One other point about this silly John Edwards haircut story. I understand that Republicans, who figure he might be the Democratic nominee in '08, are eager to portray him as womanly, sissy boy, non-masculine, etc. It's an established battle plan in politics, practiced by all sides, that you figure out a caricature of your opponent and try to sell the public on the idea that that's who he is.
My question is what good that caricature of Edwards will do them if he's the candidate and the Republican nominee is Rudy Giuliani. It's hard to portray the enemy as effeminate when there are photos of your guy dressed as Jean Harlow.
Eric Boehlert writes about the silliness of most/all political stories about what candidates pay for their haircuts. He's right.
But I have one comment, not about what candidates pay for their coifs but about Brian Williams. As Boehlert notes, the other night Williams was on Mr. Letterman's show and the discussion turned to this issue...
Asked what was the most he'd ever paid for a trim, Williams responded, "probably $12." Really? I have to pay $16, plus tip, for a trim at a little barbershop on Valley Avenue in the New Jersey 'burbs. But Williams, who lives in a restored farmhouse in Connecticut where he parks his 477-horsepower black Porsche GT2 (that is, when he's not decamping on the Upper East Side), gets his haircut for just $12. And remember, that's probably the most he's ever paid.
Williams enjoys a $10 million salary. He's a celebrity journalist and recent Men's Vogue cover boy, who, up until just a few years ago, was probably known as much for his perfectly coiffed locks as he was his reporting skills. Yet, eager to project himself as one of the guys, Williams insists his trims cost chump change.
Boehlert's correct that it's silly to think Williams pays twelve bucks for his haircuts but it's probably not true that the newsman pays more. He probably pays nothing. NBC has a make-up department. They have people on staff who cut and style hair...and probably some very good ones. (If they didn't keep Williams' "do" looking good, they'd be replaced in a second.) These people not only will cut his hair without him paying a cent, they'll give him a trim every time he sits in the make-up chair if he needs it. And he doesn't even have to tip.
Brian Williams has been on television, usually on a daily basis, since around 1985. It could easily have been that long since he had to pay someone to cut his hair.
Boy, we hate doing this. A lovely man named Tom Poston is dead at the age of 85. You may have known him from his many appearances in Steve Allen's little stock company of great comedians. You may have known him from his many game show appearances, particularly on To Tell the Truth. (GSN has been running episodes of that in memory of his fellow panelist, Kitty Carlisle. They can keep it going for Tom.) You may have known him from his work on The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart. Or you may have known him from the many other things he did in front of a camera or on-stage. He had a helluva career.
Obits like this one will tell you all you need to know about that career. I can only add two things. One is to mention that every time I was around Tom Poston, I found him to be a charming and very funny man, exactly as you'd expect him to be from his TV appearances. He was one of those comedians — too few in number — who seemed genuinely unthreatened by others so when his friends said something funny, he'd laugh...out loud, even. He just gave off an easy-going air of being nice.
And the other thing I'll mention is what I'm sure Tom would have wanted me and everyone to mention. It's that he and his wife Suzanne Pleshette really loved each other...and were not shy about making sure everyone knew it.
I have to run out now but if I think of any good Tom Poston anecdotes, I'll post them here later.
Jerry Beck and Pat O'Neill both wrote to remind me that Dabbs Greer was in several episodes of the old George Reeves Superman show. In fact, in the "origin" episode, he played the first person Superman rescued in Metropolis — an airport worker who was dangling from the tie-line to a dirigible.
Trevor Kimball informs me — I'm not a big enough Dabbs Greer expert to know such things — that he played the priest or Justice of the Peace (or whatever he was) who married Florence Henderson and Robert Reed in the pilot of The Brady Bunch...and then, twenty-one years later, he did the same job when Bobby Brady was wed on The Bradys. A nice touch, Trevor notes.
What's more, Curtis Burga tells me that in the 1958 movie, I Want To Live, Greer played one of the Death Row guards who escorted Susan Hayward to her execution. And then in the 1999 film of The Green Mile, he played Tom Hanks' character as an old man, working as a Death Row guard at a prison.
Many years ago, to the amazement of film buffs everywhere, the folks at Castle Films used to take 90 minute (or longer) feature motion pictures and abridge them down to four minutes to be sold as 8mm movies. It was astounding that they even attempted this and even more astounding that, once in a while, the films were reasonably coherent at that length.
Well, let's see if Sony Pictures can cut episodes of Charlie's Angels, T.J. Hooker and Starsky & Hutch down to between three and a half minutes and five. According to this article in The New York Times, that's on its way. Just another point of contention to add to the coming Writers Guild strike talks.
Cutting a Charlie's Angels down to length should be a breeze. Just keep the bikini scenes and throw the rest away. That's all anyone cared about in those shows. But on T.J. Hooker, William Shatner used to take eight minutes just to wonder about the murderer's soul. That may present problems.
You're probably familiar with the 1960 motion picture, Inherit the Wind. Adapted from the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, it starred Spencer Tracy as maverick lawyer Henry Drummond and Fredric March as his courtroom opponent, Matthew Harrison Brady. It was about the trial of a Tennessee schoolteacher for teaching evolution and everyone knew it was a fictionalized (somewhat) version of the 1925 trial of teacher John Thomas Scopes for daring to do such a thing. The character of Drummond was obviously based to some extent on Scopes' lawyer, Clarence Darrow, and Brady was not unlike William Jennings Bryan.
What you may not have known is that there have been four filmed versions of the play. The 1960 one directed by Stanley Kramer was the first. Then came the 1965 TV Movie version which cast Melvyn Douglas as Drummond and Ed Begley (Senior) as Brady. Begley had originated the role of Brady on Broadway (opposite Paul Muni as Drummond) and this filming, which I've never seen, was hailed for preserving his historic performance. This one also featured Dick York, who played the teacher in the 1960 version, in the same role.
Then came a 1988 TV Movie of Inherit the Wind with Jason Robards in the Drummond role and Kirk Douglas as Brady. This one turns up often on cable and although it won a couple of Emmys, I didn't think much of it. Robards seemed to me to be on auto-pilot and Douglas sounded like the Frank Gorshin impression. I like both actors a lot but didn't care for them in this match-up.
Which brings us to the 1999 TV Movie version which had Jack Lemmon as Drummond and George C. Scott as Brady. I only saw a little of this one a few years ago but I thought what I saw was outstanding. I've just set my TiVo to snare the whole thing. It's on Showtime tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. That's what I wanted to alert you about.
Scott seemed born to play the role...but he also could have played Drummond. In fact, he did — in a 1996 Broadway revival produced at Tony Randall's National Actors Theater, with Charles Durning as Brady. I wanted very much to see that so when I planned a New York trip during its run, I ordered tickets. Before I even went east though, it hit the press that Scott was missing performances and that Mr. Randall (!) had stepped into the role, playing it with script in hand. I couldn't imagine what that would be like...and still can't. The night I went to see it, the performance was cancelled. I'm still not sure if that was a lucky break or not.
Anyway, you might want to see Lemmon and Scott have at it. It's a great play...and sadly, one that remains relevant.
Four years ago today, George W. Bush stood beneath that infamous banner and proclaimed that "Major combat operations have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
I know I put too many obits on this site but I had to note the passing of Dabbs Greer, a fine character actor who worked with an amazing frequency for more than fifty years. Few TV shows were filmed in Hollywood during that time without at least one appearance by Dabbs Greer, and the producers must have appreciated his skill and dependability because most brought him back several times. He was on seven episodes of Bonanza, ten of The F.B.I., thirty-five (!) episodes of Gunsmoke, six of The Fugitive, etc. He played guest roles eight times in the Raymond Burr version of Perry Mason. Three of those times, he turned out to be the murderer.
Mr. Greer's listing over at the Internet Movie Database tells the story better than I can. They have 253 entries for him which seems like a lot, but I'll bet it's less than a fourth of what he did. To the extent people know him at all, it was probably via recurring roles on Little House on the Prairie and Picket Fences. In both cases, he played priests, which was how he was frequently cast. (Remember the episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show with the flashback to how Rob and Laura got married? The scene where Rob couldn't hear so he kept saying "I do" at the wrong moment? That was Dabbs Greer playing the priest who conducted the ceremony.) More often, he played "every man" roles.
Here's the L.A. Times obit for Dabbs Greer. It's not only a shame to lose him but also to see that kind of prolific character actor fade from the scene. We don't have people like that anymore. And come to think of it, you don't meet a lot of guys named Dabbs, either.
We're featuring obscure film clips of my all-time favorite performers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The one we have for you today is probably the last time the two of them ever appeared in front of a camera together. It's a home movie camera and the footage is silent...but it's also in color, which is a treat.
It's nice to see them and their families socializing off the set but it's also sad. Laurel was recovering from a stroke...though one might note he's still smoking. This was 1956. Hardy's doctor had ordered him to lose weight and as you can see, he'd lost around a hundred pounds. At the time of this filming, they were planning some television projects — a series of fairy tales with their characters inserted into the storylines — but then Hardy suffered a stroke from which he never recovered.
Beyond that, it pretty much speaks for itself. Here's one last look at the two men I consider the most glorious entertainers of the previous century. I'm skeptical that anyone will top them in this one, either.
May 2, 2007
