Saturday, June 16, 2007

Video Village

Last night, I embedded a video here with a sing-along to the Magilla Gorilla theme song. It was from AOL/in2TV, which is a new Time-Warner project designed to eventually control every aspect of our lives.

There's something about the coding of their embeds that does odd things to weblogs. In particular, it seems to "take over" when you load the page. Even if the embedded in2TV video is at the bottom of the page, most browsers go to it instead of the top of the page. I don't like them doing this to my weblog and I even tried fiddling with the coding and couldn't figure how to get it to stop doing that. So I've taken out the embedded video and no more AOL/in2TV embeds until they fix that.

You can reach the Magilla sing-along on this page and watch it there, complete with the slightly incorrect lyrics. (You'll probably have to watch an ad first, by the way. That's if you can even get the thing to load, which it may not. One day, Corporate America will figure out that the fancier you make the website, the more likely it is to not load for people or to load so slowly that they abort and go elsewhere.)

While you're hanging out in the neighborhood, you might like to sing along with the theme from F Troop. Or at least see if you can catch the funny spelling mistake in the on-screen lyrics. Other lyrics are also slightly misheard, too. It's "While pinning it on..." not "But pinning it on..." and "know their morale can't droop..." instead of "know their morale can droop..." This is important stuff, people. Let's get it right.

• Posted at 12:29 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's the opening and the closing to It's About Time, a sitcom that lasted one unsuccessful year — from September of '66 'til August of '67. If the theme reminds you of the one from Gilligan's Island, there's a reason: Same producer, same songwriters. Back then, there was kind of an unwritten rule in network television. If you had a hit show on a network, your production company got pilot commitments for new shows and had a real good shot at getting one on the air. Sherwood Schwartz used whatever Gilligan clout he had to get this one on...with limited success.

In fact, the show inverted its premise mid-season to try and combat low ratings. Originally, it was about a couple of astronauts (played by Jack Mullaney and Frank Aletter) who somehow, via shaky science, wound up back in the Stone Age. There, they interacted with a clan of cave people played by Joe E. Ross, Imogene Coca, Mike Mazurki, Cliff Norton and others. The hilarity was supposed to be about these two modern-day guys trying to cope with prehistoric life. That didn't work...so after the first thirteen, they changed the storyline: The astronauts travelled back to present day and brought along a couple of the cave people to try and cope with modern life. That was a little better but it didn't save the series.

Another alteration was made earlier. As you'll notice in the titles, Imogene Coca's cave lady character was originally named Shag. At some point, CBS Standards and Practices decided that was a naughty word...so the name was changed to Shad.

The best thing about the show was probably Joe E. Ross, who was already well known from the Sgt. Bilko series and from Car 54, Where Are You? Mr. Ross was very funny in front of a camera and, from all reports, impossible to deal with off-camera. In fact, he was fired a couple of times from Car 54 and if the show had returned for a third season, it would have returned sans Ross because the producers couldn't stand him any longer. I have long been intrigued by Joe E. Ross anecdotes and when I met Imogene Coca, I asked her if she had any. She just blushed, muttered something about "that awful man" and changed the subject.

You will notice in the end titles, reference to "Gladasya Productions." That was pronounced like "glad to see ya" and that was Phil Silvers. Another aspect of TV deal-making back then — and this still goes on but not as often — is that stars get pilot commitments that wind up getting folded into others' deals. In order to sign Phil Silvers to star in The New Phil Silvers Show in '63, CBS not only let his company, Gladasya, produce that show but also gave Gladasya commitments for other, non-Phil shows. When Sherwood Schwartz pitched Gilligan's Island to CBS, the network agreed to commission a pilot on the condition that it be done under one of Gladasya's commitments...so Phil Silvers wound up being a partner in Gilligan's Island and made more money off that than he did off The New Phil Silvers Show. (The same principle explains why Bing Crosby was a partner in Hogan's Heroes and Robert Wagner had, you should excuse the expressison, a piece of Charlie's Angels. There are many other examples of this.)

Phil didn't make much, if anything, off It's About Time but I thought it was a fun show. And as you'll hear, it had a pretty catchy theme song. Here it comes...

• Posted at 1:53 AM · LINK

Producers News

As we speculated here, Tony Danza is joining the Las Vegas production of The Producers as of a date to be announced. Danza played Max Bialystock in New York and will presumably play the same role in Vegas. Rumor is that attendance has dipped seriously since the departure of David Hasselhoff, who was playing Roger DeBris. (He was replaced there by Lee Roy Reams, who I saw doing the role in the production that starred Jason Alexander and Martin Short. Reams was terrific in the part.) I still haven't seen the condensed Vegas version of the show and I doubt I will.

• Posted at 12:52 AM · LINK