One of the great things about the Internet is that it brings people together. For years, I was aware of a fine TV writer named Mark Rothman. He worked on a number of successful shows, including The Odd Couple, Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days. Once in a while, someone even got us confused because, as we all know, all comedy writers named Mark might as well be the same person. We had many mutual friends but we'd never met.
We met over the Internet...and earlier this year when he started a blog, I recommended you visit it. He's a funny guy and he tells a good story. Many of you have written to thank me for sending you his way.
This afternoon, we finally met in person...over lunch at Nate 'n Al's deli in Beverly Hills. This is more or less the natural habitat of two Jewish comedy writers. He had the chicken liver plate and he squished his carrots into the mashed potatoes. I had a half a corned beef sandwich on rye and a cup of chicken noodle soup, and then I got a "to go" order which I took to my mother. I figured you'd all want this information.
We swapped stories and discovered that we knew even more of the same people than we'd previously thought. I had a great time and it reminded me to mention the following here: If you aren't going to Mark Rothman's blog, you're missing a lot of great show biz anecdotes and observations.
Conan O'Brien (who I think cut me off the other day on Barham Boulevard) is prepping to take over The Tonight Show with Jay Leno shifting to a 10 PM show. Lynn Hirschberg takes a look at how Conan's getting ready.
Last night, I had the sad chore of putting up an obit for my pal Vince Davis, who among his many other credits was the producer for several seasons of Garfield and Friends. I couldn't find a photo of Vince but Norman Quebedeau, who was one of the many fine artists who worked on that show, sent me this one that he took in the office. That's the Vince Davis some of us remember...and will never forget. Thanks, Norm.
Those "I'm a MAC, I'm a PC" ads with Justin Long and John Hodgman are often very clever. I don't know if they ever sell any MACs but they're very clever. Right this moment, there's one on the home page of Salon that is quite entertaining.
I never know how to phrase what I'm thinking now about my pal Vince Davis, who passed away on May 6 due to kidney failure. I'm sorry to lose Vince, who was a great guy and a great cartoonist. I'm not sorry that he's out of pain. The last few years, his life had only been about fighting to stay alive, checking in and out of hospitals, wasting away physically and emotionally. I'm told his wicked sense of humor remained intact until a few months before the end, when even that part of him failed. After that, there was no real reason for him to stick around.
Vince was one of those quiet talents, working in animation and on the occasional comic book project, never calling attention to himself, sometimes not even signing his work. He did some wonderful work for Bill Spicer's Graphic Story Magazine in the late sixties. In the early seventies, he was in a few underground comics. Mostly, he worked in animation, working his way up from layout and design to directing and producing.
He produced the last few seasons of Garfield and Friends, which was the first time we worked together after several decades of friendship. He was very good at his job, though he had one failing. He was a soft touch (usually) when he was approached by someone desperate for work...someone he knew needed a job but maybe wasn't up to the demands of the assignment. So he'd hire them anyway and when they handed in something unusable, he'd just redo it himself, even though it added many long, uncompensated hours to his work week. (Vince, I should mention, was not related to Garfield creator Jim Davis. This did not stop someone on an animation website from claiming he got his job through nepotism. No...he got it because he was good.)
I could write a lot more about Vince but there's no way I can top what animator Mark Kausler wrote about his and my pal. Go there. Read a lovely tribute to a lovely guy.
I must have a dozen photos of Vince in my files but I can find none of them tonight. Instead, I decided to illustrate this with a panel from "Comic Book Fans," a three-page comic book story Vince created around 1972. It was a harsh but loving slam at those of us who wallow in funnybooks...written and drawn by an admitted wallower. That's Vince in the above scene, annoying Bill Spicer. The story struck a note with fans of the day and it was reprinted in several magazines and issued as a huge poster that was literally wider than Vince was tall. I just read it again and it made me smile, partly because it reminded me of myself but mostly because it reminded me of Vince.
As a follow-up to yesterday's video link: Here's Louis Jordan and the Tympani Five performing "Caldonia" in a 1945 "soundie." (For those of you unfamiliar with the noun, "soundies" were the music videos of the forties, made to be shown primarily in jukebox-like devices.)
Mr. Jordan, who had a number of big hits, probably wrote the tune. I say "probably" because when it was first published, it was credited to his then-wife, who was not a songwriter...and anyway, he divorced her soon after when she stabbed him with a knife. That's never good in a marriage. Apparently, there are musicologists who think Jordan only wrote the lyrics and that someone else penned the music...but the point is that he made the song famous and sold an awful lot of records with it. Here he is...and I still don't get the part about "mop."
May 22, 2009
