What's that you say? You can't find a hotel room in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International? Well, I can't help you with this year or next year or even the year after. But if you attend the 2010 convention down there, you may be able to stay in a room, courtesy of SpongeBob SquarePants. A suite with a view of Bikini Bottom costs extra. (Thanks to Tom Galloway for the link.)
Tomorrow night, I will be one of as many as a hundred people watching the Tony Awards on CBS. The annual celebration of Broadway's best never draws much of an audience and this year's nominees are of uncommon disinterest even to people who usually wouldn't miss the program. There are gay men who won't be watching. That's how little excitement there is over the ceremony this time.
There's also the matter of the Sopranos finale. That might lure away a viewer or two. Or three. Or almost everyone.
My pal Bob Elisberg has some suggestions on how the show could be improved. I'm pretty sure that if they followed everything Bob says, they'd have a much, much better show...and instead of a hundred people tuning in, they'd have two hundred.
The Tony Awards are the Tony Awards...and what's more, they will always be the Tony Awards. Even if someone could arrange for Paris Hilton to host, live and nude from the Correctional Treatment Center at Los Angeles County's "Twin Towers" jail facility and for the show to end with Bob Barker being spayed and neutered, the evening would still be about giving awards to people most of America has never heard of for performances in shows that most of America has never heard of, let alone seen.
There's a nugget of "advice" that I've come to dislike in most cases...the admonition to "Get over it," whatever "it" is. This has its applications. There are folks who obsess on certain issues long after the stage it's constructive, to the point where the obsession does more damage than the original issue. But too often, "Get over it" is a way of saying, "Yes, we know you have concerns about something and they may be legitimate, but we're just not going to deal with them so shut up." I'm not sure which this is. All I know is that there's no way to get even a significant section of America to watch the Tony Awards...so the people doing the telecast might just as well put on whatever kind of show they want. I'm thinking three hours of baton-twirling might be nice.
Roger Armstrong, a giant in the world of cartooning and a teacher to countless art students, passed away in his sleep on Thursday at the age of 89.
This is a very difficult obit to write because Roger did so much and meant so much to so many people. I want to underscore, so it doesn't get lost in the career details, that while he had an amazing life as a cartoonist, he had an equally important — perhaps more important — life as an art teacher and watercolor artist. His landscapes were exhibited in every major gallery in Southern California and hundreds of accomplished artists cite him as a great tutor and source of inspiration. He encouraged so many to paint and draw, and led by example.
Roger Joseph Armstrong was born in Los Angeles on October 12, 1917. His father was a writer and a gagman for silent comedies at Mack Sennett and later a screenwriter for Twentieth-Century Fox. Roger began drawing about the time he started walking and by age sixteen was selling cartoons to local advertising agencies. His first drawings adorned the walls of the Pacific Electric Streetcar Depot in downtown Los Angeles. He attended Chouniard Art Institute for two years (1938-1939) but when the family hit a bleak financial period, Roger was forced to quit art school and take a job at Lockheed working on airplanes. Soon after, through a mutual friend, he met Chase Craig, who was editing the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies comic book for Western Publishing, and Chase hired him away from Lockheed to draw Bugs Bunny comics.
A quick aside. Roger always told people he was in the first issue of Looney Tunes. One San Diego Con, I bought a copy of that rare book, took it over to him and asked him to point out his work in it, since I couldn't seem to find it. Roger hadn't seen the issue in thirty-some-odd years but he paged through it...and couldn't find anything he'd drawn. With semi-mock horror, he wailed, "I'm ashamed! I wasn't in the first issue of Looney Tunes!"
But he was in most of the ones that followed...for years after. Eleanor Packer, the senior editor at Western Publishing, hired him to draw other comics for the company, including many of their Disney and Walter Lantz comics. Packer also recommended him personally to Lantz, who hired Roger to work at his studio for several years as a layout artist and animator. He worked intermittently in animation but preferred the comic strip and book format. He drew several newspaper strips for long runs but somehow managed to never get his name on any of them. They included Napoleon and Uncle Elby, Ella Cinders and Little Lulu, plus he drew the Disney Scamp strip from 1978 to 1988. For Western, he drew most of the Disney comic books at one time or another, most notably those featuring Scamp, Pluto, Goofy (or Super Goof)...and he seemed to have a special affinity for the Seven Dwarfs whenever they needed to be drawn. He did all the Warner Brothers comics but often specialized in Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig. He even dabbled occasionally in adventure-style comics and was pretty good at them, though he said they took so long he couldn't make any money in that style.
I worked with Roger a number of times, writing Super Goof during a period when he drew it, and on The Flintstones for a time. In the seventies, we were hired to whip up a few weeks of a Woodsy Owl comic strip but it failed to sell. He was also one of the first members of the Comic Art Professionals Society when we formed it. I have a very vivid memory of him arriving at the first meeting and being introduced to another charter member, Don R. Christensen. Roger had been drawing Don's scripts for comic books for over twenty years and this was the first time they'd met.
Roger was everything you'd want a cartoonist to be. He was funny and he loved to draw. He sure did it well...and for a long time. I haven't heard any details yet about a memorial service but I can guarantee you that if there is one, it'll be packed with artists who'll credit him as a champion, as a role model and most of all, as a good and glorious friend.
Speaking of Laurel and Hardy, as we just were: Very early Monday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running Utopia, their last feature. I am not necessarily recommending you watch this, as great comedians' last features tend to be very sad, and this one runs true to form. It was made in Europe by a crew that lacked certain basics, like proper financing and a common language. Both Stan and Ollie (but especially Stan) were sick during the filming, which was supposed to take two months but stretched over much of one year. As a result, you can notice Laurel's weight fluctuate from scene to scene and in some, he looks pretty awful. The film has some clever moments when it almost seems like genuine Laurel and Hardy...but for the most part, it's rough going.
(If you want to watch it on your computer, by the way, Utopia can be downloaded here.)
To redeem itself, TCM is also running two Robert Youngson compilation films later that morning. Mr. Youngson was a filmmaker who liked to take vintage silent movies and cut 'n' paste them into feature films that showcased the great moments. His work was criticized for truncating scenes...or even going in and rearranging or trimming shots...and some faulted the music, sound effects and narration he added. Still, he did preserve and promote what otherwise might have become lost treasures, and his movies are wonderful introductory samplers to that era. If you or someone you know needs that kind of intro to the material, you might enjoy his creations.
TCM is offering two — The Golden Age of Comedy (1958), followed by When Comedy Was King (1960). Both are filled with scenes of Ben Turpin, Will Rogers, Harry Langdon and others, and both derive their best moments from Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Golden Age of Comedy is especially loaded with Stan and Ollie, though it has an unfortunate emphasis on scenes films where they're among large crowds having big, destructive fights in the street. You see them ripping up cars in Two Tars, ripping off folks' pants in You're Darn Tootin', hurling pies in Battle of the Century, etc. It's a bit repetitive but the footage is hilarious.
(An interesting sidelight: The 1927 Battle of the Century features a spectacular pie fight — the biggest one ever filmed until the 1965 film, The Great Race, which wasn't a twentieth as funny. The Laurel and Hardy custard brawl may only exist today because Youngson duped the decomposing negative to include that scene in his compilation. Shortly after that, it was either lost or decayed to the point where the rest of the film was considered "lost." A copy of the first reel eventually turned up but there's no known copy of the second reel in its entirety. All that exists of it is the last few minutes — the pie fight — because Youngson grabbed it for his movie.)
Among the joys in When Comedy Was King are large chunks of several shorts. One is Laurel and Hardy in Big Business, arguably their funniest silent comedy. Another is Buster Keaton's Cops, with Buster being chased all over 1922 Los Angeles by hundreds of policemen. But a special "find" is A Pair of Tights, a 1929 short made by the Hal Roach Studio and starring Edgar Kennedy and Stu Erwin. It's basically a Laurel and Hardy comedy without Laurel and Hardy, and it demonstrates how infectious their style of comedy had become.
And then next Saturday, a week from today, Fox Movie Channel is running The Dancing Masters and The Bullfighters. These are for those of you who watch Utopia and then wonder if you've seen the worst movie Laurel and Hardy ever made. No, sadly, you haven't.
Here's a Laurel and Hardy film you probably haven't seen. It was made in 1943 for the United States Department of Agriculture and The Boys shot it over their lunch hour during the time they were making films on the Twentieth-Century Fox lot. In fact, last time I was over in that part of the backlot — must be fifteen, twenty years ago — that street area looked pretty much the same as it does in this film.
This short is called The Tree in a Test Tube and this is the first half of it, which runs around five and a half minutes. The rest, which you don't want to see, is more boring educational stuff and doesn't involve Stan and Ollie. The voiceover is by a gent named Pete Smith, who produced and narrated comedy short subjects for MGM for more than twenty years.
The most interesting thing about this film, apart from the sheer fact that it's obscure Laurel and Hardy, is that it was shot in color. In their long careers, Stan and Oliver only made two films that were shot in color and the other one, the 1930 feature The Rogue Song, is largely lost today. So this is pretty much it for Laurel and Hardy in color. Have a look, why don'tcha?
June 10, 2007
