Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Rat Pack, R.I.P.
Joey Bishop died last night at the age of 89. Whenever a famous comedian leaves us, a lot of Internet Traffic steers towards this site for anecdotes, words of tribute and tales of personal encounters...and I'm afraid I don't have much of that for Mr. Bishop. I recall liking his early-sixties sitcom, which I haven't viewed in quite some time, but I can't tell you anything else he did that amused me much. For a time there, he was a talk show star. He had his show on ABC opposite Johnny Carson from 1967-1969 and then he became Johnny's most frequent guest host for a few years, never impressing me much in either venue. When I look at the above photo of The Rat Pack, I see three very gifted entertainers and two guys (Bishop and Peter Lawford) who were in on a pass. Now, with Joey's passing, they're all gone.
So I decided to make this posting an obit for the legendary Vegas parlay of Frank, Dino, Sammy and whoever else they were then allowing into the inner circle. What exists of that act in recording and film is not all that wonderful either, though I have the feeling that to see them in person was so exciting, it didn't matter what they did. (Is there any footage of those guys performing together that doesn't include Dean picking up Sammy Davis and making the joke about thanking the N.A.A.C.P. for the award?) Still, I like the idea of The Rat Pack. It just sounds so cool and hip and fun that the reality of the performance probably doesn't matter.
I once had lunch at a Vegas hotel with a gent who'd worked at the Sands when they were playing there. I said something about how it was neat that those guys were like a "bonus" since obviously, Frank or Dean or Sammy could each have sold out the room appearing solo. You didn't need the three of them to fill all the seats. My luncheon companion informed me that I was missing the point. The idea, he said, was not to fill the seats but to fill them with the highest of the Hill Rollers. In Vegas, they live by the "drop," which is the total amount of cash that people convert into chips for gaming. How much the house wins is, of course, of vital concern but Casino Management is really two separate and distinct sciences. Configuring the games so they yield a decent return is one. Ratcheting up the drop is another. If you have the odds set properly then the way you maximize profits is to maximize the drop. The power of a Sinatra was not so much that the showroom was packed but that when he played your hotel, your drop went way up. He attracted Big Players.
In terms of selling tickets, booking Sinatra, Martin and Davis plus someone like Joey Bishop was not cost-efficient. Like I said, any one of the first three could have sold out any showroom in town without the others. But, the Vegas guy said, what The Rat Pack did for the drop made them quite worthwhile: "They didn't double the drop. They didn't triple it. It was more like times ten."
"So," I asked. "What did they need Joey Bishop there for? Did he please that many in the audience?"
"No," was the reply. "But he pleased Frank."
• Posted at 2:47 PM · LINK
Daily Deluge
I'm sorry to say you can now watch hundreds of clips from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart over at this new site. I'm sorry to say this because you could spend hours over there and never come near my little corner of the Internet again. And also, the site was put up by Comedy Central so it probably won't work that well. I'll try embedding one of my favorite segments from that show, as posted on the new site, and we'll see if it even works...
• Posted at 9:26 AM · LINK
Recommended Reading
Michael Kinsley on introducing scummy dictators. Just in case you're ever called upon to bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad up to the podium.
• Posted at 8:53 AM · LINK
Oh, Marie!
The reports on comic book legend Marie Severin are encouraging, though it looks like she'll be hospitalized for a while longer. Clifford Meth has this background article on her career and this update on her condition. It goes without saying (or blogging) that we wish her a speedy recovery on account of she's one of the nicest, funniest people ever in the biz.
• Posted at 8:44 AM · LINK
Recommended Reading
So what do you do if you're a General and you think the President is ordering something that won't work and which will have disastrous consequences? Fred Kaplan asks and answers that question.
• Posted at 8:37 AM · LINK
Recommended Reading
Howard A. Rodman explains the main issues in what may lead to The Great Writers Guild Strike of 2007 and maybe The Great Writers Guild Strike of 2007-2008.
• Posted at 2:09 AM · LINK
Blast From The Past!
Here is an old article about Hanna-Barbera...
Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera old M.G.M. cartoonists have made five T.V. cartoon shows. Which have all hit the ratings. It started with HUCKLEBERRY HOUND show with HUCK, JINKS AND "THE MEECES" AND YOGI BEAR AND BOO BOO. Later QUICK DRAW McGRAW with Baba Looey, Snooper and Blabber, and Augie and Daddy Doggie. Yogi Bear got his own show then with 2 old characters, SNAGGLEPUSS and IDDY BIDDY BUDDY (NOW CALLED YAKKY DOODLE DUCK) Hokey Wolf and Ding-a-Ling COPIED AND REPLACED YOGI. Jinks and Pixie & Dixie copied M.G.M.'S Tom and Jerry (they look alike). Then the world's first adult cartoon show, FLINTSTONES (NOW IN THE MAKING, TOP CAT, ANOTHER ADULT CARTOON SHOW) El Kabong (QUICK DRAW McGRAW AS ZORRO BUT HE USES A GUITAR INSTEAD OF A SWORD.) Snooper and Blabber was the first detective cartoons. Augie Doggie was a copy of "Wendy and Breezy" (WALTER LANTZ) It is said that WALT DISNEY is jealous.
Hey, that's not a bad little article. The phrasing is awkward in places but the author knows his cartoons.
So...who wrote this article? I did. Why are some of the sentences so odd? Maybe because I was nine years old at the time.
It's amazing. Here it is, 47 years later and I still write articles about Hanna-Barbera and my writing hasn't improved that much. (I still use too many parenthetical phrases.) (Yes, I do.) (I really do.)
• Posted at 1:59 AM · LINK
Today's Video Link
Here's what may be the first commercial for Quisp and Quake, two cereals that the Quaker Oats Company introduced in 1965 via a marketing campaign done in tandem with Jay Ward.
What I always thought was interesting about these cereals was that — at least for the initial campaign — they never told you what the cereals actually were. They told you they were sweet and vitamin-charged and that they tasted great and were packed with energy...but they didn't tell you if each contained corn or rice or oats or wheat or styrofoam or what it was about them that might tickle your tastebuds. Apple Jacks tasted like apples (they claimed) and Cocoa Krispies were a chocolate-flavored rice cereal and Trix were fruit-flavored something...but they really didn't tell you anything about what you'd be eating if you bought Quisp or Quake. You were supposed to try a box or two just because they had neat characters on the packaging and in their commercials, and those neat characters were feuding so you had to take sides.
I guess it worked...at least for a while. Reportedly, both sold decently for a few years but even though the two cereals were (I'm told) almost identical, their sales were not. Quisp's eventually went up and Quake's went down — just like the characters, themselves. Quake was discontinued and so was Quisp for a while, but in 1999, they began making it again, pushing it as the first "Internet Cereal." They still make it but it receives limited distribution and is promoted largely on the Quisp website. I am amused that nowhere on that site, from what I can tell, do they tell you what the cereal actually is. If you hunt around the Quaker Oats site, you can find out that it's a "saucer-shaped, crunchy corn cereal...but that's about it. They're still selling the mascot and not the product.
Here's the ad. Daws Butler was the voice of Quisp, William Conrad was the voice of Quake, and Paul Frees was the voice of the host in this spot, which was probably written and directed by Bill Scott.
October 19, 2007
