Speaking of impersonator shows: I was surprised years ago to learn that there was a professional Paul Lynde impersonator out there, touring with a show about the man. Turns out, there are two.
Those of you who are sick of hearing me gush about Frank Ferrante, go find something else on the Internet to read. In fact, I'll make it easy for you. Here's a link to a porn site for you.
For the rest of you: Saturday evening, I took a mob to see my pal Frank turn himself into Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush right before our eyes at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. The place was full of WonderCon attendees, and not just those I brought.
The transformation is in itself amazing. Frank enters as Frank and as one member of my party commented, "He looks nothing like Groucho." And then he does a little of this and a little of that...and next to me, my friend Paul Dini gasped out loud. Suddenly, right there on stage, we had Groucho Marx. In person.
What's really stunning, and perhaps I've said this when I've raved before about Frank, is that he not only looks like Groucho — that part's not that hard — but he moves like him, he sounds like him, he dances like him, he sings like him...
And here's the amazing thing: He even thinks like him.
Much of the show is ad-lib, bantering with the audience...and even when Frank is in his script, he doesn't get very far before he's off it, making asides and then making asides about his asides in the grand tradition. The utter lack of self-importance is so comforting. Another member of my expedition, the lovely artist Wendy Pini, made this observation to me this morning. She said, "I was never a big fan of Groucho but Frank made me love him. Frank brought out the pixie in him." This is the younger Groucho that Frank is playing — from (roughly) Cocoanuts through half-past A Day at the Races, which is when Groucho was his pixiest.
Oh, and I should mention Frank's excellent pianist and straight man, Jim Furmston. Jim adds just the air of dignity that Groucho was always so good at getting rid of.
Everyone in my group had a good time, especially me. Matter of fact, I liked Frank so much I'm going to see him again, a week from tomorrow. He's doing one show, a matinee, on March 8 at the La Mirada Theatre in La Mirada, California...and Frank tells me that Miriam Marx, Groucho's daughter, will be in attendance. For details on how you can be, go visit this website. And for the whole schedule of where Frank will be and when he might be in your neck of the woods, check out this page.
Note if you will that on March 15, he'll be at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. This is where the Marx Brothers were once on the bill with a monologist named Art Fisher. Mr. Fisher had this thing for nicknames ending in "o" and during a backstage poker game, it is said, he began referring to Julius Marx as "Groucho," to Adolph Marx as "Harpo" and so on. The names somehow stuck and Show Biz History was made. Needless to say, Frank continues to do the name of Groucho proud.
[Edited to fix a questionable factual assertion I made when I wrote this, on account of I'm exhausted.]
And hello this time from San Francisco. I flew back here yesterday morning on a plane full of Korean teenagers who were loudly rehearsing scenes from High School Musical. There's gotta be an F.A.A. regulation prohibiting that kind of thing.
The con was just where I'd left it but busier than the day before. I got back in time to host three panels in a row — a one-on-one with Gary Friedrich, a three-on-three (I guess you'd call it) with Sergio Aragonés and Stan Sakai and my ever-lovin' self, and a one-on-one with Roy Thomas. At the first, Gary spoke with disarming candor about his career writing for Marvel in the late sixties and early seventies, and how it ended due largely to alcohol abuse...or as Gary put it, "My becoming an unreliable drunk." He's thirty years sober and writing again, so the whole thing has as much of a happy ending as might be possible. If I were running a publishing firm today, I think I'd hire Gary to write some stories for me...including one that was painfully autobiographical. The audience at our panel was certainly riveted by the honesty of his narrative.
The panel with Sergio and Stan was fun, as those things always are. And I could have spent several more hours quizzing Roy about his long, colorful career. Mike Friedrich, who wrote for Marvel in the days when Roy was in charge, dropped in to heckle him about not supporting Barack Obama, even though Obama was a reader of Conan back when Roy wrote the comic.
Then in the evening, I took an expedition to see Frank Ferrante do his uncanny Groucho show at a local Jewish Community Center. But I'll write about that in a separate post because it's Sunday morn and there's another day of WonderConning to be done. See you later.
February 28, 2009
