Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Roger Remembered

The L.A. Times has a nice obit up for Roger Armstrong.

• Posted at 10:26 AM · LINK

Where's Jer?

A little over a year ago in this post, we pointed you (with great skepticism) to a press release for a forthcoming musical based on the Jerry Lewis movie, The Nutty Professor. Mr. Lewis was to direct said musical and Jerry, the article said, wanted to have a tryout run of it at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego this month, meaning June of '07.

It's not playing there now, nor is it scheduled in the next year. In fact, even with all the theater and show biz news I read, I haven't seen one word about any Nutty Professor musical since the initial announcement. And I have a hunch nobody else has, either...

• Posted at 2:50 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Two on the Town was a local TV show in the eighties hosted by Steve Edwards — who's still a fixture of Los Angeles television — and Melody Rogers. Here's a spot from 1982 on Rocky and Bullwinkle, complete with nice voice demos by Bill Scott, June Foray and William Conrad. I think this may be the only time I've ever seen footage of Mr. Conrad reading copy in character as the narrator of the Rocky cartoons.

Contrary to the impression conveyed in this segment, the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons had been out of production for some time by '82. What was more relevant was that Jay Ward had scaled back the size and ambition of his studio, partly due to network disinterest but partly due to his own desire not to work as hard. Bill Scott wanted to do more and did a lot of interviews that he thought might generate enthusiasm out there to do more with the characters, and it wouldn't surprise me if this piece came about because Bill called up Two on the Town and suggested it. Alas, the moose and squirrel never made much of a comeback, at least while Bill was still with us.

Thanks to Shane Shellenbarger for letting me know about this.

• Posted at 12:12 AM · LINK