the folks of the community where the spoof was staged.
July 1, 2006
