Tonight, an estimated one million revelers are expected to cram into Times Square in New York to welcome in the new year. Another 100,000 are expected to fill the Vegas Strip in Nevada for much the same reason.
But let's talk about really crowded places. Let's talk about the Whole Foods Market near my house this afternoon. Compared to that place, Times Square and The Strip tonight are going to look like two big Rob Schneider Film Festivals. Pregnant women were filling their carts with baby food just in case they delivered before getting out of there.
Jeez, it was packed over there today. You may already know this because you may have been among the people cramming into that store. If you weren't, you were certainly a rare and wise exception. I'm guessing a good 80% of all the human beings alive on this planet today were in that Whole Foods Market around an hour ago, with the vast majority hurriedly repositioning themselves into whichever checkout line I wheeled my cart. As I finally approached someone who would ring up my purchases and take my money, I remembered one item I'd forgotten and would have to live without. If I'd gone back to get it, all the other groceries in my cart would have expired by the time I got out of there. That includes the box of salt.
Just as I cleared the door and caught a glimpse of parking lot, I ran into a friend of mine named Laurie Bakerman...a woman of extraordinary grace and talent. She is also, sadly, reckless with her own safety as she insisted on defying my warnings about going inside and attempting to shop.
She told me her husband Steve is a devout reader of this weblog. Steve...I wouldn't expect her home before Memorial Day. And not necessarily the next one or the one after.
Juan Cole writes a pretty concise overview of what the removal of Saddam Hussein from power meant to Iraq and how his execution further changes things. This is a Salon link so if you ain't a member, you may have to sit through some advertising but it's worth it.
I can't believe this is on YouTube but it is. It's a clip of Bill Holly, who was a kids' TV host for about two years on Los Angeles television. The clip says 1966-1967 and I guess that's right, but I thought it was more like 1965-1966. He was on KHJ, Channel 9 and this footage is from a brief time when that station had somehow stolen the Popeye cartoon package away from a rival. (Before and after, Tom Hatten hosted the spinach-eating sailor's exploits on KTLA, Channel 5.)
The clip starts with some news footage about viewers picketing the station because they thought Holly's program had been cancelled when he was, in fact, just on vacation. This sounds to me like a publicity stunt that Holly and/or someone at KHJ arranged, rather than a real protest. The person who posted this material on YouTube says they can be seen in the clip and that they obtained it from Mr. Holly, which makes you wonder. Then there's a clip of Holly doing some magic...and I remember his shows generally being more entertaining than this. I also remember one period when his show turned into an exact carbon of the classic Soupy Sales format, complete with dog gloves and hurled shaving cream pies.
It's amazing that any film at all exists of Bill Holly. Most local TV stations did their programming live, well through the sixties and even when it became possible to record on videotape, they either didn't or they promptly erased and reused the tapes after broadcast. I wasn't a regular watcher of Mr. Holly's shows. He was on TV during the period when I thought I'd outgrown that kind of programming...but I caught him occasionally because KHJ was also running Laurel and Hardy films in the time slot that adjoined his, and I've never outgrown Laurel and Hardy, not even for a minute. Still, it's nice to see Bill Holly again. It's always nice to see any of those guys — Tom Hatten, Skipper Frank Herman, Engineer Bill Stulla, Sheriff John Rovick and all the rest who were such a part of so many childhoods in this town.
Dahlia Lithwick lists the top ten abuses of Civil Rights of 2006. They all have two things in common. One is that they're all a matter of the Bush administration deciding it could do any damn thing it wanted and that they were accountable to no one. The other is that one of these days, some Democratic president is going to try one of these and all the people who've excused the current leadership will be talking impeachment.
Yes, this weekend is your last chance before 2007 to show your appreciation for this website by sending a tip. I wouldn't ask but I just won a couple of auctions on eBay and I need to replenish my PayPal account to pay for some really weird stuff I'm buying. So if you've been thinking of giving, now would be a great time.
The best fonts of a comic book nature come from Richard Starkings and his company, Comicraft. If you have any desire for any of these fine specimens of lettering, have it on January 1. That's when they're having their annual New Year Sale and the fonts are $20.07 each. Yes, that's a substantial increase from the last New Year Sale when they were only $20.06 each but these are inflationary times. Every so often, they also have a sale during the Comic-Con International but you don't want to wait until then. Make up your shopping list now and order on Monday.
One reason I don't travel more is that I keep encountering nightmare stories like the one I'm going to link you to. Will Allen III is an experienced traveller but he recently blogged about a dreadful experience he had, taking his family to Disney World in Florida. Here's Part One of his report, here's Part Two and here's Part Three. Hope this kind of thing never happens to you and I really hope it never happens to me. In fact, given the choice, I'd much rather it happened to you than to me.
Before we leave the subject of Nathan Lane in our video linkage, I want to send you to two more clips, neither of which are embeddable here. This one is from the TV series, Norm Crosby's Comedy Shop, which was syndicated in 1978. It's an appearance by Stack and Lane, a comedy team of the day. Before the lovely Shelly Goldstein sent me this link, I was wholly unware that Nathan was ever part of a comedy team. The performance, which runs a little under four minutes, will tell you why they were so obscure.
Then I shouldn't link to this because I don't want to give even tacit approval to the secret and illegal videotaping of live performances but it's just too good, and I have to make up for the previous clip. This is seven minutes from the recent Broadway production of The Odd Couple starring Mr. Lane and Matthew Broderick. It's shot poorly and unethically from the balcony but it's still funny. This is the top of Act Three, where Oscar and Felix aren't speaking because the latter refused to go with the former to the apartment of the Pigeon Sisters and...well, you know the storyline. You know how this goes. You even know that it's not spaghetti, it's linguini. The last line of this clip is the line that Neil Simon says consistently receives the longest laugh of anything he's ever written. Every time I've seen the show, it sure has.
Just saw someone on a cable news channel — one of the CNNs, I think — cheering the death of Saddam Hussein...and this wasn't an enslaved Iraqi who was happy about this. I could understand and maybe even enjoy the glee of someone who suffered actual damage under the Hussein rule. This was some lady who lived in Ohio or something, and she just thought hanging ol' Saddam was the greatest thing in the whole world. After all, a very bad man got executed. She was so happy about this that, just for a moment, you could forget that there are still plenty of other very bad men out there. Some of them have the potential to be more destructive to Ohio, if not the entire world, than Saddam ever was.
She repeated at least twice, the oft-heard line that "Saddam gassed his own people." I always thought that was an odd way of arguing that he was a murdering dictator...like it wouldn't have been so bad if he'd only gassed someone else's people. That, we could forgive and maybe even respect.
It's when you gas your own people that someone's got to put a stop to you. Eventually. The alleged gassing of his own people took place in March of 1988 and this country did a lot of friendly business with Hussein after that. (Incidentally, I said "alleged" because some pretty strong arguments have been made that the story isn't true. I don't know if it is or it isn't; only that it wouldn't make him any less of a monster if it turned out to be a bogus report.)
Joshua Micah Marshall, over on Talking Points Memo, made the following comment about Hussein's execution and the whole Iraq War in general...
This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.
Probably true. The news out of Iraq lately has been awful, just awful. 106 American soldiers are dead in December, making it the bloodiest month of the year...and you have to remind yourself that that number doesn't reflect all the pain and loss. It doesn't include dead non-soldiers, for one thing, and there are a lot of those. It doesn't measure arms blown off or the inevitable lasting emotional scars that come in any war. It also doesn't measure dollar cost or the fading of worldwide honor or any number of other downsides which must be weighed against whatever good we think we're achieving. This situation continues while Bush remains at his ranch, reading My Pet Goat or whatever he's doing while he decides on a new Iraq strategy one of these days.
I mean, it's just like with Katrina: What's the hurry? We can take our time. We're getting things accomplished. Why, just the other night, we killed a guy who'd gassed his own people.
I probably don't have to post this but better safe than sorry. The end of the year is a special holiday for those who send out virus-laden attachments. If you get a message that says "Happy new year" or "Enjoy the fireworks celebration" and it has any sort of file embedded or attached, beware. I've gotten about a dozen in the last twenty-four hours, all safely deflected by my e-mail screener, virus checker and a bit of common sense.
Actually, you need more than a bit of common sense. The one time I got a real, life-disrupting virus on my computer, it was in spite of all those protections. Someone — and I'm pretty sure I know who it was — sent me a nasty one and I saw it unopened, recognized it for what it was and moved to delete it. As sometimes happens, the mouse hand did not do what the brain told it to do and I clicked on the file, thereby opening it and triggering its payload, instead of right-clicking for a deletion. Big mistake. I not only had a virus in my computer, I had one that was so new that none of the virus-nuking companies — Norton, McAfee, etc. — had heard of it yet. A week later, my virus checker (I think I had McAfee then) would have stopped it or removed it but the day I got it, it was uncharted territory. So keep an eye out for booby traps. What I went through that time would be a lousy way to start your year.
Here's seven minutes from a vintage episode of The Soupy Sales Show, including a lip-sync to his recording of "The Mouse," which I never thought was much of a tune or dance. The off-camera voice you hear heckling him at the end is that of Frank Nastasi, who was the foil when the Soupman did his show in New York.
The stuff that comes before the song is the kind of material that endeared Soupy to many of us. He was just out there, ad-libbing on live TV with no idea what he was going to say or do, enjoying the hell out of his own predicament. As I wrote in this article, I used to watch him, wishing I could be one of those people in the studio you always heard laughing. I can't think of anyone who has a TV show today who would have the guts to go out there so unprepared and to just wing it. He was a brave man, that Soupy.
In the interest of airing both sides, I thought I'd link to an article that argues that Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon was right and proper. The author is Richard Ben-Veniste, who was a member of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office at the time. I don't think I agree but his view is worth considering.
I'm watching the news coverage of Saddam Hussein's impending execution, which the cable news folks are covering with a kind of smug excitement. They always like it when they think they've got your attention. Larry King just told us that if they're in the middle of a commercial break and they get word that Saddam has been hanged, they will cut out of that commercial break instantly. This is great because I wouldn't want to be watching an ad for eHarmony.com and miss the precise moment. I mean, there's news that can't wait for thirty seconds.
Much of the discussion is about how it's vital that Hussein be hanged "respectfully" and that his corpse not be mistreated. This is good to know. It's okay to kill a guy but no one wants to see him embarrassed.
What I'm kind of waiting to hear, and I haven't yet, is who benefits from executing him now. I'm not questioning that he deserves the ultimate penalty, whatever that is. I'd just like to hear someone finish a sentence that begins, "This will be help bring peace to Iraq because..." Given the price so many have paid to topple this regime and bring Hussein to trial, it would be nice if we got more out of this than the satisfaction of one less bad man in the world.
The other day here, I wrote about Stan Lee appearing on an episode of To Tell the Truth around 1970. Someone posted it to YouTube so — through the courtesy of Anthony Tollin, who told me it was there — I can embed the whole appearance here...
A few years later, Robert Kanigher was a similar guest on To Tell the Truth. Mr. Kanigher was a longtime writer-editor for DC Comics and at the time, Wonder Woman was making a brief comeback as a symbol of feminism. Kanigher had been Wonder Woman's main writer so the game show had him on, along with two other men pretending to be Robert Kanigher...and if I'd gone just by the answers that were given, I'd have picked the wrong guy. Because the real Bob Kanigher got all the questions wrong and the impostors got them all correct. I suspect that wasn't the first time that had happened on that show.
According to a new study, skyrocketing prices on prescription drugs do not mean we're all subsidizing the development of newer, better drugs for the future. We're just plain getting gouged.
I can't resist linking to more of that Evening at the Pops show with Nathan Lane singing songs that were made famous by Danny Kaye. This is "Lullaby in Ragtime," which Mr. Kaye introduced in the movie, The Five Pennies.
Danny Kaye was wonderful in everything he did on a stage but he was, from all reports, a truly awful person off-stage. Howie Morris, who frequently appeared on Kaye's 1963-1967 CBS variety show, used to practically froth when he told tales of working with the guy. Nevertheless, I fondly remember a night of my childhood — I'm guessing this was around 1960 when I was eight — when my parents and I went to see Mr. Kaye at the Hollywood Bowl. There was this magical man up there who held the rapt attention of 15,000 people...and he just went on and on, topping himself, apparently going way over his scheduled end time and daring Management to come drag him off.
I remember one thing he did. This was a nighttime performance, remember. Out in the audience, it was very dark. He asked everyone to take out a match or a cigarette lighter — this was back when most people carried them — and to light them at the count of three, Then he counted the numbers off and when maybe 10,000 flames suddenly appeared throughout the amphitheater, he began singing, "Happy birthday to you...happy birthday to you..." It got one of the biggest laughs in which I ever participated.
So I always liked Danny Kaye and I was sorry to hear so many unflattering stories about him. I don't doubt they're all valid. I was just sorry to hear them.
On the other hand, I always liked what Gene Wilder says every time I've seen him interviewed about his early career. Someone asks him what he wanted to be when he grew up, long before he grew up. The answer he gives is always, "I wanted to be whatever Danny Kaye was." I heard him say that and then a few days later, I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and I realized he'd made it. I mean, if they'd made that movie twenty years earlier, who would they have cast in the role Wilder played? Danny Kaye, right?
Anyway, here's Nathan Lane singing another one of Danny Kaye's songs even better than Danny Kaye...
Sgt. Bryan Anderson lost three limbs in the Iraq War. Take a moment to read this piece, if not for inspiration then for (perhaps) a more vivid understanding of what that kind of loss can mean.
Here's Jimmy Breslin with a rosy memory of Gerald Ford. Recalling (vaguely) Breslin's book about Watergate which I can't find at the moment, it seems like a rosier portrait than he had of the man then. But that doesn't mean it's not sincere or accurate.
And while you're over there, you might want to read this piece by Breslin about the night Bobby Kennedy was shot. Chilling.
Today is the birthday of Stan Lee...and I don't think I have to throw in any explanation of who Stan Lee is. He's Stan Lee, that's who he is.
I first met Stan in July of 1970. By that, I mean I met him in person, in the offices of Marvel Comics. But of course, I'd met him years earlier in the pages of Marvel Comics and had been so impacted by his cheery editorial style that it didn't feel like meeting someone new. It was like seeing your old pal Stan again, only for the first time.
I'm not sure how you categorize Stan...writer, creator, editor, spokesperson, media legend. Whatever he is, he's the only one of its kind. It's a pleasure to wish him a joyful birthday day and many more.
Incidentally, I said in an item here the other day that Stan receives a nice percentage of revenues from the current spate of Marvel movies. Stan himself dropped me an e-mail to say this isn't so — "I wish," he wrote. But he should. He should also receive royalties every time one of us rips off some element of his style or manner. If he did, it would make the combined revenues of all the Spider-Man and X-Men movies look like chump change.
Anyway, a Happy Stan Lee Day to you all. Take a moment to face front and hang loose. 'Nuff said.
The NBC website has a page called NBC Rewind where they stream full episodes of many of their shows. Usually, they only have one up at a time but at the moment, there are several episodes up of each of several series. The site doesn't seem to run smoothly (neither does NBC) but I did get a couple of the videos to play on my computer, especially when I gave up on Internet Explorer and tried accessing it via Firefox.
This link will take you to the menu where you can pick something to watch if you're so inclined. A couple of folks have written to ask me where they could see Stan Lee's appearance last week on the game show, Identity. Well, you can see it here. Look for Thursday and then look for the second part of the show. The portion with Stan commences a few minutes in.
A year or two ago, there was a wonderful episode of Evening at the Pops on PBS which featured Nathan Lane doing a "Tribute to Danny Kaye." I put that in quotes because I don't think it's much of a tribute to go out there and do most of Kaye's best material (which he didn't write so there's nothing of him on the stage) and to do it, for the most part, better than he did. But it was a fine program and Lane was very, very good. It's one of the shows I've kept on my TiVo for a long time so I could watch it every now and then with just the push of a button. Here's the opening number...
Apart from discussing the wisdom of the Nixon pardon, I don't see a lot of interesting chatter on the web today about former President Gerald Ford, who passed away yesterday. Everyone seems to be using the occasion to advance their particular political cause: Whatever you believe in, his successes or failures were proof of it. I almost suspect this is the last time anyone will have any reason to talk about Gerald Ford.
Most historians say that pardoning Richard M. Nixon (a) cost Ford the 1976 election and (b) was a decision made strictly on the basis of what he believed was right and proper for America. I think I agree with the first one, though I suspect that greater damage was done by the popular media image of Ford — inflamed by Chevy Chase's impressions on Saturday Night Live — of the man as a stumbling idiot. I thought the characterization was unfair but as so often happens with these things, the "victim" sure didn't do a lot to counteract the caricature. And I'm skeptical about the second point. Maybe it was a matter of pure conscience but maybe it was just an attempt to contain the ongoing embarrassment to the Republican party and some of Ford's crony pals, as well. It could even have been both.
Bob Woodward is out today with this article, based on an interview with Ford that was conducted in July of '04. In it, the former Chief Exec says that "very strongly disagreed" with Bush's handling of Iraq, including the fact that we invaded at all. That would be a courageous stance for Ford to take if he'd said it for publication two and half years ago...but what was the point of embargoing it until after his death? Especially since that death could have occurred next year or the year after? It's like Ford was saying, "I feel strongly about this but not strongly enough to have to listen to the criticisms of me for criticizing a current Republican president." If there was any reason for Ford to say it, he should have said it then.
Stan Lee is interviewed on National Public Radio about "realism" in super-hero comics. It runs seven and a half minutes. This will get you in the mood for tomorrow's Stan Lee Day festivities.
I keep getting e-mails asking me to post a photo of myself since the weight reduction surgery. Here's a shot of me at a post-Christmas party last evening surrounded by three very talented men. I'm the tall one. The man on the far left is Ian Whitcomb, the eminent musician and musicologist. Second from the left is Richard Sherman, who (with his brother Robert) wrote most of the great Disney songs, including the tunes for Mary Poppins. At far right is the great satirist and cartoon voice actor, Stan Freberg.
But the most talented person at this party was none of the guys around me. There was a gentleman there making balloon animals out of ordinary skinny balloons, and guests were challenging him to replicate classic cartoon characters. Here we see Jerry Beck — one of the Brewmasters of the fine website, Cartoon Brew — showing us what he got when he asked the balloon artist to whip up a Droopy. And this wasn't even the most amazing balloon creation of the evening. The brilliant glamour artist Olivia De Berardinis, whose stunningly beautiful women appear regularly in Playboy in the old Vargas slot, went home with a balloon likeness of Bettie Page.
The artisan who rose to these challenges was Buster Balloon and here's his website. If you have a party in Southern California and you want an entertainer who'll delight your guests, hire this man. And invite me so I can see him work his magic again. (He also created a Balloon Elvis for someone. If you ferret around on his site, you'll find a photo of him with a similar balloon sculpture.)
Back in my early teen years, I used to make balloon animals at birthday parties for younger kids. I'd make a horsie and then have to tell everyone which of the five possibilities was the head. So I'm in awe of someone who can do it well and Buster is the best I've ever seen. Just had to share that with you all.
I'm not going to embed this because it's an hour and ten minutes long...but some of you might be interested in the video of Stephen Colbert's appearance before the Institute of Politics at Harvard. It's a very good interview and conversation and you can watch it on Google Video on this page.
This is the "Sue Me" number from the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, which I saw and which was quite a wonderful production. Playing Miss Adelaide is Faith Prince. Playing Nathan Detroit is Nathan Lane. This was before most people knew who Nathan Lane was...and you can see why that situation didn't last long.
Ezra Klein on the intolerable health care system in this country. This is going to be a big issue in the next few years and we will eventually see almost everyone who ever opposed Universal Health Care not only not opposing it but taking credit for whatever progress is made in that area.
People send me links for a lot of these bogus trailers where someone with video editing software and a lot of time and patience has merged two very different movies into one. This mix intermingles Singin' in the Rain and Star Wars and it made me laugh so it goes up here on the weblog. It's an ifilm link and since those don't always embed well, we like to include the direct address in case clicking below doesn't work on your computer. Go for it.
Bob Newhart on the day after Christmas. And I should mention that I enjoyed Mr. Newhart's recently-issued autobiography, which is entitled I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny. It's a small, quiet book full of Newhart-style wit, which means it's quite humorous. I don't understand a few things that aren't in it...like, I didn't notice any mention of his first TV series, the one that won the Emmy as Best Show after it was cancelled. (That was the first time that had ever happened. I think Taxi was the second.) But hey, he's Bob Newhart. Here's an Amazon link to order the thing if you feel about him the way I do.
One more bit of Christmas animation you might want to check out before it goes away. It's the Garfield version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Very clever stuff.
There's a great charity in New York called Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Basically, it's folks in the theatrical community doing whatever they can to raise money to fight that dread disease. Among the many ways they do this is by putting on star-studded benefits. Here's a nice little montage that shows two and a half minutes from their recent events...
John Kerry, whose chances of being the Democratic nominee in 2008 are only a little better than mine, writes that "flip-flopping" is not a bad thing, especially when it turns out you're not right. I agree...although I may change my mind about that.
Well, we all knew it was coming but we've reached this stage...
The U.S. military death toll in Iraq has reached 2,974, one more than the number of deaths in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, according to an Associated Press count on Tuesday.
I think the premise here is that if we let them kill Americans over there, they won't kill Americans here.
The wise writer-director Vince Waldron favors my e-mailbox with some additional comments on the movie we were just discussing here...
That film's been a requisite part of the Christmas holidays since NBC Saturday Night at the Movies dragged it out for an annual airing
some time after Thanksgiving for seemingly every year of my childhood. And, you're right, the continuity errors are legend. But you really have to see it in a packed house to truly appreciate the unintentional comedy of some of those blunders. I had the privilege of watching White Christmas on the big screen for a number of years at Chicago's Music Box theatre, where pre-Christmas Day screenings of Der Bingle's cinematic holiday card have become a Chicago tradition. And ever time a coffee cup gets magically refilled between cuts, there's always a big laugh. The other moment guaranteed to elicit a gasp is when unbilled dancer George Chakiris' face is revealed. In other W.C. trivia, I didn't know until recently that Vera-Ellen's vocals were performed by Trudy Stevens.
As to the question of how so many obvious continuity errors crept in, my guess — based on nothing more than a hunch — was that Der Bingle couldn't be bothered doing a bunch of takes to cover for something as minor as fixing a continuity error involving a pitcher of buttermilk.
Hot on the heels of that e-mail, Vince sent a P.S. with another thought...
Also remember that White Christmas was the first movie shot in the wide screen Vista Vision, and thus may well have been a working
rehearsal for all involved. Shooting a film in an untested screen ratio may well have presented economic or other practical reasons that prevented the director, A.D. or script supervisor from insisting on retakes where needed, even if they were aware of them during the shoot.
That sounds a bit more logical...though I don't recall hearing that Mr. Crosby was that pissy about doing an extra take of something. There are some pretty unflattering anecdotes around about him but none that I can recall in that category. But you may be right. The crew may been so busy mastering the intricacies of Vista Vision that they didn't have time to think about unfilled coffee mugs. Or maybe the A.D. was just drunk a lot.
Not only did Trudy Stevens do those uncredited vocals but her husband, Dick Stabile, played the orchestra leader in the scene where Rosemary Clooney is off in New York doing a solo performance. (Talk about odd continuity: Clooney's character has been doing a sister act for years. Then she abruptly quits the show in Vermont and a few days later, she's doing a fully-produced act of her own — complete with back-up dancers — in one of Manhattan's top night clubs. Not only that but they're some of the same dancers who are still appearing in the show in Vermont. And then the next day, she just quits the New York gig and goes back to the one in Vermont.)
Thanks, Vince. And I should mention that I'm still intrigued by these claims that Bob Fosse was an uncredited choreographer on the film. If so, I think it would have been the first time he ever choreographed something in which he was not a performer. Does anyone know if there's any believable source for this? I'm not saying it's not possible, of course, but you'd think it would have been mentioned in one of the Fosse bios or somewhere.
Earlier this month, a lot of you were happy that I linked to this video of Sandy Duncan performing the "I'm Flying" number in the 1979 Broadway revival of Peter Pan. So you oughta be pleased with this link of her doing the "Neverland" song. She was very good in the role and I'm sorry no one videotaped the whole production for perpetual replay. (The subsequent Cathy Rigby production, which I thought was even better in some ways, was recorded but the DVD seems to be out of print now. If I were you and I didn't have a copy of it, I'd scurry about and find one before they become even more scarce.) Here's Sandy...
Bob Ingersoll was one of many who sent a message that said essentially the following...
Probably not the first to e-mail with this "correction," but your "imagination" was a little off. James Brown didn't die the day before Dreamgirls was due to open. He died in Atlanta in the early morning of December 25. (It was probably still December 24th for you at the time) But as he was in the Eastern Time Zone, he died the same day that Dreamgirls was due to open.
...and somewhere in the Paramount organization, one exec phoned another and asked, "Do you think this helps us or hurts us?"
By the way: I suspect I'm not the only person who was surprised to see that the great James Brown was only 73 years old. I thought he was somewhat older than that. I guess that's what being The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business will do to you.
Last night while working, I just felt like re-watching White Christmas, the 1954 feature that starred Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. If you can get past the overly-sentimental plot points — and Christmas is a fine time to embrace a little schmaltz — it's a pretty good movie. Danny Kaye's especially terrific in it, and it's interesting that he was at least the third choice for the role. Fred Astaire was originally supposed to fill that slot but he didn't like the script...or maybe he just didn't want to work. Donald O'Connor was signed but he had to withdraw due to health problems so the producers went to Kaye.
I always found it hard to believe that no one discussed trying to get Bob Hope in the part. A Paramount picture which called for a comedian who could dance and play Bing Crosby's partner and wartime buddy? How do you not try to get Hope for that? When I interviewed screenwriter Norman Panama for my Li'l Abner articles, I took a detour and asked him about this and he kept saying over and over, "Bob would have been so great, Bob would have been so great." Mr. Panama was in poor health at the time and was having huge memory gaps, and I'm not sure if he confirmed my hunch or not. I also wish I'd asked him what, if anything, Bob Fosse had to do with the choreography of White Christmas. I suspect the correct answer is "Nothing." It's been reported in any number of places that he did some of it but neither of the published biographies of Fosse mentions it. Perhaps more signficantly, Rosemary Clooney did a commentary track for the White Christmas DVD and though she talks about the dancers and the credited choreographer, she never speaks of Fosse. She does point out that among the unbilled dancers are Barrie Chase and George Chakiris.
One thing which I find curious about the film is how filled it is with very simple continuity errors. You know...like someone's holding a glass that's half full of liquid in their left hand, the camera cuts to someone else, and then when it cuts back to the first person, the glass is full and in the other hand. There are so many of these that at least one class for wanna-be Script Supervisors uses it as a kind of training film, challenging students to see how many mistakes they can catch. Paramount was a big studio and Michael Curtiz was an experienced director...so how did so many bad match shots creep in? Beats me. But it says something about the performances that they manage to distract you from all the jump cuts.
Recently, the movie was turned into a stage musical with the interpolation of a few more great tunes from the Irving Berlin catalog. One production of it is currently in Detroit and another is in St. Paul. (In St. Paul, David Ogden Stiers of M*A*S*H fame is playing the General.) In theory, it will get to Broadway next Christmas...or maybe the Christmas after that or the one after that. I haven't seen the show but I've listened to the cast album and it sounds pretty good. There's some info over on the show's website along with some video clips that don't seem to play.
If you haven't seen the film lately and don't have a tape or DVD around, Turner Classic Movies is running it tomorrow morning at 6 AM Eastern time. Why are they running White Christmas the day after Christmas? Who knows? Maybe it's another one of those continuity errors.
Every year about this time, the most popular page on my weblog is my Christmas tale involving Mel Tormé. Here's the link to the story, which involves his famous co-composition, "The Christmas Song." And here's a clip of that tune as performed by another darn good singer, Nat King Cole. Have a Merry, everyone.
I wandered through several stores last evening and I think I heard the same song playing at some point in every one of them: "Linus and Lucy," as written and performed by Vince Guaraldi for A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's everywhere. In fact, it's the ringtone on my cellphone and when I heard it the other night while I was in a CVS Pharmacy, I thought at first I had a call.
It's a fine song, of course...and this jazz critic even thinks the soundtrack album from that much-loved Christmas special is "the most successful recording in the history of jazz." I'm sure, by some definition of "success," that's so.
What I find interesting is how popular "Linus and Lucy" is as a Christmas song since there are no lyrics to connect it with Christmas. I was thinking of that as I drove to and from that party this evening. I had on a local radio station that was playing holiday tunes, many of them instrumentals. When you hear a Christmas instrumental, there are only two things that causes it be about Christmas. One is if the arranger has called for a lot of bells, especially jingle bells. You hear bells, you think Christmas. The other is if the tune is sufficiently well known so that the listener does a kind of Mental Karaoke, filling in the unheard lyrics which are about Christmas. You hear "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dum..." and you think, "Oh, you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry..."
And that makes it Christmas music. You have to make the connection yourself.
Neither of these applies to "Linus and Lucy." There are no bells in Guaraldi's recording and there are no lyrics about Christmas for you to mentally supply. What makes it a Christmas song is that it reminds you of a Christmas TV special you watched and loved as a kid. (Come to think of it, there might be one other way in which the tune denotes the holiday. It may remind some people of Christmas just because you always hear it around Christmas. But at some point, that couldn't have been the connection. At some point, someone had to start playing it at Christmas just because it evoked memories of the Peanuts Christmas cartoon.)
I guess this attests not only to Vince Guaraldi's talent but Charles Schulz's as well...and also, Lee Mendelson, Bill Melendez and the other gifted folks who made A Charlie Brown Christmas. I watched it again the other night and it still works for me, still hits all the proper chords. Lee told me once, in greater detail than he has in most interviews, how he had to fight to get the show on the air and to keep its quiet, non-gimmicky manner (and Guaraldi's score) intact from network tampering. I'm glad he won those battles because it really is a wonderful show.
We're coming to you live from the lovely home of my friends, Misty Lee and Paul Dini...via Paul's computer, no less. Some of their friends — not all their friends because all their friends couldn't fit into the Rose Bowl, let alone their house — are assembling for fried turkey, pot roast and an odd array of people, places and things made out of gingerbread.
The monkeys are here, too. (If you're not familiar with them, you need to check out what they've been up to...which mostly consists of adding omelets to local Christmas decorations. Go to this page and see what I mean.)
I have to get back to the party. I just wanted to see if I could post here from a Mac. If you can read this, I can.
This is just to remind/warn you: You still have a couple of chances to hear the episode of Stu's Show with Yours Truly as the guest, discussing the late, great Joe Barbera. Stuart Shostak invited me on to discuss Mr. B. and discuss we did...for the full two hours, along with phone calls, a few rare Hanna-Barbera records and two very easy H-B trivia questions. You can hear this on Shokus Internet Radio today (Sunday) at 1 PM Pacific Time, which is two hours from when I'm posting this. It repeats again tomorrow and Tuesday at 7 PM and...well, just consult the schedule to see when it's on. That's simpler.
Ah, but how do you listen to Shokus Internet Radio? That's what you want to know? Easy. Click on this link and select an audio browser. Then click on it and don't stop until you hear the sound of my voice.
I linked to a copy of this animation last Christmas and people loved it. That link's gone dead and several of you have written to ask if I had a new one. I didn't...but this morn, I did a little Googling and found you a new one. This link will take you directly to the animation in case you want to download it or in case the embedded version below doesn't work on your browser. Here are Santa and his Reindeer doing their imitation of Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters...
Here are some responses to my message earlier this morning about fast food and how I don't enjoy it as much as I once did. This first one's from Doug Cuff...
Thanks for asking "Is it me or have these places plunged in quality lately?" It hadn't occurred to me that the Colonel's chicken had declined in quality. I just assumed I wasn't enjoying it as much (nor the burgers from Burger King) because I was getting older. Maybe it's neither me nor my arteries. None of this will stop me from chowing down on In and Out french fries next time I get a chance. And I might as well have a burger and a milkshake after a journey like that...
A tip when you're at In and Out: Try asking for your fries "well done." That won't get you anything different in most places but they know what they're doing at In and Out, and it also makes for a big difference because they use fresh potatoes there. Won't help you at Arby's, though. This next message is from Gary Emenitove...
I used to be a big fan of Arby's, to the point where I'd drive the hour and a half from Dubuque to Madison just to indulge. (I am not kidding and was known for this foolishness.) Then I moved to Omaha where Arby's were plentiful and I could partake whenever I wanted, and did so fairly regularly. Until about a year or two ago, when apparently the company took some new direction in its food. Their standard fare was still there, but seemingly in smaller, less-flavorful portions. They pushed all sorts of new, apparently-more-healthful sandwiches, and frankly I didn't like any
of them. Then the final straw — they changed their chicken. And had the audacity to proclaim the new chicken "better" in ads. Sorry, but the previous Arby's chicken was a big reason I visited often. Now, I don't go there at all. I suspect they're aiming for a younger crowd, but they've lost this consumer in the meantime.
When I worked for Sid and Marty Krofft, we were usually on the KTLA lot on Sunset in Hollywood...a facility with no commissary. There was a catering truck there occasionally but it was undependable and awful. The food from that truck destroyed more people in television than all the Tom Arnold sitcoms have since then. So when I needed a fast bite, the only answer was the nearby Arby's, and I recall it being quite acceptable. I mean, the roast beef sandwich is only a roast beef sandwich by a technicality but it was fine for what it was.
A few weeks ago, I was in a time crunch and I drove through that same Arby's for the first time in twenty years. Got a roast beef sandwich that I think had been prepared shortly after my previous visit...with "meat" (I'm being charitable) stamped out of plastic sheeting. It was literally two bites and into the dumpster. I didn't even leave their property with the putative food. As the following message from Ted Frank suggests, some of this could be about my changing taste buds but in the case of that Arby's meal, no. It was just really a decline from what the product used to be. Here's what Ted sent...
I can't speak to the Corn 'n' Cluck, but I know from personal experience of losing 60 pounds that one's tastes change and one becomes less tolerant of the fat+sodium formula that makes fast food so enjoyable if one goes a long time without it: that Burger King chicken sandwich or Papa John's pizza I craved just a few months ago becomes barely edible, and I don't think that the quality dropped so much over a few months.
That's kind of what I was thinking was true in part but I think it's also that these places are going for cheaper ingredients or, more likely, food that is largely prepared elsewhere and then just reheated (sort of) on the premises. I can't find it now but a few months ago, I read an article on the wondrous worldwide web about how Burger King was squeezing their new outlets into smaller and smaller retail spaces and that this had necessitated some changes in how it was prepared. I think in some cases, we're almost to the point where the kids in the fast food stands are just opening cans and dumping the stuff into glorified microwaves.
Anyway, I'm receiving a lot of interesting mail on this topic. I may post some more later today. Thanks to everyone who offered their thoughts.
Since my surgery last May, I've generally been eating healthier...and I've found my tastes evolving in new, non-sugary directions. So I'm not sure how much of what I'm about to discuss here is to me changing and how much is because of the food. But three times since the operation, I've gone to fast food restaurants that I used to occasionally patronize...and all three times, what I got was so awful that I took two bites and chucked the meal into the trash.
The three visits were to an Arby's, where I ordered the basic roast beef sandwich and an order of their potato cakes...to a Jack-in-the-Box where I got a simple hamburger with a side of onion rings...and to a KFC for a small order of chicken strips. These are all things I'd eaten in the past, usually when I was in a desperate rush to get something to eat, and while they were never great, they were at least edible. Not now they aren't. I am not kidding when I say that I ate two bites of each and tossed my purchase. In all three cases, I went to the fast food place because I felt in need of some fast food...that is to say, I had to be somewhere in X minutes, felt I should eat something before I got there, and the Arby's (or whatever) seemed like the only viable option. In all three cases, I decided I'd just be better off not eating the item(s).
Is it me or have these places plunged in quality lately? I'm not suggesting they were ever places that could set a gourmet's taste buds a-tingle, and I never thought Jack-in-the Box was very good...although come to think of it, there was a time when Kentucky Fried Chicken was pretty darned tasty. It was never particularly healthy cuisine but before Colonel Sanders sold out his interest in the chain, the chicken was — as advertised — finger-lickin' good. In the last few years of his life, the Colonel used to bitch about how the new owners had changed his recipe and cooking methods, and say that he was ashamed of the contents of all those buckets his face adorned. He was right...but even then, the chicken wasn't as bad as it is now.
Back in the sixties, my friends and I loved the Corn 'n' Cluck special at Colonel Sanders'. The advertising slogan was "Corn 'n' Cluck for under a buck and what it meant was that for 99 cents, you got two pieces of chicken and a piece of corn. You could chart the rise of inflation by how the make-up of the KFC Corn 'n' Cluck special devolved. At first, you got a breast and a drumstick plus half a cob of corn. I'm guessing that as their costs went up, they decided to lower the content, rather than raise the price and lose that great rhyming slogan. So every time I bought one, it would contain less corn and less cluck. I think the last Corn 'n' Cluck I ever bought consisted of two small wings and a third of an ear of corn. After that, I gave up. I figured that the next one would include a beak and a couple of niblets.
Still, it was good chicken then, what there was of it. It isn't now; not judging by those chicken strips I had a couple weeks ago. They were all breading...and not even particularly good or fresh breading. When you can't even make fat fried in oil taste good, you're really doing something wrong. KFC is reportedly planning to change the look of the Colonel, younging him up and going for a hipper mascot. If they want to get my business back, they ought to try making the chicken the way it was made when the chain originally became successful. There was a reason for that success and it wasn't because ol' Harland Sanders looked like a happening dude.
For now, I'm giving up on all those places — every one except In and Out Burger, which is in a class by itself. And I'm writing this message to remind myself that I'm giving up on Arby's, KFC and Jack-in-the-Box and, while I'm at it, Burger King, Wendy's, Carls Jr and all the rest, up to and including the place with the Golden Arches. I know the food isn't healthy at any of them but I need to remember that's not the reason I'm crossing them all off my list. I'm doing it because what they serve doesn't taste good to me any more. I'm sorry these places have ruined their products...and sorrier still that they didn't do it twenty years earlier. If they had, I might not have needed Weight Reduction Surgery,
I'm not sure I have this story 100% right but here goes: When they made the James Bond film Thunderball in 1965, the opening song was originally going to be a tune called "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" that was written by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse, and sung by Dionne Warwick. Its title was a popular nickname for Mr. Bond, especially in the foreign press.
The main titles were filmed and edited to that track and then the producers, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, got to worrying that it was the wrong song. Reportedly, they felt that a vital part of their films' promotion involved having a hit song out there that endlessly repeated the name of the movie...and of course, "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" didn't reference the title, didn't yell at people to go out and see Thunderball. So Mr. Barry got together with lyricist Don Black and they came up with a song called "Thunderball," which was recorded for them by Tom Jones and it was substituted for the Warwick track. (Also reportedly, Johnny Cash took a crack at writing and recording a song called "Thunderball" but his submission wasn't used, either. It was probably all about 007 riding trains, drinking coffee and being in prison.)
This clip consists of the opening titles of Thunderball with the original track reinstated. I don't think it's a better song but I think it fits better with the visuals. I guess that's only to be expected since they were calibrated to this tune instead of the one recorded by Mr. Jones.
Thursday night, they ran the episode of Identity with Stan Lee as one of the "strangers" whose identity a contestant had to guess. It wasn't a toughie. By the time they'd gotten around to him, they'd eliminated Break Dancer, Opera Singer and Sushi Chef as options, and somehow, I can't see Stan doing any of those things. Well, maybe the break dancing. The other choices were that he was the Youngest person up there (nope), an Alligator Wrestler (also nope), a Bouncer (ha), a Fitness Model (double ha), a CSI Investigator (slight maybe), a Kidney Donor (possible), a Vegas Showgirl (well, he does have great legs) or the World's Fastest Man (likewise).
And...oh, yeah: Created Spider-Man. I think I'd go with that. None of the other strangers looked anything like Steve Ditko.
Stan's appearance got me to thinking: The late Harvey Kurtzman used to speak of his "reward" and how the financial and employment situation in comics, back when he launched Mad, did not allow him to claim it. He had created something of enormous value...but in a system that compensated him as if he hadn't. In books, movies, television or practically any other entertainment medium, if you created something lucrative — or even if someone else created it but you were a major contributor — you could share in the gold mine. But not then in comics. Not for most of the great creative talents of comics' first forty years.
Now, in some cases — and Kurtzman was arguably one — the creators may have mishandled the business/contractual side of their working arrangements and made it easier or even quite legal for the publishers to stiff them. And there were folks like Bob Kane who did a lot better than others.
Still, the general dynamic was just what Harvey lamented; that you could create something worth millions...and the next day, they could pay you the same as someone who'd created zip, or even fire you and take your name off your creation. There are some pretty ugly stories of this kind of thing occurring and they're a source of great discomfort and sadness for so many of us who follow the history of the business. There are also, happily, stories of some who got their "rewards" in other ways. These include doing cover re-creations (if they're artists), signing collectors' prints or editions, and getting other, better-paying projects due to the reputations they achieved from their poor-paying comic book creations.
Stan Lee did not do badly at Marvel. He worked his way up to a salary of a million dollars a year from them plus a nice percentage of current film revenues. He is also receiving other "rewards" via other means because he is famous as the creator (or more correctly, co-creator) of Spider-Man, The Hulk, The X-Men and so many more.
It's fascinating how far-famed Stan has become. Last week, GSN ran a 1970 episode of To Tell the Truth. Marvel Comics were pretty popular in '70 but Stan himself was still "unknown" enough that he could appear on that show, along with two impostors, under the presumption that none of the four panelists would know which one was the real Stan Lee. As the kids of that era have become the adults of today, that anonymity has gone away. A few years ago, he appeared in the same capacity on a revival of To Tell the Truth. This time, Stan and the two impostors had to all wear masks or there wouldn't have been any game.
And now, here he was the other night on Identity...and when the live audience realized who he was (a bit ahead of the contestant), there was a decided "ooh" and a murmur of excitement. He's a superstar, as famous as any of his second-string characters. The other day, I had an electrician in here and when he found out I did comic books, he immediately asked me, "Have you ever met Stan Lee?"
There are a number of reasons he's receiving all this when others haven't and one, of course, is that others made the mistake of dying. Someone said to me the other day that if Jack Kirby had lived to see how wealthy and celebrated Stan has become, it would have killed him. I think not...because if Jack were alive today, he'd be getting his share in both categories. Or at least, he'd have the chance to exploit his credits the way Stan has wisely exploited his stature as the co-creator of those properties. (This is another way of saying Jack would not have done what Ditko has done, becoming a near-hermit, refusing all offers and opportunities.)
Stan will be (mumble, mumble) years of age next Thursday. I'll post some more thoughts on this topic then when we wish him a Happy Stan Lee Day. I just think it's interesting that the comic book industry has so rarely made its giants rich or famous...and that the fans have had to assume that responsibility.
Cartoonist Bob Foster is living and working up in Portland for I-don't-know-how-long. He's taken the opportunity to take a lot of great photos which you might enjoy.
Here's a short video with a long explanation. In 1982, Joe Barbera asked me to write a prime-time Yogi Bear Christmas special for CBS. One of these days, I'll have to publish the whole, amazing story of how this one came to be but basically, it was an impossible job for All Concerned. The show had to be written in about four days, storyboarded in about a third of the time these things usually take and animated in less than half the time the animators needed. To further complicate an impossible task, there was (1) a huge negotiation battle with the agent representing Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi and nine other characters, (2) a storyboard artist whose work had to be tossed and redone, thereby wasting three of the four weeks allotted on the schedule for that task...and (3) a strike by the Animation Union.
But somehow, they got it on the air. It was delivered to CBS two days before the broadcast date and the guys at the network found (correctly) all sorts of mistakes in it...animation errors, missing footage, etc. The animation folks in Australia actually did a pretty good job under the circumstances. A couple of editors did a last minute patch job and the show was telecast to all of America with the errors reduced (but not totally eliminated) and with two key scenes absent. I like parts of it, cringe at other sections...and am not unhappy it hasn't been rerun anywhere lately or put out on DVD.
I mentioned it the other day when I appeared on Shokus Internet Radio. In particular, I mentioned that Snagglepuss had been bleeped when he mentioned Chanukah. I was not kidding. I wrote a line where the lion said, "Merry Christmas! Seasons Greetings! Happy Chanukah even!" Everyone who had to approve the script — which was a whole lot of people — approved it and it was recorded that way and the animation was done accordingly.
In December, when the last minute edits were being done, someone at CBS decided that the reference to Chanukah had to go. I do not know precisely why. At the time, and later when I wrote one article about this, I didn't know even if it had been done at CBS or if someone at Hanna-Barbera had been responsible...but then a friend at the network showed me a memo he'd dug out of the files. It merely said that CBS was insisting on the deletion, no explanation given.
In all my years of cartoon watching, this is the only time I've ever heard of a cartoon getting bleeped. Dialogue is often edited out or redone for reasons of taste or "standards" but in every other case, it's done in an undetectable manner. They redub the words or chop out a whole line or something. In this case, presumably because the show was edited (literally) the day before it aired, they just cut the word out and there was an obvious jump where "Chanukah" should have been. The edit was apparently made on the one-inch master tape because it was that way when the show came out a few years ago on VHS.
As I said, I mentioned this on the radio show. Some listener took it upon him- or herself to locate the video, edit a ten-second clip and to upload it to an online video site. So here it is as today's link...and I remain as stunned and mystified as you will probably be as to why this was done. I thought my people were supposed to run Hollywood but I guess I was wrong.
Is this new? My e-mailbox this morning is filled with advertising from almost every merchant with whom I've done business in the last year or two...messages with Subject Lines like "It's not too late" or "Still time to shop." Some say that if I order from them by Noon and pay some huge Saturday FedEx delivery fee, they'll get my last-minute gift to someone tomorrow so the person will have it before Christmas.
Okay, I think I remember a lot of similar e-mails last year. What I don't remember is this offer that a number of them are also making...
Place your order by Midnight on Saturday night and we'll e-mail your recipient and tell them your gift is on the way and that it will arrive shortly after Christmas.
Years ago, Saturday Night Live had a bogus commercial for a FedEx-type company that would take the blame for late packages. If you were two weeks late sending someone something, they'd deliver it and — presumably for a hefty price — swear you'd sent it three weeks earlier. We may be only one Christmas from such a service becoming available to us. You'll be able to order on December 26 and they'll deliver it on December 28 with their apology for delaying an order placed on December 18. Watch for it.
Do you know what Rifftrax are? Well, this page will explain what they are and also give you a chance to get a free one. But basically, what they are are "alternative commentary tracks" for your favorite DVDs. A team of expert riffers record silly comments in the manner of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a classic series for which the same riffers riffed.
So you got the concept? The guys from MST3000 record new commentary tracks...you buy and download them...then you watch the DVD but you listen to their comments. Only in this case, you don't have to buy your first one since they're making one — for Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey — available for free. Give it a try. Nothing to lose.
A kindly reader of this site sent me a nice Christmas gift — the PC version of the Deal or No Deal game show. At least, I think it was a kind gesture. It may have been one of the half-dozen folks who routinely send me e-mails explaining how I'm wrong not to think George W. Bush is a great president. I wouldn't put it past one of them to think they could keep me busy with the game so I wouldn't post any more articles that make them grind their molars.
If that was the goal, they figured wrong. The computer version of Deal or No Deal wouldn't keep anyone busy for more than about fifteen minutes. You play it a couple of times, ogle the odd graphics and put it away forever. Gamewise, it's a faithful reproduction of the TV show but all the fancy music and dramatic pauses still cause a very simple game to take a lot longer than it should. There are many online versions (including this one on the NBC website) that let you play the same game a lot faster.
The only reason to spring for the twenty bucks and get the PC version is for the graphics...and I might have gone for it if they had the real models in there and you felt Up Close and Personal with them as you played. But all the people — Howie Mandel, the models, even the audience — are CGI animations and the models are all generic, unsexy types. Howie's pretty generic and unsexy, too...and it's a little creepy to watch the computer-animated representation of him gesturing with odd, mechanical gestures and speaking with almost no lip-sync.
Makes you wonder why they went to the trouble to build a computer-animated Howie Mandel. Why didn't they just videotape the real guy? I'm guessing they did the whole thing in CGI because it would have been too expensive to pay all 26 models to actually appear in the game, Too bad...because it might have made you feel like you were actually playing for real. As it was, I almost wanted to take a bad banker's offer just so I could get out and stop looking at the weird computerized people.
I actually never saw this before I spotted it on YouTube. It's the opening to the 1988 Yogi Bear Show and it's made up of clips from classic Yogi cartoons (many of them from the feature, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear) and a pleasant, newly-recorded rendition of Yogi's theme song.
Joe Barbera always resisted when people asked him to name his favorite character. It was the one they were currently working on, he'd say. But I'm convinced that if you'd strapped him down and pumped him full of sodium pentothal, he'd have told you Yogi was his fave. A couple times, we got to talking about that bear and you could always see the man's face light up. It was the only Hanna-Barbera character I ever heard him imitate. Of course, some of that may have been because Yogi was the studio's first superstar.
J.B. and I had an interesting conversation one day about Yogi. In some of his cartoons, Yogi is a real operator, largely in control of the situation, able to con tourists out of their pic-a-nic baskets and to snow the Ranger and not get punished. In others, he's something of a victim, unable to escape from Jellystone Park or getting repeatedly blasted and mauled by the crew of a movie shooting in the park. I generally preferred the competent con artist Yogi and wrote him that way whenever I wrote him...but I had to ask Mr. B. why the inconsistency.
He was startled by the question and admitted he'd never noticed the change. At the same time though, he acknowledged it was a valid observation and he began puzzling it out. After a pause, he said something like, "I think the problem was that we weren't used to doing cartoons for television then. We'd been doing the Tom and Jerrys and you never worried about that kind of thing because no one ever saw the films again. They ran and then they went away so if you had a funny idea, you just did it. Once we got established in television, we learned that these things would be rerun over and over so you had to be consistent from one to another."
That sounded like a good explanation to me...and as I type it here, it occurs to me that it may also be a partial answer to a question I was asked the other day on Shokus Internet Radio. A caller asked why Barney Rubble's voice changed so much from week to week during the first season of The Flintstones even when it was still Mel Blanc doing it.
Anyway, here's the opening to the '88 Yogi Bear program...
This weekend on C-Span 2: Art Buchwald, Too Soon to Say Goodbye. As we all know, the great columnist checked into a hospice in Washington last year with the expectation that he had 2-3 weeks to live. He's still alive and still writing, and this is a little 25 minute show about him. It airs Sunday at 11 AM and 5:30 PM, and on Monday at 6:30 PM and 9 PM, all times Eastern. My thanks to Gordon Kent for alerting me to this and I hereby forgive him for the lousy creamed corn I ate last night.
Meanwhile, here's a Head's Up! On Wednesday, January 10, there's something on Basic Cable that you're going to want to record, at least if you're a fan of great comic actors in very bad movies. I'll write about it here next week but trust Mark on this one. It's a classic and not in the good sense...and no, it's not Skidoo. It's not that awful...but it's close. Check this space in a few days for all the details.
You've all seen this a thousand times but I don't care. I feel like putting up the opening from The Jetsons because I feel like writing about the first time I saw that show.
It was the first night that show was on: Sunday evening, September 23, 1962...which I means I would have been ten years of age. A great age to watch the first episode of The Jetsons.
I wonder if kids today get as excited about a new cartoon show as my friends and I did back then. We all loved what had emerged so far from the Hanna-Barbera studio and this was their new series. What's more, it was announced as the first series to be broadcast in color on ABC. My family and I did not then own a color set but Mrs. Hollingsworth down the street did. She was an elderly widow who was cranky about everything except me because I was so adorable. And if you think I'm adorable now, you should have seen me when I was ten. She invited me to come down and watch the new cartoon show on her set.
(Trivial Aside, of the kind that appears often on this website: We all agree, I'm sure, that H-B TV cartoons never had the visual richness and depth of Disney animation or any good Warner Brothers cartoon...or even the theatrical animation that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had produced for MGM. But something to consider is that they may have worked better on television then. The simple graphics, thick outlines and bold colors came across well on the primitive TV screens of the day. We didn't have 50" High Def Plasmas then, remember. My middle-class family watched its shows on a black-and-white 17" Zenith with reception via a cheap roof antenna. Even when new and tuned properly, it wasn't all that clear. Huckleberry Hound looked pretty good on that set, probably better than Fantasia would have fared.)
The Jetsons went on at 7:00 that first, fateful evening. I was at Mrs. Hollingsworth's, parked in front of the set in her den, by 6:30. Didn't want to miss a second. My mother had cooked a pot roast for our dinner and as she sometimes did, she served up a plate of it — with potatoes and carrots and the works — and had me take it down to Mrs. Hollingsworth. We did that for her on holidays and special occasions, and this seemed like a special occasion. Mrs. Hollingsworth left me with the TV while she went into her dining room to dine.
She was back in time to watch the show with me, and I'm not sure she enjoyed it but she sure enjoyed how much I enjoyed it. I took an instant liking to The Jetsons. I even liked it more than The Flintstones and I liked The Flintstones a lot. The futuristic show seemed to me to have even more likeable characters doing even neater things. I also liked that I recognized the voice of Daws Butler as "his boy, Elroy." It wasn't a Hanna-Barbera cartoon without Daws.
When the story was over, Mrs. Hollingsworth made a move to turn off the TV before the end credits. I probably said something rude when I stopped her. The credits were almost the best part...in two ways. Something funny always happened under them...and I also wanted to read the names to see how many I recognized from other H-B shows I followed. Dutifully, not wanting to be hurt, Mrs. Hollingsworth waited for the show to be utterly and totally over before she snapped off her RCA. I ran back to my home, half a block away, and asked my father why we didn't have a color TV. I think within two or three years, we did.
By that time, of course, The Jetsons was gone from the ABC prime-time lineup, consigned for all eternity to daytime and syndicated reruns. It only lasted one season because, I suspect, the time slot was too competitive and much of America was set in its Sunday night viewing habits. When I first met Mr. Barbera, one of the things we talked about was how that show (and Top Cat) should have lasted a lot longer than they did. He agreed. Those were two of his favorite shows and he said that in both cases, there were offers to continue production immediately for syndication but they were deficit offers, meaning the studio would have had to go way in the hole to produce them and hope they could recoup and turn a profit by the shows rerunning for a long time. They had not been in a position to take that gamble at the time, he said, but in hindsight, he wished they had. Years later, his studio produced another batch of Jetsons episodes for syndication with the original voice cast but (largely) a new creative team. It wasn't the same, of course. The momentum was gone, the spirit was gone...and even Mrs. Hollingsworth wasn't around anymore.
Two articles in Slate you might want to give a look-see...
John Dickerson assesses how George W. Bush answers the repeated question about what he's learned. When we get around to tallying lists of why the country turned against the Iraq War, a biggie will have to be the truly awful job Bush has done of instilling confidence in people...and I don't even mean in Democrats and others predisposed to oppose him. I mean people who voted for him and believed in him and his word.
And Fred Kaplan explains in pretty good detail why the latest "surge" proposal is doomed to failure. The whole thing looks like an attempt to postpone the losing until it can occur on the next president's watch.
Jack Burnley spent his last years in Charlottesville, Virginia...not in Charlottesville, North Carolina as I said. We regret the error. We regret all errors. We especially regret ordering the creamed corn last night at dinner.
It is the sad but frequent duty of this weblog to report the passing of another veteran comic book creator. Jack Burnley died Tuesday at the age of 95. He was only active in comics from 1940 until 1947 but during that time, he drew some of the most memorable covers and co-created the popular super-hero, Starman. His renditions of Superman and Batman were among the first, if not the first, to be done outside the control of those characters' creators and his slick, professional approach did much to shape the image of those classic heroes.
Hardin "Jack" Burnley was born in 1911 and unlike many of the early illustrators of comic books, came to the field as an established professional. During the thirties, he worked as a sports cartoonist and illustrator in newspapers, and in the area of advertising specialties. In 1940, he was hired to do material for the World's Fair comic book that DC Comics was producing that year. The cover he drew (seen above) was the first time Superman and Batman ever appeared together in print. He soon began drawing covers for all the DC books, as well as frequent Superman stories to supplement the material being prepared by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. For a time, he pencilled both the Batman and Superman syndicated newspaper strips, and he and writer Gardner Fox also launched their own feature, Starman, who appeared in Adventure Comics.
In 1947, Burnley decided a better living could be made back in newspapers and he returned to that field, working for The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and subsequently for The San Francisco News. He retired from that job in 1976 and moved with his wife Dolores, a former dancer, to Charlottesville, North Carolina Virginia [Correction] in 1981. Jack and Dolores were said to be inseparable in life and their passings showed a similar sense of togetherness. Dolores died in 2003 from complications relating to a broken hip and Jack just died in the same retirement home from the same thing.
I'm afraid I have no personal anecdotes or insights into Mr. Burnley as I never met the man. Always admired his work, though. The guy could really draw and it's a shame that comics lost his talents when they did.
You missed it! But don't worry...Stu's Show, featuring Stu Shostak and Yours Truly discussing Hanna-Barbera and the late Joe Barbera, reruns throughout the next week. Consult this schedule to get the time in your zone when you can listen in.
At this very moment, I'm on Shokus Internet Radio discussing Joe Barbera with my pal, Stu Shostak. If you read this in the next hour, click here to come over and listen in on our conversation.
I'm going to take my life into my hands now and attempt to embed a video from last night's Daily Show With Jon Stewart. This is dangerous because the Comedy Central website was designed by someone who apparently thought it would be hilarious to configure the most confusingly-designed website on the 'net and to include all sorts of complex animations and scripts to muck up our browsers. I always have the feeling when I'm there that I could click on the wrong thing and take the entire network completely off the air.
But it's worth the gamble to make sure you've seen Jon Stewart's interview with William Kristol, perhaps the punditry's leading advocate of the following Foreign Policy: Whenever something's wrong somewhere in the world, we should go in, show everyone that we possess awesome power, reduce them to subservience, make them have free elections ("free" in the sense that they have to elect only the leaders we want them to elect) and then allow American business to go in and exploit the situation. This actually may not be a bad strategy for some nations but Kristol and his crew seem to think it's a universal solution for everything and everywhere...and the fact that it keeps failing and creating more problems for us is a minor quibble.
Somehow, he reminds me of a guy I encountered years ago who thought he was a doctor (the A.M.A. did not) and that there was no ailment in the world that couldn't be cured by eating fish. Some who heeded his advice got better but most got worse and some died. And of course, if they got worse or died, the explanation always was that they simply hadn't eaten enough fish.
You almost have to admire Bill Kristol. If I'd been as utterly wrong as he's been — if I had people on my own side saying we'd screwed up big time — I don't think I'd be rushing onto every TV show that would have me to try and shore up my position. I certainly wouldn't go on with Jon Stewart, in front of his studio audience. I mean, even if there is a defense possible of the Bush plan, that's not the place to make your argument. Still, Kristol shows up on programs like this, smiling the same frozen smile, no matter how he gets slapped around. As you'll see, Stewart slaps him pretty hard. Or at least, you'll see it if the video link works...
My friends Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin are currently in New York, appearing in their musical play, The Big Voice: God or Merman? It's at the Actors' Temple Theatre and it's probably quite wonderful. I haven't seen it but it's won a lot of awards and Jim and Steve are brilliant and I even got an e-mail from a reader of this weblog who went to see it strictly because he recognized Jim's name from previous mentions on this weblog. This reader is a self-admitted homophobe and didn't realize until he got there that the play was about two gay men who sing a lot about their relationship. But he stayed for it and enjoyed it, and that's probably the best review Jim and Steve will ever get.
While in Manhattan, they're keeping a running video diary, excerpts of which are posted on Steve's weblog. They're all interesting and worth your attention but I'll direct you especially to this installment, which finds them taking a tour of Al Hirschfeld's studio. Jim gets overcome by emotion, which is not all that unusual. I mean, Jim cries if you tell him the swallows will be a little late getting back to Capistrano. But it's all quite honest and fascinating and I kinda know how he feels. I had the honor of sitting for a caricature by Mr. Hirschfeld back in 1992 and spent a thrilling afternoon with him in that studio. There's something invigorating about just being in a room where so much great creativity has taken place. You also leave with little NINAs all over your clothes and in your hair.
Nate Stewart is the latest of about ten people who've written, asking me to comment on a new "experiment" in the Archie Comics line...drawing the adventures of Betty and Veronica in a slightly more realistic style. Nate's message says, "Maybe you mentioned this already (if so, please point me toward the correct entry on your blog), but I am curious as to your thoughts on the change. I find it strangely unsettling."
I'm not sure what basis I should use for this judgment. Is it sacrilegious? No...this is Archie Comics, not The Bible. The characters have been changed a hundred different ways over the years to make them more merchandisable. They've long since passed out of the realm of creations with any sort of unified vision or concept.
Is it a good idea from the standpoint of moving product? Probably. The line of comics has gotten so generic and easy to overlook that almost anything that generates some interest is likely not a bad idea. Moreover, the revamp — and I'm going just off the one cover drawing above right that's been released so far — may partially correct a certain problem that the comics have long have, which is that they've become unstuck in time. They're not set in today, as the wardrobe and haircuts of certain characters establish, as well as the fifties approach to dating and male-female relationships. But to try and make the stories relevant to a current audience, the writers keep dropping in references to current celebrities and trends...which means the stories don't take place in the fifties, either. At least with this "new look," we have an Archie-line comic that looks like it was drawn in the year 2006. Perhaps some day, they'll let one good writer take the scripts into into this century, too.
It's the opening of one of my favorite Hanna-Barbera shows, Top Cat. I'll point out two things for those of you who love to fixate on minute, trivial details. In the beginning, when the limousine turns around, you can briefly see that the insignia on the front is "HB." Then near the end, the folks in the camera department got the cel levels screwed up. The fancy-dressed waiter manages to walk between the lunch box and the table on which it has been placed. This mistake not only got on the air but no one ever fixed it.
Still, I thought this was a great series. Obviously, it drew inspiration from the Phil Silvers Bilko show. Some of us have a theory that the original notion was to build the show around Daws Butler's conman voice, which had otherwise found its way into the mouth of Hokey Wolf. It wasn't exactly an impression of Mr. Silvers but it did bring him to mind. And the way the theory goes, at some point in the development process, they chickened out, just as they had with The Flintstones. Daws did the voices of both Fred and Barney in the original presentation that led to that series...and what he did, at the request of Mssrs. Hanna and Barbera, was essentially the same dead-on Gleason/Carney impressions that he'd done for the Warner Brothers "Honeymousers" cartoons.
In the case of the Modern Stone Age Family, the lawyers seem to have gotten too worried about a lawsuit from Gleason and/or the producers of The Honeymooners. Daws's impressions were good enough to sell the series but when it came time to go on the air with it, they replaced his voices with ones that sounded a bit less like Gleason and Carney. The same thing may have happened with Top Cat. They feared litigation so they dumped the Daws impression and brought in someone who didn't sound quite as close to the original.
They did retain Maurice Gosfield, who'd played Doberman on the Bilko show, to play Top Cat's not-dissimilar cohort, Benny the Ball, but no one else from the Phil Silvers program was in evidence. Not long after, Allan Melvin — who'd played Bilko's sidekick, Henshaw — became a mainstay of the H-B voice pool...and Harvey Lembeck, who played Bilko's other sidekick, was heard in a couple of uncredited roles in other Hanna-Barbera cartoons soon after that. Makes you wonder if they first came to the studio's attention because someone was thinking of casting more voices from the Bilko series.
Meanwhile, I should mention one other possible source of inspiration for Top Cat: Joe Barbera, himself. There was a fair amount of Joe in Top Cat, always charming the ladies and buttering people up when he wanted something out of them. Both did it with such style and grace that it usually succeeded. After I started working with Mr. B. and seeing him in action, I decided that at least some of the writers of Top Cat must have had him in mind as a model, at least as much as they thought of Bilko. And it was only after I formulated this observation that I learned that in the original presentation, the name of the series was Top Cats (plural, referring to the whole gang) and their leader was named "J.B." A surviving storyboard for the pilot episode clearly has the name "J.B." written in throughout and replaced with "T.C."
Make of that what you will. And now it's time to click and watch the clip...
Not to take away from tomorrow's extravaganza on Shokus Internet Radio but I did a short interview this afternoon about Joe Barbera with my pal Paul Harris, who's heard on KMOX, the voice of St. Louis. You can hear it over on this page at Paul's site — and while you're there, look around a little. Paul's one of the best interviewers I've found and he has a knack for getting guests who are...well, let's just say they're generally more important and/or interesting than I am. And yes, I know that doesn't exactly thin out the herd much. Anyway, we chatted about the late 'n' great Joe B. for a bit.
I also did two separate interviews for BBC Radio and a couple of others...and I'll tell you how stupid I can be at times. When you do these by-phone interviews, they call you and as you wait to go on, you're usually listening to the station. Waiting for Paul to introduce me, I'm hearing a traffic report that the 270 Southbound is jammed due to heavy holiday traffic and an overturned vehicle...and I think, "Ooh...better stay off the 270 Southbound." Of course, two seconds later, I realize that I'm not likely to be travelling the 270 Southbound in the next hour or so since it's in St. Louis and I'm in Los Angeles. I don't know why I keep falling for this...only that I do.
I will be back on Shokus Internet Radio tomorrow (Wednesday) from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific — that's 7 PM to 9 PM for you Right-Coasters — and the topic will be Joe Barbera! Stu Shostak and I will spend two hours talking about J.B. and taking phone calls and I think Stuart will even be playing some rare Hanna-Barbera records. You can call in and ask a question or just listen. Either way, I assure you you'll get to know more about the extraordinary world of H-B than you ever did before. I may even let Stuart goad me into telling the tale of the birth of Scrappy Doo.
You can listen to Shokus Internet Radio from the comfort of the chair you're sitting in, tuning in via the computer upon which you're reading these words. Just click here to go to the Shokus site and pick an audio browser. And you don't have to do that only when I'm on there. You can listen 24/7. Here's a link to their schedule.
Here are some more remembrances of Joe Barbera, who died yesterday at an alleged 95 years of age. (At least one animation historian is certain Joe was two years older than his official bios claimed.) I suppose we're engaged in two channels of mourning here...one for the man himself and another for the last real "relic" — I don't mean that word in a bad way — of a studio that meant so much to so many cartoon watchers as well as cartoon makers. And maybe we're also mourning the end of an era, as I can't name another living person who was as much a presence in theatrical animation. either. We lost a lot when we lost Joe, as these folks are noting...
Paul Dini likens J.B. to Sinatra...and if you knew how much Paul loves Sinatra, you'd know what a nice, apt comparison that is.
Voice guy Howard Hoffman talks about the honor of meeting and working with Mr. B.
Brent McKee is a child of television and he has a good assessment of Joe's contribution to the medium.
Peter Farnsworth, one of the talents behind Wallace and Gromit, speaks of how Joe Barbera influenced his work.
And Tom Sito, an animator and Past President of The Animation Guild, has his own memories of Joe.
And today's video link comes equipped with another Joe Barbera anecdote. This one is a story that has been told a couple of times in various venues and occasionally mauled or distorted in the process. I've even told it once before on this blog but unlike some others, I got it right. So I'm going to tell it again...
There are two participants in this story, one being — of course — Joe Barbera. The other is Howard Morris, the brilliant comedy actor who is probably best known today for his many years as a sidekick on various Sid Caesar TV shows and for playing the irrepressible Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show. Howie also had quite a career doing voices for cartoon characters including Jughead and several others on the Archie cartoons, Wade Duck on Garfield and Friends, Gopher in the Winnie the Pooh shorts and Beetle Bailey in the cartoon series of the same name. For Hanna-Barbera, he voiced — among many I could name — Atom Ant, Mr. Peebles on Magilla Gorilla, and Breezly Bruin in the "Breezly and Sneezly" cartoons.
Howie's career at H-B ended in 1966 when he had an argument with Joe. What it was about is immaterial now but if you absolutely have to know, I explained it here the last time I told this anecdote. All you need to know is that it ended with Howie telling Joe, "Go f*** yourself!" Once that instruction was delivered, Howard Morris walked out of the building...and forever out of the employment of Hanna-Barbera. Or so he thought at the time.
Around ten years later, to his utter amazement, Howie got hired to do some voices for another H-B project. Given the number of ex-wives he was supporting, he could not afford to turn it down, so he timidly reported for work at the Hanna-Barbera Studio. All through the session, he was nervous about what might happen if he ran into Joe Barbera. He was afraid Joe would slug him or have him removed bodily from the premises...or maybe it would just be a lot of ugly yelling and screaming. He managed to get through the recording without encountering J.B. but as he headed out of the building, he found himself walking down a hallway...with Guess Who coming his way. "Howie," he heard Barbera call out. Howie froze in fear...but Barbera came up to him, gave him a big hug and told him how happy he was to see him again after too long an absence.
"You're not going to throw me out?" he asked Joe.
"Of course not, Howie," Barbera replied. "Why would I throw you out?"
Howie stammered, "Well...the last time I was here, I told you to go f*** yourself."
Barbera grinned and said, "I took your advice."
And now you know one of the reasons that so many people, including those who fought with him and quit and got fired, loved Joe Barbera.
Which brings us to the video clip, which is from the second episode of The Jetsons. It first aired on Sunday evening, September 30 of 1962 and it features the first thing that Howie did for the studio. They cast him as the teen idol of the future, Jet Screamer, and had him introduce the immortal rock 'n' roll classic, "Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah." According to Howie, J.B. personally selected him and directed him, the selection being because Barbera always liked Howie's performances as one of the Haircuts, the singing group on various Sid Caesar programs. (One of those numbers was our video link earlier this year.) Here's Jet...
This article by George Packer is difficult to summarize. It's about a gentleman named David Kilcullen who has an intriguing view of how the Iraq War could and perhaps should be handled.
Tributes to Joe Barbera continue to pop up everywhere. I've done a batch of press interviews this evening, including one for BBC Radio. Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi have some wonderful memories up on their fine blog, Cartoon Brew.
But so far, the best one I've heard of was just related to me in an e-mail from Tim Powers. Over at the Television Academy building in North Hollywood, there's a wall sculpture of Hanna and Barbera. I reported on the unveiling ceremony here. And Tim informs me that people have been going there and leaving candles in front of it...a very nice thought indeed.
Just watched the first episode of Identity, the new NBC game show hosted by Penn Jillette. It's a cute idea — match ten strangers to ten occupations — but not one I can see myself or America sticking with for very long. I'm also getting weary of the repetitive theatrics of these shows...similar sets, similar music, pointless "suspense" pauses before revealing each answer, etc. Penn made his reputation turning the clichés of magic on their derrieres and bringing a modern, sometimes daring approach to a performing art that was getting stale...and here he is, hosting a program that stays firmly on safe, well-trodden ground. Yeah, I know he's just a hired hand — but his presence there only accentuates the problem. Even Penn couldn't bring a fresh approach to this kind of show.
Four more shows air this week, one per night. A teaser during tonight's telecast showed a quick shot of Stan Lee, who is apparently one of the guessable strangers on one episode, his "identity" being "Creator of Spider-Man." Sunday night/Monday morning, GSN reran an episode of To Tell the Truth from 1970 in which much of the panel failed to guess which of three men was Stan Lee. I've known Stan since around that time and it still took me until my third guess.
Well, I'd hoped to get a few more days in our Joe Barbera Tribute before the man left us. But given the reports of his condition the last week or three, it's not surprising and of course, it's better that these things end sooner than later, for the family if not for the deceased.
There will be obits galore (like this one) with the details of his amazing life. I thought I might be able to offer a few personal glimpses and observations. The first time I met Joe Barbera, I had been hired by his studio to write a live-action situation comedy pilot that had nothing to do with animation or cartoons or anything you think of when you hear the name, "Hanna-Barbera." Mr. B. walked into the room looking beleaguered and weary, flopped into a chair and announced, "God, I have so many things to do today. My wife wants me to stop on the way home and look at new carpeting, I think I may need some dental work, my secretary is out sick, we just bought Marineland, I lost one of my credit cards..."
I'm sure I looked startled. "Just bought Marineland?" But that's what the man said. The corporation that then owned H-B had purchased the famed amusement park and was counting on the entertainment wizardry of Joe Barbera to turn a failing operation into a going concern. That almost made sense. What amazed me was how he just lumped it in with picking out carpet samples and other things that were on his mind.
And then, before we could get to the project at hand, he launched into a ten minute explanation of why Marineland was losing money. It had to do with crowds only coming on the weekends...but the place had to be kept open and fully-staffed seven days a week, 365 days a year. Apparently, if you want the seals to do six shows on Saturday, the seals need to do six shows every day. So on a rainy Christmas with no one in the place, someone had to go out and put the seals through six shows to an empty house, and that meant security guards had to be there and electricians and there were other costs that ate up the weekend profits.
The problems as he described them seemed insurmountable — and indeed, "Hanna-Barbera's Marineland" would be a disaster — but that day, I was dazzled by the discussion. He seemed so "on top" of the dilemma and yet, it was in a very human, humble way. Overall, he was so sharp and so engaging and (dare I say it?) so animated that you could instantly see why this man had his name on the outside of the building.
Finally in that first meeting, Mr. B. turned his attention to our show...and I should explain about that nickname. Joe always wanted everyone to call him Joe, just as his longtime partner Bill Hanna told everyone to call him Bill. When I worked there, I felt a bit awkward addressing Mr. Hanna as Bill and even less comfy turning to Mr. Barbera and saying, "Well, Joe..." I think most of us had this problem to some extent...at least, those of us who grew up on Huckleberry Hound and The Flintstones and Top Cat and other seminal Hanna-Barbera programming. It wasn't just that these men were such towering presences in the animation business. It was that they were such a part of our lives, our childhoods...in some cases, the reasons we got into cartoons or creative arts. Which was why a lot of us called him "Mr. B." It was friendly and casual but it didn't bring him down wholly to our level. That was not where we wanted him.
He and Bill were the guys who, once upon a time, had saved the animation industry. Perhaps if they hadn't, someone else would have...but they were the ones who did it. They'd made all those wonderful, Oscar-winning Tom & Jerry cartoons for seventeen years for MGM and then, one day, the studio was closing. All the studios that did that kind of thing were closing and Bill and Joe were, like many talented folks who wanted to work in animation, without a place to do that. Others had done cartoons for TV before them but they were the guys who showed everyone how it could be done as they built a dynasty in that new venue. At first, it was founded on the likes of Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear and The Flintstones — very good shows, I thought. A whole generation of kids loved them and many of us were inspired to want to write or draw, if not for Hanna-Barbera then for someone.
Later, especially after the studio was sold to corporate overlords, Bill and Joe seemed to put profit over pride in craft...but from their point of view, I'm sure it didn't feel that way. Mr. B. sometimes admitted that his legacy included an awful lot of dreadful shows and cut corners, though he defended some (not all) as being as good as network and financial circumstances permitted. More important though was that they kept the doors open, kept the operation operating, kept everyone — including Bill and Joe — working. They were both tireless workers who rarely took a day off, and who never retired. The last day that his health allowed it, Barbera was trying to get another cartoon made. Same with Hanna.
Unfortunately for me, I worked at Hanna-Barbera during a period when Mr. B. was not happy with much of their product and often felt shackled by all the restrictions. Still, just as he was excited at the prospect of rebuilding Marineland, he never seemed to lose his optimism that the next show could be better, that the idea they'd just sold ABC could be the next Scooby Doo. And of course, there was enormous pride in employing so many people who needed a paycheck and wanted to earn it by helping create cartoons. No overview of his life and times would be complete without noting the thousands of writers and artists who might have had to go work at Home Depot had it not been for Hanna and Barbera.
On a personal basis, Joe Barbera was a delight. He was charming and funny and in all the years I was around him, I never saw him lose his enthusiasm for the next series, the next project, the next challenge. The way he and Hanna divvied up the operation, Joe was in charge of selling the shows, Bill was in charge of the details of production. It worked well because Mr. B. was a fabulous salesman. He had good ideas and bad ideas but when he pitched them, they all sounded great.
One day, Barbera was in a network meeting proposing idea after idea for specials, tossing out jokes and concepts and ideas with machine-gun precision. Finally, as the hour grew late, the network guy said, "Okay, we'll buy two hours," and Barbera quickly left. That's how you sell. When they say yes, you get the hell out before they have time to think it over and take it back. So J.B. got the hell out and an hour or two later, the guys from the network called over to H-B and said, "Uh, this is embarrassing and we are going to honor the commitment...but there were so many ideas flying around that room. Just what was it we agreed to buy?" And of course, the punch line was that Barbera wasn't sure, either.
I believe that to be true because I worked with Joe Barbera. Anyone who did would believe it.
As I said, I grew up on the initial product of the H-B empire. When I was hired for the aforementioned live-action show, I had the feeling I'd come in through the wrong door. I wanted to work there but Mr. B. had the belief that "live-action writers" couldn't write animation and since he'd met me as a live-action writer, that's what I was to him. I dazzled him with my knowledge of their early shows and showed him Hanna-Barbera comic books I'd written...but still, I was a live-action writer. I had to go write animation for other studios before he'd consider me to write cartoons for his.
That's how I got in. How I got out was that one day, he and I were debating some silly story point on a new, planned Yogi Bear series. I was right and he was wrong but he was still Joe Barbera. Even when he or his company did me wrong, which they occasionally did and not just to me, he was still Joe Barbera and I liked him so much. I had other offers at the time and I suddenly, right in the middle of our meeting, decided that I should go take one of them; that if I argued much more with Mr. B., right or wrong, something would change for me in how I viewed him and his studio. On the spot, I decided it was better to leave while I was still in love. I've never regretted anything about that decision other than that I didn't make it one show earlier.
It was smart because every time I saw J.B. after that, we were friends and my affection for him and his studio was undiminished. The last few encounters though, were bittersweet. Well into his eighties, he looked sixty and performed with the energy of a man of forty. Then one day not long before Hanna passed, Barbera was suddenly acting his age, whatever it was. The official bios say he was born in 1911 but some animation scholars say it was earlier than that. However old he was, you could tell the mind was as alert as ever but things just weren't connecting as before. Paul Dini and I went to lunch with him and J.B. told us, almost by rote, an anecdote right after we ordered and the exact same anecdote once again just before dessert. Paul and I exchanged uncomfortable glances. Mr. Barbera was on Autoplay, no longer thinking clearly but still determined to be entertaining and to not disappoint his audience.
The twice-told tale was about how they'd sold The Flintstones, arguably their best show and the one that established the studio as the top animation company of its day. He related some of the obstacles they'd faced, including sponsors who questioned whether anyone over the age of twelve would ever watch cartoons. And even if it was all from primal memory, he spoke with great satisfaction of how the whole crew — he made a point of spreading the credit around widely — had triumphed over all the skepticism. They'd not only created a show that was popular then but popular still. They'll be watching The Flintstones when The Jetsons is a period piece.
After the replay of the anecdote, we got to talking about the little side comments that were made by the animals in the show — a bird that functioned as Fred's record player or a monkey that did the dishes for Wilma. Everyone around the table recounted a favorite they recalled and suddenly, Mr. B. started inventing new ones, suggesting animal-based inventions that could be in the next Flintstones cartoon, whenever that occurred. It was a momentary flash of the real Joe Barbera, the creative guy, the man who'd helped launch so many great shows that you could forgive him the non-great ones. He came up with one gag, apparently on the spot, that was so funny that our table burst into laughter that startled other diners. It caused someone in our party to say, "I wish you were producing a new Flintstones show right now."
Mr. Barbera sighed and said, "I wish I was doing a lot of things I used to do." I wish he was still with us, still doing a lot of the things he used to do, too. But wherever he is now, I bet he just sold three shows and a special.
Here's a story about Joe Barbera, followed by an old Kellogg's cereal commercial.
In the mid-seventies, CBS commissioned Hanna-Barbera to do a pilot for a series that, if accepted, would run Monday-Friday early in the morning. At the time, that's when they aired Captain Kangaroo...but the good Captain was holding out for higher pay and the network would need a new show for that slot if they couldn't come to terms. If nothing else, they thought, the fact that they were making a pilot might frighten Bob Keeshan, who owned and played C.K., and cause him to temper his demands.
So Joe Barbera supervised this pilot...and it came out rather well, despite the fact that it was produced for little more than pocket change. A guy in a Yogi Bear costume played a part in it, and there wasn't enough money in the budget to pay to have Daws Butler come in and record two Yogi lines that were called for in the script. So Mr. Barbera, for just the two lines, did the voice of Yogi Bear. He did a pretty good imitation of Daws.
J.B. was proud of the finished product and confident that once the CBS execs saw it, they'd close down the Treasure House, retire Mr. Greenjeans and mount Mr. Moose's head on their wall. Instead of just showing them the finished product, he arranged a small party in a fancy conference room at the facility where the editing was done. He had his favorite restaurant of the moment, the Villa Capri, send over a bartender and a sumptious supper buffet for about ten people. What Barbera was thinking was that he'd wine them and dine them, and then he'd run the pilot for them and they'd be so happy and/or drunk by then, they'd buy it. Not a bad idea but it didn't work out that way.
No one from CBS ever showed. Ten minutes after the scheduled arrival time, someone phoned to say that the network and Bob Keeshan had come to terms...so there was no available time slot for the new series and no rush to view the pilot. The execs there were busy so instead of trekking over to Burbank for Mr. B's little party, they wanted him to just send over the tape. They'd watch it — or not — when things were a bit less hectic.
Barbera told the bartender and the catering folks to go home. Then he called upstairs to an editing room where I was working. I had not worked on the pilot that had just met a probable demise. I was there laboring over another Hanna-Barbera pilot which would eventually meet a similar fate. Its producer and I were in the middle of an editing session when Joe phoned and asked me to please come down to the conference room. When I got there, he told me his pilot had just been shot down without anyone seeing it, and that he needed my help. "You want me to help you on a rewrite?" I asked.
He said, "No, I want you to help me on this dinner." He began loading a plate for me with pasta and veal from the spread. "We're going to eat as much of this as we can, you and me. And then we'll pack up what's left and you can take it home, stick it in your freezer for a few months and then throw it out when it gets too old." I guess I had a sad look on my face because he added, "Don't be down. This is a celebration!"
"A celebration? Your pilot didn't sell," I reminded him. "Just what is it you're celebrating?"
Joe picked up a bottle of wine, took a long swig and replied, "I'm celebrating that I'm not going to have to go around for the rest of my life with people pointing at me and saying, 'That's the man who got them to cancel Captain Kangaroo!' Here — have a canneloni."
That's today's Joe Barbera story. Now, here's Yogi Bear (with his real voice, the voice of Daws Butler) selling cereal...
Lawrence O'Donnell on the Iraq Study Group report. Briefly, he believes that we're going to have to surrender in Iraq and that the report was a decent plan to do that without calling it "surrender." Critics like Rush Limbaugh, he says, are spoiling that option by identifying it as surrender.
The L.A. Times runs a nice obit on Chris Hayward, the comedy/animation writer who passed away almost a month ago. (Here's a link to what I posted then.)
Our video links here the next few days will be a tribute to Joe Barbera, and I'll try to tell you a few stories about this extraordinary man and perhaps explain what his work has meant to me. We kick off with the original opening to my first favorite cartoon show, Huckleberry Hound, which debuted in October of 1958. It was the second Hanna-Barbera series, following hot on the heels of Ruff & Reddy, which I liked but not as much as I liked Huckleberry Hound. Kellogg's funded this show and the opening titles featured the rooster from the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box dancing around a circus arena. Later, this opening was remade with Huck himself going through the same motions, and that's the one most of you probably recall.
The Huck Hound show featured clever scripts, wonderful voice work by Daws Butler and Don Messick, and resourceful animation...which is a way to saying that a lot of things didn't move very much on the screen but you hardly noticed. This footage was shot in color but I kind of like watching it here in black-and-white because that's the way I originally viewed it on the TV in my parents' living room. It ran Tuesday evenings at 7 PM on KTTV, Channel 11 in Los Angeles and I could hardly wait from one week to the next.
Shortly after the show debuted, my mother took me back East for a trip to New York and Hartford to see a little of America and to meet some of my relatives. I was reluctant to go because they might not have Huckleberry Hound back there and I couldn't miss an episode now, could I? My father, eager to please, phoned his brother Seymour in New York and his brother Irving in Connecticut and had them check their local TV Guides. Only when I was assured they had Huckleberry Hound in those remote locales did I consent to get on the plane.
After several days in Manhattan — where I watched Huck and his friends on the TV in our room at the Taft Hotel on Seventh Avenue at Fiftieth — we were going to take a train to Hartford. In a little newsstand in a snack bar in Penn Station, I found a comic book rack and on it was the first Huckleberry Hound comic book from Dell. This was a wonderful thing, of course, and it was promptly purchased and read over and over and over. It had superb art by a man I would later (much later) learn was named Harvey Eisenberg and it had stories adapted from episodes I had recently seen on TV. It was Heaven but I was worried: Was this something they only had in New York? And if it was, how could I get my parents to move there before I missed another issue? Happily, it turned out that no relocation was necessary. When we got back to Los Angeles, they had Huckleberry Hound comic books there, too.
So here's the opening to Huck's show. I love this bit of animation and every bit of the tune except for the part where they pretend "get yourselves all set" rhymes with "TV set." It bothered me when I was six, too. When I sang the song, I changed it to "It's a certain bet / You'll watch your TV set..." and I wondered why if I could think of that at my age, the guy who wrote the song couldn't. Twenty-some-odd years later when I worked for him, I asked Mr. Barbera about it. He laughed and said, "Bill wrote that line. Go upstairs and tell him we have to go back and fix it." I never did that but I should have.
Frederick W. Kagan makes the case that victory is still possible in Iraq. I'm a little fuzzy on the current definition of what will constitute "victory" in Iraq and I get the feeling I'm not alone. In any case, that article may tell us what the White House has in mind.
We recently plugged one of the new Superman movie DVDs from Warner Home Video. Adrian Hickman informs me that some of the discs that have been issued have flaws and that the company is making replacement discs available. I won't pretend to have all the details but if you read this post and this one over at the Digital Bits website, you should have all the info. Don't thank me. Thank Adrian.
I have in the past linked to several of the Private Snafu cartoons produced for the U.S. Army during World War II, primarily by the same folks making the Warner Brothers cartoons. Less well known is that that studio (Leon Schlesinger's company) also did a few shorts in a series for the U.S. Navy. It featured a a sailor named Mr. Hook and his voice was supplied by Arthur Lake, who was then appearing on-screen and on radio as Dagwood Bumstead in the Blondie series. Very little is known about the Hook series other than that Hank Ketcham, who later created the Dennis the Menace newspaper strip, was among the writers.
There were three or four Hook cartoons made. This one is called Tokyo Woes and it reportedly was directed by Bob Clampett, though I don't see a lot of his style evident in it. Apart from Hook, all the male voices are Mel Blanc, including the cameo of the Sad Sack character that Mel was then performing on radio. The female voice appears to be that of Sara Berner.
I guess I should warn you before you click that this is an extremely racist, Japanese-hating cartoon. Okay, you've been warned. Go ahead and click.
A Charlie Brown Christmas airs again on Sunday evening. Here's a pretty good article about its making, including chats with Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez.
Here are a few messages that seem like they oughta be up here. This first one is from Daniel Klos...
I'm sure others have already written in to tell you this, but just in case they haven't, the new 14-disc Superman Ultimate DVD Collection that came out last month from Warner Bros. has all 17 Fleischer cartoons on it, completely restored. I've bought many, many versions of these cartoons over the years on DVD and VHS trying to get the cleanest, most pristine prints I could find, but the ones on this DVD set are the best I have seen hands down. (Also the best I've heard. Several collections have tried to update these things with upgraded sound effects and the results were less than desired)
No one else wrote to tell me that so I'm glad you did. If someone wants to order that set, here's an Amazon link. Meanwhile, Dan O'Shannon sent me a message devoid of capital letters...
a little while ago, you posted a betty boop cartoon in which she impersonates maurice chevalier, and you posited that doing chevalier was mandatory for all performers at paramount (just ask the marx brothers). i smiled at the thought, but woke up today with a chilling realization: you may be right. check out jerry lewis in "the stooge" (paramount, 1952). it's the scene where dean's too drunk to go on stage so jerry goes up by himself. sure enough: chevalier. i'm beginning to think that there are more chevalier impersonations on film than there is actual film of chevalier.
I once had an interesting discussion with an impressionist friend about stars he called "gimme impressions." These were people who had one or two traits so distinctive that if you could approximate them — fairly easy to do — then onlookers would recognize who you were doing and it really didn't matter if the impression was any good at all. I've seen/heard people do Groucho with no attempt to approximate his voice or rhythms. The "impression" is just to hunch over, pantomime a cigar and maybe try to move one's eyebrows up and down. I suspect Chevalier would fall into the same category: You stick out your lower lip, mime a straw hat and attempt any sort of French accent and...voila! Chevalier! That's probably why he was so mimicked...but it does seem to also have been some sort of Paramount Pictures corporate policy.
This last one's from Bart Lidofsky...
I have deja vu about this, but, just in case: I used to have a talent (well, a skill, since it required actually using it to keep it up). I would be able to see about 10-15 minutes of a movie, and I could figure out the year it was made, plus or minus one year. There were many things I looked at for clues. Period pieces, of course, were harder (the only movie that I can recall getting really wrong was when I first saw Privilege; it was so dead on with a lot of its predictions, including style, that I thought it was made in 1972 or 1973 instead of 1967).
Which brings me to my point. For pretty much all other movies, one major clue to movies made before 1969 or after 1971 was the attitude the movie showed towards its female characters. It is difficult for those who were not news/media aware during those years (and I am certain that I am merely jogging your memory rather than informing you) how radically societal attitudes towards women were altered during that short period of time. I've since done more research, but the short version is that attitudes that were formed over thousands of years for very good and logical reasons became obsolete starting with the Industrial Revolution (and one can trace the codifying of a lot of laws in the West locking women's positions in society to technological advances which removed physical necessities for this). However, the inflation of the mid-late 60's, making two-income families more of a requirement than a luxury for the middle class, brought home that many of the attitudes in our society towards women made no sense when measured against reality.
That Girl is a wonderful example of this; as a show about a single woman during the time that the attitudes were beginning to change, it reflected some of those changes, as the series went on (I Dream of Jeannie did similar things, but the basis of the show made the changes much more uncomfortable for the comedy). Both shows ended by the time that the change had been more or less set into society; it was no coincidence.
One of the first people I worked with in the TV business was a delightful gent named Jerry Davis who, among his many other credits, produced That Girl. He used to say that two things made that show work. One was Marlo Thomas because everyone at ABC was convinced Marlo Thomas could be a star and so they pushed the series in every way possible. The other was the timing. Two years earlier, it would never have gone. But then one day, someone at a major ad agency wrote a memo that said that the thing America was yearning to see, and wasn't yet getting on their teevees, was "young women controlling their own lives." It wasn't a matter of the characters being powerful — obviously, Samantha on Bewitched (which Jerry had produced before That Girl) and Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie were powerful...but they functioned in relation to a male. Jeannie just wanted to serve her master, Tony. Samantha just wanted to have a "normal" marriage with her mate, Darren.
The key to That Girl was that Marlo's character didn't want to just marry Donald. She didn't rule that out but there were other things that mattered to her. Every network around that time did a couple of pilots that aspired to depict women controlling their lives but, according to Jerry, the other ones all chickened out and in some way made the female an appendage of a male. She was making decisions with "him" keeping an eye on her.
I don't think the old That Girl episodes hold up all that well. There are some wonderful comedy bits and performers in them but we've evolved so far beyond that era and its view of women. You're right though that it was a great marker of its time.
Before I forget: Those of you interested in the music changes made on reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati can find out everything you want to know on this page. Thanks to John Schrank for the link.
Here's another one of those Superman cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer studio. This one is called Volcano and it was released on July 10, 1942.
Superman/Clark Kent doesn't have many lines but the ones he has sure don't sound like Bud Collyer to me. The narrator is said to be a gentleman named George Lowther, who also wrote and directed the Superman radio show at times. He also authored a very nice book about the character in 1942 and is said to have contributed a number of key ideas to the Superman legend. And that's about all I know so you might as well go ahead and click. If you need me, you know where I'll be.
One of my favorite places on this planet is the tourist attraction in Los Angeles known as Farmers Market. My parents took me there when I was a toddler. In fact, I have a fuzzy but certain memory of being taken along to a baseball game at Gilmore Field, right next door to the Market, when the Hollywood Stars played there. This was before L.A. had a major league team, though come to think of it, there have been many years since the Dodgers moved here when that still seemed to be the case. In any event, the Stars played their last game there in '57 when I was five and I remember being to at least one of them.
Everything in that area then was Gilmore: Gilmore Bank, Gilmore Field, Gilmore Stadium, Gilmore gas station, etc. The Gilmore Bank is still there, though in another building. In the photo above, if you look at the far right, you can see the screen of the now-extinct Gilmore Drive-In where around 1959, I squirmed through a double-feature of Onionhead and Once Upon a Horse. Onionhead was the movie that convinced Andy Griffith to get into television and Once Upon a Horse was the movie that proved Rowan and Martin were not the new Martin and Lewis. Then as now, the Gilmore Company owned and operated the wonderful amalgam of merchants, grocers and eateries that is Farmers Market.
I remember the way Farmers Market looked when I was a kid. Parts of it have been torn down since then but the portions that remain don't look all that much different. Or to put it another way, those sections have probably changed less than almost any other well-travelled part of Los Angeles. I wrote a few other thoughts about it in this post last September...and I even wrote them sitting at a table at Farmers Market.
If any of my friends are as fascinated by the place as I am, they might want to check out the new Farmers Market website. It's just been remodelled and there's a very nice History section with photos aplenty. And now that I've gotten to thinking about it, I have a yearning to dine there. (It wasn't the main reason I picked out the home I now live in, which is within walking distance, but it was a contributing factor.) I think I'll post a link to an article and a link to a video and then take a hike over there for supper. See ya later.
I fixed the link in the post before last but I fixed it wrong. I think I've now fixed it right. And trust me, I wasn't trying to have to make corrections on a post about corrections.
In the past, I've posted links to a couple of the Superman cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer Studio, and later (after Max got kicked out of his own studio) by its successor in interest, Famous Studios. Today, we go back to the first in the series, which was just called Superman when it was produced by Max's operation and released September 26, 1941. The 8,000 different companies that have since put it out on home video have occasionally referred to it as The Mad Scientist but as you'll see, that title appears nowhere on the film.
Bud Collyer did Superman's voice in this one, Joan Alexander voiced Lois, Jack Mercer was the villain and I'm not sure who did the other voices. Perry White sounds a little like Jackson Beck.
This is a stunning work of animation and it runs a little over ten minutes. I'm told that at the time it came out, it was the most expensive non-Disney cartoon short ever made. It looks it. The Fleischer artists did a good job of capturing Joe Shuster's earthy drawing style and giving weight and form and shadow to his characters. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of "Best Short Subject (Cartoon)" but that's not as impressive as it sounds. Back then, each of the major studios had the clout to get at least one of its shorts nominated so it was probably just a matter of Paramount picking it as the short they wanted to have receive a nomination. Still, they seem to have recognized its excellence...or maybe it was just its price. Either way, you get to watch it for nothing...
Earlier today, I listed some of the men who drew comic books in the forties (or before) who are still with us and, in most cases, still active in the industry. I hadn't intended my list to pass for complete, and adding the following still won't make it complete but here are some more, along with the year in which I believe they did their first comic book or comic strip work: Sam Glanzman (1939), Joe Giella (1945), Al Jaffee (1942), Al Feldstein (1947), John Cassone (1940), Roger Armstrong (1940), Dan Spiegle (1949), Jerry Grandenetti (1946), Sy Barry (1945), Joe Edwards (1942), Ric Estrada (1949), Frank Frazetta (1944), Al Williamson (1948), Harry Harrison (1947), Bill Lignante (1949) and Lee Ames (1940).
And of course, once you get into the early fifties, there are a lot more: Steve Ditko (1953), Jack Davis (1950), Ramona Fradon (1950), Dick Giordano (1951), Mike Esposito (1952), Angelo Torres (1954), Mort Drucker (1951) and a number of others. It's kind of amazing to realize that the first issue of Mad was published almost 55 years ago and of the four stories in that first issue, three were drawn by men who are still around.
Gordon Kent and others are writing to ask if I have any personal anecdotes about Peter Boyle, the fine actor who has died at the age of 71. I have maybe a fourth of one. I always thought Mr. Boyle was a fine actor, starting with the film in which most of us first heard of him, Joe. It was a clumsy, sometimes tasteless effort but amazingly, Boyle was quite wonderful in it and its story, which was appallingly relevant in 1970, may be even more pertinent today. Or maybe not, I don't know. I'd have to watch it again.
My one encounter with the man came at the 100th birthday party for the great ventriloquist, Señor Wences in 1996. I was talking with the Guest of Honor and with another great voice thrower, Paul Winchell, who was then a spry 74 years young. Boyle came over to say goodnight to the Señor and somehow, he and I got to talking about what guys like that meant to our childhoods. I don't remember the words but the jist of it was how wonderful it was that Wences and Winchell had lived long enough to be properly honored and to maybe, just maybe appreciate the impact of their work on others. It's a bit chilling to recall the discussion today and to realize that Boyle did not even make it to the age Paul was on that evening. You hope he realized how much his work — Peter Boyle's, I mean — had meant to so many others.
If ten minutes with him is any indication, he was a crusty but sincere man, very devoted to his work. I saw an interview with him not longer after and was struck by how serious he was about acting...serious enough to give it his all but not so serious that it skewed out of proportion to other things in the world. The obits I'm seeing now on the Internet are short and obviously prepared in a hurry...but if you come across a longer one that goes into depth about his life, and about how he gave up life in a monastery for what some would view as the extreme opposite, give it a read.
That said, the following clip does not represent the extent of Peter Boyle's acting prowess or the seriousness with which he approached his work. But it sure is funny.
Paul Krugman on "The Great Wealth Transfer." Quick summary: Yes, the economy has improved in some ways over the last few years...but George W. Bush and his crowd have made certain that it only improved for the super-rich, even at the expense of anyone below that level.
This runs three and a half minutes. It's one of the trailers (the longest one I know of) for one of my favorite movies, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. If you're a fan of this film, you might be delighted to know that I have a little section of this website where I've posted a few things about the picture. It's over here. Get to clicking.
Every time I post an obit for someone like Martin Nodell, as I had to do the other day, I read messages from people lamenting how our heritage is slipping away...how the founders of the comic book industry are almost all gone. This is true and, of course, there's nothing that can be done about it, and we need to honor and interview these folks while they're still with us. This requires that we remember which ones are. This morning in an obit for his father in the L.A. Times, Marty Nodell's son Spencer says, "My dad is one of the last of the Golden Age artists. Guys like [Superman creators Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster, [Batman creator] Bob Kane, they've all passed. Jerry Robinson [co-creator of the Joker] and [Batman artist] Sheldon Moldoff are still with us, but otherwise they're all gone."
Well, not quite. Paul Norris, who co-created Aquaman, is still with us at the age of 92. George Tuska, who was drawing for Will Eisner's shop in 1939 would certainly fit anyone's definition of a Golden Age artist. He's still around at the age of 90. Nick Cardy, who started with Eisner at the same time, is a much younger man of 85.
Creig Flessel, who was drawing the covers of Detective Comics before Batman was in the book is alive at age 94. Jim Mooney, who drew his first comic book in 1941, is a mere 87 years of age. Joe Simon, who has a pretty impressive list of co-creations to his credit including Captain America, is 93. He started in comics in 1938. Joe Kubert, who's 80 years old, did his first comic book work in 1942.
Irwin Hasen is 88 and he started drawing comics in 1940. His occasional partner Bob Oksner is two years older and he started doing comics about the same time. So did Bob Fujitani, who's 86. Bob Lubbers (age 84) was illustrating for funnybooks in 1942. Carmine Infantino is 81 and he was drawing comics before 1941.
There are others I could add to the list...not many, sad to say, but there are others. Stan Lee wasn't an artist but he was an important figure of that era and he's not only going strong...at his current rate, he's going to outlive all of us.
Then you have a number of folks who are still with us who did their first comic book work later in the forties. Here are ten names and the years in which they first worked in comics: Russ Heath (1947), Gene Colan (1944), Dick Ayers (1947), Al Plastino (1948), Murphy Anderson (1947), Lew Sayre Schwartz (1948), John Romita (1949), Joe Sinnott (1949), John Severin (1947) and Will Elder (1947).
The point, of course, is not that we have a whole lot of these guys left...and Spencer Nodell, mourning his dad, can hardly be faulted for a bit of exaggeration at our collective loss. It's just that we need to treasure the pioneers of comics now, while we can, and not forget that they're here. It also still amazes me when someone suggests to a convention organizer that they invite some 91-year-old comic book legend as a guest and the organizer says, "Oh, my list is kinda full this year. I'll invite him next year...or maybe the year after." Let's not bury an entire generation before we have to.
And it's a special bonus because I didn't write any of it. It's another thirteen minutes of old cereal commercials for those of us who usually liked the commercials more than the cereal. (Warning: This package contains some repeats from others to which we've recently linked.) Among those in this collection, you'll find a couple of Alpha Bits spots with Jack E. Leonard voicing his mailman character, a Crispy Critters commercial with Sheldon Leonard as the voice of Linus the Lion-Hearted, Ex-pugilist Rocky Graziano as a sea captain selling Post Raisin Bran, a Sugar Bear ad with Gerry Matthews as the voice of the bear and Ruth Buzzi as Granny Goodwitch, Tony the Tiger as voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft, and a lot of commercials that suggest that if you eat Post Sugar Crisp, you can beat up anyone you want to beat up.
Somewhere in there, there's a spot with Euell Gibbons, a "naturalist" who was very famous for a brief time, mostly in jokes that appeared in Johnny Carson monologues. Mr. Gibbons used to advocate the eating of odd (to some) plants and berries that could be found in the wild and was known to take lunch by nibbling away in public parks. For some reason, some ad agency thought he'd be a dandy person to be the spokesperson for Post Grape Nuts...and he may have been, I don't know. All I know is that I thought it made the notion of eating that cereal sound like eating tree bark and I always wondered why they thought that was a good idea.
There are a lot of polls out about potential presidential nominees in 2008, telling you that Hillary Clinton has X% support while Barack Obama has Y% and John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are battling for Z%. I not only think these polls are meaningless this early, I think they're especially meaningless with candidates who haven't indicated they're likely to run. A lot of people don't want to fall in love with someone they can't have. I think if Al Gore came out and said, "I'm running for president and I'm going to do everything I can to take back the White House for the Democrats," his numbers among Democrats would go way up.
Polls say that Clinton and McCain are the front-runners for their respective parties' nominations. Okay, that makes sense. They're also the two people perceived as most likely to make the effort, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Maybe this is all stating the obvious on my part because I keep reading polls that say that, to cite one recent one, Hillary is favored by 28% of self-identified Democrats, whereas Gore is only favored by 13%. Uh, maybe that's because Gore keeps acting like he isn't running and Hillary keeps acting like she is. And maybe that's all it means.
The Fox Home Video people have already issued all 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends in five volumes of DVDs. Now, they're going back and issuing single DVDs, each holding a batch of selected episodes. The first one is out now, I'm told. It's called Garfield and Friends: Behind the Scenes and it spotlights cartoons in which the lasagna-gorging cat explained to viewers how a cartoon show is assembled, or otherwise lectured on the vital issues of the day. There are fifteen of them included. These were among the episodes that the crew on the show liked the most and certain folks at CBS liked the least, so that says something for them.
You can order it two ways, assuming you want to order it at all. There's the plain, old fashioned DVD for thirteen bucks at Amazon, and they also have the deluxe model for eighteen bucks. The deluxe model is the same DVD but it includes a Garfield "mini beanie" plush toy that I just know you can't live without. A similar DVD package featuring Odie will follow shortly...and maybe someday, Mark will get his royalty payments, although I fear they're going to pay me off in those little dolls.
What do you do if you backed the Iraq War and things aren't turning out there the way you confidently predicted? Why, you blame the media, of course. They're the ones spreading all those questionable stories about car bombings in Baghdad and killings in the streets. Eric Boehlert discusses this spin on reality.
We're hearing that it's finally going to happen: A DVD release of WKRP in Cincinnati. But as we've warned here before, they will not be as the shows originally aired. The disc jockeys in the popular sitcom often played records and at the time the shows were produced, it didn't cost that much for the producers to use real records. So they did. Then later, when the shows got to the land of syndicated reruns, the rates had changed and it cost more to leave those real records in. So they didn't. Other, generic songs were substituted...and where there were lines of dialogue referencing the now-excised tunes, they either (a) left the lines in so they made no sense or (b) had someone try to imitate the actors and redub new dialogue. Neither worked all that well.
I'm told a first season DVD set will be out next Spring and that a number of songs will be changed. I'm not sure if that means these are the syndicated prints or if they're redoing the replacements. Either way, it's something of a shame...though I suppose an altered collection is better than no collection at all.
The last time we discussed this here, it sent another blogging friend into a tirade, the jist of which was, "How dare those greedy record owners try to hold up the DVD company for money, thereby making it impossible for the folks who made the WKRP shows to market them in their original form?" That may be the case or it may be that the company that now controls WKRP in Cincinnati (which is not the company that made them in the first place) is just being penurious. That has been known to happen, too. Unless you're privvy to the negotiations, you don't know.
If you've been watching Late Night With Conan O'Brien, you're already familiar with their great new website. If you're not, here's the story of how it came to be...and a direct link to www.hornymanatee.com.
This is another Garfield cartoon that I wrote and which shouldn't be up on YouTube. It's called Skyway Robbery and it features a recurring conman character named Mr. Swindler who was in four or five episodes.
Interesting story how we cast his voice. I decided to introduce a larcenous scam artist who'd pop up every few weeks to try and cheat Garfield's owner Jon out of his hard-earned mazuma. To play the role, I cast a wonderful character actor named Jesse White. Most people remember him as the Maytag Repairman in the commercials but most of the jobs Jesse got during his long, rich career had him playing agents and con-artists and crooked salesmen, and I thought he'd be perfect. And if we'd gotten him five years earlier, he probably would have been.
But Jesse was old and Jesse was ill, and it just broke your heart. He simply wasn't up to the job. The recording session took a long time and even then, what resulted was barely satisfactory. I decided then and there that that particular conman character wasn't coming back and that I'd create a new one and find a different actor to play him. About two minutes after Jesse White left, I was walking into the waiting room at the recording studio, wondering who I might get for the job when I noticed an actor sitting there. It was Carl Ballantine and he was waiting to do a radio commercial in one of the other studios.
You may know Carl Ballantine from his role on McHale's Navy. You may know him from one of his hundreds of other TV and motion picture appearances. You may even know him as The Amazing Ballantine, performer of the lamest, funniest magic act in the world. I know him from all those and from appearing in the 1971 stage revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. It was the most hysterical, magical thing I've ever seen in a theater and Ballantine was one of the reasons. (I wrote about this production here and here.)
So that day at Buzzy's Recording Studio, I saw Carl sitting there, said the word "perfect" aloud...and he soon became Mr. Swindler. I thought he was quite wonderful in the role and he was a joy to work with. One of the reasons I kept bringing Swindler back was so that I could keep bringing Ballantine back.
Our cartoon today was his second appearance. When I first put up a website, I had a number of requests to post one of my cartoon scripts so people could see what they look like. I picked Skyway Robbery and you can read it over here.
In addition to Carl, the voice cast consisted of Lorenzo Music as the cat, Thom Huge as Jon, and Gregg Berger as Odie and everyone else. You may click when ready. It runs about six and a half minutes.
Congrats and sighs of relief to my longtime friend (and one of the best artists in the realm of fantasy), Bill Stout. Bill has just come through a nasty brush with cancer and he reports on his weblog that they got it all. In fact, his weblog has a very candid, chilling diary of his experiences. The accounts may be too raw for some people but if you want to brave it, go to this page, locate the entry for November 16 and then read sequentially upwards to the happy ending. I'm horrified by what he's been through but glad we'll have Stout around for a long time.
And good thoughts go out to a great veteran comic book writer — the man who gave us The Doom Patrol, Deadman, Stanley and His Monster and so many more. Arnold Drake has been hospitalized with a couple of broken bones and I'm told he's doing well. I'll call him tomorrow and try to get you all a more complete report, as well as an address for Get Well wishes.
My Congressman at work. I don't know why more people aren't outraged at evidence that some companies have taken tax money for war-related work, gouged us on the amounts and then either not done the work or done a slipshod job. Shouldn't these be the kind of scandals that unite us all? Is there anyone who doesn't think this kind of thing is shameful?
Here's a new CBS poll on Bush and Iraq, and here's Mark baffled about something.
21% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush has done handling Iraq, as opposed to 75% who disapprove.
31% of Americans approve of Bush's overall job performance, as opposed to 63% who disapprove.
So, uh, what's on the minds of those people who think he's done a rotten job with Iraq but still think he's been a good president?
I'm serious with this question...well, sort of serious. I can understand thinking Bush has botched the war badly. Actually, I can understand that from two fronts: I can understand thinking he made a colossal mistake taking us to war in the first place and I can understand believing the war was the right move but that it's been lost by bad strategizing and/or not committing sufficient troop strength and/or mishandling the occupation. I can even understand (again, sort of) believing that Bush has made all (or mostly) the right decisions and that he's been a good Chief Exec. I don't agree, of course, but
But this presidency has become all about the war. It overwhelmingly dominates every poll about what Americans think is important and it impacts the runner-up answers like The Economy and Immigration and Combatting Terrorism, and probably not in a good way. How does someone disapprove of the war but approve of the guy who started it and ran it? I mean, even if you think Donald Rumsfeld's the one who screwed up, Bush is the guy who picked Rumsfeld, okayed everything he did and insisted, long after members of their own party were calling for the man's head, in keeping him on.
Now, it may be that the poll is just full of manure...but I don't think that's it because there's a similar gap in all the polls. My suspicion is roughly as follows: There are, of course, a lot of people out there who believe in the over-all, non-Iraq goals of the Republican Party. They've lost faith in Bush himself and they wish we'd never invaded Iraq and could get out without it helping the Democrats. When they're asked about the war, they don't want to encourage its continuance so they say no, they don't approve of the handling of the war. But when they're asked about Bush, they don't want to repudiate the domestic issues he seemed to stand for. They still think a G.O.P. in the White House is the ticket to lower taxes, banning abortion, more God in public settings, no gay marriages, etc., so they answer that they approve of Bush. But it's not him they like. They just don't want to have him seen as a failed president because some of that failure will rub off on their non-Iraq agenda.
Does that make any sense? Or is there some other explanation I'm missing here?
Are there people reading this who disapprove of Bush's handling of the war but approve of his over-all presidency? Would one of them like to send me a message I can post here explaining this? I'm really curious.
The New York Times has corrected its obit on Sid Raymond. They now quote his favorite joke in a way that makes sense. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this earlier item on this site.) Naturally, we would like to take credit for this...so we will.
The Times credits Sid as having provided the voices of the Terrytoons magpies, Heckle and Jeckle, and several folks have written to ask me if this was so. Yes, it is was...briefly. There are one or two cartoons in which Raymond appears to have done the voice of Heckle and/or Jeckle.
I say "appears" because those of us who profess to know a lot about animation voice work are all still a bit puzzled by the credits for many films that came out of Paul Terry's studio. A gentleman named Tom Morrison, who also worked there as a storyman, did an awful lot of voices. So did a New York based singer named Roy Halee. The two of them swapped off certain voices from time to time. Both were Mighty Mouse at different times, occasionally in the same cartoon — Halee singing, Morrison speaking. Sometimes, one of them did Heckle and Jeckle, sometimes the other did the magpies and sometimes they split the chores. There are also other, unidentifiable voices in Terrytoons, some of which sound like the director grabbed a janitor and stuck him in front of a microphone.
I'm glad someone was skeptical about Sid Raymond's credit. There's a lot of misinformation out there about the voices on these cartoons. Many sources say that character actor Ned Sparks was the voice of Heckle and Jeckle at one point. As far as I know, this is wrong. Impressions of Mr. Sparks turn up in a lot of cartoons produced in this country in the thirties and forties but I don't think he ever actually did animation voice work. Comedian Dayton Allen voiced the magpies a few times in the fifties, including redubbing old footage to serve as interstitial segments on the CBS TV series, but he's often credited as if he did all the voices in all their cartoons. Also, some sources say that Roy Halee went from voicing Mighty Mouse and the magpies to producing records by popular recording artists, including Simon and Garfunkel, The Lovin' Spoonful and Bob Dylan. Actually, Roy Halee Senior was a singer and cartoon voice and his son, Roy Halee Junior, became a top record producer.
Incidentally — getting back to the first topic for a moment — isn't it interesting that the Times, which published many assertions about Whitewater, and later about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, has never corrected those stories...but someone there was conscientious enough to fix Sid Raymond's joke?
Here's another cartoon I wrote which should not be on YouTube and which the legal folks will soon have removed. But in the meantime, I wrote it. I can link to it. I can even tell you a little story about it.
I don't think it happens as much these days but those of us who do cartoons have been occasionally pressured, in much the same way a guy with a gun pressures you to hand over your wallet, to include certain "social messages" into our work. There's nothing wrong with trying to include a benevolent moral in a cartoon if — and here come a couple of big IFs — it doesn't despoil the entertainment value and it can be done without a condescending, lecturing tone...and especially IF the message is a sound one.
For a time in the eighties, a lot of us had to include a message with which I did not agree. It was, basically, that the group was always right; that one should avoid the anti-social behavior of not going along with what everyone else thought. This was embedded in many cartoon shows in many ways. On a show I launched called Dungeons and Dragons (the DVD of which is just now being released), I had to make one of the kids a sour presence who always wanted to go in a different direction from all the others. The same network also had a show called The Get-Along Gang, which was about a batch of cute, furry animals who always had to be reminded to get along with the gang. There were other examples.
I thought this was a foolish value to be teaching children. So did the programming folks at the network but it was forced upon them by outside interests. Later, when I did the Garfield and Friends show, things had changed and I not only didn't have to include that message, I could attack it...as we did in this U.S. Acres cartoon. U.S. Acres was Jim Davis's other newspaper strip — the one he retired because it was "only" in 300 papers...an impressive number for anyone but the creator of Garfield. In some other countries, the strip was called Orson's Farm so the cartoons we did were filmed with both title cards, and today's video clip has an Orson's Farm logo on it.
They all took place on a farm where Orson the Pig, Roy Rooster, Wade the Cowardly Duck and others cavorted. In the episode you're about to view (assuming the link is still good and you click on it), the voices of Orson and the agent were done by Gregg Berger, who I should mention also had a small role in the movie I saw last night. Thom Huge was Roy Rooster and the late, great Howie Morris supplied the sound of Wade Duck. All three, with their voices sped a la Bagdasarian, spoke for The Buddy Bears, three extremely annoying characters who popped up every now and then on the Garfield show singing their little tune which was written by Yours Truly and Ed Bogas. Which brings us to the cartoon entitled Big Bad Buddy Bird...
In 1967, two reporters — one of them, a gent named Murray Fromson — filed stories which quoted an anonymous "senior American general" about how badly the war in Vietnam was going for the U.S. The article enraged the White House and the Pentagon, and I seem to recall a lot of their supporters insisting that no general would say such a thing; that the reporters had to have made it all up. Today in the New York Times, in this article, Fromson reveals the name of his source. And it really doesn't matter who it was...only that he appears to have really had one.
I'm just back from a screening of Dreamgirls, which I guess is opening in most of the country on Christmas Day. Actually, the movie ended at 9:00 but we had to sit through the end credits, which ran longer than some studio deals I've had.
The cinematography and art direction are great. The performances — especially Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson — are great. The editing, the orchestrations, the mixing...all the technical details are great, and you probably smell the "but" coming so here it is: But I didn't like the movie very much. I know it'll probably take in serious megabucks. It's certainly the one everyone in Hollywood wants to see. (We were supposed to go to a screening last night but it and all the others that had been scheduled were overbooked, and a nice lady at Paramount switched us to tonight and one of several hurriedly-added additional showings. The fact that people in L.A. are eager for it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be storming the cineplexes in Wyoming...but it sure doesn't hurt.)
Why didn't I have a better time? Same reason I didn't like the original musical back in the mid-eighties: Don't like most of the songs, don't care about most of the people. In case you don't know, this is basically the story of Berry Gordy's Motown Records empire and more specifically of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but with the names and some details changed. I might have been interested in a story about how the group went from obscurity to stardom but that all pretty much happens in the first half hour, and it happens via cynical means that have very little to do with them being deserving talents...or even having any musical integrity. The Gordy clone demotes the lead singer with the thrilling voice to backup status, elevates a blander vocalist to sing lead and otherwise takes the guts out of their music...then he bribes a lot of disc jockeys to play their records and otherwise buys their success.
From then on, it's a film about a bunch of successful people squabbling over who's sleeping with who and getting hurt by the machinations of the guy who manipulated their way into stardom in the first place. The spine of the story is what happens with Effie White, who's played by Jennifer Hudson and who's based on the real-life problems of Florence Ballard in fitting in with the Supremes. Ms. Hudson is electric in the role — rarely do you see a screen debut with "Oscar" so boldly written across it — but I'm sorry. I didn't feel for Effie because she was relegated to back-up singer in the group...and for the same reason I never felt sympathy for George Harrison because John and Paul so dominated The Beatles. More interesting to me than Effie was the situation of James "Thunder" Early, played by Eddie Murphy...but that story ends abruptly and you don't see enough of it before it does.
Ultimately, I guess, it's all about the songs. In a movie like this, you want to love them. You need to love them because the superstar singing group has to thrill you with their performances...and I found the songs — most of them, anyway — forgettable. Jennifer Hudson stops the film with "I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," just as Jennifer Holliday stopped the original Broadway show with the same tune. I think it's a phony theatrical moment because the song is shrill and full of pain disproportionate to what's actually been done to the woman singing it. Matter of fact, I think that's the moment the film really lost me for good and here's what's really odd about it. Despite the title and many of the lyrics, this is not a song about a woman who's defiantly refusing to leave. It's about a woman who's not going along; i.e., she's quitting. As many critics of the original musical observed, she sings "I'm not going" and then she goes. And because she goes, her life gets even worse. For me, the whole story just has too many moments of people being self-destructive but acting like they've been victimized. I know people do that all the time but it doesn't make me care what becomes of them.
You may well enjoy this movie and you certainly shouldn't avoid it because of me. A lot of people at the screening loved it and applauded and like I said, I think it'll make a ton o' cash. I hope it does because we need more screen musicals to do well so they'll make more screen musicals. If they do, I'm sure there'll be many that I enjoy more than Dreamgirls.
The New York Times has a pretty good obituary up for Sid Raymond — the fine character actor who, among his many credits, provided the voices for Katnip the Cat and Baby Huey.
Well, it's a pretty good obituary except for the last part where the reporter attempts to quote one of Sid's favorite jokes...
One of his last jokes involved a son sending a prostitute over to his widowed father, in his 90s, still a self-proclaimed ladies' man. She tells him she is his birthday present and will give him whatever he'd like. "I'll take the soup," he says.
Doesn't make any sense. But it might if the obit writer had gotten the set-up right. The prostitute says to the old man, "I'm here to offer you super sex!" And then the old guy replies...
This shouldn't be on YouTube but since I wrote it, I figured it was okay to link to it. The lawyers will get it removed soon but before they do, you can watch a Garfield cartoon I wrote called Video Airlines.
For those of you interested in the details: The voice of Garfield was performed by the late, great Lorenzo Music. Thom Huge provided the voices of Jon and Binky the Clown. Gregg Berger was Odie, the announcers for The Mediocre Movie Matinee and the Spanish language station, and the monster at the end. Neil Ross did the voice of the actor in the movie, the video store clerk and the ushers. Jim Davis, the creator of the Garfield comic strip, read the part of the announcer on Adequate Theater. The song was written by Desiree Goyette and Ed Bogas. And the whole thing was inspired by when I got my first satellite dish and had a devil of a time finding a channel that wasn't showing the Hello, Dolly movie with Barbra Streisand. Here's what resulted...
Here's a link to a half-hour video excerpt from a panel I co-hosted at the 2000 Comic-Con International in San Diego. The eminent writer Ron Goulart and I interviewed Harry Lampert, who was the artist on the first stories of The Flash, and Marty Nodell, who did the honors for Green Lantern. Mike Catron edited this two years ago when Harry passed away so it favors him...but there are some nice moments with Marty in there, too.
The fellow selling those drawings on eBay has just changed the listings. They now say...
I was asked the question on who had drawn these. I thought it was Mark Evanier, but informed that they were drawn by Sergio Aragone's and then signed by Mark Evanier. So These are being sold as drawn by Segio Aragone's and signed by Mark Evanier. Wish Sergio had signed them to.
To make it clear: They were not drawn by Sergio. They're so amateurish, I can't believe anyone would think they were drawn by Sergio. I've e-mailed the seller and informed him, and I bet he'll do the right thing and cancel the auctions. But this is a great example of how you need to be cautious when purchasing artwork.
Martin Nodell, the artist co-creator of Green Lantern, died this morning less than a month after his 91st birthday. I'm afraid I have no further details other than that Marty had been in poor health lately.
Marty was born 11/15/15 in Philadelphia. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and later, Pratt Institute in New York. It was in New York that he began working as a freelance artist, in or around 1938. He soon started freelancing for several comic book companies that either didn't pay or didn't pay well. As he later told the story, he got tired of being stiffed by the smaller firms and decided to make an all-out effort to break into the majors. He called at the offices of the biggest publisher, DC Comics, and was told they were full up but that there might be work at an affiliated company, All American. The editor there was Sheldon Mayer.
Mayer gave him a little work. When Nodell asked what it would take to get steady assignments, Mayer, who was looking for a new feature for the company's signature title, All-American Comics, told him to come up with a character. Nodell returned a few days later with sketches and the germ cell of a strip called Green Lantern. He said the idea had come to him on the subway when he saw a man waving — you guessed it — a green lantern. Nodell also said he wrote and drew the first few pages of the first story...but he wasn't a writer so Mayer brought in one of comics' top writers, Bill Finger, to rewrite and finish the first tale. The result was that Green Lantern, by Bill Finger and "Mart Dellon," debuted in All-American Comics #16, cover dated July of 1940. The character, which drew inspiration from the legend of Aladdin, was an immediate hit on the magnitude of the firm's other new superstars, The Flash and Wonder Woman, and soon received his own comic. (The All-American company was later absorbed by DC Comics. A new version of Green Lantern was created in 1959 and that version remains popular today, though the original Nodell incarnation has also been known to reappear.)
Nodell was very proud of his creation and its longevity. Asked why he'd opted for a pen name on the early stories, he once explained, "A lot of us did that back then. We thought of comics as a way to earn money before we moved on to real illustration work. If you used a fake name, you could disavow the work. Now, of course, I don't want to."
Marty worked for DC until 1947, then did a brief stint at Timely (Marvel) where he drew Captain America, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner in some of their final appearances before the declining popularity of super-heroes brought about cancellation. He took that as a cue to get out of comics and around 1950, made the move into advertising work, which he found more satisfying, at least in terms of pay and stability. He was also good at it. Marty was widely credited, here and elsewhere, with designing several iconic characters including the Pillsbury Doughboy. Apparently, some of these attributions are arguable, at least insofar as giving him sole credit is concerned. But he was definitely a major contributor and was responsible to some extent for a lot of memorable cartoon figures.
In the eighties, following his retirement from advertising, Marty was rediscovered by comics. He and his delightful wife Carrie could be found on the convention circuit, selling his sketches and often being interviewed by me. Carrie passed away in April of 2004 (reported here) and as one might expect, life was rough for Marty after that. They had been married for 63 years.
He was a fine gentleman and I always enjoyed our conversations. If and when I find out anything more about his passing, I'll post it here.
An awful lot of stuff gets sold on eBay and most of it, from what I can tell, is legit. One of the categories that seems to attract some amount of fraud, or at least bogus info, is that of original comic book and strip artwork. There's a lot of inaccuracy and occasionally some out-and-out lying in that area. At any given time, for example, you can bid on an awful lot of Charles Schulz sketches that Helen Keller could have spotted as fakes. (I loved the one a few months ago where Schulz signed his name "Schultz." Someone actually offered good money for that, and not a small amount of good money.) To be charitable, some of the sellers seem to have been duped and to be honestly unaware they're not only selling fakes but vowing for the authenticity of them...but some of this is just Art Forgery. There are also a lot of animation cels, recently painted in by the guy who's now selling them, claiming they were were used in production at some studio a few decades ago.
Another category is artwork that is not exactly phony...but if you skim the ad too quickly, you might get the wrong impression. Currently up for bids on eBay are two drawings of Groo and unless you read the listings carefully, you might get the idea that I'd drawn them. I did not. Nor did Sergio Aragonés, the gentleman who draws the Groo comic books.
The listing says, "This is Original Art work of Groo. Signed by Mark Evanier. This was done sometime in the early 1980's. Groo was created by Sergio Aragonés in 1981. Mark Evanier was recruited to do the art work." That's inaccurate. Sergio has done all the artwork for the comic book. I handle words...but the erroneous statement plants the idea that I draw Groo, which I don't. Three people have already e-mailed me to ask me about these drawings and all three thought the listing said they were my drawings.
They aren't. They're tracings of drawings Sergio did for the cover of Groo the Wanderer #27, which came out early in 1987, which is not "sometime in the early 1980's." I don't know for sure who did them. My sense is that Sergio and I were appearing at some bookshop — I'm thinking it was the Page After Page shop, now defunct, which used to be in Las Vegas — and the proprietor did these or had someone do them as part of a store display to promote our appearance. While there (or maybe later), I was asked to autograph them and I did. Those look like my signatures.
Unless you buy them — and I doubt anyone will — this is no big deal, and I'll give the seller the benefit of the doubt and presume he didn't intend to mislead anyone. But I was planning to post something here about the bogus Schulz drawings and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any. I know I was crushed when people started raising questions about my original Elzie Segar drawing of Popeye using a cell phone as he microwaved his spinach.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Carolyn and I spent a day at the Los Angeles Zoo where, thanks to a special "in," we got to go into the hippopotamus compound and feed the hippos. This mostly consisted of lobbing apples and heads of Romaine lettuce into yawning mouths...and if you've never done this, let me describe the experience...
You ever play Skee Ball? Of course you have. You would have lived a sheltered, deprived life if you'd never played Skee Ball. Well, this is just like Skee Ball except that instead of a wooden ball, you're using a head of lettuce...instead of rolling the ball, you're tossing the head of lettuce...and instead of trying to get it into the little round hole that says "100," you're trying to get it into the gaping maw of a creature the size of a Mazda. The hippo just stands there, wanting more, more, more even if hasn't bothered to swallow or even chew the last forty things you hurled at his uvula.
And then the real strange/cute thing comes when they close their mouths for a moment. I don't know if you can tell it from the above photo but they have these massive folds of skin on both sides of their yaps and when they close them, the folds curl up...and it's like the hippopotamus is smiling at you. (But not for long because they immediately open their mouths again and you can almost hear a little voice going, "In here, stupid" as you reach for another volley of Romaine. By the time the hippo has "enough," your pitching arm could be like Sandy Koufax's used to be after nine scoreless innings, swollen to Popeye dimensions.)
I posted some photos of this before but I just came across this one I took that day and I decided you needed another, closer look. In fact, you can see the above photo even larger if you click on this link. You might want to wait until after dinner to do this.
Karen Greenberg on the Bush administration and confessions. With an overwhelming majority of Americans now believing the Iraq War has been bungled (at least if we believe polls like this one), I'm wondering how many people believe that torture and other human rights abuses were necessary or even productive.
Don't click below unless you're prepared to watch fourteen minutes of vintage commercials, starting with Rocky Graziano playing an old sea captain who sells Sugar Crisp. Later on, you'll hear comedian Jack E. Leonard as a mailman who sells Post Alpha Bits and a spot with Rory Raccoon (who I think is voiced by Mel Blanc with a "speed up" assist) selling Post Toasties Corn Flakes, plus there are a lot of great ABC promos and Marx toy commercials and things that may make you say, "Hey, I remember that one..." But don't click 'til you're ready.
By the way: I think a couple of these are repeats from other recent compilations to which I've linked. Don't complain. It's free.
I'm hearing from an awful lot of David Frye fans. They're directing me to this outta-date article about him, reminding me that he did a comedy CD about Bill Clinton and repeating rumors about him retiring well on a family inheritance. But so far, no one's actually seen the guy in more than ten years...which leads me to believe he hasn't performed anywhere in at least that long.
I see also that a company has taken two of his old vinyl records — I Am the President and Radio Free Nixon — and reissued them on a single CD.I Am the President was the better seller but I thought Radio Free Nixon was a funnier album.
Not much more to add but perhaps we'll hear something now that I've posted my wonderings on the 'net. Almost every time I ask a question here, I hear from someone who has an answer. Sometimes, it's immediate. Sometimes, it takes a while.
While I'm at it: Does anyone know if A. Whitney Brown is still performing? How about Ed Bluestone, a comedian who may have set some sort of record for having the most jokes stolen and quoted of anyone who had such a brief career? (Ed's the guy who described himself as a Quadrisexual, meaning "I'll do anything with anyone for a quarter." And of course, he devised the famous National Lampoon cover — "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog.")
I ask because there are some comics out there who manage to continue lucrative careers without turning up on Comedy Central every month or three. Their absence from such venues make you think they're out of the business but, for instance, Gary Mule Deer is out working somewhere every week, often opening for Johnny Mathis — another star who appears constantly but has dropped off the TV listings. Some folks may think that one of my favorite stand-ups, Kevin Meaney, has stopped performing...but he's actually been appearing for a couple of years in productions of the musical, Hairspray. (He's currently in the New York company, playing several featured roles and understudying Edna.) Maybe we need a Department of Missing Comedians.
Is it my imagination or has Tony Blair started to sound more and more like George W. Bush? Unfortunately, George W. Bush isn't sounding more like Tony Blair. He's sounding more like an impressionist doing George W. Bush.
I don't recall if I made it up or quoted it from somewhere but in an article I wrote 25 years ago, it said that by the time they leave office, all presidents look like the Paul Conrad caricature of themselves and sound like David Frye impersonating them. Bush is well ahead of schedule.
And say, whatever happened to David Frye? The last time I heard him perform was not on TV or a record or even in a club. A comedian I was writing for played me back a message the man had left on his machine. Frye was upset because the comedian had done a joke on The Merv Griffin Show that was — arguably, I thought — similar to a joke in his own act. He called, got the machine and left this long but brilliant twenty minute scolding, the first three minutes of which were in the voice of William F. Buckley, followed by four minutes of George C. Scott and then a few of Al Capp and a couple of appearances by Richard M. Nixon and so forth. (It was actually more than one message because every time he took a medium-length pause, the machine cut him off. So Ted Kennedy or whoever he'd been doing at the moment would call back and resume that particular tirade.) The recipient of the complaint was pissed at the accusation but he had to admire the skill and admit that he felt somehow honored by this long message accusing him of plagiarism.
Then a couple days later, I was out on a date in Westwood Village and I spotted Mr. Frye in the Tower Records up there, flipping through the albums in the Comedy section. He was unshaven and looked like he wanted to be alone so I didn't say anything to him.
Fifteen minutes later, my lady friend and I were walking down Westwood Boulevard and we saw an elderly woman fall on a flight of stairs that led up to a Hungry Tiger restaurant. This was back when there were Hungry Tiger restaurants. My lady friend was schooled in First Aid so she ran up and started helping the woman while I located a pay phone. This was back when there were pay phones. I called for an ambulance and then when I returned to the scene of the accident, I tried to politely shoo away some of the people who were clustered about, looking at the injured woman and asking if there was any way they could help. One of them was David Frye. He said, "Is there anything I can do?"
I think I said something like, "You can do Nixon." He laughed and gave me that furrowed brow look that all Nixon impersonators did because they'd learned it from watching Frye. I remember thinking that the beard stubble made the facial impression frighteningly accurate. Then he walked off and I've never seen him anywhere since. This was something like thirty years ago.
From about half past the Johnson administration until the fading days of Watergate, Frye was one of the most popular impressionists in the business and certainly the King in the area of political voices. Does he still perform anywhere? Is he even still alive? The guy was really remarkable.
As you may recall, everyone in my neighborhood was recently switched — against our will, I might add — from Comcast High Speed Internet to Road Runner High Speed Internet. Road Runner has done such a poor job that they keep sending out apology e-mails and, since they apparently don't trust their own assurances that everything's getting fixed, apology paper mails, as well. As well they should. A quick check of recent e-mail arrivals suggests that about half of all I receive are arriving promptly but others are dribbling in hours — in some cases, days — after they were sent.
One friend sent me an e-mail that demanded an urgent reply. When he didn't receive one in twelve hours, he sent another message. And then the next day, he sent another. All three arrived simultaneously in my inbox, six hours after he sent the third. For some reason, mail sent from America Online accounts seems to take especially long. At one point, Road Runner was marking everything that came from an AOL address as Spam but that problem seems to have ceased. The funny thing, of course, is that Road Runner and AOL are both owned, as we all will someday be, by Time-Warner.
My Internet connection also disappears about once a day for 10 or 15 minutes. Naturally, it seems to only occur when there's something I desperately need to send out immediately. This is obviously an advance on the technology that makes your printer break down only when there's fifteen minutes to get the job printed out and delivered to FedEx.
We're dealing with it all as well as we can. But there's not a whole lot we can do.
Another five and a half minutes of old cereal commercials. The best one in this batch is a Bullwinkle spot about halfway through. And look for the Sugar Smacks commercial with narration by Paul Frees. Fun stuff.
Hope you tuned in yesterday to catch a fast (where does the time go?) two-hour interview of moi by Stuart Shostak on his new Shokus Internet Radio channel. We only covered about 10% of the topics Stu wanted to get to but that was plenty. We — and by "we," I mean mostly me — discussed my childhood, my early days conning people into paying me money for writing, working with stand-up comedians and on Welcome Back, Kotter; writing variety shows for people who didn't speak English very well..and of course, the story of Jack LaLanne trying to punch me out in a trendy Hollywood eatery. I'm not one for physical brawling but I will take on most bodybuilders over the age of 85. Especially when they're a foot shorter than me.
If you didn't hear any of that, you're not outta luck. Quite the contrary, you're in luck. It reruns several times on Stuart's channel, which means you can hear it right on your computer. It airs again today and tomorrow from 4 PM to 6 PM (West Coast time) and 7 PM to 9 PM (East Coast time). Then it airs on Sunday from 10 AM to Noon (West Coast), which translates to 1 PM to 3 PM (East)...and then you can find additional air times on the schedule. To listen, go to this page and select a browser...and you don't have to just listen to me. There's a lot of fine programming to be heard 24/7 on Shokus Internet Radio.
Leaving aside time spent on a going-nowhere-fast freeway to get to the spacious Shokus Broadcasting Complex, I had a fun time. I'll be back to cover some of the other queries on Stu's list...but don't wait for me. Tune in to his station and enjoy. I'm listening right now and hearing a great Harry James record. Much better than that guy who was on yesterday for two hours talking about himself.
This is the third of at least three, maybe four plugs for my appearance this very day on Shokus Internet Radio. I'll be grilled unmercifully by your digitial deejay, Stuart Shostak, on Stu's Show, which airs live from 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast and from 4 PM to 6 PM on the West Coast. We'll talk about working on TV shows and writing comic books and cartoons and all those things I pass off as a career. I'll probably make some really embarrassing, scandalous confession like about how I got Dick Cheney's daughter pregnant or something. Maybe I'll even tell the story — and this is a real one — about how Jack LaLanne took a swing at me one night in Musso-Frank's. I lead such a colorful life.
Here's how you listen to Shokus Internet Radio. Click over to this page and select one of the audio browsers. Once you get there, you can minimize the Live365 window and use your computer to do other things — write, surf for porn, play Sudoku, whatever — while you listen. Knowing you, you'll probably do all of those while you listen. Well, you can. In fact, you can do all those things and listen to Shokus Internet Radio 24 hours a day, not just when I'm on the air. Give it a whirl. Won't cost you anything.
Six minutes more of cereal commercials. These all feature George Reeves as Clark Kent...but not as Superman. (It was decided that Clark could do commercials but not The Man of Steel.) Here we see him wandering around, walking into strange kids' homes and eating breakfast. We also hear the guy who was the voice of Tony the Tiger before Thurl Ravenscroft. Enjoy.
TV scribe Ken Levine has a very fine blog in which he discusses his experiences working on shows like Cheers and M*A*S*H. He's currently on vacation and he's turned the floor over to another TV writer, Peter Casey, who's relating his version of how the Frasier series came about. Here's the first part of his recollections and here's the second.
See that man? That's Peter Leeds, a wonderful character actor who passed away a little more than ten years ago. He was in a lot of things you saw. Matter of fact, someone told me — I can't swear this is true but it sure wouldn't surprise me if it is — that there were several years when he worked more days than any other member of the Screen Actors Guild. His listing in the Internet Movie Database has more than 170 movies and TV roles and I'd bet that's less than a tenth of them, plus it doesn't list commercials, radio shows, records and cartoon voiceovers.
Peter worked constantly...and yet, if you didn't know him by name, there's no way I could describe to you who he was. I could mention Roger C. Carmel (another character actor who worked constantly) and if you didn't know him by name, I could say, "He played the character Mudd on two episodes of Star Trek" and a lot of you would go, "Oh yeah, that guy." But for all the hundreds, even thousands of roles Peter Leeds played, he never had one that defined him that way. He played agents, cops, con men, gangsters...almost any kind of part you can imagine. But he never played anything that was so colorful and memorable that it defined him thereafter.
Mostly, he was a straight man...maybe the best of his era. Lucille Ball was always telling her producers to hire him for her shows. Bob Hope hired Peter constantly, not only to play interviewers or official-type people on his specials but he took Peter along on military tours to play opposite him in sketches. (At Peter's memorial service, a lady who'd gone on one of those tours choked up as she told a story of Peter taking charge and getting her and other performers get out of a particularly nasty situation when their troupe got too near enemy fire.) Stan Freberg used Peter on his radio show and many of his records. He was the bongo-drumming beatnik on Stan's recording of The Banana Boat Song, for instance.
And Carson loved him. People forget how many comedy sketches Johnny Carson did on The Tonight Show but he did a lot of 'em and Peter was often the serious guy in them. The above screen grab is from a skit where Johnny played a Mafia type who was interviewing for a position in some other line of work. Peter played the man interviewing him for a job.
I got that image from an episode of Carson's Comedy Classics, which is a syndicated show that Carson's company packaged in 1983 and which they're running now on a small UHF channel in Los Angeles. The programs contain sketches and comedy highlights from The Tonight Show so they contain a lot of Peter Leeds. At the beginning of each show, they billboard the guest stars who appear in the segments and the other night, they ran one that gave star billing to Peter. Here's a screen grab of it...
Sometimes, odd things make me smile and that made me smile. Peter was a working actor for well over fifty years and that's one of the few times, maybe the only time anyone gave him the same kind of billing they'd give Bob Hope or Lucy or other stars he supported. I rolled back the TiVo and froze it on Peter's name for a few seconds, just looking at it and thinking, "Look at that...Peter Leeds being treated like a star." He was a star, of course...he did great work and everyone who hired him knew that because they hired him again and again and again. But they never gave him star billing and when I saw one time they did, I thought, "That's great. I'm going to put that on the weblog." Why? Because I liked seeing it and it's my weblog. And also because I wanted there to be some page on the Internet that would tell the world how good Peter Leeds was. If you Googled his name and got this page, now you know.
Fred Kaplan doesn't think much of the report of the Iraq Study Group.
I don't know if it's a workable plan for Iraq but after watching some of the news channels today, I get the feeling that's not the point. The idea is to minimize embarrassment for all the folks who got us into the mess in Iraq. If that means keeping U.S. troops there longer and getting more killed, or making the death toll for the Iraqi people get even worse...well, that's too bad. But we have reputations to protect.
Today's click will bring you eleven minutes (that's right — eleven) of old commercials, starting with a Kool-Aid spot with the voices of Dick Beals and Paul Frees. After a Pillsbury ad, you'll see John Astin and Marty Ingels promoting their then-new comedy series, I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, an ABC promo for My Three Sons, a Barbie and Ken spot that I think is narrated by Olan Soulé, another Kool Aid Kids ad, a commercial for Mattel Spy Detector (with a v.o. by Mr. Frees again), a spot for Mattel's Vroom Bikes (announced by William Conrad) and some other stuff that I don't have time to list. Just clear eleven minutes and watch. You'll especially enjoy the commercial for Feeley Meeley.
The most encouraging thing I've seen about Robert Gates, who will presumably be our new Secretary of Defense, is this article by Fred Kaplan, who more or less likes the guy. Kaplan's been pretty good about assessing this kind of thing in the past.
Everyone says the TV show Heroes (which I have yet to watch) is a great show. It may be...but think how much better it could be if the entire cast was comprised of Deal or No Deal models.
Your bargain-hunting friend Mark wishes to inform you that the first three volumes of Looney Tunes on DVD have been drastically marked down...like to around 50% of list price. That's not quite as big a bargain as it sounds because you're never dumb enough to pay list but it is a bargain. You can now order Volume 1, Volume 2 or Volume 3 for $32.00 each and if you get them shipped by Amazon's "free super saver shipping," which arrives pretty swiftly for me, that gives you something like 180 of the best cartoons ever made (plus a ton of extras) for under a hundred bucks.
People tell me that buy.com and deepdiscountdvd.com are the two best places to get DVDs for cheap on the Internet...but buy.com still has them for $51 to $57 each and deepdiscountdvd wants $44.74 apiece or $130.61 for all three. So it pays to not assume that and to shop about. (The website shop.com has them at $81.15 per volume. Do people really not know how to browse a few stores so they don't wind up paying $81 for the same thing someone else is selling for $32?)
Gene Deitch was one of the great animation directors and my favorite work of his was the Tom Terrific cartoons which ran for years on the Captain Kangaroo show. Tom and his sidekick, Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog, stumbled through simple stories with simple drawing and simple premises and a simplicity of production that was hard to resist. (One guy did all the voices and one musician played all the music.) Whoever owns the rights oughta stop cockin' around and put out some Tom Terrific episodes on DVD.
In the meantime, Fantagraphics Books has favored us with a collection of a short-lived newspaper strip that Deitch created. Terr'ble Thompson only ran for about a year and I have to admit I'd never heard of it before. But it's enormous fun, and not just because it was an antecedent of the Tom Terrific shorts that debuted a few years later. Deitch was just as creative in one medium as he was in another.
I hereby suggest you click this link and order yourself a copy of Terr'ble Thompson. And if you're in a clicking mood, Fantagraphics has a nice freebee you can listen to right now. That's right: I said listen. The folks at Golden Records produced a 12-minute kids' record of Terr'ble Thompson starring none other than Art Carney. The record was never released but Deitch came across a copy of the tape in his files and it's been turned into an MP3. It's available for your listening pleasure on this page and so is a brief introduction that Deitch recently recorded, telling the tale of how the record came to be.
In his intro, Deitch says that the songs were written by two important Broadway composers, Marshall Barer and Alec Wilder. That's a bit of an exaggeration. At the time, Barer had only done one show that had reached Broadway. He was one of several composers who contributed to Once Over Lightly, a translation/parody of The Barber of Seville that ran a big six performances in 1942. That was the sum of his Broadway credentials in '55 when he penned the lyrics for Terr'ble Thompson. He later contributed to a couple of revues but his only real hit came when he wrote the lyrics for Once Upon a Mattress, which hit New York in 1959. Wilder's credits were even spottier. He also contributed to Once Over Lightly and then wrote incidental tunes for two non-musical plays which ran a total of 26 performances between them. But the two men did a nice job on the kids' record and it's well worth twelve minutes of your time. If you buy the book, read it while you listen.
We have here another (another!) sixteen minutes of old cereal commercials. It opens with a dandy Rice Krispies spot, followed by Buffalo Bee (voiced by Mae "Olive Oyl" Questel) selling Wheat Honeys and Rice Honeys. A pre-Batman Adam West eats Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes, with narration by Paul Frees. The Cheerios Kid tries to launch himself into space and his spot is followed by the Trix Rabbit and the Lucky Charms leprechaun. There are some promos for Clackers and Frosty-Os, an Andy Griffith Show in-show commercial with Don Knotts, and one for Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice that I think features the voice of Kenny Delmar. Mr. Delmar played the infamous Senator Claghorn on the Fred Allen radio show and later was the voice of The Hunter and Commander McBragg for animation. You'll see an early Tony the Tiger commercial with Thurl Ravenscroft's magnificent baritone, a Maypo spot and...oh, there's too much in this to list it all. Just watch.
The next presidential election is 704 days away. Isn't it a little early to be talking about frontrunners and saying things like, "It's Obama's to lose" and "Nobody can stop Hillary"? Unless Dick Cheney does something crazy like running or quitting, we won't even have an incumbent on the ticket in 2008...and some people think the nominees are all but certain?
Incumbents aside, when was the last time someone had a near-lock on the nomination 700 days before it was time to vote? More important, when was the first time that someone's frontrunner status that far in advance was even relevant once the primaries started? (Bill Clinton, let's remember, lost his early primary contests.) Candidates like this kind of talk because it's never too early to start raising funds. Reporters like it because it gives them something to write about and they can make predictions that no one will remember when things turn out otherwise. But the rest of us don't have to fall for it.
If you stuck a gun in my ribs and made me predict who'll be the Democratic ticket in 2008, I'd say it will be Al Gore. His slogan will be, "Re-elect Al Gore" and his running mate will be either Barack Obama or Howard Dean. On what do I base this? Same thing as everyone who's making predictions these days: Almost nothing.
Those of us with TiVo Series 2 know that one of its many delights is the "TiVo to Go" feature via which you can record something on one TiVo and, assuming you're properly networked, transfer it to another TiVo or to your computer. This is more than a convenience of being able to watch a recording where you want to watch it. If two shows I want to view are on at the same time, I can record one on my office TiVo (where I watch most programs) and the other on the TiVo in my TV room downstairs. Then I can transfer the show from the downstairs TiVo upstairs. Neat. Tidy. Handy.
One snag in all this has been that if you transfer a TiVo recording to your computer, it's there in an encoded proprietary format — a filename that instead of ending in ".avi" or ".mpeg" or some other common format, ends in ".tivo" — which means you can't easily edit it or burn it to a DVD (without special software they sell) or upload it to the 'net. TiVo instituted this because they were afraid of lawsuits from networks and movie producers even though there are plenty of ways to configure a computer to record shows off the air without this kind of encoding.
There have been a couple of different methods to get around this restriction, the easiest of which was a piece of free software called DirectShow Dump. It works decently with most recordings but occasionally encounters something it cannot parse or process. Now, someone has made things simpler. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) feature of .tivo files has been cracked and the software to do it is widely available for no cost. That version, by the way, is rather clumsy to use but it does "decode" the structure of the .tivo files for all to see, so we'll probably see a handier utility program any day now.
I think this matters beyond the fact that some of us will now have an easier time doing whatever we want to do with shows we record on our Series 2 TiVo machines. Many years ago, when the Betamax was the format of choice for almost everyone practicing home video (largely because VHS and DVD hadn't been invented), there was a lawsuit. A group of major studios headed by Disney and Universal sued Sony — this was before Sony was a major studio — demanding that the Betamax be redesigned to prevent people from taping copyrighted shows off the air. It seems silly now but in the early days of home video, no one quite knew where it would or could all lead...no one but the judge who presided in that case. He said, and this is a paraphrase but it's close, "It's silly to insist they invent a way to jam the process because two days later, someone else will invent a way to unjam the jam." That's pretty much the way it's gone.
Those who traffic in intellectual property — books, TV shows, movies, music, etc. — have sometimes harbored fantasies that technology could restrict the copying and circulation of their wares, enabling them to set up a lucrative per-use (or per-user) licensing fee. If it ever works that way, it doesn't work for long. Not as long as there's a widespread desire to unjam the jam.
I'm not saying this is good or bad because for me, it's both. I'd love it if shows I've written could not be copied or illegally downloaded or otherwise obtained without each consumer coughing up a fee. That would translate to more cash for Mark. On the other hand, I like the idea that if I buy a DVD, I can copy it so I can have one copy in my downstairs library, another in my upstairs DVD carousel and maybe another stashed away as a backup. When I buy a CD, I often dub off the cuts I like to CD compilations I can play in my car. It's all legal and I think it's ethical...but there's no way I can have both my wishes at the same time. If I have the power to copy a DVD or CD for myself, I have the power to copy it for someone else. Like I said, it's not good or bad. It's just the way it is. Copy protection is like those speed bumps they're putting on my street. They slow people down but they don't stop anyone...and I doubt they ever will for long.
This is one minute from the first episode of The Chris Rock Show on HBO, which was aired some time ago. There's a joke at the end that is oddly prophetic. Take a look.
For the last year or three, I've been in the process of transferring my videotapes to DVD. In my lifetime, I've moved from 3/4" U-Matic tapes to Beta and then to VHS. Then for a time, I bought movies on Laserdisc and taped off the TV to VHS. Now, the 500+ Laserdiscs sit on shelves, as untouched as the 1000+ record albums in the other room. I buy movies on DVD and when there's something on TV that I want, it goes onto the TiVo...and if it's something I want to keep, I burn it to a DVD.
I know not what new formats await me in the future...but a lot of my tapes are rotting and many contain material that will never be available commercially. So I decided I'd better copy them over to DVD and every now and then, I run a few. I started with the 3/4" tapes, most of which contained shows I'd written. This went faster than I thought it would due to some fortuitous timing. I'd transferred every show I'd worked on except Garfield and Friends, which I saved for the end. The day I was going to start transferring the 121 half hours of that program, I got the call that the producers had closed a deal to put the series out on DVD. I should have been happiest that I was going to get some money out of that. Instead, the only thing I could think was, "Great...now I don't have to do those shows."
Once the 3/4" tapes were done, I went on to Beta. I'm almost finished with them and am about to get started on the VHS cassettes. There are so many of them that by the time I'm done, it'll be time to start converting all my DVDs to some other new format.
Most of the tapes are labelled but some aren't and that's where the fun begins. I shove an unlabelled tape into a machine, punch "play" and then I sit there, trying to figure out why I recorded whatever I see on it. Once in a while, I decide there was no reason; that the tape is unlabelled because I (or some friend) recorded the wrong channel or the right one at the wrong time, and there's absolutely nothing on the cassette that I could possibly care about. But often, it's something I want...and sometimes, it's something I really want. I just found some old Tony Awards broadcasts from the early nineties, some tapes of panels from comic book conventions and old episodes of Late Night from the Letterman era and from Conan's first year. I have Leno's first few Tonight Shows (which he reportedly doesn't have and doesn't want) and a lot of odd news specials from the eighties.
Some I'll transfer, some I won't. But the big decision is what to do with the tapes themselves. Throw them out? Put them in storage? I made a decision that if the tape held something that was out on DVD, I'd toss the tape. If it held something that wasn't out on DVD and it was something I really wanted, I'd transfer the program and put the tape in storage. If it wasn't out on DVD and was something I might want to watch one more time, I'd keep it around until I could do that, then dump the tape.
That made sense in theory but it's rough in practice. I'm throwing away hundreds of tapes. I'm getting rid of tapes I never watched and that doesn't feel good. One time shortly after I got my satellite dish, a station I received ran a holiday weekend marathon — every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, in sequence. I taped all 158 of them — twelve to a cassette, even though it meant fourteen tape changes and timing my life and sleeping all weekend so I could be at the machine at the precise station break to make the swap. Monday morning, I was so proud: I had every episode of my favorite situation comedy!
Little did I know I'd never get around to watching those tapes because the shows would always be running on some channel I received. Or at least they were, up until the time I could purchase them all on DVD. I can't think of a single reason to keep the VHS tapes around but I put so much effort into recording them that it's hard to just dump them in the garbage.
The tapes could, of course, be used as blanks...and I have about fifty VHS cassettes that have always been blank. I also have no need for blank VHS cassettes. I don't think I've recorded anything on VHS for more than three years. For that matter, I wonder if I even need the four VHS machines I have stashed in the garage, right next to the three Betamaxes and my extra Laserdisc player. (I also have a camcorder that takes full-size VHS cassettes.)
Eventually, of course, everything will get tossed out or moved forever to the world of Public Storage. That includes DVDs I'm buying today because home video is not a permanent thing. As I've written elsewhere, it's all a slimy plot to see how many times they can get me to buy Goldfinger. You'd think I'd be used to it by now but I'm not. In fact, I still have the 4 minute 8mm silent Castle Films edition of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein that I owned when I was ten. I don't have a projector to play it on and I can always run my DVD of the whole movie with sound. The 8mm version is of minimal value and I can't think of a single reason to keep it around.
Still, I keep it and all my other old 8mm treasures there in my front hall closet. Because you never know when you might need something like that.
TV Land is having a Marlo Thomas Film Festival for the next month or two, not only on the air but also on its website. This weekend on the channel, they're running what they consider the best episodes of That Girl, and you can also watch them uncut on the site for the next month or so. I've found that these shows don't hold up as well as some others but your mileage may vary. Here's what should be a direct link to the first episode. They also have some of the special features that are on the new That Girl DVD.
I'm even less impressed with Free To Be...You And Me, the award-winning 1974 special that Ms. Thomas produced and starred in, and which can also be watched over at the TV Land site. I agree with its message — that women should feel free to aspire to any job a male can do short of sperm donor — but the presentation of that self-evident truth struck me as pandering and overkill. Perhaps it needed to be said in such an obvious, overwrought manner but you'd like to think otherwise.
While you're over at the TV Land site, check out some of the clips from other shows they have up. But especially check out the one you can reach by clicking this link. It should take you to three and a half minutes of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding on The Flip Wilson Show. Nobody funnier. (Bob and Ray, I mean. There were plenty of people funnier than Flip Wilson.)
One of the best things for me about the Mid-Ohio Con last week was seeing my friend, Herb Trimpe...though not for a long enough time. Most of you who know comics know Herb for his Marvel work in the late sixties and seventies, especially a fine stint drawing The Incredible Hulk. That all ended for Herb in 1996 when the folks then in power at the company decided his artwork was old-fashioned...or maybe it was just that the readers don't want to buy comics drawn by someone over a certain age that Herb was over. Whatever the thinking, he was out...and he bravely took his story to the pages of The New York Times with this article.
Herb has been doing other things since then, mostly of an educational nature. After 9/11 though, he found another activity that I find fascinating. He spent eight months working at and around Ground Zero in New York as a chaplain, helping people to cope with the death and destruction that had abruptly entered their lives that horrible day. To hear him tell it, it was a depressing, life-changing experience in some ways but highly inspirational in another.
He authored a book about his experiences. Herb tells me he made almost no money off the book but is glad he wrote it, just to record his feelings and observations about this job of mercy. For me, it was can't-put-it-down reading and I'd like to suggest you pick up a copy. You can snag one at Amazon via this link. If you're doing Christmas shopping over there, toss one in your cart for yourself...not because the guy used to draw great comics but because he had an important experience, and the passion and skill to share it with us.
Robert Kagan and William Kristol are two of the more prominent neo-cons who urged the Bush administration into the course we've been staying in Iraq. The bi-partisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group has been, in effect, charged with figuring out a way to get us out of the mess that guys like Kagan and Kristol got us into.
In this new article, the two neo-con superstars argue that the Baker-Hamilton recommendations are (a) nothing new and (b) not likely to change what Bush does. Sadly, I think they may be right on both counts.
The one thing the Iraq Study Group does accomplish, however, is that it changes the nature of the national debate. For right or wrong, good or ill, the notion that the war is "winnable" (whatever that means) and that we should just keep on keeping on has become a fading minority viewpoint. Not many people are saying it and of those who are, the majority seem to be doing so out of blind stubbornness, more so than any conviction that the sacrifice will prove worth it. Getting out in the least damaging way is now the bipartisan consensus...even if all those bipartisans don't seem to have any idea how to make it happen.
I'm not sure if you'd call Jerome Murat a mime or a "performance artist" or just what. All I know about him is that this clip from some French television show features the man performing a fascinating and skillful act. It runs a little over eight minutes and it's quite stunning. Matter of fact, here's a link to a larger screen version of it for those of you with a fast 'net connection. If not, just watch the version below. It starts a little slow but give it time. It's worth it.
So, uh, where's this O.J. Simpson book? And the specials? Why aren't the specials making the rounds of the Internet already?
They were taped and ready to air. There must be a few copies floating around. The book should be even more available. Supposedly, several hundred thousand copies were printed. Someone must have one.
When it was announced that Rupert Murdoch was calling off the specials and pulping the books, everyone thought they'd surface somewhere within a matter of days. What's the deal?
That's the trouble with bootleggers. You just can't count on them.
This is the second of at least three plugs for my appearance this coming Thursday on Shokus Internet Radio. I'd really like to get as many of you to listen as I can, not because it's me but because I've become enthused about Stu Shostak's new radio network. I want to see it thrive and succeed and grow to the point where he can get better guests than me on there.
I'll be on Stu's Show, which airs live on December 7 from 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast and from 4 PM to 6 PM on the West Coast. We'll be taking phone calls and I'll be telling Show Biz stories (some slanderous) and I don't know what else will happen. Tune in and find out as I do. I may even try to blog here live while I'm on the air there.
Here's how you listen to Shokus Internet Radio. You go to this page and select one of the audio browsers. It should connect in just a few seconds and then you can do what I do, which is to minimize that window on your screen and do other stuff on your computer as you listen. I find it a pleasant way to work.
Shokus Internet Radio is available to you 24/7. You can listen right this moment if you like. Much of the broadcast day, he runs old radio shows or what some might call "nostalgia music." The show I'm on will repeat many times throughout the week (here's the schedule) but try and listen when it's live if you can. I want to see if we can get a couple hundred people all listening at once. If we can, it will beat the ratings of a show I once wrote for NBC that not only got a zero rating but everyone at the network thought it was a typo because they didn't know they were broadcasting the show. Maybe Stuart will ask me about that one and I'll tell that story.
I don't agree with Christopher Hitchens on a lot of topics but every so often, he hits one out of the park. Here he is writing about the use of what we timidly call the "n" word, and the attempts to make it verboten.
Here's one that'll waste a nice chunk of whatever's left of your weekend. It's sixteen (!) minutes of old cereal commercials. The first one or two are from a show called Super Circus. There's a King Vitaman spot in there with the voice of Joe Flynn (from McHale's Navy) as the character from that cereal's box. There's Clayton "Lone Ranger" Moore selling Cheerios. There's an old Trix Rabbit spot and a couple of great old Cocoa Puffs ads from the days before they had the cuckoo as their mascot. You'll see future game show host Jack Narz as a spaceman selling Rice Chex and Wheat Chex. There's Andy Devine hawking Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops, followed by a spot with his cartoon replacement, Sugar Pops Pete, who was voiced by Daws Butler. You'll meet Buffalo Bee, who used to sell Wheat Honeys, and whose voice (I think) was by Mae Questel...and there are other treasures in this package, as well. Happy viewing!
Andrew Sullivan, who was once a big booster of George W. Bush and our efforts in Iraq, thinks the invasion has become an unfixable disaster and that Bush is in denial.
I got to discussing this with some folks at the Mid-Ohio Con and they all suggested I post this story here. It's the story of how, during the James Bond craze of the sixties, DC Comics had an option to publish a 007 comic book and didn't know it.
The first Bond film, Doctor No, debuted in England in October of 1962. To coincide with that release, the British publisher of the Classics Illustrated comic book series issued an adaptation that was drawn by Norman J. Nodel. It was not, by the way, a terribly precise adaptation, at least of the movie, which Nodel does not appear to have seen when he drew the book. It has been suggested that the publisher had the right to adapt the screenplay but not necessarily the film based on it. The likeness of the lead character makes it seem like Nodel was told to draw a Bond that looked a lot like Sean Connery...but not exactly.
In any case, the company that arranged the adaptation wanted to have it published in America when the movie was released here the following May. The American publisher of Classics Illustrated was in no position to do so. They had a marketing program that avoided most of the main newsstand outlets — the obvious place to sell such a book — and concentrated on classrooms and other educational venues. The Bond people, not wanting to miss an opportunity, tried to arrange to publish the Doctor No comic book themselves. They approached the largest comic book distributor, Independent News, which was owned by the same folks who owned DC Comics.
Independent said no, they would not handle a one-time publication from a new publisher...but they would buy the rights to publish an American edition and issue it as a DC Comic. The Bond licensing people liked this deal or at least accepted this deal. They did like the idea, which was briefly discussed, of DC publishing an ongoing James Bond comic book if this first one did well. The contract when it was concluded included an option clause that would allow DC to do a regular series for a modest fee.
Rumor has it that this clause was tossed in by the Bond people and that DC was generally indifferent to the notion. George Kashdan, who was the editor at DC involved in the Doctor No one-shot, told me that DC Management felt it was in the business of promoting Superman and Batman, not properties owned by others. The company rarely bought the rights to publish someone else's characters. They tried it a few times — often for reasons other than they thought it would yield a best-selling comic — but usually avoided such arrangements. Kashdan did not know why they made an exception for the Doctor No adaptation but theorized that it was cheap (the material was already drawn and the Bond people didn't want a lot for the rights) and maybe that someone was doing a favor for someone else.
DC published the Doctor No adaptation as a badly-timed issue of an anthology comic in which they tried out new ideas, Showcase. It was #43, which came out in January of '63 and was long off-sale by the time the movie was released in the United States. I remember it as a very odd presence on the newsstand. The cover was drawn by longtime DC artist Bob Brown but inside, it looked nothing like a DC Comic. It had dark, sterile artwork with typeset word balloons. Nothing like that had ever appeared in a DC title before and nothing like it has been in one since. (The cover, by the way, did not exactly proclaim it as a movie adaptation. It said, "Based on the novel and now a United Artists Film Thriller!")
Showcase #43 did not sell well. If it had come out after the movie opened in the U.S. and had sported a photo cover of Sean Connery and Ursula Andress, I suspect it would have outsold Superman. But that didn't happen and almost immediately, everyone in the DC office just forgot about it. Few of them knew about the option and none of those who did, as the film series got hot, thought to say, "Hey, why don't we do that James Bond comic?" It was not discussed up there until early '72 when one of DC's business folks noticed that the ten-year option was about to expire and mentioned it to then-publisher Carmine Infantino, who was quite surprised. There was some brief discussion of exercising the option and starting the comic immediately — they spoke with Jack Kirby about drawing it, as well as with Alex Toth and some others — but DC ultimately decided against it. Sean Connery had just made what he swore would be his last appearance as 007 — Diamonds Are Forever — and there was some question as to whether the world's most famous spy had much of a future...or what James Bond could even look like.
Eventually, there were occasional Bond comic books, though not from DC. They never caught on, and one wonders if a DC book in the sixties would have sold for very long with as little sex and violence as it would have contained. But it sure would have been hot for a few years there when everything that said "007" on it was a top-seller. There's a long, much-discussed list of reasons why Marvel passed DC during that period as the top publisher of comics in America. You can add to that list that no one in the DC business department thought to mention to the editorial division that they had this cheap option on the hottest property in popular fiction...
Actor Sid Raymond has died at the age of 97. During his 70+ year career, he appeared in countless roles on TV, in the movies, on stage and on radio but his face was probably best known for his long run as a goofy bartender in commercials for Schlitz Beer. His voice, however, was best known for coming out of the mouths of two famous cartoon characters — Katnip the Cat in the "Herman & Katnip" cartoons, and the overgrown infant duck, Baby Huey.
This article, which is an Adobe PDF file, will tell you more about his life and times. In the meantime, let's remember Sid through his work. Below, I've linked us to Quack-a-Doodle-Doo, which was the first of twelve Baby Huey cartoons made by Paramount Studios between 1950 and 1959. You may note in the credits the names of Marty Taras and Dave Tendlar. Dave, we've mentioned recently on this site. Marty Taras is often cited as the creator of the character, having worked not only on the cartoons but also on his early comic book appearances, most of which were written by Larz Bourne. (I'm not an expert on Baby Huey but my understanding is that the character was created for the Paramount cartoon and that because of the lead time involved in animation, his first comic book appearance — in the back of Casper the Friendly Ghost #1, published by St. John in 1949 — actually came out several months before this first cartoon hit theaters, which occurred March of 1950.)
But enough Huey history. This is a moment to salute the fine work of Sid Raymond. Here's an example of the fine work of Sid Raymond...
Gary Brown, who's been covering the comic book scene for something like 40 years, is now doing a column about comics for The Palm Beach Post. Here's a link to one that just went up and I'll try and link to more in the future. Gary is a great guy and a great writer and this should be a column to watch.
Jim Brochu and his partner (on stage and in life) Steve Schalchlin just opened their play, The Big Voice: God or Merman? at a theater in New York. They got a very good notice from the Times (read it here) and we couldn't be happier for them.
In 1979, a new production of the musical version of Peter Pan appeared on Broadway with Sandy Duncan in the title role. It later toured and I recall seeing it at the Pantages in Hollywood with Christopher Hewett as her Captain Hook. (George Rose played the part in New York.) I thought she was wonderful — better even than Mary Martin. Alas, no cast album of the Duncan version was ever recorded, apparently due to some legal complexity involving rights. They sold the album of the Mary Martin version in the lobby of the Pantages, where I heard the person manning the booth explain to folks that he couldn't sell them a record of the Sandy Duncan version because there wasn't one.
Fortunately, snippets of Ms. Duncan's performance were preserved. The TV series, Omnibus, taped the the "I'm Flying" number and that's our video clip for tonight, kids. Now, think lovely thoughts and click the link...
The New York Times has a nice article about my occasional employer, Sid Krofft, and his newest business venture. Sid is a fascinating and wonderful gentleman — and by the way, if you're baffled by the locale of that photo of him, that was taken in his home. Sid's mansion is one of the most imaginative and stunning residences on this or any other planet. I suspect his new nightclub will be in the same category. (If that link doesn't work, by the way, try this one. I try to configure my New York Times links so they'll work if you're not registered there but it isn't always easy.)
I'm hoping this will be the last posting here about the Michael Richards matter. It probably won't be but I am hoping. A couple of messages I received seemed to belong here. This first one is from Anita Kilgore...
According to this video, what started it was that the group came in late after Michael Richards' act had started. One of the guys admitted that they were loudly getting to their seats and giving drink orders. This appeared to annoy Michael Richards who said something like "Here come the stupid Blacks and Hispanics." This prompted the response heard on the cell phone video of "You're not funny," at which point Michael Richards had his thorough meltdown.
I, too, think that getting money from Michael Richards for the incident is a bit classless. Not something I would have done. I would have accepted an apology and encouraged the man to stick with therapy. He obviously needs it. I think that Jessie Jackson's initial take on the situation was more appropriate in that he sought to turn this negative incident into something positive that opened dialog about real issues of racial disharmony in the U.S.
However, according to the above video and to other reports I've read online from patrons and comedians that were there, Michael Richards made statements about how rich he was and how he could use his money and position to have the men arrested. This was in addition to the other hateful things he said. Therefore, it could be that the request for money is an attempt to take him down a peg or to hurt him in a place he obviously values enough to flaunt (his wallet).
It's very painful having to endure racial insults. Earlier in life, I was on the receiving end more times than I care to remember — even to the point of being spit on and having dogs sic'd on me. It hurts and is demeaning in ways that I am not sure people who never experienced the same can understand. It can leave you feeling helpless and it is difficult figuring out how to respond. You want to do something about it, but what can you do that will change things or be meaningful or show the person/group the error of their ways?
Like I said, I wouldn't have asked for money. No amount of money can erase the words. A face-to-face apology and a sincere desire to change would be more meaningful. But that rarely happens. I can understand the desire of these men for.something. The "something" they seek may seem inappropriate or an attempt to capitalize on a bad situation. Just as hard as it may be for you to put yourself into the shoes of the men who were verbally assaulted, it is that hard — even harder — to endure it. And to know how to respond.
I agree about trying to turn something negative into something positive. One of the reasons it's dismaying to hear that the "victims" are expecting cash and that Richards might pay it is that it turns their hurt into something else. There'll be a lot of people who'll be saying, "They just feigned outrage to position themselves to extort money from Richards." And there will be members of minority groups who'll be thinking, "Gee, I wish some wealthy star would throw racial slurs at me so I could get that kind of loot."
The positive thing that I would hope would come out of the incident is what seems to be happening: Michael Richards is being humiliated and an awful lot of the public now thinks he's a bigot and/or unstable. He won't be doing that kind of thing again and a lot of other celebrities will be watching their racial language, as well. I'm not sure though that they aren't taking this to a damaging extreme. According to this article in The New York Times, we now have comedy clubs banning the use of the "n" word. I think I side with Dick Gregory who sees something insulting to blacks in such a ban.
I also have this message from Phillip Fried that I wanted to post...
If I started heckling Nathan Lane during a performance of The Producers, I'd get tossed on my can. The same thing would happen if I ragged on a musician or any other performer.
Where does it say that it's okay to heckle stand-up comedians? Unless the comic specifically asks you (or the audience) a question, then your response is to either laugh or not at the routine. The people who started all this are entitled to an apology and nothing else. No money
should change hands. Richard's punishment is the loss of respect, work, and income that comes from his actions on stage that night. And he'll
never recover from it careerwise. He might as well take up a hobby, because he's going to have a lot of time for it.
Believe it or not, there are comedians who welcome and even encourage hecklers...or at the very least, talk to the audience in a way that makes it okay for them to respond. Depends on the comic and the act. Andy Kaufman had some bits that were intended to provoke hostile audience response. (When Richards began his apology on David Letterman's show and the studio audience laughed, it was probably because they thought it was a bit in the style of some of Kaufman's old stunts.)
Ms. Kilgore above relates how the exchange started. The late arrivers were in the wrong to disrupt the show by talking loudly...but that's a "crime" committed by someone in every comedy club in America most nights. Frankly, I think they owe Richards a small apology for interfering with his act, he owes them a larger one (but no money) for how he responded, and both sides owe the other members of the audience a pretty good-sized apology for ruining the evening. My guess though is that it won't come out like that. Richards will write a large check...and soon, hoping to get this thing off the newspapers and weblogs...and the moral of the story will be that if a public figure throws a racist crack at you, call a lawyer and make some money off the incident.
Last night before going to bed, I asked here if anyone could tell me where to find Mylar envelopes that measure 16" by 24". I'd like to thank the 44 people who wrote and told me where I could find Mylar envelopes that measure 18" by 24" or 18½" by 24½".
Now, does anyone know where I can find Mylar envelopes that measure 16" by 24"?
(I don't mean to sound as ungrateful as that probably does. I really do appreciate the instant response that I get when I ask a question here. Guess I should have made it clearer that I need a certain size.)
You may or may not want to watch this clip, which consists of the last nine minutes of Skidoo, a completely unbelievable movie made in 1968 by director Otto Preminger. It was the kind of film that had audiences coming out of the theater muttering, "I did not see what I just saw." A few of those people even stayed to the end — and if they did, they got to see the best thing in the picture...the closing credits. They were all sung aloud by Harry Nilsson, and those credits are in this clip, right after Carol Channing performs the film's uncatchy title song.
Skidoo was covered in more detail in this post, which included a link to its trailer but that link's no longer operative. Later that same day, we wrote more about the film in this post. Basically, it's Preminger trying to latch onto the "hippie" scene of that time period and to explore/exploit it with a cast that included Groucho Marx, Jackie Gleason, Peter Lawford, Mickey Rooney and everyone who'd played a villain on the Batman TV show. The result was a movie that probably caused a lot of filmgoers to take up drugs.
I hesitated a bit about linking to the end of a movie. We don't like people who give away endings. But in this case, you won't have any idea what's going on with the plot. In fact, you could have seen the film, start to finish, ten times and not had any idea what was going on with the plot.
I should caution those with delicate sensibilities that there is a tiny bit of nudity in this clip. Also, you get to see Groucho smoking marijuana in what turned out to be his final scene in his final motion picture. That and Nilsson singing the credits are probably worth nine minutes of your life. It certainly beats watching the whole movie.
Every year, a website called ICQ puts up a nice little Christmas animation done by...well, I don't know who does them because they have no credits. However, they're a lot of fun and I always link to them. A couple of folks have already written to ask me to give them those links again and to add in this year's. Glad to comply. Here's the 2002 entry, here's what they did for 2003, here's what they had up for 2004, here's the 2005 special and here's what they've posted for 2006. There are places you need to click on each of them but I think I'll let you figure out where.
Michael Richards is going to meet with four folks who were in the audience the night of his now-famous tirade and if we read between the lines of this article, it would seem they're going to get some money out of it. A reader of this site, Nick Varga, writes...
I have a problem. Why is it that someone who disrupts a show thinks that they're entitled to a "possible cash settlement?" Why didn't the club request that these people leave when the incident started? Weren't they the ones who started heckling Richards? For that matter, why aren't other people who were at the show to have a good time suing the people who heckled for interfering with their chosen entertainment? Am I wrong that this is all so blown out of proportion? Did I miss something? Did Richards start this by singling this group out? Sorry. I have no where else to vent this and it's bothering the hell out of me.
It's my understanding that one group of people in the house started yelling at Richards in response to remarks they found offensive and that sent him off the edge or over the top or however you want to describe where he went. The person who recorded the infamous video started it then to document what was happening on stage. Eventually, most of the audience walked out. It's not clear if the folks who are now talking about demanding cash from Richards were among those yelling back...or even if that would qualify as heckling.
Beyond that though, I'm with you. A cash payment in this case sounds like an attempt to exploit the situation for personal gain. Frankly, I think Mr. Richards is already receving the appropriate punishment just in terms of humiliation and the likelihood that a pretty large chunk of the public isn't going to go see anything he's in.
Time to start plugging my appearance next week on Shokus Internet Radio, a new online channel operated by my chum, Stu Shostak. S.I.R. is where you can hear old time radio shows, shows of great dance band music of the past, TV theme songs, classic comedy records and all sorts of other fun material. Next Thursday evening, December 7, you'll be able to hear me in a two-hour live call-in show that will replay many times thereafter. It's an episode of Stu's Show and it will air from 4 PM to 6 PM West Coast time, which means 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast. We'll be discussing what I laughingly call my career, Stuart will be dragging show biz anecdotes out of me, and I may even bring along some audio treasures from my collection.
But you don't have to wait until then to listen to Shokus Internet Radio. Go to this page and select one of the many ways you can listen to this fine station.
Max Fleischer's cartoon studio made a couple of these...films which reused footage from earlier cartoons. This one's called Betty Boop's Rise to Fame and the live-action footage shot for it gives us a chance to see Max himself, acting and pretending to be drawing cartoons. This one came out on May 18, 1934, which was around the peak of Ms. Boop's popularity. You get to see her imitate Maurice Chevalier — which, as the Marx Brothers learned, was something you had to do if you were in a film released by Paramount back then — and do a hula dance that would be condsidered naughty today...so one can only imagine what they made of it in the early thirties. Not a bad little cartoon...
Here, through the courtesy of Roger Freedman who sent me the link, is a better newspaper obit on Dave Cockrum.
One point I think someone oughta make about Dave's career is the way in which his presence on the Legion of Super-Heroes strip at DC changed industry thinking. The editor of that comic was a man named Murray Boltinoff. Now, Murray was a pretty good editor but with a couple of "old school" philosophies, one being a certain disdain for the new writers and artists who were getting into comics. In the early seventies, he was especially against catering to what some called the "fan" mentality — readers who read the books regularly, studied the storylines, etc. Comics, he felt, should be written so that each story was utterly transparent to someone picking up their first-ever issue. There should not be any references to earlier tales, and especially not to any more than a few months back. Boltinoff was generally against the idea of trying to build or maintain any sort of long-term mythology that transcended individual stories...and he also felt that DC Comics had a moral obligation to its older freelancers. He never liked to give work to a new person if there was an "old pro" who could use the job.
Obviously, some or all of that is wise in its place. Within the industry today, I believe there's a consensus that editors are too quick to pass over veterans in favor of anyone who can be described as "hot, new talent." There are even editors who routinely who do it who will admit it's wrong both morally and from a long-term sales standpoint, but do it anyway. Back when Boltinoff needed someone to draw the Legion, the pendulum was all the way over in the other direction. He resisted engaging the inexperienced Dave Cockrum and had to be talked into it. (I believe he only accepted Dave because he figured Murphy Anderson — an "old pro" for whom Dave sometimes worked — would really be doing the work, or would at least be supervising every step.)
The Legion of Super-Heroes had suffered at DC from a lack of continuity and from being crammed into short back-up stories. The strip had a large cast with an even larger mythology and it just didn't work in the occasional seven-page appearance. Then when Dave came on it, something happened. He introduced new costumes and drew with a greater-than-usual density (a lot more happened on each page) and this liberated and inspired the writer, who I believe was then Cary Bates. Suddenly, the strip's potential was obvious to the readers and though it took a little while, to Murray Boltinoff and DC Management. Soon, the Legionnaires had the whole book and it was on its way to becoming one of DC's better sellers.
Dave, who left soon after, shouldn't get all the credit, of course. Cary deserves plenty and there were others, as well. But I always thought that the success of that strip — and of the willingness of Boltinoff to embrace the work of a "new kid" — marked a turning point in the history of seventies' comics. Murray became such a champion of that book that when Dave quit in a silly dispute — silly on DC's part; they promised him the original artwork to one particular double-page spread he drew, then reneged on that promise — Boltinoff published a nasty crack about Dave in the letter page and awarded the art assignment to the next "new kid" who walked in the door. (That assignment worked out well for Boltinoff only because that artist happened to be Mike Grell.)
Roy Thomas at Marvel knew what Dave's presence had done for the Legion. That's how come Dave and Len Wein got assigned to revamp the X-Men and as we all know, that worked out well, far beyond anyone's expectations. And from that moment on, it truly was a brand new ball game.
Timothy Noah makes a point about the Iraq War that strikes me as very important; that the decision of what we should do there has as least as much to do with our own national pride as with what will be best for Iraq. And the way we deal with the fact that things didn't go the way we wanted over there is to, of course, blame the Iraqis. (If you want to see a great example of this, read Charles Krauthammer this morning. Apparently, we were right to bring our brand of democracy to Iraq. Those stupid people were wrong not to vote in the government we wanted them to have there. Maybe instead of Halliburton, we should have sent in Diebold to run things.)
January 1, 2007
