Thursday, April 5, 2007

A Debt of Gratitude

Here's a list of names. Guess what these people have in common. No, on second thought. Don't bother. You won't be able to guess. I'll tell you what they have in common after you scan the list.

Johnny Carson	Bob Hope	Frank Sinatra
Dean Martin	Mel Blanc	Jim Backus
Stan Laurel	Bud Abbott	Buster Keaton
Oliver Hardy	Lou Costello	Buddy Hackett

Okay, yes, they're all dead but that's not the answer I'm looking for. Here's the answer: They all apparently have money being held for them by the Screen Actors Guild department that collects residuals. Their names all turn up on this database on the S.A.G. website. The union collects this money and is supposed to forward it to the performer or if said performer is deceased, to the appropriate heirs. But sometimes they don't have an address and that's where the database comes in. If you're a member of S.A.G. or you know a member of S.A.G. or you know someone who's a relative of a deceased member of S.A.G., go to the database, enter their name and if it's in there, let someone know.

This does not just apply to biggies like Carson and Sinatra. My friend Earl Kress and I just entered the names of every cartoon voice actor we could think of. In addition to Mel Blanc and Jim Backus, the database says they're holding cash for Daws Butler, Don Messick, Alan Reed, Paul Winchell, Bill Scott, Jackson Beck, Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, Syd Raymond, Jean Vander Pyl, Vance Colvig, Thurl Ravenscroft, Paul Frees, Lennie Weinrib, Walker Edmiston, Howard Morris and Sterling Holloway. Earl and I are going to alert the heirs of some of those folks but if you're in contact with any of them, by all means, be our guest.

You might caution them, by the way: It could be a lot of money or it could be almost nothing. Some people are going to go to the trouble of calling S.A.G. and/or downloading and filling out forms in order to receive a check for three dollars or thereabouts. But I'll bet some of them have tidy sums waiting.

The problem may puzzle some of you. Why can't S.A.G. find Bob Hope's family? The Hopes operate a website. There's still a Bob Hope estate that produces projects and controls the rights to what he owned. Okay, so the current address they have for Frank Sinatra is no good. Don't they have one for Frank Jr. or Nancy? And the answer is that it's probably a drawback to the age of computers. Back when human beings handled all this stuff, someone could figure that out. S.A.G. needs to do what some other unions, including the Writers Guild, have sometimes done, which is to hire a few people to just work the phones and play Detective. It's probably a pretty formidable task however, given the size of the S.A.G. membership, past and present.

It may also puzzle some of you that so many addresses would be no good. The widow of Daws Butler still lives in the same home where she and Daws lived since the sixties. Why doesn't S.A.G. have that address? I'm just speculating here but I'd guess that near the end of his life, Daws had his agent's or business manager's address listed with the union. That address is now invalid — Daws's last agent died years ago — and no one at S.A.G. has done any legwork to find the Butler home address, which they could get from any number of sources. That is, if they had anyone or even enough people assigned to do that.

And let me emphasize that though I'm talking here so far about deceased actors, the database is full of people who are alive. I'm going to call some of the ones I know over the next few days but, to quote Regis Philbin (who does not seem to have any money due him), I'm only one man. In particular, we oughta try to notify the performers who could really use it.

I'm thinking of one particular veteran character actor who I believe is now homeless and on the streets. Or at least he was a few years ago when I used to occasionally see him in my neighborhood. I tried once to slip him some cash but he refused it because I made the mistake of greeting him by name before offering. At least, I think that was his reason. I sure got the feeling that if he hadn't known I knew who he was, he would have grabbed the loot. Anyway, I haven't seem him in some time but his name is in the database. I'm not sure what can be done to get him whatever money they have for him — that is, assuming he's still around. But if he is, I'll bet he could sure use it.

Thanks to James H. Burns who wrote to remind me about this database. I'd been meaning to link to it and also to the much smaller Writers Guild Undeliverable Funds database to see if we could help get some of these bucks to the right people. If you're in or around what they call "The Industry," take a look and see if you can help a friend.

• Posted at 12:36 PM · LINK

Today's Political Query

George W. Bush keeps saying that the Democratic Congress must send him a funding bill without "artificial" timetables for withdrawing troops from Iraq. I don't understand the repeated use of the word, "artificial." What would a real timetable be and does he have any of those? How might a real (as opposed to "artificial") timetable emerge? The only thing I can think of is that at some point, our military could be so exhausted and in disrepair that it will create a timetable out of a sheer manpower shortage — i.e., we withdraw on a certain timetable decreed by a lack of troops.

Maybe I'm overthinking this but it seems like the word he really means there is "arbitrary" or maybe he just means "Congressionally-dictated." I'm assuming that if at any point, he and the military leaders decided some sort of withdrawal schedule becomes prudent, that one would not be artificial in his view. Perhaps a real timetable would be one we arrive at because of a heightened ability of the Iraqi governing forces to, as they say, "stand up as we stand down." In that case, the adjective Bush should probably be using is "imposed." He doesn't want an imposed timetable.

But really, isn't a timetable imposed by the Democrats in Congress the least of Bush's worries? Seems to me that if he wants to stick to his plan — and he always seems to want to stick to his plan for anything, no matter how poorly it seems to be working — he should be more concerned about a timetable forced on him by Republicans. Because Republicans are the ones worried about having a timetable forced on them by voters who are sick of this war. And that one won't be artificial.

• Posted at 11:03 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

In 1982, there was a short-lived sitcom on NBC called One of the Boys. Mickey Rooney was the star but if the show is mentioned at all today, it's probably because the then-unknown co-stars included Nathan Lane, Dana Carvey and Meg Ryan. It advanced none of their careers. About all any of them got out of it was that Carvey developed a great Mickey Rooney impression.

Here's a one minute promo for the show with a voiceover by Casey Kasem. For some reason, it's called The Mickey Rooney Show on this clip but as far as I know, it was never called that on the air or anywhere else that mattered. This was probably done well before the show debuted using scenes from the pilot, and they decided to change the name before its debut. Here it comes...

• Posted at 1:51 AM · LINK