Keith Olbermann discusses the claims George W. Bush made in his State of the Union address that four important terrorist plots have been foiled. Here's a link to the video, which runs a little under nine minutes.
I know you'll all be spending tomorrow scurrying about your neighborhoods in your ape costumes, frightening small children and inducing coronaries in seniors, to say nothing of beating and pummelling anyone you encounter named Fester Bestertester. But if you pause for a moment in the day's occupation, you might want to tune in Shokus Internet Radio...say, between 4 PM and 6 PM for those of you on the West Coast or 7 PM and 9 PM for those on the other one. That's when Earl Kress and I will be guests on Stu's Show, taking your calls and discussing cartoons and animation and records about cartoon characters and all sorts of other fluffy topics. Our cordial host will be Stuart Shostak, who puts the "sho" in Shokus Internet Radio.
You can listen to Shokus Internet Radio by mousing your way over to the Shokus site and selecting an audio browser. And like I've been a'tellin' ya...don't wait 'til Earl and I are on to sample this fine station. Here's a link to the schedule.
Eric Boehlert points out a very silly, inaccurate assertion that swept through the press recently. It was the claim that when John Kerry announced he would not be a candidate for prez in 2008, he teared up, sobbed, began crying, whatever. That's not what happened and Boehlert provides a link to a video that proves that isn't what happened.
So why did so many media outlets report that it had? There are two explanations — they didn't check or they just figured the readers wouldn't — and neither speaks well of the reporters. The same thing was true when there was that big, televised funeral for Paul Wellstone and it was reported as three hours of Republican-bashing. If you actually watched the video, you saw it wasn't. And it makes you wonder about the accuracy of reporting in the majority of cases. If they're that far wrong when there is a video record, what's their batting average like on stories where there isn't?
There's talk that the Broadway version of The Producers will close in June. Business is way down from what it once was, and the St. James Theater may be needed to house the forthcoming musical version of Young Frankenstein.
If so, I'm a little surprised that there haven't been more attempts to pump up the box office by bringing in big stars...or at least, bigger than Tony Danza...although two biggies are being mentioned. According to this article, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, who opened the show, may return to close it. I don't know if there's any truth to this but the columnist is right. Those tickets would go for a lot of money, emphasis on "a lot."
Scott Ritter on the current situation in Iraq and why he feels it must not also happen with Iran. Ritter is one of those folks who was right about the Iraq War from the beginning so, of course, he rarely gets on the news talk shows. It's more important to give maximum air time to the people who have been dead wrong at every turn.
Clear the next seven minutes of your life. This is one of the best clips I've had up here.
The late George Carl had one of the most brilliant, hilarious acts I've ever seen in my life...and that isn't just my opinion. Johnny Carson once called it "the funniest twenty minutes in show business" and I think Carson knew a little something about funny acts. I only got to see Mr. Carl in person once — it was when he was in the Lido de Paris show at the Stardust in Vegas — but I'm still chuckling over his skills. He came out, immediately began getting a laugh about every eight seconds, and kept up that pace for the full time he was on stage. When he finished and it was time to bring out the beautiful topless women again, even my friends and I were disappointed.
Some time ago — in this posting — I linked to a clip of Carl performing and warned you that the vignette did not give you the full sense of how funny he was. Neither does this one but it's better. It's George performing on Mr. Carson's show around 1985 and part of the joy is how much Johnny enjoys the performance. You will, too.
Each year, the Animation Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild of America, West presents something they call the Animation Writing Award for lifetime achievement. They've given out eight of these in the past and have just announced that the ninth will be presented to Jules Feiffer. Mr. Feiffer is a cartoonist, a novelist, a screenwriter, a playwright, a former writer of comic books...and he has occasionally dabbled in writing animated cartoons. Anyone here remember Tom Terrific? That was one of his efforts in the medium.
This press release will tell you more about him. Or you can pick up the next issue of the Guild's official magazine, Written By, and read a profile of Feiffer by me.
Okay, Microsoft has just released its new operating system. Here's what I intend to do...
Not upgrade to it now.
Watch experts complain about it and pronounce it a disaster.
Wait as various updates and bug fixes come out.
Six months from now, I'll ask my Computer Expert Friend if it's worth it. He'll probably say yes and I'll probably upgrade then.
But until then, I'm not going to think about it.
You might want to adopt this philosophy. I do it with every major upgrade of an important piece of software and so far, every time I haven't followed this policy, I've regretted it.
Here we go again, people! I will be back on Shokus Internet Radio on Wednesday from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific. That's 7 PM to 9 PM for those of you who live on that side of the country. And it won't just be me appearing this time on Stu's Show with your genial host, Stuart Shostak. This time, I'm bringing along Earl Kress, a fine writer of many things, cartoons among them. There is no one on this planet who knows more useless information about animation than me...but if anyone comes close, it's Earl.
I'm not sure what we'll be discussing. Probably silly stuff about a lot of old cartoons. If you folks call in and ask good questions, it'll be interesting. You can also call in to answer Stu's trivia questions and snag yourself a free Shokus Video DVD, which is more than Kress and I get out of the deal. Maybe if someone prods me, I can be coerced into announcing the name of the actor who's providing the voice of Garfield the Cat in our upcoming animated projects, taking over for the late Lorenzo Music and the expensive Bill Murray.
You can listen to Shokus Internet Radio on the very same computer that's bringing you this lovely website, assuming it has working speakers and an Internet connection that downloads faster than we can talk. Click here to go to the Shokus site and select an audio browser. And don't wait 'til Earl and I are on to sample this fine station. Here's a link to the schedule.
Here's another story from my visits last week to a hospital's emergency room. I have others beyond this one...
There was a woman, right across from where my mother was being treated, who'd been severely injured. Her name was Lily and I overheard her doctor say something about lacerations and contusions and he also used much more complicated medical nouns that sounded even more painful. Then I heard him mutter something about, "...her husband beating the crap out of her." That kind of thing happens, of course, and we know it happens. Still, it's jarring to see the results of it right in front of you, as done to an actual human being. They weren't attractive.
It was perhaps an hour later that I was sitting on a couch in the hallway outside the emergency room making a cellphone call. A tall, well-dressed man walked up to me, sat down and — completely ignoring the fact that I was in the middle of a conversation — he began asking me if I was ready to accept Jesus Christ as my personal saviour or if I was instead prepared to burn in Hell...those apparently being the only two possible options.
You may know the pitch. It's one of those stories that makes God and Jesus sound like egomaniacal dictators who'll condemn you to torture, no matter how else you've lived your life, if you don't pay proper fealty to their names. Helped the poor? Saved innocent lives? That's nice...but if you haven't taken your loyalty oath, you spend All Eternity in the firepit next to Hitler, Saddam Hussein and the guy who green-lights all those Rob Schneider movies.
I gave him my standard reply when confronted by such people. I tell them that whatever they want to believe is their right, and I'll fight to the death, blah blah blah. But I'm suspicious of a religious sales shpiel that's delivered like someone selling magazine subscriptions. I don't buy cookies from total strangers who approach me with a five-minute prepared speech so I'm certainly not going to change my faith that way. I also threw in, as I sometimes do, that I think it cheapens their message to sell their beliefs almost the exact same way kids in college used to try to sell me marijuana. (There were also people at U.C.L.A. then pushing Jesus. I'll bet the marijuana vendors got a lot more takers.)
The man realized he was not about to make a sale so he apologized, told me he'd pray for me to someday see the light and departed. You may have already guessed where this story is going.
An hour later, I was back in the E.R., waiting outside my mother's cubicle while a nurse inside tended to one of those matters that is best done with the son out of the room. Suddenly, I saw the well-dressed man wandering about in the ward and he wasn't wearing one of the Security Badges that we all had to wear in there. One of the nurses spotted him, too. She pointed and yelled with great alarm, "He shouldn't be in here!" A security guard hurried over and after a brief quarrel, the religious pitchman was escorted out.
I assumed it was because he'd been going around asking the sick and injured if they're ready to accept Jesus Christ, which would be annoying enough. But then someone explained to me that he was the husband who beat the crap out of Lily. I don't know if there is an Afterlife but if there is, I'm betting I fare better in it than he does.
Here's kind of a neat triple feature. Three different women have starred on Broadway in what some would call the "Mary Martin" version of the musical, Peter Pan...one being, of course, Mary Martin. It was written for her, rendering obsolete a previous Peter Pan musical and a couple of non-musical versions. Because it's so famous, people think it must have been a long-running Broadway smash but in fact, Ms. Martin only did it in New York for a few months — October of '54 through February of '55. She did tour with it for years but it's mainly known because she performed it three times on television — in 1955, 1956 and 1960. The first two were live. The third was produced on tape and was subsequently rebroadcast on a number of occasions.
I remember liking the TV version, though with reservations. Even as a kid, I thought Mary Martin didn't look like a lost boy who could fly. I thought she looked like someone's very sweet grandmother on a wire. There's a limit to how much you, as an audience member, can pretend and go along with someone or something on screen that isn't convincing and she came perilously close to my limit when I was a lad. And though I didn't know what "gay" was then, I later realized that's what I always thought Captain Hook, as played by Cyril Ritchard, was in that production. His feet touched the floor even less than hers. In the number where Hook lusts after a mysterious lady who is actually Peter Pan singing soprano, I lost all track of who was the boy and who was the girl...and I think they did, too.
Anyway, here's "I'm Flying" as Mary Martin and Company performed it for the 1960 videotaping. I have a suspicion that when this tape was released on home video, someone went in and digitally "painted out" some of the flying wires. At least, I remember them as being quite obvious when I saw them on my home set at age eight, even though we got lousy reception. With or without them, it's a pretty good number...
In September of '79, the show was revived with Sandy Duncan in the lead. She did it for a year and a half on Broadway, vastly exceeding Ms. Martin's run, then toured it for a year or two. I saw this production out here and thought it was outstanding. By then, her Cap'n Hook was Christopher Hewett, better known as Roger DeBris and/or Mr. Belvedere. Hewett managed to not play it as campy as Ritchard and I thought the story worked better with the villain acting like he wanted to kill Pan rather than to style his hair. I linked to the following clip once before but here it is again...the same number, only as performed by Ms. Duncan and Friends. This was taped for the TV show, Omnibus...
In the late eighties, former Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby began a long stint touring America with a bus-'n'-truck version that played everywhere, including four separate runs in Broadway houses, usually when one had a few months open around Christmas time. She's retired from the role now, which is a shame because I thought she was about as good as anyone could be in the part. Fortunately, her production was videotaped for cable and released to home video. Both the VHS and DVD versions seem to be outta-print but they're not scarce if you hunt around on eBay or at some merchants. Since I never saw the Mary Martin version live, I'm hesitant to say I liked Cathy Rigby better but the fact that I'd consider saying that should tell you something.
This is the Rigby version of...yes, the same number as the other two. Here's how they did "I'm Flying" on the 1991 Tony Awards — a bit abbreviated for the telecast and not as polished as it is on the home video version. It has the addition of Pan swooping out over the audience, which Rigby did each performance as her curtain call "bow" at the end of the show. Sandy Duncan did that in her production, too. I don't care how jaded and sophisticated you are. It's a truly thrilling theatrical moment. If I ever do a one-man show on Broadway, I'll either close by doing that or smashing a watermelon. Maybe both at the same time.
John W. Dean says some things that need to be said about our Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. I assume you all saw the exchange recently between Gonzales and Arlen Specter. If you didn't, its more astounding moments are here. It's amazing that we actually have an Attorney General with less respect for the law than John Mitchell.
The New York Times has a good, rare interview up with Garry Shandling, answering the question of where he's been lately. Garry's a very funny man and a very nice guy, and I wish he'd figure out something new he wants to do, because we could certainly use more of him on the screen.
In the article, he mentions being inspired by a kids' TV show called Hot Dog. I think I've mentioned this before here but we need to get Hot Dog released on DVD. It was a great program that showed how things were made, interspersed with commentary from Jonathan Winters, Joanne Worley and Woody Allen. That's right: Woody Allen. He did a kids' show and he was very funny on it. I'll write a little more about it here in a few days.
As a couple of you actually figured out from my patterns of posting here, I spent much of last week taking care of my mother. I had to transport her to a hospital emergency room last Sunday night. The hospital released her late Tuesday. Then Wednesday afternoon, I had to take her back to the emergency room and she was in the hospital 'til late Friday.
She's home now and doing well so I need to fume about how awful things can get in a crowded emergency room. I've been in a number of them the last few years and it's maddening, utterly maddening. Because people are suffering, people are in pain...some are even on the verge of dying. There's a possible — in some cases, near-certain — cure there but then there are all these things, mostly relating to overcrowding, that keep it agonizingly out of arm's reach for far too long. Almost without exception, the doctors and nurses are wonderful and efficient and caring and everything you'd want them to be. Almost without exception, the admitting process and the red tape and the paperwork and most of all the overpopulation and the "waiting for a bed to open up" are disgraceful and — I'm sure, in many cases — killing people. That includes people who wait for long hours in emergency rooms to be seen and those who don't go there at all because they know what an ordeal it will be.
The Wednesday afternoon visit was one of the worst experiences I've ever encountered. Around 3 PM, I was leaving my house for the Joe Barbera Memorial when my mother's caregiver called and described symptoms that sounded bad. I course-corrected, went over there instead and stuffed Mom in the car. (Naïve optimist that I can be, I actually thought, "Well, Mr. B's memorial doesn't actually start until 6:00. Maybe I can get my mother treated and still get there in time for some of it." I was at the hospital until 2:20 AM...and would have been there longer if I'd just been quiet and done everything according to the rules. By the way, if you want a report on the memorial, my colleague Earl Kress has one up on his site.)
In every emergency room, you first encounter someone who does "triage," meaning they kind of log you in, check whether you're there for a heart attack or a hangnail, then prioritize who gets treated in what order. This particular emergency room was so busy and so disorganized that the triage people were running a good half-hour behind. I don't mean a half-hour to get the sick people inside so treatment can begin on them. I mean a half-hour to decide if someone is about to drop dead without immediate attention.
This, obviously, was not acceptable and I got into a very loud argument with one Triage Lady...which I guess was foolish on both our parts. Because while she was standing there yelling back at me, she wasn't processing patients and that was kind of the desired goal. So I broke it off, ran upstairs, snuck into a department that I shouldn't have been in and pressured my mother's doctor's chief nurse into phoning downstairs to demand a speedy admission. By the time I got back to the emergency room, my mother was undergoing the triage examination and shortly after that, she was wheeled inside. It also helped that I dropped the names of high-ranking hospital officials and the fact that one of my best friends from high school is a doctor in this particular emergency room. These are the times when you have to go into Full Bilko Mode, saying whatever it takes.
But you know, it shouldn't come to that. I kind of cheated and fast-talked and relied on connections to get her in there ahead of others...and I could only get that nurse upstairs to intervene because it was 4:00 in the afternoon and the rest of the hospital was still open. If we'd gotten there after hours when the upstairs departments were closed, that wouldn't have worked. The decision that my mother's condition warranted prompt action wouldn't have been made until a half-hour later, if then.
The call from upstairs got me got into another argument with the Triage Lady. She was furious that I'd gone "over her head" and she apparently felt that expressing that anger to me was more important than processing the dozens of people who were waiting for medical care...in some cases, critical medical care. Once again, I broke it off so she'd go back to doing her job...which I'm afraid was taking down their particulars, telling them to have a seat and then making them wait forever. Either that, or she told them it might be eight hours and they were free — hint, hint — to go to some other facility. Trouble was, she couldn't tell them where it might be any less of a wait. All throughout the evening, every time I passed through that waiting room, I saw sick people who'd arrived before we had, sitting there...praying to see someone who could treat what ailed them. It was very sad.
When I left at 2:20 in the morning, my mother was in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in the main hospital to become available. When I returned the next morning at 10 AM, my mother was in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in the main hospital to become available. They had yet to find her one so I spent four hours trying to hurry that up. Again, I had to bend/break rules, sneak into offices where I technically should not have been, go to superiors and ask them to intervene, etc.
This was more than just a matter of my mother's comfort. The doctors in the E.R. had signed off on moving her to the main hospital and to the care of specialists up there. That was right and fine. Trouble was, she hadn't actually been moved upstairs. The doctors who were now in charge of treating her didn't have her...so she was in kind of a Medical Limbo. The E.R. crew had stopped the immediate pains and problems but they were unequipped to deal with figuring out what had caused it and how we might prevent it from happening again. To get that part of the process underway, I had to get her upstairs.
It finally came down to the point where a room was assigned but the previous patient was still in it. A friend was with her and they hadn't left because the friend's son, who was going to drive them home, hadn't been able to get off work yet. They were eager to leave, I was eager to have them leave...so I gave them cab money, took them out and put them in a taxi. If I'd waited for the system to work, it would have been at least another three hours before my mother got into that room. And of course, getting her out of the E.R. freed up the space for them to treat someone else in there.
So I want to give you some advice. If you have an elderly relative and you care about them, do not ever let them go by themselves to an emergency room. Drop whatever you have to but get over there and fight for them to get prompt service. They cannot do this alone. They need you there to be an advocate, to stand up for their rights, to make the system work as well as it can for them. To the extent possible, accomplish all this by ingratiating yourself with the staff and following the rules...but don't stop there. If you have to, get loud and get in the way. And whenever the system doesn't work, circumvent it. This may be difficult because it will probably mean figuring out the system in order to figure out ways around obstacles...but you're a smart guy. Or at least, you'll be smarter than your unwell Loved One will be at that awful moment.
We're now hearing a lot in this country — and it's about time — about National Health Care. I understand all the arguments against government getting involved in this area and I would certainly not discount the possibility that the wrong action could make a bad situation even worse. But I also think we have to acknowledge the bad situation and do something to try and correct it, especially in the area of emergency care. One of the reasons that emergency rooms everywhere are so crammed and unable to deal with emergencies is that so many people today can't afford basic medical coverage. So they aren't receiving treatment for ailments when they're minor...and when those ailments get to be major, the only thing the infirm can do is go to some emergency room and overwhelm the triage people. This doesn't work for anyone. It doesn't even work for people who have decent health insurance — I do and my mother does — because we have to get in line behind them and either wait forever or do as I did and cheat a little.
I'll probably write a bit more about the past week in the next few days here. I have a few other relevant anecdotes. But I also have deadlines I'm now behind on. So stay tuned to this station for more grousing about Emergency Rooms and those who bar entry to them.
A while ago on this site, I put up a section called Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More, and I've occasionally added to it since then. (If you haven't read it for a while, there are probably a few entries — not necessarily at the end — that you haven't seen.) I thought the premise of this section was pretty clear. It's personal recollections of restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area that I went to, one or more times, and which are no longer in business. And I guess I thought it was also implied that these were restaurants about which I thought I had something interesting to say. I know I did mention that the section would be expanded in the future...and I continue to add to it.
I also continue to marvel at the people who don't get this basic concept. In the last two months, two major websites that focus on Los Angeles have linked to that feature, prompting thousands more hits than usual and lots of very nice e-mails from folks who fondly remember this or that place to dine. I also, however, received a number of messages that really baffled me because, like I just said, I thought the premise was pretty simple.
I received one rather insulting message from a fellow who was upset because I didn't include his favorite old restaurant, which was a place called Brewster's in Michigan. Why didn't I include Brewster's?, he demanded to know. Well, maybe because it was in Michigan and this is a section about restaurants in Los Angeles. Also, of course, I never went to or even heard of Brewster's.
I've received any number of messages — well over two dozen — from folks who write to me about great defunct L.A. restaurants that I seem to have omitted from my list. Most are friendly and polite but a few write as if I have committed a horrendous factual error and shame on me. Why didn't I include their favorite old restaurant?, they demand to know. Well, in a few cases, it's because I haven't gotten around to it yet...but in most, it's because I never went to their favorite old restaurant, have nothing to say about it and perhaps never even heard of it.
This morning, I received a message from a man who I hope was kidding with how outraged he was. I mean, I don't know the guy but you hope there aren't total strangers who could get this incensed over something so wrongheaded. He's upset because he operates a very popular, successful restaurant in Los Angeles and I didn't include it on my list. Why didn't I include his restaurant?, he demands to know. Well, maybe it's because it's still there. It's not out of business! I've also never been there and have barely heard of it so I have no reason to declare it "Great"...but the main point is that it's still open and operating. It doesn't belong in a collection of essays called Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More. Maybe he'd have a point if I'd called the department "Every Single Restaurant That Ever Existed in Los Angeles That Anyone Liked."
I guess I shouldn't be stunned by these messages. Whenever I post anything even vaguely political, I get at least one e-mail to which the appropriate response, were I of a mind to respond, would be, "Please read what I wrote with your eyes open." The Internet is wonderful because it makes it so simple for us to all communicate with each other but of course, there's a downside to this. It's that it makes it too simple for us to communicate without enough thought and consideration.
Someone ought to invent a piece of e-mail software that would work as follows: You compose a message and hit "send" but it doesn't send it. It holds the message in a little storage area for twelve hours and then it shows it to you again and asks, "Do you really want to send this?" The software could even scan the message for certain key angry words and if you include enough of them, it would ask you two or three times, the last of which would say, "Are you sure we can't talk you out of sending this?" Or if you tend to drink at night while surfing the web, you could set the program to stop you from sending anything after 9 PM. It wouldn't actually dispatch the message until the next morning after you'd passed a little online sobriety test.
I'll be updating the L.A. Restaurants section in a few weeks with three or four more old extinct Southern California eating establishments. If your favorite isn't there, relax. Maybe I never went there. Or maybe it's still in business or it was in Michigan.
If you enjoyed yesterday's clip with Mel Blanc and Johnny Carson, you'll probably like this one of Mel Blanc with his longtime employer, Jack Benny. You'll even get to hear the English Horse impression again.
This runs ten minutes and it's from Benny's last TV show of 1956. The first half is Mel playing an impersonator of animal sounds. Note that he and Mr. Benny have a bit of trouble getting through it without breaking up.
If you want to stay tuned for the second half, you'll see some (not all) of a bit Benny did with "The Landrews Sisters." There's an interesting bit of history to this piece. It was originally written for Benny by a writer named Harry Conn, who authored all the early Jack Benny radio programs. Jack did some version of it throughout most of the live performances he did from about the mid-thirties until the last times he played Las Vegas in the seventies. The name of the act kept changing to keep up with the times. Near the end, they were called The Smothers Sisters.
The three ladies in the video are, left to right, June Earle, Iris Adrian and Muriel Landers. I don't know anything about Ms. Earle but Iris Adrian had a long career playing wisecracking waitresses and chorus girls. (She was the waitress that Walter Matthau flirts with in the delicatessen in The Odd Couple.) Muriel Landers had a long career playing fat girls and was even a regular briefly on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. She was so often cast when they needed a fat girl that casting agents used to refer to those as "Muriel Landers roles," which was a nicer way of saying, "Get me a fat girl."
This clip cuts off in the middle of the Landrews Sisters bit. If you make it that far and yearn to see the end of it, you can view it here.
Tim Dickinson on why he thinks Al Gore should run for president in 2008 and why he thinks Gore can win. I still think it's too early to predict almost anything about the election but when I think of all the reasons some people gave in 2000 for thinking Gore would be a bad president, they sure seem trivial to me today.
That's Charles Lane in his (brief) scene in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett. It was only one of a couple hundred movies in which he appeared, usually playing a banker or a lawyer or some other officious presence. Every time I've seen Mad World with an audience, there's a laugh of recognition when Mr. Lane appears on the screen and you can hear people muttering, "That guy." They may not know his name but they know the face and voice from films as diverse as You Can't Take It With You (he played an I.R.S. agent), Arsenic and Old Lace (he played a snoopy reporter), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (he played another snoopy reporter), It's a Wonderful Life (he played a rent collector), The Big Store (he foreclosed on Groucho's car) and so many more.
Mr. Lane turned 102 today. I doubt he's spending it Googling himself so he probably won't see this. But maybe somebody he knows him will let him know that he has a lot of fans out here on the 'net and that we're thinking of him.
This video is badly edited but there's enough good stuff in it to make it linkworthy. It's an appearance Mel Blanc made with Johnny Carson, demonstrating pretty much the same voices he did on every talk show appearance he ever made. Even the bit at the end where they pretend Johnny's throwing a curve at him is an old bit but, hey, it's Mel Blanc. There's a reason he was the top voice guy in the business.
The 1933 movie 42nd Street may have been the first great movie musical...and it still holds up rather well. Let's take a look at the trailer for it which hypes all the wrong selling points and avoids showing you any interesting scenes from the film. In spite of that, it's still a fun trailer. If the embedded link below doesn't do it for you, click here instead.
And by the way, consider this: This is a pretty old movie. Your great grandmother could have seen it when your great grandfather took her out on this first date. It truly belongs to another era.
The movie is all about the staging of a Broadway musical called Pretty Lady. And you know who played the guy who authored Pretty Lady? He only has a small, unbilled part but he's there in the movie...
Charles Lane, who reaches the glorious age of 102 tomorrow. We'll post something more about the Birthday Boy then.
Take a moment and read this weblog post by Glenn Greenwald. It's about the latest crusade by people who were all wrong about Iraq to suggest that the problem isn't that they were all wrong about Iraq. The problem is American citizens pointing out that they were all wrong about Iraq. You know, everything would be just fine if we'd just refrain from pointing out that they don't know what they're doing.
This is a quickie but it's something you may remember from your childhood...an animated commercial spot with Reddy Killowatt, the mascot of your local electric company. I believe his voice is done by Walter Tetley, who's probably best remembered for his role as Sherman on the Mr. Peabody cartoons produced by Jay Ward. Here he is...
So what's the deal with Bush's alleged "health care" proposal? Doesn't it sound like he gathered together his aides and asked them to come up with some new proposal that was guaranteed to not go anywhere and to piss off everyone in the process? If you hate the idea of increased government involvement in our medical lives, you're probably annoyed that he's legitimizing that goal and suggesting it would be a good idea for something to be done in that area. If you love the idea, you're probably annoyed that he's come up with such a terrible one.
Isn't Bush down to the point where his remaining constituency is mainly people who love him for his tax cuts? For the last decade or three, any time a Democrat has suggested anything that might cause someone to pay a dime more to any government than they did before, those people have screamed "TAX INCREASE!!!" What Bush is proposing here would certainly qualify as one by even a more realistic definition. So, given what a tax hike did to his father's popularity with that same crowd, why is this Bush opening himself to that charge? Especially for a proposal that won't even have much Republican support, let alone the Democratic backing it would need to become a reality?
I didn't watch the State of the Union address earlier, though it's waiting on my TiVo at home. (I am currently blogging from an undisclosed location.) According to Fred Kaplan though, Bush is still double-talking us through this war. Which is a shame. It would be nice to believe in Bush's plan...and even nicer to believe he actually has one.
Ed Golick explains something that hadn't occurred to me about that "soundie" I linked to...
The "Who's Yehudi film" was printed backwards on purpose. Panorams, the machines that showed the 16mm musical numbers, rear projected the films. If the films were printed normally the titles and the image would have been backwards. I own a number of original 16mm Panoram films and they all have reverse titles.
A little trivia. Years ago, a Yehudi radio contest was held on Bob Hope's radio program. Listeners were invited to send in who they thought the
mysterious Yehudi was. The winning entry — "Yehudi is the little man who turns out the light in the refrigerator when the door is closed."
Maybe someone who reads this site can help me with this. I'm looking for a place, preferably online, to buy two-sided blank DVD-r discs. I don't mean dual-layer. I mean the kind where you can burn Part One of a movie to one side of the disc, then flip it over and burn Part Two on the other side. Most companies have stopped making or carrying these because they're quite unreliable. I know this but I have a need for them in spite of it. I'd like 16X but will settle for whatever I can get.
Also: I'm looking into maybe/possibly/I'm not sure getting a wireless Internet card for my laptop. Several cellular companies offer them and I'm wondering if anyone reading this has a strong recommendation or warning about any particular provider or plan. Natch, I'm most interested in hearing from anyone in Southern California, which is where I can usually be found. So far, the deals I've seen all require that you to sign up for a couple of decades. Having once gotten stuck in a long-term analog cell phone plan when the rest of mankind went digital, I'm a bit leery of committing to anything that may not be what I want after the next Consumer Electronics Show. Anyone have a suggestion?
Several folks have pointed this out to me in e-mail: In the "Who's Yehudi?" soundie — our previous link — everything is mirror-imaged. Whoever did the transfer flipped the image.
Sharp eyes there. For years, whenever the movie Oliver appeared on home video — and sometimes even when it ran on TV — one entire reel (about 11 minutes) was flipped that way. The telecine operator who did the film-2-tape transfer erred and then that transfer was used over and over...with surprisingly few complaints. Finally, a few years ago, they did a new transfer and put things right.
I've been swamped with matters — biz and personal — all day so I'm behind in posting news and thoughts. I'll try to catch up later tonight. I also need to post our annual notice of the birthday of the great character actor, Charles Lane. He turns 102 on Friday, I believe.
Bear with us, please. It's not quite Cream of Mushroom Soup time here but it's getting close.
Here we have a soundie from 1942...and for those of you who don't know: Soundies were the music videos of that era. They were seen in a special kind of jukebox that was equipped to run movies instead of records.
The offering is "Who's Yehudi?" as recorded by Kay Kyser and his Orchestra, with Lane Truesdale as the vocalist. The song was written by two gents named Bill Seckler and Matt Dennis, who were inspired (if that's the word) by one of the many catch-phrases of comedian Jerry Colonna. Mr. Colonna, who was then a regular on Bob Hope's radio broadcasts, liked to make sport of the name of Yehudi Menuhin, a prominent violinist and conductor. For a time, no matter what sketch or bit Colonna found himself in, he'd find a way to ask the question, "Who's Yehudi?" and audiences would howl and I don't quite understand why it was funny, either. Maybe it was the way he said it. In any case, it inspired the following tune...
HumorousMaximus is a website that features daily cartoons. Yesterday, they began running old episodes of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, starting almost at the beginning. The first Canyon strip was a Sunday page which ran on January 13, 1947. Yesterday, the website posted the first daily strip, which appeared the Monday after.
As I understand it, they'll post a new daily strip each day until they reach the end of the run. The strip lasted from 1/13/47 until 6/4/88, which works out to 15,118 strips. There were 2,159 Sunday pages and this website isn't running them...so that leaves 12,959 daily strips. At seven per week, that means 1,851 weeks or around 35 and a half years. What does this work out to? June of 2042? I'm too tired to do the rest of the math. It's quite a while.
You can read each day's Steve Canyon strip here. If you don't know why people loved this feature, give it a few weeks. You'll see.
Okay, I've sent you towards enough bad movies lately. Let me make it up to you by recommending a great one. Wednesday evening, Turner Classic Movies is running Billy Wilder's rarely-seen masterpiece, The Big Carnival. When Wilder made it, it was called Ace in the Hole but the studio didn't like that title. They apparently didn't like the movie, either, and it was released under a couple of other names, as well.
You're going to have to get yourself in the right frame of mind for this one because it brings on-screen cynicism to a new peak. Almost everyone in the film is slime, especially Kirk Douglas in the lead. He plays a rotten-to-the-core reporter who doesn't believe in letting minor things like truth or other folks' lives get in the way of a hot, career-advancing story. His tactics got him booted out of mainstream journalism and exiled to a small-time newspaper in New Mexico. While there, he happens upon a mining accident and decides to hype it into the news story of the year. Given what's happened with cable news the last few years, with the exploitation of O.J. and Jon Benet and Condit and all the rest, it's amazing no one thought to remake or even rerun Wilder's prescient movie.
But no. It's been hard to find. There have been a few home video releases, not necessarily legal. If it's run on TV in the last decade or so, I managed to miss it. The tape I have is from a broadcast so long ago that it's full of commercials for defunct products.
The one time I met Wilder, I asked him about the film but he didn't want to discuss it. It was a painful memory, a failed project, a movie for which he'd received undeserved grief. He'd talk at length about The Apartment but not about The Big Carnival (or, as he called it, Ace in the Hole). He didn't even want to hear me tell him that it would someday be hailed as a classic. The only real thing he did say was that the studio wanted him to put a happy ending on it, which proved they didn't understand it one bit. It's one of those films where the only conceivable happy ending is that you walk out when it's over and think, "Thank God that didn't happen to me." And then you go home and take a couple of showers to try and wash off the general smarminess.
This article by Bruce Bennett will give you more background on the film and the real-life tragedy that inspired it. But if you've never seen the film, maybe you'd be wise to wait and read nothing more about it before you do. And for God's sake, don't watch it when you're in a good mood you don't want to spoil.
Political blogger Ezra Klein makes an important point about the current flurry of polls adjudging Hillary's chances versus Barack's versus Joe's, et al. At this point in the '04 race, Joe Lieberman was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, followed by Gephardt and Edwards. And a commenter notes that in February of '91, the eventual nominee (Bill Clinton) was in eleventh place.
The current polling may be equally meaningless...which is kind of an exciting prospect. I think the person currently in eleventh place for the Democratic presidential nomination is me.
I live a few miles from a portion of Los Angeles known as Culver City. Although it's presently going through a heavy influx of new businesses and structural upgrades, there are still a lot of old buildings in Culver City, which makes it a delight for us Laurel and Hardy buffs. The Hal Roach Studio was located there and though it's long gone, you can still spot a lot of the street locations where Stan and Ollie filmed. Several are strikingly identifiable from their old films even 70-80 years later.
Piet Schreuders is a designer and pop culture historian. Not long ago, he did extensive research of the area, as you'll see in this clip. You'll also see a little of what he did with it, which was to create a computer model of the main streets of Culver City, regressed to the era when Laurel and Hardy filmed there. This runs a little less than five minutes and some of it is in Dutch but you'll get the idea. Thanks to Don Brockway for sharing this with us.
More on the booking of Rich Little for that Correspondents' dinner. He disavows remarks in the earlier article to which I linked, and the guy who booked him says that he was turned down by David Letterman, Jay Leno, Martin Short and Billy Crystal. Some interesting comments in there from Lewis Black, as well. Here's the article.
I enjoy reading your blog as often as I can. As a high school film and television teacher, it is nice to get an inside perspective on some of the industry goings-on and the people within the business. I learn as much, often, as my students do.
One question I have been pondering for the last few months...what are your thoughts on Bob Barker, his career, his retirement, and the future
of The Price is Right? (I have noticed that you have referenced Barker only a handful of times in your entries the last few years, and
none of those times have you been overly flattering toward him.) Just curious.
Well, my thoughts on Bob Barker are that he deserves a mass quantity of kudos for sheer endurance but I haven't been able to enjoy the show in years. At some point, the focus changed from Bob playing pricing games with the audience to Bob encouraging the audience to slobber over him. I never liked the guy or Truth or Consequences back when he hosted that program because both exuded a condescending approach towards the contestants. I liked him when he started on The Price is Right because that manner was not in evidence. And then at some point, it crept back in and I stopped watching. The program also lost a lot of its nice family "feel" because of announcers dying and models being replaced.
CBS is still trying to pick a replacement. This coming Thursday, they're taping a couple of "audition" shows which will not be broadcast, testing out three potential hosts — Doug Davidson, Todd Newton and John O'Hurley. I'm not sure why they're auditioning Davidson, who hosted a 1994 syndicated version of The Price is Right that didn't make it — presumably, they know how he'd handle the job — but they are. Mr. O'Hurley has just been announced for the role of King Arthur in the Las Vegas company of Spamalot that opens March 31. Presumably, he has an out clause in his contract there in case he gets Price and can't juggle both gigs.
I have no idea who they'll get but I suspect the show won't last in its present daytime slot. I think it's long since run its course and that a lot of viewers who've been watching from force of habit will take the departure of Barker as an appropriate point to hop off. However, it's been such a money-maker that CBS will do everything possible to keep it afloat and if they give up, its owners will keep throwing it at us in new venues and new formats much the way Hollywood Squares and Family Feud never seem to go away. It also wouldn't surprise me if someone is working on a way to retool The Price is Right as a prime-time entry with the look and feel (and payoffs) of Deal or No Deal.
Hey, did I ever post my one Bob Barker anecdote here? It occurred at a car wash on Highland, just south of Sunset in Hollywood. One day in the mid-eighties, I was getting my auto debugged there and found myself standing next to Mr. Barker, who was waiting for the guys with the blue rags to finishing swabbing down his car. His was a big Lincoln Continental, as I recall. Anyway, I motioned towards the men drying our vehicles and told him, "They don't like it when you tip them in Plinko chips."
I thought that was a pretty funny line but Barker looked at me like I'd just made Number One on his shoes. The incident didn't sour me on him and his show but it was indicative of the attitude that did. I'll bet we could have had a nice chat if I'd just told him he was the greatest thing to happen to television since the invention of the remote control.
The reviewer for The New York Times doesn't think much of Tony Danza playing Max Bialystock in the Broadway version of The Producers. But I note from the grosses posted over on Playbill that business seems to be up so that may not matter. (Thanks to Bruce Reznick for the N.Y. Times link.)
I can't embed this one but if you'd like to see a four minute video summary of the first four months of a panda's life, click right about here. My Uncle Aaron took 8mm movies of my first few months that are virtually indistinguishable except, of course, that I was cuter.
Rich Little tells The New Yorker about his upcoming gig entertaining at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
The gent who made the selection says that the White House didn't complain about last year's Colbert extravaganza. Yeah, but they didn't have to complain. Everyone knew the prez was uncomfy and if you're in charge of that dinner, your number one priority is to make certain the President of the United States is present and doesn't find something more pressing to do that evening. The event derives all of its importance and purpose because the Chief Exec puts in an appearance. Picking someone like Rich Little is cowardly, yes. But I don't think the person making the decision really has a lot of freedom to say, "I want Michael Moore and if Bush doesn't like it, too bad. He doesn't have to show up."
Another point: If you decide to re-watch Colbert's speech, as I did the other day, see if you don't agree with this observation. The audience wasn't that bothered by the shots at Bush. To the extent the mood in the hall turned icy, it was because of Colbert's shots at the Press Corps. Some of them probably complained.
I also don't believe that, as Little claims in the article, Bill Maher wouldn't have him on because, "He didn't want to take the chance that I would be funnier." I mean, I believe Rich Little said that but Maher routinely books Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Ben Affleck and other people you wouldn't let anywhere near your show if you were worried that someone else might be funnier. The reason Maher hasn't booked Rich Little is probably the same reason that the White House Correspondents Assocation did. Oddly enough, Bill might just invite him on because of that boolking.
Thanks to Craig Robin for calling the article to my attention.
On the other hand, I just read an item about how the California presidential primary may get moved way up, maybe becoming the second or third in the land. That might bode well for Hillary Clinton grabbing the Democratic nomination. With the right kind of campaign — and Bill stumping for her — she might do well enough in this state to make her unstoppable. I'm assuming a victory in a California primary would have a lot more impact on the whole contest than winning New Hampshire or some other state with four electoral votes. If it was big enough, might it not give the victor a near-lock as the nominee? Something to consider.
Hillary Clinton is entering the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. This comes as good news to a band of folks out there who've made an awful lot of money demonizing her, preying on the view of a small band of citizens who think she's Satan in a pants suit. There's one activist group that's very bad with facts, very good at getting past my Spam trappers. At least twice a month, I get an e-mail that says, in effect, "Everything you value in the world will cease to exist if this woman is not destroyed. Send us lots of cash and we'll stop her." Those people must be turning cartwheels right now and starting the mass mailings.
This is just a gut feeling on my part but I don't think their efforts will be necessary. I don't think she'll get that near the nomination. She's not a very dynamic speaker and I suspect a lot of folks who otherwise might be inclined to vote for her would prefer someone who didn't come with so much baggage. It's kind of the way a lot of the loyalest Republicans now view George W. Bush.
Of course, I also don't think Obama, Biden, Kucinich and the rest of the announced or presumed contenders have that much more appeal than Ms. Clinton. The shallowness of the Talent Pool is evident when the Democrat who looks the most like presidential material is Al Gore. And some of that will just be a matter of voters wanting to turn back the clock, wipe out the previous eight years and vote for the guy they now think they really wanted in the first place. Gore was right on the Iraq War and it's now becoming near-fact (sadly) that he's right about Global Warming. In politics, if you're right about two important things, you're way ahead of the average. Like, by about two things.
An obituary for Joe Gill in his hometown newspaper. Apparently, I now run "an obituary Web site featuring famous names in the comics industry." Sometimes, it sure feels that way.
RawVegas.tv is a new Internet site that went online yesterday. As near as I can figure out, the idea behind it is that a crew of reporters run around Las Vegas and tape features about what's going on. There's not much up yet of interest but we're going to keep our eyes on this site.
I couldn't find a traditional still of Ron Carey, a very funny character actor who died Tuesday at the age of 71. I had to do a frame grab from the Mel Brooks film, Silent Movie, in which Ron played the sidekick to the bad guy played by Harold Gould. But that was kind of the way Ron's career went. He was always the sidekick, the buddy, the little guy who aided and abetted the hero or villain. In Mr. Brooks's High Anxiety, he was the chauffeur who drove Mel around and for his regular role on Barney Miller, he was the little guy everyone abused. He made a pretty decent living that way.
Ron was a stand-up comedian who started getting tapped for roles in commercials. He made so many of them that he largely abandoned stand-up and made the lateral move into acting. He was an enormously nice, funny man. I remember one time when — for reasons too boring to relate — I found myself on the set of a Barney Miller taping that had stretched to 4 AM, having started somewhere around dinner time. The producers and story editors were doing Rewrite #47 on the script and the cast members were alternately cursing and nodding off. All the energy on the set flowed from Ron Carey, who was scurrying about, telling jokes and keeping spirits up throughout what someone else (or maybe Ron) referred to as "The Bataan Death Sitcom." He only had a small role that week but his cheerleading did plenty to make it, as I recall, a pretty good episode.
I met him a few other times, often at meetings of Yarmy's Army, which is a local group of older comedians. I was a guest/outsider but Ron did an awful lot to make me feel welcome...and it wasn't just me. He was like that with everyone. Here's the L.A. Timesobit. As you'll see from the man's list of credits, Mel Brooks tried to use him in every film he did. This was, of course, because Ron was very good on screen but I'm sure it was also because Ron was just great to have around.
Mitchell Anthony has a new "Creating Success" podcast up...an interview with The Movie Trailer Guy, Don LaFontaine. Those of you interested in voiceover work might want to give it a listen. Click here to hear the MP3 file...or go to Mitchell's site to select it or any of his fine conversations with people from whom we could all learn something.
As mentioned in a recent link here, the White House Correspondents Association has selected Rich Little as the entertainer at their 2007 dinner. Here's part of this article about it...
Rich Little won't be mentioning Iraq or ratings when he addresses the White House Correspondents' Dinner April 21. Little said organizers of the event made it clear they don't want a repeat of last year's controversial appearance by Stephen Colbert, whose searing satire of President Bush and the White House press corps fell flat and apparently touched too many nerves. "They got a lot of letters," Little said Tuesday. "I won't even mention the word 'Iraq.'"
Little, who hasn't been to the White House since he was a favorite of the Reagan administration, said he'll stick with his usual schtick — the impersonations of the past six presidents. "They don't want anyone knocking the president. He's really over the coals right now, and he's worried about his legacy," added Little, a longtime Las Vegas resident.
I saw Little's "Presidents" routine a few years ago. As I recall, it skewed somewhat pro-Reagan but it was like a Bob Hope monologue: Nothing in there that could make any president the least bit uncomfortable. The jokes about the previous George Bush were about him not liking broccoli, as opposed to jokes about the Gulf War or Iran-Contra.
Booking him for the dinner sounds cowardly...but I think if I were the guy making the selection this year, I might play it safe. Something about this presidency is becoming downright unfunny. Bush had a low approval rating last April but he didn't have the air of gloominess and failure that now seems to hover over his administration and the war. Back then, he was down but he still looked like a guy who might turn it all around. Now, with members of his own party and other traditional supporters deserting him, he's lost a certain smugness and taken on the look of an injured animal. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve criticism and satire. I just think it'll be a lot harder for any comedian to come in and mock the man to his face. And by April 21 — after another three months of war and G.O.P. defections — it'll be harder, not easier.
Of course, if Rich Little has any guts at all, he'll get up there and say, "Thank you. I'd like to start with my newest impression...Stephen Colbert!" That would make for quite an evening.
The New York Times has up a video obit for Art Buchwald, complete with him announcing his own death in a segment that he filmed for that inevitable event. [CAUTION: Plays music as soon as the page loads.]
He also left a final column to be published after his death. You can read it here.
Buchwald was a very funny man...and very fair. I can't find the quote but he once said something like, "I can't afford to play favorites. When you have to fill as many columns as I do a year, you need to go after everyone." Indeed.
What you get as today's video link is a peek at another cheaply-produced animated show of the fifties. I was never particularly a fan of Colonel Bleep, a series of cartoons that Engineer Bill ran on Channel 9 here in L.A. when I was a kid. Other hosts in other cities also inflicted them on the young population.
There were 104 of these done in 1956 and 1957...reportedly the first made-for-TV cartoon series to be produced in color. It's probably not true, as industry legend has it, that they were made "in a garage in Miami" but they looked it...although I have to say that looking at them now, some of the graphics are surprisingly delightful. I remembered it looking much shoddier than the example below. I've seen worse looking shows produced by folks who probably had what, measured in constant dollars, would be five times the budget.
Can't say much for the storylines, though. Even when I was six or seven years old, I couldn't wrap my still-developing brain around the adventures of a frenetic little alien who hopped around, saving the galaxy with the help of his friends, a living-but-mute puppet and a numbskull caveman. At a time when we were periodically being scared at the prospect of nuclear annhilation in this country, some of the plots were a bit unsettling and the "all narration" style was a little distancing, as well.
They were done by a studio in Florida known as Soundac. The only thing I know about Soundac is that they primarily created commercial spots and that the operation came to an unglorious end around 1971. The company decided to move its offices to another location so they loaded the files, equipment and film library of their studio into a big van. Then, as the story is told, some stranger jumped behind the wheel, stole the van, and its contents — and therefore, Soundac — were never seen again. This is the tale that gets told when someone asks why many of the Colonel Bleep episodes no longer exist today...and I can't swear it's true. But it's so funny, you almost hope it's true.
Soundac also did a series of cartoons in the mid-sixties called The Mighty Mister Titan. I've never seen one and I'd be very surprised if you had, either.
You can buy an entire DVD of Colonel Bleep cartoons for eight bucks on this page. I'm betting you don't. In fact, I'd wager serious money that most of you don't watch the entire nine minutes of Bleep below — a four-minute intro and a five-minute adventure — even for free...
Richard Leung suggested I read this piece in The New Yorker because it might speak to some of the things that bothered me about the Borat movie. It does.
Sorry — shocked, even — to hear of the death of artist Leah Adezio at a much too early age. I really only knew her from occasional chats at conventions but she seemed like a nice, popular lady who was well-liked by her close friends. Some of those close friends have posted eloquent insights into her life, and you might want to start with Elayne Riggs and then go through some of the links she has up to what others are saying. Very sad.
Had an interesting experience last evening: A screening at the Writers Guild of the hit film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It was followed by an interview with two of the movie's writers — Peter Baynham and Anthony Hines — and its star, Sacha Baron Cohen.
First thing that must be said: The audience loved it. People around me, including several good friends, were laughing themselves sick...and I must say that I admired the skill and the cleverness and the overall guts it took to make the movie. Cohen is a brilliant and courageous performer, no doubt about it...
...but I don't think I laughed once.
Well, maybe I'm overstating the case. I laughed a few times...but only a few and not with much vigor. Why? Hard to say. It wasn't because of the frequent lapses into low comedy. I usually love low comedy. What I don't usually love is the kind of Candid Camera humor where we're expected to laugh at the humiliation of people who are being ambushed and filmed for our alleged amusement. It always feels like a rigged game to me...like the situations that are arranged make it impossible for the victims not to look at least a little foolish. And if by some miracle they don't, that footage gets tossed. That alone, however, doesn't explain my general indifference to the movie. Matter of fact, I felt that parts of the movie weren't as spontaneous as the p.r. would have us believe, and that some of the people caught on camera had to have been playing more clueless than they appeared.
I guess I didn't like Borat the Character much. Many of those he encountered on his shlep across America were jerks but he was usually a bigger jerk. Matter of fact, the jerks he encountered were often only jerks because his jerkiness was provoking them into it. So I guess I thought something like, "This is supposed to be the Comedy of Reality, but the reality is phony because his actions are creating it." Or something like that. I really can't explain my reactions very well. If I come up with a better understanding of them, I'll post it here.
For now, I'll just say that I appreciated the skill of Cohen and the filmmakers, and I enjoyed (and laughed at) the panel discussion which followed, which may or may not turn up on a forthcoming DVD release. Still, I was an oasis of non-laughter in a theater of people who were howling, sometimes in spite of themselves...and I can't quite explain why. (For another report on the event, here's Marv Wolfman, who was sitting next to me, laughing and sometimes making that little sigh that suggests you're almost sorry you laughed at something you just laughed at.)
On the way in, audience members were subjected to metal detector searches. No one seemed concerned that we might have weapons. The fear was of cell phones with cameras or other recording devices. Seemed as if at least half of those trekking into the Writers Guild Theater had to step out of line, go back to their cars and leave their cell phones. I heard someone ask one of the guys wielding the wands why and he said the studio was worried about someone filming the movie and putting it on the Internet...which, of course, is not the reason. The movie's playing in hundreds of theaters across the country where you can go and not be searched on the way in. And though I don't venture near the wickeder parts of the World Wide Web, I'll bet that horse is long since outta the barn; that somewhere online, one can find plenty of copies of Borat that are better and clearer than what anyone could capture on a cell phone camera.
No, more likely, this is the legacy of the Michael Richards incident, or at least of the rise of YouTube. The studio wanted to control what would get out, not of the movie but of the live panel discussion after...and I almost don't blame them. Just need to make a note to self to start leaving the cell phone in my car when I go to anything that might get interesting. Or to act like Borat would have acted, had those men with the wands waved them across his privates.
For those of you interested in this matter — and I'm almost embarrassed that I still am — Timothy Noah has a copy of the agreement O.J. Simpson signed to write that book that didn't come out. (I say "almost" embarrassed because as readers of Groo the Wanderer know, it takes a lot to embarrass me.)
We all get these. Perhaps you got this one. It arrived in my e-mailbox yesterday and I thought it was the most shameless, inept attempt I've seen yet to get me to send vital personal info to a stranger so they can clean out my checking account and/or engage in a little Identity Theft. I keep reading that people fall for these and it always amazes me. The spelling and grammar are unchanged.
My Dear,
We wish to inform you that your fund which you have been processing for some period of years is coming through a diplomatic means to your door steps in cash. We are a diplomatic attached to OCC (Oversees Credit Commission).
We advice you to forward to this department your home address where you want the consignment to be deliver and your telephone number, and also your International Passport or Driver's License for Identification.
As soon as we receive this information required the consignment briefcase will forwarded to you immediately and the date of our officer arriving will be also giving to you.
We wait your reply.
Dr. Fred Williams.
Diploma Director
I especially like the fact that Dr. Williams has been processing this matter for years regarding what is apparently a large sum of money that I am owed. But he doesn't seem to know my name.
There are people out there who are angry about what's happening in the world. Some of them gravitate to the Nutcase Left. Others find their way to the Wacko Right. There are serious dollars to be made — especially in talk radio and book publishing — by telling either of those groups exactly what they want to hear. It doesn't have to be fair. Matter of fact, the extremists would prefer it if you not be fair to the opposition because they don't think the opposition deserves fairness.
Your attack doesn't have to be accurate, either. They just want to hear — and will pay good money to be told — that their political opponents are neither right nor honest with any syllable they utter.
I haven't read the new book by Dinesh D'Souza that blames "the left" for 9/11 but I keep catching appearances on his book tour. Mr. D'Souza is obviously a smart enough guy to know that much of the promotional hype for his book is just indefensible red meat. You can see him struggling to sound reasonable, trying to back away from his own jacket copy and the claims of his publisher while still reaping the potential sales benefits from that line.
He wasn't smart enough, however, to know he shouldn't go on The Colbert Report. Last night, Stephen Colbert eviscerated the guy so thoroughly, I'm not even sure D'Souza realized he'd been fileted wide open and had his innards removed. It was such an amazing piece of surgery that I once again take my life in my hands by embedding not one but two video links from the functionally-insane Comedy Central website. I think this will show you the two parts of the interview. If Colbert was just warming up for this week's reciprocal guest appearances with Bill O'Reilly, it's going to be brutal.
This site gets results. When people ask me why I do this thing, I tell them stories like this.
Yesterday, I posted a piece about the "longform" versions of the old Crusader Rabbit cartoon series and how I loved watching them when I was a wee lad. I described the opening titles — which I haven't seen in more than forty years — from memory and said I'd love to see those episodes again.
Ask and ye shall receive. Ron Kurer, who operates one of the best animation-related websites called ToonTracker, responded by posting the opening of one to YouTube. Here it is. Watch it and then we'll discuss it after the fold...
Just as I remembered it. And the best part was being able to read the credits. Let's point out a couple of those names...
"Story" is credited to Barbara Chain and Chris Bob Hayward. We wrote about Mr. Hayward here. Barbara Chain — referred to by some as the first woman animation "storyperson" — also wrote for UPA cartoons and has the teleplay credit on the immortal Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. "Story sketch" is by Jack Miller...and since someone will write and ask me, I oughta say that this is not the same Jack Miller who edited and wrote comic books for DC and also wrote some of the Filmation Superman cartoons...although this Jack Miller also wrote for Filmation (and Warner Brothers and DePatie-Freleng and other studios.)
Voices were by GeGe Pearson, Roy Whaley and Vern Louden. As I understand it, Pearson was Crusader Rabbit (replacing Lucille Bliss, who did the role in the first series), Whaley was the narrator and Louden was Ragland T. Tiger and everyone else.
Sound effects by Ray Erlenborn and Gene Twambley? Boy, those are superstar sound effects guys. Those two men were the top guys for making noises on all the major radio programs of the forties, including Burns & Allen and The Jack Benny Program. Gene actually spelled his name either "Twomby" or "Twombley," depending on his mood that week. And someone here will probably be interested to know that he was married to Bea Benaderet.
There's John Sparey's name among the animators. Was there a TV cartoon show produced in Los Angeles that John Sparey didn't work on? He was even on Garfield and Friends, where he was one of our most valuable artists. And there's Chuck McCann as one of the editors...not the same Chuck McCann who worked in front of the camera, of course. This Chuck McCann was, among other credits, the editor for Bill Melendez on so many of the Charlie Brown cartoons.
Many of the other names are familiar to me — a lot of them worked on Calvin and the Colonel or King Leonardo — but the ones I cited are the ones that jumped out at me. Their credits didn't mean a thing to me when I last saw those titles but they do now.
Anyway, thanks to Ron of ToonTracker. You have no idea how much I enjoyed seeing that little bit of video again. (By the way, Ron says on this page that there were 260 episodes in this series and he has a list so I guess he knows what he's talking about.) I hope viewing this title sequence did something for someone else reading this, as well. Now, if I could only get copies of some of the complete hours...
Wanna see what Las Vegas looked like on New Year's Eve? There's a video over on this page that may give you some idea. It's a great place to be that night if you like fireworks.
According to Fred Kaplan, Condoleezza Rice is being much nicer to Egypt these days. She'd better. The way things are going, she needs every friend she can get.
For several days now, the rumor has spread through comic book forums on the 'net that Joe Gill, one of the most prolific writers in the history of the medium, passed away last December. I've received many an e-mail asking me if it was true and why I hadn't posted something about it. Easy answer: I didn't know if it was true...and the people I knew who knew Joe Gill didn't seem to know if it was true, either. Mr. Gill had little or no family so there didn't seem to be a simple way to check and find out. Finally, sadly, I think I have sufficient confirmation.
Gill was born in 1919. His earliest known work in comics was for Timely (now Marvel) in the early forties and he was among the many writers who wrote Captain America after the departure of Simon and Kirby. In the late forties when the company switched over to teen comics and westerns, he was one of their busiest writers but he eventually fell into disfavor with the editor there, Stan Lee, and work began to become sporadic. By the early fifties, he was doing most of his writing for a company called Funnies, Inc., which supplied publishers with stories and artwork.
One of those publishers was John Santangelo of Charlton Comics. The comic book business was entering a rocky period with many companies going under and Santangelo decided he wanted to build a stable of writers and artists who'd work primarily in the firm's plant in Derby, Connecticut. For many, this meant relocating to that area but the deal included a certain stability along with very low rates. Someone once described the terms as "We'll pay you a third of what the other houses pay but we'll give you three times as much work." Santangelo was familiar with Gill's work (and legendary speed) via Funnies, Inc., and offered Joe a contract. Joe accepted and for the next three decades — until Charlton shut its doors — he was their star scripter, producing thousands of scripts for every kind of comic they published. In a business where some writers were pressed to write a book a week, Gill often produced a finished manuscript in a day.
His work included westerns (Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok), war comics (Marine War Heroes, Fightin' Army), romance comics (Love Diary, Teen Confessions), crime comics (Crime and Justice, Vengeance Squad), science-fiction comics (Space Adventures, Doomsday Plus 1), comics based on movies (Konga, 1776), comics based on books (Jungle Tales of Tarzan), comics based on newspaper strips (The Phantom, Popeye), comics based on cartoon shows (Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw), comics based on live-action TV shows (The Bionic Woman, Emergency), comics about martial arts (Yang, House of Yang), ghost comics (Ghostly Tales, Haunted), comics about car racing (Hot Rod Racers, Grand Prix), comics about surfing (Surf Kings) and anything else Charlton put out. He handled (and in some cases, co-created) a number of recurring characters and super-heroes, including Captain Atom, The Blue Beetle, Hercules, Peacemaker, The Fightin' Five, Sarge Steel, Son of Vulcan and Judomaster. In addition to all this, he worked often as a writer and/or editor on Charlton's many non-comic magazines, many of which featured pulp-style romance or crime fiction.
Charlton kept Gill so busy that he rarely had time to work for other publishers. He scripted a number of books for Dell in the sixties...for not much better money than he was receiving from Charlton. In 1968 when former Charlton editor Dick Giordano began working at DC, he brought Gill along and gave him work — at DC rates, which seemed astronomical to Joe at the time — on The Secret Six, Hot Wheels and a few other titles...but Gill's association with DC did not survive Giordano's ouster and it was back to the lousy money in Connecticut. He professed not to mind very much. Charlton's editors accepted whatever he did and rarely, if ever, asked for revisions. After the company shut down in 1986, Gill largely retired. In the company's waning days, he sold a few more scripts to DC for their ghost comics but when Charlton ceased publishing, Joe largely retired...and I'm afraid that's all I know about his later period.
There are a number of debates in the comic book community as to who stands as the most prolific writer in the history of the medium. The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized the late Paul S. Newman for that distinction...and he may well be, although he got in there in part because he was smart enough to submit himself as such. Others have argued for Stan Lee, Robert Kanigher or my personal nominee, Vic Lockman — but if anyone could ever properly calculate the numbers, it sure wouldn't surprise me if the winner turned out to be Joe Gill.
That crazed Liberal, William F. Buckley, comes out against increased U.S. forces in Iraq. But he seems to be saying that a loss of lives by U.S. soldiers is acceptable, whereas a loss of wealth by "corporate" forces is not. And if that's what he's saying, I don't think that idea is acceptable at all.
Okay, let's play a game. Let's say you're the guy who has to select the entertainment for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Every year, they bring in some comedian to perform and for the event scheduled for this April 21, you have to pick someone.
Last year, it was Stephen Colbert. The star of TV's The Colbert Report pulled few punches and really let both the assembled members of the press and George W. Bush have it. Many people found him hilarious. Others felt he bombed. Some were angry. (Here's a link to the video of what Colbert did that night, just in case you need any reminding.) A number of people complained, Bush looked unamused and there was much controversy, which is probably not what you want.
So you're in charge of picking someone to perform at this year's dinner. Who do you pick?
Make your decision and then click here to see who's been chosen to headline in April.
Among my favorite shows when I was a kid was Crusader Rabbit, which was more or less the first cartoon series produced for television. The adventures of the plucky hare and his pal, Ragland T. Tiger, were done in two batches. In 1948, Jay Ward and Alex Anderson produced 195 four minute cartoons in black-and-white. In 1957, a company called TV Spots did around 200 more cartoons in color. The photo above is from the opening of the first series and you can see what I believe is the opening episode of that run over at this link.
But let us concern ourselves with the second batch. Among the stations that carried those cartoons was the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, which is now called KNBC but was then KRCA. The channel's afternoon programming was all locally-produced and on Monday through Friday, most of it consisted of a gentleman named Tom Frandsen. His show changed formats and lengths from time to time but during the period I'm recalling, he presided over an odd array of elements that really didn't go together.
The main part of his show was an afternoon movie which would be interrupted every three minutes for commercials and so he could interview in-studio guests. Then after the movie, he'd host an old episode of the prime-time TV series, Hennesey, which was a great show...I think. I have one episode here — the only one I've seen in 40+ years — and it isn't very good, but I'm willing to assume it's an exception. It was an "adult" situation comedy, which meant only there was no laugh track and no one got dressed up in funny costumes or hit with pies, but I recall its star (Jackie Cooper) being very funny and his co-star (Abby Dalton) being very lovely.
Hennesey was on in prime-time for three years (1959-1962) but I think the period I'm describing here was around '61, before it went off the network. Frandsen was showing episodes from its first two seasons and after each, he would introduce the day's installment of Crusader Rabbit. (And as if this aggregation of programming wasn't odd enough, the Crusader Rabbit cartoon led into the afternoon newscast. So Channel 4 would segue from the bunny and Rags the Tiger trapped in a mine to a police shootout in the City of Industry.)
The cartoon was, of course, why I watched. I was home from school by that time...or if I was at a friend's house, I made them turn it on. Couldn't miss Crusader Rabbit...though once in a while, I did and it wasn't my fault. Frandsen's movie would occasionally run long because a guest got wordy or because of an interruption for breaking news coverage. When that happened, guess what would get bumped. I was quite unhappy when this occurred, even though Frandsen would promise us that we wouldn't miss an installment; that today's would be run tomorrow. I didn't see why the 5:00 News couldn't start at 5:07.
What I really couldn't miss was Crusader Rabbit on Sunday morning. Like I said, there were approximately 200 of these cartoons produced. I'm not sure of the precise math but I'm guessing there were either 195 or 208 because I do know they formed thirteen separate serialized storylines. The production company made them available in two forms and your local station could air them in either format or both. One was the way Mr. Frandsen ran them Monday through Friday — one standalone chapter per day. The other was how KRCA ran them very early (around 7 AM or 8 AM) on Sunday morning, which was with an entire storyline edited into an hour-long "movie."
Absent was all the recapping, along with the portions where the announcer would tell you to "tune in tomorrow" for another exciting chapter of Crusader Rabbit. The customary main title of Crusader riding up in shining armor on a white horse was gone...which was fine with me since it was just confusing. In the cartoons, he never rode a horse or dressed as a knight. Instead on the quasi-features, there was a new main title with full credits that made what you were about to see look kind of like a theatrical film. Along with the names, you saw still shots of Crusader and Rags posed around an animation studio, acting like they were drawing and photographing their own adventures.
I loved those Crusader Rabbit "movies." The animation looked like it was done on shirt cardboards but the stories, many of which were written by the late Chris Hayward, were very clever and engrossing, especially in that edited/tightened format...though (again) it's been a long time since I've seen them. One of the reasons for this post is to ask if anyone out there has copies or even if the "feature" versions still exist. In all my travels in and around the animation community, I've never seen one or even heard anyone besides me mention them. There have been some legit video releases and a lot of free-floating bootlegs of the serial versions of Crusader Rabbit but I've never seen the longform versions. Has anyone else?
Anyway, here at long last is today's video link. It is, appropriately, the opening of the color Crusader Rabbit series, complete with the bunny who never dressed in armor or rode a horse in the body of the cartoons dressing in armor and riding a horse. I still don't understand that or why he was dressed that way in the opening and also on the covers of the Dell comic books. Just another one of those mysteries of childhood.
If you're interested in this matter of O.J. Simpson's "confession" in his ghostwritten book, you'll want to read this piece by Timothy Noah. He says, and I suspect he's right and I was wrong, that the ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, extensively interviewed Simpson. Noah also suggests that the construction of the "confession" sounds like something a guilty Simpson would dictate, filling in some details and punting on others. Makes sense to me.
A couple of readers have sent me info on books that argue that O.J. Simpson was innocent of the double murder. They're pretty obscure, small press books that received no attention because their conclusions (most pinned the killing on Mark Fuhrman or on Simpson's son Jason) were so inane and poorly supported. The point is that O.J. Simpson never got behind any alternate theory of the killings, nor did F. Lee Bailey or any of Simpson's other attorneys, nor did any prominent journalist or anyone with a smidgen of credibility. If one of them had crafted even a semi-logical case, they could have cleaned up. But no one could.
Regarding the movie Stop! Look! And Laugh!, a person who wishes to remain anonymous sends the following...
Is it possible there are two versions? I had never seen the movie until one Saturday afternoon, around 1984, when it was being broadcast on the old WNEW Metromedia station, in New York. I was paying special attention to the Winchell-Mahoney-Knucklehead Smiff scenes, as I had fallen in love with the performer, and his characters, nearly two decades earlier. But in the movie, when Winch left the kitchen, I was stunned, as the Jerry Mahoney puppet got up from the breakfast table, and walked to the sink, in full view of the camera...
Obviously, it was a little person, or child, in a Jerry Mahoney wardrobe, and rubber mask, but it was still almost kind of chilling, if only because of the surprise. When the movie was next broadcast, a couple of years later, I set the VCR to record it — more for the wonderful Winchell scenes, than anything else. I had the Stooges shorts, and really wanted a copy of the amazing — to me, at least — Jerry walks sequence. But when I checked the tape, WNEW had shortened the dining room material, cutting the scene out.
Years later, when I encountered a bunch of hard-core Stooges fans on the internet, they told me they had never seen the scene I described. And when I bought Stop! Look! And Laugh!'s prerecord, the sequence was also gone. Do you, or any of your readers, recall any such scene?
I don't, at least in that movie. I do recall an episode of The Jack Benny Program that creeped me out when I was a small boy. Jack visited Edgar Bergen at his home and saw Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd walking about. (They were both reportedly played by Billy Barty in masks.) It was very bizarre.
I have a vague memory of Winchell doing something similar on some show, though I have the feeling it may have been not a small person in a mask but a marionette. Perhaps someone with better info will write in and tell us.
Lots and lots of messages this morning telling me I'm lunkheaded (or other, politer terms) to believe that California does not have a Statute of Limitations on the crime of murder. Sorry, I mistyped. I thought I was typing, "...a Statute of Limitations on being an accessory to murder." Apparently, we do have one of those and it's three years. So if O.J. Simpson did have an accomplice in the grisly double killings, that person can't be charged. Come to think of it, even if he could, how do you charge Man #2 with helping Man #1 commit a murder even though Man #1 was acquitted?
Aah. It's all moot because of the three year limit and also because you couldn't prove Man #2 was even there. The evidence is non-existent and Simpson isn't about to take the stand and say, "Yeah...if I did it, that's the guy who got rid of the knife and bloody clothes for me." This is even assuming there was such an accomplice and that authorities could identify him, both of which I doubt.
I did predict that Simpson would disavow the contents of the book and especially that chapter as being wholly the work of the ghostwriter. Apparently, as David Seidman and others are noting in e-mails to me, he already has.
But while I'm back on this topic I wish I could get out of my head, let me mention one of the eight thousand things that helped convince me of Simpson's utter guilt in the whole matter. Usually in this world, when there's any sort of belief that is disseminated, there's an opening for the opposite belief, even if (maybe especially if) it's totally counter-intuitive. If the official version of how Kennedy was shot is "X," there's an audience for "Not X." Some part of the population is naturally drawn to any position that is framed as "Everything the general public believes is wrong." Maybe it's cynicism, maybe it's curiosity, maybe it's a desire to not want to believe what the masses believe. Maybe there's even truth to be found by tackling the issue from that viewpoint. But it's always there, that yearning for the other, "real" story.
There was a wide-open market and money to be made with a serious book that argued, with any kind of coherent arrangement of known facts plus a lot of speculation, that Simpson didn't commit the murders. The Geraldo-like talk shows would have booked its author with sufficient gusto to promote such a book onto the Best Seller list. True, whoever wrote it would have taken a lot of personal abuse and looked like an idiot to much of the population...but you do that if you write a book these days arguing that George W. Bush knows what he's doing, and people are still coming out with those. The Ann Coulters of the world make tons of money and receive other perks, advancing positions that cause much of America to hate them.
Just before and for a year or three after the Simpson acquittal, you did have prominent folks around asserting that he didn't do it, that he couldn't have done it, that the real killers would soon be found, etc. They could maintain this position for a few minutes on Larry King Live because they could say "The proof is coming." But none of them could write the book that included that proof. The case would not have to have been airtight. It could have leaked like one of those Seal-a-Meal vacuum-containers I once bought off an infomercial...but even then, none of them could come up with even a semi-credible alternate theory of who did knife those two people if O.J. didn't. I think F. Lee Bailey and one or two other members of the so-called "Dream Team" even announced tentative publication dates for such a book — and of course, Simpson announced his intention to clear his name with one —
— but there was no book. Even though there was money to be made, no one made that case.
Simpson says he went along with this If I Did It project because he needed the money. I can believe that. What I can't believe is that he wouldn't have made even more if he'd written the book that even came close to proving someone else butchered Nicole and Ron. Gee, I wonder why he didn't write that one.
I don't want to oversell this movie — Stop! Look! And Laugh! — because it's really quite missable. But here's the trailer for it. Notice that someone thought it would be funny to throw a pie at one of the Marquis Chimps.
Newsweek has printed this summary of what was in O.J. Simpson's If I Did It book about the murders. It all sounds reasonably credible up until the part about him having an accomplice who disposed of the bloody clothes and knife.
That's possible, I suppose...and it's a nice, simple explanation to one of the difficult-to-explain parts of the whole case. The trouble is that in none of the testimony, including that of houseguest Kato Kaelin, was there any mention of Simpson hanging around with anyone else that evening. It's a bit difficult to believe that someone just dropped by and Simpson said, "Hey, let's take a ride so I can scare my ex-wife with a knife. And tell you what — if I lose control and kill her and any visitors she has, you can get rid of the evidence for me." I also don't recall investigators finding any physical evidence of another person around.
What's intriguing here, of course, is the notion of Simpson having an accomplice. As I understand it, there's a three year Statute of Limitations on murder in the state of California so the guy who helped him, if there was such a person, is in the legal clear. But I'm not inclined to believe there was such as person. It just sounds too "written."
You know: I read an awful lot about the Simpson case...more than I should have, certainly. If someone came to me and offered enough cash to whore myself out and ghost this book...and if Simpson asked me to work out a possible explanation that he could endorse...I think I'd have written something like that. Much of it is logical conjecture, and I would have skirted the explicit details of the knifework, as the account apparently does, because it would be too difficult to write something that would precisely match the physical evidence. I'd also have made up the accomplice because it would easily explain where the bloody knife and outfit went, and since Simpson might well want a detail or two that would lead researchers away from the truth.
And of course, the next step down the line, after Simpson's wrung every possible dollar out of this book, is for him to disavow it. That's when he might say, "Hell, I didn't even write that chapter. Since I didn't commit the murders, I told this ghostwriter to just put down any silly theory he could come up with. Ask him...he'll tell you." That's how I would have done it if I'd done it...but I didn't.
Stop! Look! And Laugh! also features a neat opportunity — one of the only, come to think of it — to view "Officer" Joe Bolton, who hosted the Stooges shorts for years on WPIX in New York. He's a customer at the diner with Knucklehead. (He's also featured in The Outlaws is Coming, along with a whole posse of kids' show hosts from around the country — those whose shows screened Howard, Howard and Fine — as, I always thought a bit oddly, famous desperadoes.
By the way, Joe Besser told an interesting story about why he had to leave the Stooges. When the shorts were first released to TV, and met
with near instantaneous success, Moe had the bright idea to begin doing live shows again with the act. Dates were planned, with the first booked, I believe, in Pittsburgh...
Moe figured it might be the only way to cash in on their new popularity, as there were — as was, of course, standard for the time — absolutely no residuals from the old Columbia pictures. Besser's wife had been sick, requiring daily care. A film schedule, particularly one where he had only to drive the short distance to the studio for a few days' work, on a two-reeler, was no problem. But there was no way he would leave California, for any amount of time, while his wife remained ill. Contrary to rumor, it was only when Besser told Moe that he couldn't
tour, that the chief Stooge decided that he'd have to be replaced...
I know that's the story as it's usually told but I always thought the illness of Mrs. Besser was an excuse. I think Joe Besser just decided that at that point, he'd have more of a career as a solo comedian. If I'd been his agent at the time, that's how I would have advised him...and I'd have been right. Even assuming he'd have received a third of what the Stooges made — perhaps a faulty assumption — I'll bet he made more on his own. He certainly had more potential as a performer on his own.
One of the times I visited Larry Fine out at the Motion Picture Country Home, I asked him if my theory was correct. He said, "Probably," and went on to tell me that Besser — for whom he had nothing but fondness — never really liked being a Stooge. Didn't like the physical demands, didn't like being part of a team, didn't like the money.
Probably because of that, when I later met Mr. Besser, I asked him nothing about his days with the Stooges. We talked about his work with Abbott and Costello and he told me that after Costello died, Abbott was after him to team up for an act. I don't know if that's true or not but I think Abbott and Besser might have worked quite well as a duo, certainly better than Abbott's unsuccessful attempts to form a new team with Candy Candido. (The reason I wonder if Besser's claim is true is that he said nothing of the sort in either version of his autobiography — Not Just a Stooge or Once a Stooge, Always a Stooge. He also made some outlandish claims in them about his salary as a cartoon voice performer.)
Regarding the Stooges having all the local TV hosts in The Outlaws is Coming: One of the folks in there is Don Lamond, who was a personality on KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles, not only hosting the Three Stooges shorts but also at times, an afternoon movie program. He was an odd choice to emcee Stooges films — a guy in a sport coat and tie with no "character" like Skipper Frank or Engineer Bill. He had a distinctly adult presence and didn't seem to relate in any special way to the live kid audience they sometimes had in for the show. (The station eventually replaced him with Billy Barty.)
Lamond was Larry's son-in-law and he turned up in most of the Stooge movies of the sixties. I never knew if he got the job at KTTV because he was related to Larry but I'm assuming that's how he occasionally snagged Larry, Moe and Curly Joe to appear on his show. Every four months or so, they'd come on and explain to the viewing and in-studio audience that they were actors and trained professionals and that we, being stupid children, should never try to do the kinds of things they did in the films like ripping handfuls of hair out of our friends' scalps. Moe would then demonstrate on Joe DeRita how, when it looked like he was poking Joe in the eyes, he was actually hitting his eyebrows. And naturally, after he showed us the secret, we all wanted to try and do it on our buddies.
Anyway, thanks for the message, James. And doesn't it feel nice to be discussing something important here instead of nonsense like our current Iraq policy? (...which, by the way, I think the Stooges were also responsible for...)
Let's set the Waybac Machine for 1960, Sherman. The place is in front of your television set. Get comfy as we watch an old campaign commercial for John F. Kennedy. They don't write 'em like this anymore: No attacks on his opponent, no campaign promises, not even a claim of what J.F.K. would do as president. I think the idea here is that we vote for him because someone wrote a catchy jingle and it's nicely sung. (I doubt it's him but the lead male vocalist sounds to me like Mike Douglas, who did a lot of studio singing gigs before he became a talk show host.) It's not as effective as the recording of "High Hopes" that Sinatra made with the special "vote for Kennedy" lyrics but it's interesting.
Rod Dreher is a devout Conservative who has come to not think much of George W. Bush or the current war efforts. In a recent commentary for N.P.R., he said so and it's causing much talk around the blogosphere. This weblog post by Glenn Greenwald discusses Dreher's conversion.
Judging from the e-mail, many of you "enjoyed" (in some odd sense of that word), Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title, which ran last week on Turner Classic Movies. If so, you're the kind of person who needs to know about Stop! Look! And Laugh!, which runs this coming Tuesday on TCM...at 5:30 AM Pacific Time.
Interesting story about this film. For several centuries, the Three Stooges made two-reel shorts for Columbia Pictures on ever-diminishing budgets. The studio's attitude was, more or less, that a Stooge short would bring in X dollars and if they could be made for less, fine. They'd keep on making them. If they couldn't, that was it. For a time, they could...though this was achieved by some of the most outrageous cost-cutting techniques imaginable. Many of the new shorts released in the last few years of their Columbia contract were "new" only in that they had new titles and a few new scenes, while the bulk of the footage was culled from earlier films.
By 1959, it became impossible for a short comedy to make back its cost, even shooting them the way the Stooges did. They made a feature for Columbia called Have Rocket, Will Travel and then their association with the studio ended. This was the first film with the new third stooge. "Curly Joe" (Joe DeRita) replaced Joe Besser, who had replaced Shemp Howard, who had replaced Curly Howard.
As it happened, Have Rocket, Will Travel was quite successful at the box office. The Stooge shorts had been released to television and were scoring big with kids who were eager to see the guys on the big screen. Columbia wanted the three knuckleheads back to make more features but Larry, Moe and Curly Joe got a better deal from Fox and began shooting Snow White and the Three Stooges there. Undaunted, Columbia decided that they really didn't need the Three Stooges to make a Three Stooges movie..and based on that realization, they whipped up Stop! Look! And Laugh! The popular ventriloquist Paul Winchell was engaged to film new segments and he, of course, brought along his dummies, Jerry Mahoney and another Knucklehead named Smiff. New footage was also shot of the animal act, The Marquis Chimps, who were about to star in a Columbia TV sitcom called The Hathaways. (You can hear June Foray's voice dubbed in during the apes' segment in Stop! Look! And Laugh!)
The new footage was combined awkwardly with segments pulled out of ten old Stooge shorts that featured Curly. As you can see from the above lobby card, star billing went to "The Original Three Stooges," which may have been some sort of dig at Curly Joe. The patchwork film was released, primarily for matinee programming, and it did rather well, especially for the Stooges. They sued and wound up settling for some of the best money they ever got out of Columbia. They also dumped their old manager, Harry Romm, who'd produced the Columbia paste-up film. Instead, they put their careers in the hands of Norman Maurer, a former comic book artist who'd married Moe's daughter, Joan. Norman used some of the cash from the lawsuit to fund the Stooges' own production company which made some of their later films.
You might want to set the ol' TiVo for Stop! Look! And Laugh! because individual segments are fun, especially the ones showing Winchell in his prime. The Stooge clips are well-selected and edited down to the essentials, too. The pieces just don't all connect into a real movie.
While we're here, let's see what else is interesting on TCM this week. Monday night, they have an interesting line-up: Lawrence of Arabia, The Gold Rush (with Mr. Chaplin), Rashomon and Judgment at Nuremberg. The logical theme that flows through those four movies should be obvious to anyone.
Tuesday night, they have Kiss Me, Stupid, a Billy Wilder film I've never been able to make it through. Then later that evening, they have If You Could Only Cook. This is the Jean Arthur comedy made in 1935 which Frank Capra had nothing to do with but Columbia (them, again) released it overseas as "A Frank Capra Production" because his name enabled them to charge more for it. Capra sued and wound up sitting out a year of his contract during a time he was at his filmmaking peak, only to finally drop the suit and return to making movies for the studio. He claimed in his autobiography that he did this out of personal loyalty to the studio head, Harry Cohn, who was going to be fired if and when Capra prevailed in court. But so much in that book is demonstrably false that it makes you wonder. In any case, it's not that great a picture and it certainly wasn't worth Capra making no movies for a year there.
There are plenty of other treasures on TCM this week but I'll just mention two more. On Thursday, they're offering Cain and Mabel, one of Clark Gable's more obscure films. If you want to see how good Gable was, you need to stop watching him in great movies and see how he could make stuff like this viewable and pleasant. The same could be said for Jack Lemmon in Phffft!, which runs on Friday.
They say you're the fastest cartoonist in the world. Well, actually, I started saying it and others have fallen for my claim and picked it up. But you have certainly been known to amaze people when you draw. You have won every award that has ever been given for cartooning. In fact, recently, the Comic Art Professional Society started a new cartooning award and called it The Sergio and you won that, too. So you are truly quite remarkable.
This is kind of interesting. Anthony Cordesman, who I guess is a political analyst, has taken Bush's speech from the other night and written commentaries and corrections on many of its key phrases. The New York Times has it up as an interactive feature.
The proposed Broadway stage version of Young Frankenstein is proceeding apace. A debut date for later this year will soon be announced, along with the signing of Kristen Chenoweth to play the role that Madeline Kahn played in the original movie. Or so says the grapevine.
I don't intend to devote a lot more of this weblog to the Iraq mess. There are plenty of places online that deal in such trivia, whereas I need to focus on the important topics of the day like dead cartoonists and Doodles Weaver. But I posted a message yesterday from someone named Greg and responded to it. And now here's Greg again, and I'm going to insert my responses as we go along. He's the one with the narrower margins...
Thanks for your reply. Regarding your comments about inherent references and assumptions on my part. I'm not sure I see how you came to that — I actually made no comments that came close to discussing what percentage of people currently support our ongoing efforts towards a safer, self-governing Iraq. Speaking of my quasi-question to you along those lines: "...we should help Iraq become a country stable and safe enough to govern itself, as much as possible, as soon as possible" — I'm still curious to know whether or not we agree on that.
It's a commendable goal, of course. I don't know that it's attainable, or that it's attainable at a price we'll want to pay. There are a lot of noble things we might be able to do around the world if we don't care how many of our soldiers die or how many of our tax dollars we spend. I always remember the saying that "politics is the art of the possible." So my question would be to wonder if a safer, self-governing Iraq is even achievable or if that's the best use of our human and financial resources. And at what point in the Body Count, do we decide maybe that it is not? Mr. Bush scares some of us because we worry there's no point at which he'll think too many soldiers have died.
In any case, my reference to the percentage of people who support the war was a response to your saying that "the left" has no solutions. I don't think anyone has any great, workable solutions but it isn't just "the left." There are plenty of people on the opposite end of the political spectrum who are saying the exact same things about this war.
And, I found this fairly contradictory — you say it's not your job to know how we should proceed in Iraq — that it should be
decided by folks experienced in these things (sounds good, I think I'll go with the Commander in Chief and his administration). Anyway, even
though you say "not my job," you then provided two plans of action — and you even give predictions as to what will happen! Even more, both outcomes are guaranteed "disasters." It seems you've taken the option of things moving in a positive direction completely off the table! I can understand that some people have that point of view, I suppose, of giving up on things getting better in any way? But I can also see it as being negative, bizarre, and counter-productive. (Not to mention that for some people, I believe, it involves a large amount of petty wish
fulfillment. Personally I wouldn't guess that would apply to yourself, but to some.)
Yeah, I'm pessimistic about things getting better in any way. The claims by some that we're gaining ground strike me as so empty (and quickly discredited, like Cheney saying the insurgency was in its final throes) that they don't instill optimism. You say you'll trust the Commander in Chief and his adminstration. I'd love to but I haven't seen them do anything right yet. Bush couldn't even tout great progress in his speech the other night.
But I think the thing that worries me — and this is the point I was trying to make — is that I don't trust these guys to change courses or cut our losses if that's truly the best option. They're convinced we need to go North and even with so many experienced voices saying we should go South, the Bush crew is going to go North, even if it means driving us off a cliff. We don't expect our leaders to be infallible but we also don't want leaders who think they are, and will press on in the wrong direction rather than admit they were wrong. At some point, the possible good we can achieve in Iraq may be totally out of balance with what it will cost us to make happen. (This is assuming we aren't already past that point.) Bush seems to have taken that consideration completely off the table, and that scares me and a lot of people.
You wrote that you're not sure that anyone has a plan, "...unless it's to cut our losses and get out." What? Lots of people have plans that don't have disaster in them! Don't you have any recommendations in a positive direction regarding Iraq?
Nope. And I somehow have a feeling that if one does emerge, it's not going to originate with the guy who writes Groo the Wanderer. I believe in expertise. I expect my doctor to know more than I do about medicine. I expect my lawyer to know more than I do about law. And I expect the guy who runs our military to know more than I do about how to deploy troops and wage war. I wouldn't excuse incompetence by any of them on the grounds that I don't know their jobs better than they do. They're supposed to know more than me. In fact, if our military leaders don't have a much better idea of what to do in Iraq than I do, we're in more trouble than anyone imagines.
Got another Spike Jones clip for you this morning. This one spotlights Doodles Weaver, a very silly comedian and character actor who was a part of Spike's stock company for many years, often performing this assault on "The William Tell Overture." You may also remember Doodles from his occasional appearances on Jack Webb's Dragnet, his three second cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or his prestigious family ties. He was the brother of Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, who was a major player in early television as the guy in charge of NBC. That means that Doodles was also the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver.
Me, I remember Doodles because I used to see him at the Silent Movie Theater here in L.A. when I was a frequent patron in the mid-to-late sixties. So was he. He'd arrive before an evening performance, usually on a bicycle which he chained-up outside like it was King Kong and he feared it would break free and go on a rampage. Then he would just wander around and tell jokes to the other folks waiting outside. He was very odd and very funny and it was almost impossible to have any sort of a conversation with the man. Thinking back on him, I am reminded of what David Letterman once said of Andy Kaufman: "When you look into his eyes, you get the feeling that somebody else is driving." Here's Doodles...
Terry Jones on a better way we could have spent the money we've been spending on the Iraq War.
Also, Bob Elisberg explains that Bush really didn't admit mistakes in his speech the other night. The Los Angeles Daily News had a headline on its print edition that said "BUSH ADMITS MISTAKES" and I imagine other press accounts did, as well. But Bob is right so I guess I owe him yet another lunch.
I'm getting a lot of e-mails tonight from people saying, "The video clips on your weblog are missing." I guess I need to explain that there are no video clips on my weblog. The things you click on here are on some other site — usually YouTube or Google Video — and I just embed links to them on my site. Each link creates a little window on this page that lets you see a video that's really part of someone else's website on some other server located God-knows-where. At this very moment, YouTube is down for maintenance so the embedded links can't connect there. Ergo, there are blank holes on my page where video gems usually reside. YouTube will be back up soon — maybe even by the time you read this — and the video fun will magically reappear.
A reader of this site who identifies himself as Greg sends the following, which I felt like answering here...
I'm going to assume that you don't want us to leave Iraq 100%, right now. I'm going to assume we both agree that we should help Iraq become a country stable and safe enough to govern itself, as much as possible, as soon as possible.
So, unless I'm assuming incorrectly — how would you recommend we go about that? Solutions are what don't seem to be coming from the left. And the few solutions that sort of, kind of seem to be mentioned, seem to sound like ways to lose in Iraq rather than the above.
This message incorporates a couple of (to me) false assumptions. One is inherent in the reference to solutions not coming from "the left." With many prominent Conservative voices saying the same thing that the Cindy Sheehans of the world are saying, this has long since stopped being a left/right issue. The AP-Ipsos poll today (this one) says that 70% of all Americans oppose The Surge. This is not because 70% of Americans are left-wingers.
Frankly, Greg, I don't know if we should just pull out of Iraq right now. Knowing that is not my job. But I do think that those keeping us there should be open to a possibility being suggested by a lot of folks experienced in military actions and/or geopolitics. It's that our options are coming down to (a) pulling out now and having a certain level of disaster descend on Iraq...or (b) pulling out at some point in the future, having the same or worse level of disaster hit Iraq then, and a staggering number of American lives and dollars lost unnecessarily in the interim. Those who oppose this war now may not have a proposal to make everything in Iraq hunky-dory...but I don't see that those who favor staying having any plan beyond "Let's keep trying all those things that haven't worked at all the way we predicted."
I'm not sure if I want us to leave Iraq 100% right now. What I want is for us to have leaders who would do that if that's our least objectionable alternative...and George W. Bush has not convinced me — along with an awful lot of people who once voted for him — that he could make that call.
So no, I don't have a Plan B. I'm not sure anyone does, unless it's to cut our losses and get out. I don't have to have a Plan B to suggest that Plan A ain't working. If my doctor prescribes something and my fingernails start falling out, I don't have to know what I should be taking in order to decide that he gave me the wrong medicine. I can just decide to go to a different doctor. Would that it were that easy to change our president.
This one was suggested by my longtime pal, Russell Myers. Russell draws the wonderful comic strip, Broom-Hilda, which can be read online on this page. But he didn't suggest you read his strip. That's my suggestion. What he suggested is that I favor you with the following Spike Jones clip. It runs almost eight minutes but, hey, you have nothing better to do for the next eight minutes. So sit back, click and watch as Spike — wearing one of his more conservative outfits — conducts "The Poet and Peasant Overture." The funny guy with the banjo is Freddie Morgan...
I have a couple of friends who still support...well, I'm not sure if they support George W. Bush because they support the War in Iraq or if they support the War in Iraq because they support George W. Bush. But some of them do and a couple of them don't seem to understand why so many of us support neither.
To them...to anyone who's wondering...I recommend spending two and a half minutes and watching Keith Olbermann tick off a list of past rationales and statements that have been offered in support of our nation's efforts in Iraq. It's rather an amazing list and you can watch it over at this link.
I'm afraid I don't have a great Yvonne DeCarlo anecdote to toss up here today. The one time I ever saw her in person was around 1965, the first time I took the Universal Studio Tour. Today, that experience is like an amusement park ride with stunts and effects, but back then, they used to actually take you where movies and TV shows had been or were currently being filmed. At one point, we all got off the tram and were led through "an actual star's dressing room." In this case, it was allegedly Yvonne DeCarlo's...and it was a nice little room but there was really nothing of interest to see in it. There was certainly nothing that indicated Yvonne DeCarlo had ever set foot in the place and I got the feeling that the next tour group to shlep through would have been told it was where Gene Barry or Doug McClure got dressed.
A little later, we were back on the tram and it was ambling past the stage where The Munsters was filming. We didn't get to go in but Al "Grandpa" Lewis was dawdling outside in full make-up, fiddling with script pages. He acted like he was trying to memorize lines but it was obvious that he was trolling for attention, waiting to be spotted by the tourists so he could feign annoyance...but still come over and sign autographs for his adoring public. I mean, if you're dressed up as Dracula and your skin's painted blue-green, you don't loiter where the trams go by unless you want to be noticed.
Anyway, Mr. Lewis signed and bantered with us...and then someone spotted her. Yvonne DeCarlo, partially but not fully made-up as Lily Munster, was rushing towards the stage door. In contrast to Grandpa, she was trying to not be recognized. The people on our tram started calling to her, yelling "Lily" and "Miss DeCarlo," hoping she'd come by and scribble out a few autographs, too. But she gestured and waved as if to say, "I'm really sorry but I can't" and disappeared inside. Grandpa Al waited until he had everyone's attention back and then announced, "They haven't finished turning her into a monster yet. She doesn't like people to see her at her best."
Big laugh. I'll bet it wasn't the first or last time he used that line.
I'm sorry I don't have a better Yvonne DeCarlo story than that because she was, at least on-screen, a classy lady who had an incredible career. I hope the reason they hadn't finished her make-up wasn't because we'd thrown her out of her dressing room. She deserved better than that.
Max Boot, who has pretty solid credentials as one of them, warns that Conservatives are likely to blame the failures of Iraq on the media. And he says that's nonsense.
As I explained in this article, I was always a fan of the great ventriloquist, Señor Wences. I didn't always understand what he and his many voices were saying but I used to enjoy just watching him. It was quite a thrill to meet the man on two occasions, one being a party to celebrate the fact that he had just turned one hundred.
Señor Wences did essentially the same act for around seventy years. It varied due to time restrictions and sometimes had to be altered because of the particular venue in which he was playing. But it was still the same wonderful act, and he knew it backwards, forwards and in about eight languages. Here's six minutes of that act...
George W. Bush is going to address the nation this evening, reportedly to tell us that he's going to ignore the wishes of most of the nation (and a surprisingly high percentage of our military leaders and Republican members of Congress) and proceed with "The Surge." It may not be much of a surge because we don't have enough troops for that. And it may take quite some time to surge properly...but damn it, we're going to surge. Okay, so it'll mean a lot more of our soldiers getting killed. Isn't that ever so much better than Bush having to admit he screwed up?
It reminds me of something I used to say when I worked on a lot of variety shows. I had a producer who'd come up to me before every sketch and ask if it was going to be funny. I'd always say yes and then I'd point to one of the other writers and say, "In fact, I'm willing to put his job on the line."
And is there something symbolic in the fact that on one network, Bush's speech will be pre-empting Deal or No Deal?
It will interest at least two regular readers of this site that I know of to hear that NBC is not going to waste a new episode of that game show tonight. They're rerunning the one from last Sunday — the one with the lady who was a fan of the movie Grease — and then in the time zones where the presidential address displaces Howie and the models, NBC will join Deal or No Deal in progress, after the speech.
Personally, I think Bush should just have 26 models come out with his Iraq plan. Each model would represent one percentage point of his approval rating by this time next week.
This morning, I linked to a commercial with Mark Wilson promoting his 1960 TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam. He's a great magician but the trick in that spot wasn't all that impressive. This one is. It's Wilson — aided by "the lovely Nani Darnell" — performing a terrific version of the classic trick "Metamophosis" on a 1981 HBO Special. It runs a little less than four minutes.
Just a reminder: Tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM Eastern Time (6:30 AM on this side of the U.S.), Turner Classic Movies is running Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title, one of the crummiest but fun obscure movies ever made. It was produced and co-written by its co-star, Morey Amsterdam and it also stars Rose Marie, Richard Deacon and a bevy of cameo stars including Danny Thomas, Carl Reiner, Cliff "Charley Weaver" Arquette, Milton Berle, Nick Adams, Forrest Tucker and — as you can see above — Moe Howard. There's also a nice character role by Henry Corden, who most of you will recognize as the second voice of Fred Flintstone.
I am not suggesting you will find this movie funny. I'm not even suggesting you'll be able to make it all the way through to its bizarre ending. I'm just suggesting some of you will enjoy taking a look at this sucker.
Obits for Iwao Takamoto (like this one) are all over the web and some of them are pretty loose with their assignment of credits. Most say Iwao was the creator of Scooby Doo...an honor that has also been (at different times) claimed by or attributed to Joe Barbera, Fred Silverman and the writer-producer team of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. As far as I know, Iwao himself never claimed to have done any more than design the look of that show and its characters...and even then, he was the main designer, not the only one.
Several wire stories also say that Iwao named the dog, having been inspired by the portion of the record, "Strangers in the Night" where Sinatra warbled, "Scooby dooby doo..." I don't think Iwao did that and I don't think Iwao ever claimed he had. Everyone has always given credit for the naming to Fred Silverman, who was then the CBS exec in charge of Saturday morning. (And I've always wondered if he isn't misremembering; if the record in question wasn't "Denise," a medium-sized hit by Randy and the Rainbows. Here's a link — which may not work for all browsers — to a few seconds of that classic recording. What Frank sang in "Strangers in the Night" sounded more like "Shooby dooby doo...")
In any case, I wish people didn't use words like "creator" and "created by" so casually. To give someone credit for something they didn't create is to deny it to someone who did. That has personal ramifications and these days, it may also have legal and compensatory ones, as well.
Iwao was a brilliantly talented artist. It's too bad more of you haven't seen his original concept and presentation drawings, which often far exceeded anything that made it onto your TV screens. And he did come up with the basic and/or final design of more popular TV cartoon characters than almost anyone else. He never wanted, nor does his memory require credit for things he didn't do.
50+ of you have now e-mailed me this article about a planned sequel to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and asked me what I think about someone making a follow-up to one of my favorite movies.
I think, first of all, that this proposed film is a long way from getting in front of a camera. No director is mentioned, no stars, no studio, no distributor. There seems to be a script but the screenwriter is not even named. So this is most likely an article that's being planted in the press in the hope of generating interest from studios, major stars, etc.
Beyond that, I wish them well. If it's a great movie, we all benefit. If it isn't, it doesn't despoil the original in any way. Naturally, there's always cause for skepticism when someone aspires to replicate past greatness. It wouldn't seem likely that it could be achieved in this case. The big appeal of the original started with its huge budget and this sequel doesn't seem to have huge financing.
And that huge budget bought a stellar cast. Assuming the producers come up with that kind of cash, there's some question as to whether it's possible to assemble a comparable roster of stars. Today, your top comedy stars are used to getting salaries that amount to 5-10% of a film's total budget so you can't just go out, meet established price quotes and lasso the top ten folks in that category. That's even assuming you think Will Ferrell, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler and Jack Black are somehow equivalent to Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett and Jonathan Winters.
Maybe that's the big problem. The original Mad World was a celebration of a certain kind of comedic actor who is currently in short supply. A lot of the major laughs came from the mere appearance of certain people...seeing that the firemen dispatched to prevent a disaster were The Three Stooges, for example. Or watching Don Knotts enter a scene and anticipating what was about to happen because it was Don Knotts. I can't think of too many current comedians whose screen presence is so well established in advance. But hey, I'd love to see them pull it off. Karen Sharpe Kramer, widow of the man who directed the original, is a smart lady and I'm sure she'll do it right or not at all. It's not sacrilege that someone wants to make a movie as good as a great film of the past. It's actually a commendable goal.
I had to turn off the first episode of Grease: You're the One That I Want...a "reality" show that was just too phony for me. Perhaps there are Broadway auditions that are conducted in such a stark manner, with auditioners insulted to their faces after they sing a few bars of something without even piano accompaniment. But those auditions are done in private without the employers trying to act like Simon Cowell, wringing emotions out of those trying out. I guess the publicity and national interest bodes well for the new production of Grease that's heading for Broadway. But it doesn't bode well for the show that two key roles are being cast in a manner that would (and should) scare off any performer with an ounce of dignity.
Actually though, there's a bit of a trick at work here. The reality show is only trying to cast the roles of Danny and Sandy, the parts played by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in the movie. In fact, they're acting like they're casting the movie, not the play. Most of the auditioning ladies sing "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and the whole TV competition is called "You're the One That I Want" — two songs that were not in the original stage version and were only added for the movie. They're now sometimes inserted into live productions of the play...though they weren't in the 1994 Broadway revival. Even if they're added to this new incarnation, it probably won't change the fact that Danny and Sandy aren't the stars of the stage version. It's more of an ensemble piece and will surely stay that way.
Before that show aired on Sunday night, there was a special Grease-themed episode of Deal or No Deal. I still like this show, at least when viewed with judicious use of the Fast Forward button...but their new "twist" is silly. At the end of each game, the contestant is now given the opportunity to play "Double or Nothing," picking one of two giant cases. One says "double" inside. The other says "nothing."
In theory, this gives the show the right to say that their top prize is now two million dollars but that's just theory. It's never gonna happen. In order to win the two million dollars, you'd first have to win the one million dollars. No one has yet. Then you'd have to decide to gamble the whole million on a 50-50 chance of turning it into two million. No one's ever going to risk the million. In fact, most players win whatever they win on the show by turning down better gambles than that.
I'm told this option is popular on Deal or No Deal programs in other lands but I don't see why. The worst thing about the show is when we watch an occasional contestant be embarrassed to go home with some small amount because they got greedy. And as long as they keep playing "Double or Nothing," each game will end with an opportunity for the contestant to go home with nothing because they got greedy. I'd hate to think people would find it entertaining to watch someone blow the wad that way.
Since we seem to be having a kidvid festival here, I'll toss in one more...a short one. Among my favorite non-cartoon shows when I was younger was The Magic Land of Allakazam, a filmed show starring magician Mark Wilson. It debuted on CBS in October of 1960, ran two years on that network and then switched to ABC. I was eight when it began and — of course — it instantly got me hooked on magic.
I tuned in initially because between tricks, they showed Huckleberry Hound cartoons. But by then, I knew all those cartoons by heart and the magic was new and exciting, so I was actually happy when they eventually got rid of Huck and just did more magic in each show. By then, I'd cleaned out the local public library of every book they had on magic and had learned how to do a batch of mystical feats...including one card trick that is still, I'm embarrassed to report, part of my repertoire.
Mark Wilson, by the way, continues to performs magic but is mainly a teacher and consultant. His spouse — "the lovely Nani Darnell," who you'll see in our video clip — handles a lot of his business dealings. Last year, I took a card manipulation class at The Magic Castle. It was not taught by Mr. Wilson but Nani handled the sign-ups and tuition collection and such. Now, you'll have to imagine the following...
We're all in the classroom — guys about my age, all wearing jackets and ties because you have to wear a jacket and tie when you go to the Castle in the evening. Nani comes in and handles the last of the paperwork, then leaves...still looking quite lovely, almost a half-century after the filming of the video below. As soon as she's out of the room, our instructor (a very famous, important magician) admits that he started doing magic decades ago because he had a crush on her and thought that that was the way to get women who looked like that...
...and every guy in the room, myself included, nods in understanding and agreement.
When you hear magicians say that they were inspired by Dai Vernon or Blackstone or even Houdini...well, that may be true in many ways. But I'll bet Nani Darnell caused more young men in the early sixties to become magicians than any of those guys. Wilson had his son, who was about my age, perform a trick on each episode and I guess that was because they thought it would motivate young viewers to take up magic. Well, they were wrong. We were all motivated by the cute blonde lady.
I should mention that you can buy DVDs of the old Magic Land of Allakazam shows over on Mark Wilson's website and I've just placed an order for some, myself. Our link today is to a one minute commercial for the series from when it aired on ABC...
Fred Kaplan explains — in pretty simple terms — why George W. Bush's new strategy for Iraq cannot work. Let me know if you see an article anywhere that explains otherwise.
Hasn't been a good couple of weeks for those who made the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons. First, Joe Barbera leaves us and now, this morning, Iwao Takamoto has died at the age of 81. And come to think of it, Ed Benedict — who was responsible for the design of so many early H-B shows, died last August. (And Alex Toth, who was the main designer of their adventure shows, passed away last May.)
In a sense, Iwao took Ed's place at H-B. Iwao (pronounced "E-whoa") was born in 1925 in Los Angeles to parents who had immigrated from Japan. His family spent much of World War II in an internment camp, an experience that he only spoke about later on rare occasions. When he did, he admitted one — and only one — upside: It was in that camp that he met some men who were professional art directors and they encouraged him in his drawing. Around 1945, not long after his family's release and aided by the encouragement of the men he'd met in the camp, he easily secured employment at the Disney Studios. There, he worked primarily as an assistant animator to Milt Kahl on all the great animated features of the day, including Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. He is often credited with the main design of Lady in Lady and the Tramp.
Some time between 1960 and 1962 — accounts differ — he left Disney and joined Hanna-Barbera, where he quickly became one of their key designers. He had at least a supervisory role, if not an active design responsibility, for most of their shows from the mid-sixties on. His most notable credit came with the designs he did for the characters in Scooby Doo, perhaps the most popular cartoon series ever created for daytime television. He held various titles at the studio that all fell under the general heading of "Art Director."
Iwao was a quiet, soft-spoken man who was generally well-respected in the business, both as an artist and as a gentleman. I had the honor of working with him on a few projects and I found him to be very serious about his work and motivated by a great love of the form. It's sad that even before we finish saying goodbye to Joe, we have to lose yet another fine man who was very much a part of that studio.
Yesterday, I had a nice one hour chat with the folks at Fanboy Radio, a weekly podcast about comics.
Well, actually, it didn't start out so well. They phoned me at the appointed hour and placed me on "hold" to await my introduction...and somehow, I got dropped. I'm sitting here waiting to go on the air and suddenly I hear that annoying lady saying, "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again..."
So I logged into the Internet site for Fanboy Radio to listen to the program. Got on just in time to hear them introduce Mark Evanier...who was not on the line. First time I ever missed an entrance.
But it all got corrected and we talked for the rest of the hour. You can hear or download the show in MP3 at this link.
Very few topics bring hits and e-mail to this site like a mention of Soupy Sales. Until I classed up and stopped posting them (i.e., when I ran out), photos of Julie Newmar in skimpy clothing was the big draw. But now it's Soupy. Every time I mention him, I hear from folks who were kids in Detroit (1953-1958), Los Angeles (1959-1962) or New York (1964-1967) and have never lost their affection for him and his shows.
As I tried to convey in this article, Soupy's show just exuded fun. It was fun to watch and I used to wish I was one of the people on the crew. You heard them laughing off-camera, especially when Soupy was in trouble and attempting to ad-lib his way out of some bit that wasn't working. As we mentioned when we recently linked to a Soupy clip, he was not only a very clever, likeable man but a very brave one, as well. His show was half improvised (some days, well more than half) and he did it without a huge cast or budget. Much of the time, it was just him out there, thinking of entertaining things to say and do. I never missed his show and was heartbroken when he left the Los Angeles airwaves.
Today is Soupy's 81st birthday. I don't think he's on the web but maybe White Fang or Black Tooth have Internet access and will let him know that a lot of us are wishing him well...today and every day.
Got a good one for you today, though it's a little long. It's a whole half hour of Time for Beany, the puppet show produced by the late, great Bob Clampett. The show originally starred Daws Butler and Stan Freberg but they had left by the time this episode was produced, which I'm guessing is late 1954 or early 1955. The cast in this one consisted of Walker Edmiston (as Beany and Clowny), Irv Shoemaker (as Cecil), Jim MacGeorge (as Cap'n Huffenpuff and the announcer) and I'm assuming that's Bill Oberlin in the gorilla suit. On the animated version produced a few years later, Shoemaker did the voices of Cecil and Dishonest John while MacGeorge voiced Beany and Huffenpuff.
The script for this one was written by Lloyd Turner, a fascinating gent who started his professional career as a gagman for Warner Brothers cartoons and ended it writing situation comedies including All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Mork & Mindy. He was also one of the more prolific writers of Dell funny animal comics in the fifties and early sixties. The one time I met and spoke with him, he didn't seem to think much of his years on Time for Beany but I think that, despite the meager production values, the shows hold up pretty well...
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, writes an interesting essay about torture. He says that there's no real evidence that it's effective in gaining useful information and I suspect he's right. But I also think there are some people who, for reasons I won't pretend to fully understand, just plain like the idea of their government torturing people who are either the enemy or who kinda look like the enemy.
When I posted the video link last night, I knew that when I woke up, someone would have sent me more info on its original airdate. Jon Delfin tracked down some info that says it's from 1984, which seems about right to me given the way Soupy looks. Alan Kupperberg also says 1984.
Also in the morning mail, Ray Arthur reminds me that tomorrow will be the 81st birthday of the pie-encrusted Mr. Soupy Sales. He asks if I have an address to which folks can send cards and if I have any updated info on Soupy's health. I have a current address for the man but don't think I should be posting it on the 'net or giving it out to strangers. You'll have to settle for me reporting what Chuck McCann told me; that he'd seen Soupy on a recent trip east and that Soupy seemed more like his old self than he has in years. Good to hear and we all wish him well in his 81st year and beyond. (And before anyone asks about an address for Chuck: Wait. I'll be helping him put together his own website and announcing it here when it's open for business.)
Oh, is this going to make some of you so happy...mainly those of you who grew up watching TV in New York in the sixties. It's an interview conducted by Stewart Klein and he's chatting with three veterans of kids' shows on WNEW...Fred Scott, Sandy Becker and Soupy Sales. I don't know how long ago this was done but Mr. Klein passed away in 1999 so it's at least that old.
The whole chat runs around 26 minutes and it's been cut into three parts and posted to YouTube. Here's a direct link to Part One, here's a link to Part Two and one more click will get you to Part Three. And now I'm going to embed the first part below and thank Marc Thorner for letting me know about these videos.
In October of '02, 77 United States Senators voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. ABC News recently asked them if they'd vote differently, based on what they know now. Here's what they said.
It's my favorite bandleader, Spike Jones. He and the City Slickers recorded their biggest hit, "Cocktails for Two," in 1944 and sold billions of copies, much to the ambivalence of songwriter Sam Coslow. He penned the tune and got a royalty for every copy sold...but he hated what Spike and the Slickers did to his tune. I don't know when this little music video was done but it's a pantomime to the original record with many of the same performers.
Again? Yes, again. I'll be the guest on Fanboy Radio this coming Sunday at 4 PM Pacific Time, 6 PM Central Time and 7 PM Eastern Time. What will we be talking about? Beats the heck outta me, other than that it'll probably be My Life in Comics. Over on their webpage, you can find out how to listen live and how to download a podcast later and even how to call in during the show and ask some vital, can't-live-without-the-answer question. That's Fanboy Radio, The Voice of Comics. Give a listen.
Is the idea behind this "troop surge" that George W. Bush, despite the advice of everyone he's said he trusts, honestly thinks 20,000 more U.S. soldiers will really make a difference? Or is it that he's hoping the newly-Democratic Congress will stop him and then he can say, "I could have won the war if not for those craven Democrats"?
Or is he maybe just doing it because he can't admit his war has failed, can't continue to Stay the Course and doesn't know what else to do?
We love Turner Classic Movies. Sure, they run a lot of the same films over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Any time I get the urge to watch Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, I can either go downstairs and get my DVD of it or just turn on TCM where there's around a 1-in-3 chance of it being on. Nevertheless, in those odd moments when it's not, a lot of interesting things are. Every so often, someone at TCM creeps into the metaphorical vaults and hauls out some lost treasure.
Next week, they're running one of the worst movies I ever saw and later in the month, they're making up for it with one of the best...and neither one has been easy to see, lo these many years. One — the bad one — wasn't even easy to see when it was current. It's called Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title, and it stars half the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show: Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie and Richard Deacon. Made around the time that great series was ending, the film was produced and co-written by Mr. Amsterdam, whose Human Joke Machine capabilities weren't working so well that month. On the plus side though, he did manage to arrange surprise cameo appearances by a number of his friends, including Danny Thomas, Milton Berle, Steve Allen, Carl Reiner, Irene Ryan, Forrest Tucker and Moe Howard.
You know the old joke, "This movie wasn't released...it escaped"? This one didn't even escape. As far as I know, it never played most of the major cities in this country. I'm pretty sure it never appeared on any Los Angeles theater screen. I saw it in 1966 when my parents and I were vacationing in Pismo Beach, a nice beachside town which is about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. We had nothing to do one afternoon so we went into town and it was playing on a bargain-priced double-bill with the James Coburn film, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? One thing I recall that did not bode well for Don't Worry... being a cinema classic: The posters for it that were on display outside were not printed. They were hand-lettered, apparently by some local sign-painting company.
The one time I met Rose Marie, I asked her about the film and from her reaction, I'd obviously touched a very sore spot. She said something about how when it was announced that The Dick Van Dyke Show was shutting down after its fifth season, she turned to Morey and said, "Well, what are we going to do now?" And Morey said not to worry. He had these friends who had financing and he had an idea for a movie...and I'm guessing it did not lead to a new line of work for the two of them, or much cash.
It's an awful movie but like some awful movies, it's enjoyable in a way. The cameo bits are all pretty good, and it's fun just to watch some of those actors — including supporting players like Henry Corden — performing, even when they're trapped in weak material. The plot, which you suffer through waiting for the cameos, has something to do with Morey and Rose Marie, who work in a diner run by Deacon, getting mixed up with spies who are looking for a defecting cosmonaut. I'm suggesting you tape or TiVo the thing but not that you try to watch it all the way through in real time. This is the kind of movie for which they invented the Fast Forward button.
Still, I'm glad I saw it in '66 in Pismo Beach, even though I couldn't skip ahead in that theater. I'm glad I saw it because for many years, my friend Leonard Maltin hadn't. This is close to humanly impossible since Leonard has seen every movie ever made. Name the most obscure Monogram one-reeler travelogue ever made and Leonard's not only seen it, he's written about it in one of his books. For many years, the one thing I could lord over him was that I'd seen this one movie that had eluded him...and it was a movie with a Stooge appearance, no less. And lord it over him, I did...until a few years ago when it inexplicably turned up on the TCM schedule. I caught it in mid-broadcast by accident and immediately phoned Leonard who said, "I'm watching it now and it's everything you said it was...and less." In Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, he gives it a rating of "BOMB," which isn't fair but it's the lowest rating he has.
Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title runs on Turner Classic Movies on Wednesday, January 10 at 9:30 AM Eastern Time. Perhaps to make up for it, later in the month they're running one of my favorite good movies, Billy Wilder's The Big Carnival, also known as Ace in the Hole and couple other names. This may be the first time it's been on TV in decades and I'll tell you about it when we get closer to the date. In the meantime — and sad to say — you missed this month's airing of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It was on yesterday morning.
From 1960, it's a two-minute commercial for that year's new model Ford automobiles...with Charlie Brown and the gang, along with Tennessee Ernie Ford. I think I remember these spots from my childhood and I understood the connection of Tennessee Ernie Ford to Fords...but never "got" what the Peanuts comic strip had to do with new cars. And you know what? I still don't.
I keep the entire archive of this weblog available online and I hope some of you admire my courage in doing this. It means that all my predictions which don't come true are still there, smirking at me. If you look back, you'll find me fearlessly decreeing — among other bad calls — that Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't run for governor of California and that Ellen DeGeneres won't be asked to host the Oscars. But hey, I'm still right more often than a lot of public officials. (Then again, so is Captain Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz...)
Back there also somewhere, you might find me thinking that Schwarzenegger would be a pretty bad governor...and for the first year or so of his term, I was right. He was terrible, his poll numbers were worse than the reviews for Jingle All the Way, and even a lot of his prominent supporters were talking about another recall election. At some point though, he seems to have wised up and managed to turn things around. He won another term partly because his opponent was a lox but also because even his one-time detractors suddenly didn't have a lot of beefs with Governor Arnold.
Some of us may be taking the last bit of our negative feelings back if he comes through with his newest proposal. It's Universal Health Care, which is an idea whose time I think came in this country a long time ago. People are dying every day from the high cost of medical treatment in this country. Even people who are covered are paying too high a price, financially and from the inefficiency of the system. There are a lot of lethal things in this world we can't do anything about but we can sure fix the clogged emergency rooms, the sky-high costs of prescriptions, the unavailability of certain equipment, the spread of some diseases, etc. Just worrying about getting and keeping health insurance is taking a lot of years off some lives.
Schwarzenegger is about to announce a plan that will guarantee health care for all children in the state of California. As this article explains, some of the details are still unknown and for all we know, the program may have problems or may not pass. Still, that a governor of a highly-populated state — and a Republican governor, in particular — could get behind such a thing is another of those small steps for man, giant leaps for mankind that you occasionally hear about. It's going to make it that much harder for the idea of U.H.C. to be dismissed by a certain crowd...you know, the ones who think the only thing the government can do with great efficiency is invade other countries.
And isn't it going to be an interesting press conference? Arnold — one of the relatively small group of Californians who can afford first-rate medical care — sitting there with his broken leg, announcing that even the children of illegal aliens are going to be able to get treatment for things like broken legs? I sure hope he throws in one of those movie line quotes like "I'll be back" or a Terminator joke because if he pulls this off, that may be the only thing some of us will have to complain about.
The Des Moines Register has been writing lately — with understandable pride — that the "new Superman" (Brandon Routh) is, like the "old Superman" (George Reeves) a native of Iowa. The other day, they touted a third Superman from Iowa: John Frederick.
Who's John Frederick? Good question. Here's a link to the article and here are the most relevant paragraphs of it...
Actor John Frederick swears it's true: He played the role of Superman on film, thus joining Iowa-born George Reeves and Brandon Routh, who also claim the role.
Frederick, now busy in retirement in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., says he filmed 18 episodes of the popular television series in the late 1950s as a studio threat to Reeves, who was increasingly unhappy in the role and felt he was being type-cast and excluded from better parts. Reeves allegedly was threatening to walk out on the series, Frederick says in his autobiography, "Name Droppings on Your Head."
"A muddled message came...the producers of the 'Superman' series would like to see me as soon as possible.
"It was at a little studio on the street just south of the Paramount gate. It was a tiny office with two men in it. Hanging on a rack was the Superman costume. 'If it fits, you've got the part,' one said."
The costume handed to Frederick did fit the brawny, square-shouldered actor, so he went to work.
He writes: "The part I remember the most vividly was lying stretched out on something that looked like a barrel on my stomach, feet and arms outstretched, and wind machine blowing. I guess I was flying. God knows where. I didn't."
Frederick adds: "Later I was told that the current Superman was making waves. I eventually figured it out that I was supposedly the threat that just might bring him back into the fold and hopefully his senses."
Frederick says he never knew where the episodes he made ended up, but "I was Superman! And it paid well too!"
Frederick says his work came to an abrupt halt with Reeves' mysterious death in 1959. Reeves allegedly shot himself, but many today say he was murdered and did not commit suicide.
I must admit to being utterly baffled by this. I never heard of John Frederick or of any scab Superman...and the story as reported does not make a lot of sense. The producers of the Superman TV show were notoriously cheap. No one who worked for them thought the job "paid well" and they certainly wouldn't have filmed one episode, let alone eighteen that were never shown. An awful lot of people involved with that series have been extensively interviewed and they sure haven't mentioned any other Superman or any unaired shows.
I also don't understand the logic here. The claim is that Frederick was hired and he did eighteen episodes replacing George Reeves. But everyone, including Frederick, knows that Reeves continued on the show until his death. So why were these eighteen alleged episodes done? And what was the job that Frederick lost when Reeves died?
It sounds to me like the man is claiming he was Reeves' stand-in or stunt double. That's possible. It's even possible the producers had him in mind at some point to replace Reeves if they needed an alternate Man of Steel. But I can't believe the man filmed eighteen "lost" episodes as the star. Further compounding the puzzlement, over on the website, there are tiny photos Frederick supplied of himself as Clark Kent and as Superman...only the Superman photo is of a homemade costume with no Superman insignia, not a costume used on the show.
Mr. Frederick's autobiography seems to be for sale on this page. If anyone has any additional information, lemme know. And thanks to John Wells, a reader of this site, for alerting me to this oddment.
Here's another episode of Paul Winchell's variety show from (probably) late 1955 or thereabouts. Like our pal Pinky Lee from the other day, Winch was sponsored by Tootsie Roll, which is one of those products I always felt represented a triumph of advertising over actual consumer satisfaction. I never liked them but I think I bought them or asked my parents for them because Paul Winchell was always telling us how wonderful they were. And a man that talented wouldn't lie to children now, would he?
This episode features musical guest stars Lonnie Donegan and Denise Lor, plus many antics by the show's bandleader, Milton DeLugg. Many of you will remember when Mr. DeLugg was the bandleader on The Gong Show. They dressed one of his musicians up as a gangster so that the program's first host, Gary Owens, could refer to the ensemble as "Milton DeLugg and his band with a thug."
One thing I remember about these Paul Winchell shows is that when I was four or so, I figured out that Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff sometimes had "live" hands. Winch was a clever man and he knew that his dummies needed to be able to do more than just talk in order to do real sketches and comedy bits on a regular basis. I was always fascinated to figure out where the live person was hidden...and often, the ingenuity of how it was done ratcheted up my respect for Winchell another notch. Once in a while, Jerry would even have actual legs which obviously belonged to a tap dancer with pretty small feet. (Paul later told me it was usually a child.) All of that cleverness plus Winchell's brilliant acting skills made Jerry and Knucklehead into two of the most colorful people on television. They were sure a lot more human than Ed Sullivan...
Here's another piece about Gerald Ford and his pardoning of Richard Nixon. This article by Douglas Brinkley says that the two men had a closer relationship than has previously been reported.
There's one thing that I'm skeptical about in all these discussions. Ford is continually quoted as saying that he didn't expect the strong negative reaction that the public had to the pardon. Well, maybe. But he knew it was going to be unpopular. He announced it without much advance fanfare on a Sunday morning...a good time to make an announcement that you don't want to have get a lot of attention.
On my recent trip to Ohio and Indiana, I had my first experience with a Global Positioning System. One came unsolicited in my Hertz rental car and it proved to be a handy thing to have. I'd printed out Mapquest guides for everywhere I had to drive but it was nice having the screen tell me that I was actually on the road I thought I was on, and having Henrietta (as I named the voice that comes out of the Hertz Neverlost® system) telling me when I was nearing a turn. For that reason — and the fact that it's a gadget and I must have all gadgets — I decided to get me a G.P.S. when I returned home.
I did a bit of study and got some advice from my friend, Marv Wolfman, who has one in his auto. It all pointed me to the Magellan Roadmate 2000, in part because it's nearly identical to the Hertz Neverlost® device I'd used on my trip. It's even the same Henrietta.
I've had my new Henrietta for a week, during which I haven't had to go anywhere I couldn't locate with my eyes closed...but I've been using the Roadmate anyway, just to get used to it and to learn what I could learn about the thing. I've learned, first of all, that there's no non-awkward way to install it in my car. I tried a number of different ways, including a special mount that I ordered over the Internet and which is supposed to clamp the thing onto any air vent on your dashboard. It did but since all my air vents rotate, the G.P.S. jiggled and moved out of position at the slightest touch of its touchscreen...and there seemed to be no way to make that mount work. I finally went back to using the suction cup connector on the inside of my windshield and it's functional but not ideal. Wherever I position it, it's in the way of something and so is the cord that goes from it to the cigarette lighter for power.
Beyond that, I'm reasonably happy. Henrietta has a tendency to send me down major streets when smaller ones would be more efficient, and she's not always correct about which route is either the shortest or quickest. But she also isn't far wrong and if I were driving on unfamiliar turf, I'd be quite satisfied with her directions. From here to my mother's house in non-rush hour traffic is twelve minutes the way I usually go. Following the path dictated by Henrietta today, it was fifteen.
She's good but she has an unfortunate tendency to nag. Today, she wanted me to take a turn that would have sent me down Wilshire Boulevard. (Henrietta loves Wilshire Boulevard. When Marv and I went to lunch in his car, we were driving down 6th Street to a restaurant that was located on 6th Street. She kept telling him to turn right and go down to Wilshire.) Anyway, today when I didn't cut over to Wilshire and went another way, she started ordering me to make a safe and legal U-Turn and to get my ass back to Wilshire. She didn't exactly phrase it that way but you could tell she wanted to.
I'll report more on Henrietta as soon as I go somewhere I've never been before.
Today's link takes you an excerpt from what was probably the funniest bit aired during the rarely-seen Season 10 of Saturday Night Live. That was the year when the cast consisted of Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, Mary Gross, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Gary Kroeger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Martin Short, Pamela Stephenson and about half a season of Harry Shearer. During the half of the season he was around, Mssrs. Shearer and Short teamed to demonstrate a unique, male approach to synchronized swimming. Here's two minutes of it...
Jacob Weisberg on what went wrong in Iraq. In the meantime, I'm waiting for a good article on what hasn't gone wrong in Iraq. There must be a few things.
I keep plugging Shokus Internet Radio here and for good reason. Stu Shostak runs a nice little station full of TV themes, old time radio shows, swing music and, on occasion, me. This week, he's rerunning the two-hour interview I did with him last December 7. Consult this schedule to see when it airs for sure but basically, it repeats each night this week through Sunday from 9 PM to 11 PM on the West Coast, Midnight to 2 AM on the East Coast. You can access Shokus Internet Radio by going to this page and selecting an audio browser. Ignore the parts where Stu tells you to call in since this is a rerun. (I just listened to a little of it and I almost forgot and called up to ask me a question.)
Today's video link will take you to an almost-15 minute TV show starring Pinky Lee. Mr. Lee was an odd celebrity. He was a one-time burlesque comedian — apparently, a pretty good one — who somehow became a kids' show host in early television. Someone at the company that made Tootsie Rolls seems to have adored him because he was usually sponsored by that product. Maybe it was because with his lisp, he always sounded like he was eating a Tootsie Roll and therefore had his back teeth cemented together.
He had an array of different shows on different channels over the years. Often during the periods when he didn't have a TV show, he could be found in Las Vegas, appearing in one of the many revues there that purported to replicate Minsky's-style burlesque. There was apparently some minor controversy over whether it was right and proper for a man who entertained children to also be consorting with strippers and gambling, but I don't know that it was what finally ended his TV career. I think evolving tastes took care of that. His "last hurrah" was around 1964 on local TV in Los Angeles where he tried to do exactly the same show he'd done ten years earlier. No one, not even Sid Caesar or Jackie Gleason, could do that in '64 and succeed.
There are many stories about Pinky Lee and things going wrong on live TV...words that shouldn't have been said, body parts that shouldn't have been exposed. The most famous though is probably the tale of him collapsing on camera in 1955, right in the middle of a broadcast. It was reported as a heart attack but when he returned to work weeks later, he insisted it was asthma...and it may well have been. Later, when his career wasn't going so well, he blamed the heart attack story for scaring off employers.
I had one encounter with Pinky Lee, back when I worked for Sid and Marty Krofft. He knew the Kroffts and had talked to them about hosting some show or being involved with something they did. He was interested in working with them but the feeling was not particularly mutual, and they had no idea what to do with him, anyway. Still, every month or three, he'd be on the phone or at the door with "the" project that would get him back on TV, where he knew he belonged and where he had not appeared for some time. This was around 1980 or so.
When the infamous Pink Lady TV show was announced, Lee was convinced that was it. Pink Lady...Pinky Lee...how was that not a combo of divine (pink) inspiration? He began calling the office every hour on the hour, asking when to report to work on the series. One day, I was sitting at my desk — I was the Head Writer — and suddenly, Pinky Lee danced in...and I mean, danced. He was in his seventies but he did a little time-step into my room. I was on the phone at the time and I remember saying to someone, "I'll have to call you back. I seem to have Pinky Lee performing in my office."
And perform, he did — telling me how wonderful he would be on our show. Yeah, like we really needed another star who no one had heard of and who didn't talk very well. I remember him just exuding energy and spittle, telling me how popular he still was; how everywhere he went, hordes stopped him to ask why he wasn't on the air these days.
At the time, "Buffalo" Bob Smith of Howdy Doody fame was big again, touring on college campuses to sold-out audiences. Pinky explained to me that those kids really wanted to see him instead and had contacted NBC trying to book him. NBC, he said, was mad at him over an old score and the network still owned a piece of Howdy Doody, so they'd steered all those inquiries to Bob Smith, instead. It was kind of sad, and yet you had to admire the guy's spirit and persistence in a way. He was actually pretty funny, at least in my office. I told him I'd discuss with the Kroffts if we could find a place for him on the show, knowing full well we wouldn't. In hindsight, maybe we should have. I mean, it's not like anything else we did would have hurt that series.
Here's Pinky Lee in all his glory. Like I said, this clip runs close to fifteen minutes. I'll be surprised if most of you make it past five but you might enjoy seeing a little of a pretty good TV host of that era strutting his stuff...
I'm not a big fan of the pontifications of Christopher Hitchens. I think they're often contrarian for the sake of snobbishness and attention-getting. But unlike so many people penning essays on the situation in Iraq, the man at least mingles with the people he writes about and is willing (too eager, perhaps) to voice an unpopular viewpoint. So I think his view of the Saddam Hussein execution is worth a read. And not that the two deaths were even remotely in the same category but his writing about the death of Gerald Ford said some things that are worth consideration, as well.
You have a wonderful resource available to you on Google Video. The Archive of American Television is uploading oral history interviews with dozens of important people in the history of broadcasting. You could waste spend hundreds of hours watching these and I'll suggest a good use of two. They've just put up an interview with everyone's favorite actor, Jack Lemmon. It's almost two hours in four parts and this link will take you a page where you can access each part. Excellent material, well worth your attention. And after you get done with that, check out some of the others they have up there. A number of people have asked me to write more about what Joe Barbera was like. There's three and a half hours over there of Joe Barbera discussing his career and it'll tell you so much more tha I ever could. Here's the link to that.
I should also mention that full episodes of The Charlie Rose Show are now available for free viewing on Google Video. They used to cost five bucks each to watch and now they're free. Here's a link that will search the library and show you what they have. It seems to take a few weeks to get shows up there. They don't have Rose's recent (and quite excellent) chat with Stephen Colbert, for instance. But you should find plenty there to watch.
The prolific writer Robert Schaefer died December 14 at the age of 80 in his home in Laguna Woods, California. The cause of death is being reported as emphysema.
Schaefer was born in Salt Lake City, Utah but his family soon migrated to Hollywood, which is where he grew up. Initially, he wanted to be an engineer but a friendly English teacher encouraged him to pursue writing and, when he got out of the Navy, he did. He enrolled in a school for would-be professional writers and that's where he met Freiwald. Both men had uncles in the movie business. Scheafer's was producing TV shows and movies for Gene Autry while Freiwald's was directing for 20th Century Fox. Soon, via those connections, they began selling scripts and gaining a reputation for swift delivery of good, filmable material.
Their first sale was a teleplay for The Gene Autry Show and they soon followed it up with sales to The Adventures of Kit Carson, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Maverick, Whirlybirds, Texas John Slaughter, Zorro, 77 Sunset Strip, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Jr and many more. It was through their Gene Autry connection that Schaefer and Freiwald hooked up with Western Publishing Company and began writing at first the Gene Autry comic books, then comics of all kinds, including the Dell Comics versions of most of the TV shows on which they were concurrently working.
Between 1957 and 1965, they wrote approximately a comic book per week for Western, including many issues of Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Maverick, Zorro, Laramie, Lassie, The Real McCoys, The Restless Gun, Roy Rogers, Sea Hunt, Sugarfoot, Spin and Marty, Wagon Train, Ricky Nelson, Rin Tin Tin, Wyatt Earp and many more. They authored many of the comic book adaptations of Disney movies (The Parent Trap, The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, etc.) and even dabbled occasionally in scripts for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Several of the early issues of the classic Magnus, Robot Fighter comic book were authored by Schaefer and Freiwald.
Obviously, they were particular favorites of the editors at Western Publishing. The senior editor there, Chase Craig, told me they were his most valuable writers, able to instantly grasp the essence of a new TV show that had to be turned into a comic book. In a 1979 interview, Craig said, "It was always difficult to get the people who produced a TV show to approve our scripts because, you know, we were outsiders and they couldn't believe we could write their characters. But they always loved what those guys did because, well, for one thing, Schaefer and Freiwald were probably writing the TV show, as well. And if they weren't already, the producers would read the comic book scripts and hire them to write the TV show."
Around 1964, Schaefer and Freiwald got too busy with the Lassie program to write many more scripts for Western. (They wrote 188 episodes of Lassie and Schaefer even had one of Lassie's pups as a housepet.) Schaefer retired from professional writing in 1984 after he and Freiwald completed a script for the Michael Landon show, Highway to Heaven. Freiwald continues to write for television, currently for the daytime drama, The Young and the Restless.
As I wrote in this article, one of my heroes was the great ventriloquist, Paul Winchell. I watched every show he was on and I never saw him not be entertaining. When people write of the pioneers of television, they always mention Berle and Caesar and Steve Allen and forget about Winch, who was just as important as any of them.
Our link today is a whole half hour of The Paul Winchell-Jerry Mahoney Variety Show. I must admit I'm not sure which of his many shows this was. He had quite a few in the fifties and they were always changing names and switching back and forth between daytime and evening hours. I'm not even sure what year this is but I'll take a stab at late 1955 or early 1956.
I don't remember watching this particular episode when I was three or four...but I bet I did.
February 1, 2007
