Friday, November 17, 2006

Cool News

Forgot to mention: Among the people I ran into at the P.P.B. luncheon was Chuck McCann, who mentioned that a crew is currently prepping a little documentary on him that will be included on the forthcoming DVD release of all the Cool McCool cartoons. Also ran into voice actor supreme Wally Wingert, who is heading up that crew. (Wally is responsible for the extras on the new DVD of The Groovy Goolies.)

Cool McCool was a very silly animated series that ran on NBC for 20 episodes, the first of which aired in September of '66. McCool was a suave but occasionally inept detective who looked like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau but acted more like Maxwell Smart, whose series had been the big prime-time hit of the previous season.

The show also had enormous overtones of Batman in it, presumably because Bob Kane was one of its two creators. That's right: Two. Kane is almost always referred to as the sole creator but the on-screen credits said the series was the concoction of Kane and Al Brodax, who was the producer of most of the King Features animated efforts of the sixties such as the Beatles cartoons. Cool McCool was one of the methods by which Kane cashed in on the success of the Batman TV show, the one with Adam West. It went on the air in January of '66 and was an immediate hit. He and Brodax must have whipped up Cool McCool and sold it right away in order for it to debut on NBC when it did. Most of the villains McCool chased down were thinly-veiled knock-offs of Batman villains. The Penguin was turned into The Owl. The Joker was turned into The Jack-in-the Box. The Riddler became the Rattler and so on.

The late Bob McFadden was the voice of Cool McCool. That's Mr. McFadden in the photo above. He was a New York-based stand-up comedian, actor and voice performer who did thousands of commercials in his time and an awful lot of cartoons. He was heard on the Linus the Lionhearted show and Milton the Monster and umpteen others. He even did the Karloff-type voice of Frankenberry in that cereal's commercials. (He had a long association with monsters. In addition to Milton and Frankenberry, McFadden had a hit novelty record — "The Mummy," which he performed with Rod McKuen. Dr. Demento still plays it several times a year.) McFadden passed away in 2000.

The female voices on the show were provided by Carol Corbett and the male voices not done by McFadden — which included all the villains — came out of Chuck McCann. I'm afraid I don't know much more than that about the show. One of the reasons I'm eager to get this forthcoming DVD whenever it comes out — I don't think there's a release date yet — is to read the credits and find out who was responsible. By the way: The DVD pictured above is not the DVD that Wally's assembling. That's the cover of an old British release. It's hard finding visual material on this show.

Another reason I want to get The Complete Cool McCool (or whatever they call it) is to see if, like the Peter Falk show I just mentioned, it's still good. Not everything I liked when I was younger is. Every time The Man From U.N.C.L.E. pops up on a channel I get on my satellite dish, I try an episode and find myself wondering what I ever liked about that show. Same with the Raymond Burr Perry Mason shows and about 80% of all the Woody Woodpecker cartoons that were ever made. Matter of fact, I think some of those shows have been quietly remade to lower their production values and quality. They couldn't have looked that bad when I was a kid. We'll see if Cool McCool is still cool.

• Posted at 11:43 PM · LINK

Lunch with Lt. Columbo

This afternoon, I attended a luncheon of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, an L.A.-based group of folks who've been involving in radio or TV for a couple of decades or more. Several times a year, they have these ceremonies that honor a great in the field of entertainment and today, the Guest of Honor was Peter Falk. Is there a more respected, beloved actor out there than Peter Falk? I sure can't think of one.

This was an unusual P.P.B. luncheon. Usually, the dais is packed with everyone they can get who ever worked with the honoree, and everyone talks so long that the proceedings threaten to become a dinner in their honor. This time, there were only a few speakers and they all kept it short. "They," in this case, were Joe Mantegna, Robert Culp, Ed Begley Jr., Dabney Coleman, Paul Reiser, Hal Kanter and Shera Danese. Ms. Danese is also known as Mrs. Peter Falk.

All of the speeches were warm and wonderful. Dabney Coleman was properly acerbic, Robert Culp told a funny story about being upstaged by Falk in one of the latter's first stage role, and Ed Begley surprised everyone by doing the best Peter Falk impression most of us had ever heard. As a matter of fact, when Falk finally got up to thank everyone, he sounded less like Peter Falk than Ed Begley did. After the festivities, Falk signed copies of his new autobiography, Just One More Thing: Stories from My Life, for those of us willing to buy a copy and wait in line. I, of course, was. Flipping through it, which is all I've had time to do, it seems like a nice, anecdote-filled overview of a stellar career.

As I think of it, one of the things missing from this afternoon was a full sense of how stellar that career was been. While we ate, they ran a montage of highlights from Falk's film work. (In his acceptance speech, he said his favorite part of the afternoon was when all his actor friends who were present were forced to watch his clips.) It was an amazing reel, not because of what was in it but because of what wasn't: No clip from Pocketful of Miracles or The Princess Bride or Murder, Inc. or Murder By Death or any of his TV work except for Columbo. They didn't even have time for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. How many actors have so much fine work to their credit that you have to omit stuff like that? No one even mentioned a 1966 TV series Falk did called The Trials of O'Brien, which I'd love to view again, just to see if they were all as good as I remember. I know he was. He's always good. He's Peter Falk.

• Posted at 8:58 PM · LINK

Producers News

For no particular reason, I seem to post any news I come across about the musical version of The Producers. The latest headline in that area is that Mel Brooks has confirmed that the Vegas production, which opens 1/31/7 at the Paris Hotel there, will clock in at 88 minutes and that there will be one act with no intermission. I have no desire to see the show truncated like that but I'm fascinated to see what they're cutting and, I suppose, to know how well it works.

Also, the New York production is in talks with a new star to step into the lead. Can you say, "Tony Danza is...Max Bialystock?" I can't, either. But that's what they're saying.

• Posted at 7:56 PM · LINK

The Boycott Boys

This is about the upcoming specials on Fox in which O.J. Simpson will tell us that he didn't savagely murder two people but if he had savagely murdered them, here's how he would have done it...maybe.

A lot of folks are outraged about this and they should be...although as outrages go, it doesn't sound as bad to me as some of the things that are still causing human beings to die and will cause a lot more to perish in the future. I mean, O.J.'s killing spree seems to have stopped at two, whereas the Iraq War is getting people killed every day. So far, 2,850 have died and that's only counting American soldiers, which is all a lot of Americans count anyway. The rate of death is increasing and it will probably continue to increase as long as George W. Bush equates changing plans with losing. And Global Warming may well kill more people per second than Simpson has killed in his entire life. Even if it doesn't turn out to be quite the threat some make it out to be, the suppression of facts about the problem — and reluctance to deal with it honestly — should spark plenty of outrage.

But maybe some of us only have the capacity for outrage over lesser issues, and O.J. Simpson is one of the greater lesser issues. The other night on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno paused in mid-monologue to suggest a nationwide boycott of the companies that sponsor the broadcasts. And Bill O'Reilly told his audience that he will personally boycott the products of those who advertise during the shows. (Actually, since advertisers often buy blocks of commercial time without regard to specific programs, it would be more correct to say he's going to boycott the wares of anyone who doesn't specifically pull their ads from the Simpson shows.) Here are his exact words...

So here's what I'm going to do as a citizen. I'm not going to watch the Simpson show or even look at the book. I'm not even going to look at it. If any company sponsors the TV program, I will not buy anything that company sells — ever.

So here's my question: This is the stand of someone who wants companies to be financially discouraged from supporting things like the Simpson programs. But the corporation that stands to benefit most from those shows is Fox Broadcasting, owner of both the network airing the O.J. programs and the news channel that airs O'Reilly's series. Does it make a lot of sense to boycott Harry's Cheese Doodles because they bought a package of advertising on Fox and didn't demand that none of their spots air during the O.J. shows...but not boycott Fox for airing the shows at all? For that matter, those Simpson hours will contain commercials for other Fox programming. There'll be a lot of Fox promos if most advertisers pull their commercials. If there's an ad in there for Fox News, does that mean that O'Reilly will have to boycott his own channel? That he can appear on it but not watch it?

This could be interesting.

• Posted at 5:27 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I've been a member of the Magic Castle in Hollywood for around a quarter of a century, which means I've seen a lot of great magicians. One of the best — and that isn't just my opinion, it's everyone's in the world of magic — is Whit Haydn. He's an amazing manipulator of cards and a historian of cheats and swindles. (He's also a fine teacher. I took a class from him once at the Castle and learned to do a couple of his tricks about one ten-thousandth as well as he does them...which is still not too terrible.) Anyway, in our clip today, you'll see Whit performing a trick called "The Ambitious Card." A number of magicians do their versions of this feat but no one does it better.

• Posted at 2:23 AM · LINK