Jonathan Handel has another analysis of the DGA deal. Again, let us keep in mind that he's looking at a summary rather than at the actual contract. There are several provisions in the summary that could turn out to be a lot better or a lot worse depending on the details. In any case, Mr. Handel is, unlike moi, a real lawyer and a guy whose job is to read contracts and look for ways in which his client stands to get screwed. So give his assessment more attention than you give mine. And don't make your mind up until you hear from somebody who's actually seen the deal.
Also, see Bob Elisberg. He's not a lawyer and he hasn't seen the actual deal, either. But most of his comments strike me as pretty sound except that I'm not as confident as he is that the WGA would have accepted these terms a month ago.
...for a commercial. Amazon is having some sort of sale on pre-ordered books where you get another 5% off if you order now. If I understand it correctly, this means that you will be charged no more than that price when the order ships and you may even be charged less. Amazon has this "lowest price" guarantee. If you order something and the price goes down before the item ships, you will receive the lowest price.
I'm not sure what this means if you've already ordered a not-yet-released book like, say, Kirby: King of Comics, which they're saying will be out February 1 but won't. Their policy states, "Whenever you pre-order a book, CD, video, DVD, software, or video game, the price we charge when we ship it to you will be the lowest price offered by Amazon.com between the time you place your order and the release date." But they actually haven't dropped the price of my book. It's still (at this moment) at $26.40, which is where it's been for some time. So you may need to cancel your order and reorder to get the discount. This is if it matters to you to save another $1.32.
If you order right now, you'll get the 5% discount, which would bring the price to $25.08. This is an interesting amount because it's a few pennies over the $25 minimum order you need to place to qualify for Free Super Shipping. If you're ordering only my book, that's good news. (If they gave you a 6% discount, it would wind up costing you more because you'd have to pay for shipping.)
About the publication date: I'm being told I'll have a few copies in a week or two and I'll let you know when I have one. I'm also told there'll be copies at the Wondercon in San Francisco, which is February 22-24. I would guess Amazon will have a supply to ship around then or maybe within a week. The books are being printed overseas so some of this depends on how fast the crates make it through Customs. (By the way, I will be soon be announcing the list of panels I'll be hosting at Wondercon. One will be a panel about Mr. Kirby and his work.)
Here's a cute little ad for the book. If you click on it, magical things will happen.
A campaign is already being mounted by some members of the WGA to urge the Negotiating Committee and Board of Directors to hurry up and accept something similar to the deal that has been announced by the DGA. This worries me because as I mentioned, I'm not sure we fully know or understand the DGA deal yet.
It also worries me because based on what we do know about it, I don't believe the DGA deal is all that great. If it's better than I think, terrific! But let's make sure it is before we start telling the studios that it's good enough for us. That kinda undermines our negotiating position if we want to better some aspect of it. We also need to address some areas that are of concern to members of the Writers Guild and which didn't come up in the DGA negotiations.
Jonathan Tasini has an interesting analysis of the DGA deal as explained in the summary. Keep in mind that he hasn't seen all the terms of the contract, either.
Some of the obits for Allan Melvin, who died last Thursday of cancer, are missing the whole point of Allan Melvin. They say that Sam, the butcher from The Brady Bunch, has died and then mention all the other stuff in a kind of "Oh, and he was also in these other things" manner. The point of Allan Melvin is not that he was on The Brady Bunch. It was that he was in everything.
He was a regular on the Sgt. Bilko series (aka You'll Never Get Rich and The Phil Silvers Show). He was a semi-regular on The Dick Van Dyke Show and All in the Family. To have been a part of one series of that stature would be impressive. To have been on all three? Amazing. That's in addition to the fact that he was the "go-to" guy time and again for the producers of The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Joey Bishop Show and so many others. That's all in addition to The Brady Bunch.
In an amazing number of these, he played a soldier — a typecasting that dated back at least to his role on Broadway in Stalag 17. I always liked to think of all those soldiers as the same guy changing his name and rank as he moved from camp to camp and decade to decade. (There was a nice in-joke once on Dick Van Dyke, where Melvin played a buddy while Rob Petrie was in the Army. In one episode, everyone was confined to the base while a crime was investigated. At the end, Melvin's character tells Rob that they caught the culprit...some soldier named Henshaw. Henshaw was, of course, the name of the soldier Melvin had played for five years on the Bilko series.)
Allan was also a cartoon voice actor, usually cast in tandem with his close pal, Howie Morris. The two of them did all the male voices on the Beetle Bailey cartoon show and, until Howie got himself fired from Hanna-Barbera, on Magilla Gorilla and Atom Ant and several others. (Melvin was the voice of Magilla.) Howie and Allan also did uncredited voices on the movie, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear, and Melvin was on many H-B shows without him, including The Popeye Show, where he spoke for Bluto.
The first time I met Allan Melvin was an unpleasant experience. It was in the Denny's restaurant over on Sunset Boulevard, across from KTLA Studios. I was doing one of the Krofft shows there and I went to lunch with Lennie Weinrib, who was the voice of H.R. Pufnstuf on that series. Nearby was KTTV Studios where All in the Family taped, and Allan went to lunch that same day with Carroll O'Connor. We all happened to converge on the Denny's at the same moment. I recognized Melvin and assumed, since Lennie had been a recurring player on the Dick Van Dyke Show as well that the two of them had crossed paths. So, finding myself standing between the two of them, I said, "Well, you two must know each other," which caused each to notice the other was there.
Well, it turned out they were acquainted and not in a good way. When the 1969 Pufnstuf feature film was made, Weinrib had been holding out for more money and Melvin wound up doing the voice of the title character replacing Lennie. It had been the cause of much bad blood between them and they'd almost had a slugfest once because Lennie felt Allan had done something unprofessional and Allan felt that all he'd done was take a job that Lennie had quit. Angry words were exchanged that day at the Denny's and we separated the two men and dined in separate rooms. A few days later, I was back there without Lennie and as it turned out, Allan Melvin was having lunch there, as well. He recognized me and came over to apologize for the squabble and tell me (briefly) his side of the dispute. I have no opinion as to who was right or wrong, but Mr. Melvin struck me as a very nice man who was deeply bothered that anyone thought he'd done anything unethical. If he did, I'm sure it was an atypical lapse.
Later, I worked with him on cartoons a few times and it was easy to see why everyone always wanted to hire Allan Melvin. He was a thorough professional, a very good actor and a man with a wonderful, wicked sense of humor. I cannot recall him ever in his long career appearing on TV in an unscripted capacity...say, on a game show or talk show. If he had, he'd have surprised people with how funny he could be out of character and out of uniform. Another one of the good guys gone.
I was a little sleepy last night when I wrote the text to lead into Today's Video Link. I know the difference between Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles but for some reason, my brain registered the wrong name. That's actually Mr. Horton voicing-over the commercial I said was Mr. Ruggles. Sorry, and thanks to the three million people (give or take 2,999,995) who sent e-mails to berate me.
Also, Anthony Tollin — who knows more about old radio than any mammal who walks the planet, suggests I clarify that while Fred Foy did do the traditional Lone Ranger opening like I said, it's someone else in the body of that commercial.
Fred was not the original announcer on the TV series. He'd only started announcing the radio series in 1948 and was apparently not yet considered a series fixture. The first season TV announcer/narrator was Gerald Mohr, best remembered for starring as Philip Marlowe on radio and the Lone Wolf in movies. (He also voiced Reed Richards and Green Lantern in 1960s Saturday morning cartoons.) Anyone know who announced/narrated the Lone Ranger TV series during the season when John Hart played the title role?
I believe the first network TV season to feature Fred Foy's introduction was Clayton Moore's last, the first and only season filmed in color (after Jack Wrather had purchased the series from George W. Trendle). A decade or two ago, a black & white version was struck off the color opening of that last TV season, and inserted into all the syndicated prints. Before that time, in many of the syndication prints, you'd see my friend John Hart rearing Silver in the opening while Clay Moore rode a different Silver up and later down the hill.
And I should toss in the interesting trivia note that Fred Foy was also Dick Cavett's announcer for most of Cavett's run on ABC. Or was that Charlie Ruggles? (No, it was Foy...)
The New York Times has a profile of WGA President Patric Verrone and David Young, the Guild's Executive Director. For some reason, the author of the piece does not seem to be aware of Mr. Young's title.
For the record, I think Patric Verrone, David Young and the other organizers have done a magnificent job of running the negotiation. I don't think they've made any significant mistakes. What I do think is that the AMPTP was just determined to try and get the WGA to accept a rotten deal and, when they couldn't make that happen, they shoved us aside and went to negotiate with the DGA.
There's an unfortunate tendency in Hollywood — and it's in full flower in the Writers Guild — that when things don't turn out the way we like, people leap to say, "You should have handled things differently." But in this case, I haven't heard anyone suggest anything that the Guild could have done to prevent this strike and the collapse of negotiations. (Well, I suppose we could have just taken a terrible deal...but then we'd have been stuck with a terrible deal and, three years from now, they'd have tried to force an even worse one on us and we'd have had an even worse strike then. When anyone does one of those summaries of how much the WGA gained and lost from this strike, they need to factor in the immutable fact that in show business, taking one poor deal always leads to another poor, usually worse deal.)
That said, I'm troubled by some issues relating to the Jay Leno situation. I've heard a lot about it but I don't think I've heard all sides so I'm reserving final judgment and for now, I'm just being troubled.
Finally, as an aside: The article quotes a number of people, including one Dennis Palumbo, described as a "screenwriter-turned-psychologist." When Mr. Palumbo toiled in the first of those professions, his partner was the author of this weblog and yes, this is quite unusual. All my other collaborators have gotten into gynecology.
Here's a thirteen minute package of old kid-oriented TV commercials...
First up are two spots from the old Space Patrol series. That's game show legend Jack Narz doing the pitch. He's followed by a Howdy Doody spot for Tootsie Pops that I must have seen more often in my childhood than I saw my Uncle Nathan...and I saw Uncle Nathan a lot. "Buffalo" Bob Smith is in this, and he provides the voice of Howdy.
That's followed by a Lone Ranger Cheerios commercial with Clayton Moore behind the mask, and announcer Fred Foy doing the traditional Lone Ranger commercial. Then we have a Mattel spot for their Chatty Cathy dolls and yes, that's June Foray providing the dolls' voices. Then there's another spot for talking dolls of Matty Mattel, Sister Belle and Casper, with June (again) heard as all three dolls. The announcer on this one is Charlie Ruggles Edward Everett Horton, the great character actor who also narrated the Aesop & SonFractured Fairy Tales cartoons for Jay Ward.
Next up is a commercial for the Beany Copter hats (another tie-in for the Beany & Cecil cartoons) and then an ad for Mattel's Dick Tracy toys. Is that a very young Billy Mumy? The announcer in this and a lot of the Mattel ads is Marvin Miller.
Then we have a G.I. Joe commercial and I believe the lead male vocalist is that New York based singer I've never been able to identify who was heard on all those Sandpipers recordings for Golden Records. Whoever he was, he was on the Mighty Mouse record that Andy Kaufman made so famous. This is followed by pretty boring commercials for Lionel Trains, the Remco Fat Cat toy truck and Blippo Choo-Choo. So don't worry if you don't make it to the end. But the first four or five are worthy of your attention...
January 20, 2008
