Here's the front page of the Los Angeles Mirror News for Tuesday, June 16, 1959. The headline is the suicide of George Reeves. Some of the "facts" in the news story — like the description of the actor's current career and prospects — are at odds with what others believe.
Speaking of Burl Ives — and I was speaking of Burl Ives — Greg Ehrbar sent me this link to a half-hour BBC radio program about his life and times. If you want to listen, hurry because it'll only be good for another day or two.
And, hey! If my friends at Turner Classic Movies are reading this, it's been a while since you've run Ensign Pulver, the 1964 sequel to Mister Roberts that Jack Lemmon turned down because he thought (rightfully) the script was weak. It's far from a great movie but it's kinda fun to watch, especially because of all the now-familiar faces and/or great character actors in the cast. There's Larry Hagman, Walter Matthau, Jack Nicholson, Peter Marshall, Tommy Sands, Dick Gautier, Al Freeman Jr, James Farentino, a skinny James Coco, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, Kay Medford and George Lindsey in his pre-Goober days. In fact, everyone in that movie became famous except Robert Walker, the guy who drew the thankless task of replacing Lemmon as Pulver. He's darned good in it but how can anyone follow in those footsteps and be properly appreciated?
I mention it because Burl Ives was just wonderful as the despicable Captain that everyone loathes. He was a great singer but he was also a darn good actor. How about it, Turner Classic Movies? Double-feature with Mister Roberts?
Better still, how about it, Warner Home Video? Ensign Pulver is not out on DVD. It was out on VHS once upon a time and you can still find that but no one buys VHS tapes these days. If you guys can't sell a product with the names of Matthau, Nicholson and Hagman on the packaging, it's time to close the department. There are Andy Griffith Show fans, mostly female, who'll buy this for the three seconds of Goober shirtless.
Come on. If I can't get Skidoo released on DVD, maybe I can get this one out of the vaults. And then we can do something about The Flim-Flam Man and Pretty Maids All in a Row.
The video quality on this isn't great but it's amazing it exists at all. In 1966, NBC debuted a new variety show — The Sammy Davis Jr Show. The first week with a stellar list of guests was a smashing success...and then the second week, things got a bit odd. That was when The Sammy Davis Jr Show stopped, for a while, having Sammy Davis Jr on it.
Mr. Davis had a contractual committment from which he could not escape. He could not appear for a month or so on his own series so friends of his filled in. This is the second episode and the host is Johnny Carson. It is perhaps worth noting that not long before, Mr. Carson had had a vaguely similar problem. When NBC wanted him to take over The Tonight Show from Jack Paar, Carson had a contract to do a game show on ABC and couldn't get out of it. So for six months, guest hosts helmed The Tonight Show and then he started.
Just before the end credits, Johnny explains a little about why Sammy is in absentia. If you don't want to watch the whole show, view his monologue and then move the slider ahead to catch the last three minutes. The program, by the way, was directed by Johnny's brother, Dick Carson.
It features some interesting performers including Diahann Carroll, Bobby Van, Mickey Rooney and a frighteningly young Joan Rivers. I was most excited to see Don Alan, a great magician who in the fifties hosted a fun, forgotten syndicated show called Magic Ranch. One of Mr. Alan's last TV appearances (he retired in '83 and died in '99) was on a program I wrote and he was very entertaining, in front of the cameras and off. There are still a lot of guys out there doing tricks he popularized (like the Invisible Deck) and doing jokes and patter that he created.
Sammy Davis, you might care to know, finally returned to the show that bore his name and resumed normal host duties. By then it was too late, though. The series didn't last, which proves a basic rule of television. If you star in a TV show, you kinda need to be there.
I thought David Letterman's second apology to Sarah Palin went way beyond what the joke warranted...but I guess I understand why certain of her supporters insist it didn't go far enough. They're empowered by their outrage. People who would never get quoted in the press have a bit of attention so they want to keep it going as long as possible. Saying Dave has evened things up would be the end of it for them. Staging protests and demanding he be terminated proves their power and keeps the clock ticking on their fifteen minutes of fame.
To the extent they're genuinely incensed, it's not Dave. It's that Sarah Palin has largely become a laughingstock in this nation, shunned even by much of the Republican Party. If you've cast your lot with her and the things she stands for — if you fantasize about her booting that birth-certificateless Muslim Socialist out of office in 2012 — well, you can't admit that maybe she's a joke because of her own words and actions. It's those damn late night comedians and their hateful, unfair remarks. Maybe if you can give Letterman enough grief, he and others will be afraid to utter her name with anything less than reverence.
This will go on for another day or two. Apology 2.0 should have drained most of the fuel from the fire and it'll become old news. (It's amazing it ever became news at all...but I guess it's not like there's anything important happening in the world at the moment.) CBS is not going to fire David Letterman or suspend him or anything of the sort. The only lasting impact of the protests might be measured next time — and there will be a next time — Sarah Palin says or does something really, really stupid or dishonest. If Letterman and other comedians go easy on her then the terrorists will have won.
Fifty years ago this morning, actor George Reeves died from a gunshot wound in the head, apparently self-inflicted. I don't know any more about what really happened than you probably do. All I have to go on is what others think. In the late sixties, when I met Whitney Ellsworth, who produced the Superman TV show that starred Reeves, I asked him. Mr. Ellsworth, who was one of the most nervous men I've ever met, lowered his voice to a whisper as he told me...this, despite the fact that we were alone in his office and no one could have heard him if he'd screamed what he was about to say.
But acting like he feared the KGB was listening in, he told me in quick, hushed tones that George Reeves had committed suicide, possibly because he'd gotten mixed up with an unsavory situation in his personal life, possibly because he'd been drinking heavily and taking pain pills. Pretty much everyone I've met since who either knew Reeves or who studied the case closely came to much the same conclusion. Still, the rumors persist. They are, after all, more interesting.
We were making them up on the playground of Westwood Elementary School the day after it happened. The theories popped up all across the country at the same time. Reeves got carried away with the role and thought he could fly and jumped out the window. Or he thought the bullets would bounce off him so he shot himself that way. Or someone thought he was Superman and thought they could shoot him without harm. Or something of the sort.
I remember that and I remember the great sense of shock my friends and I all felt. It wasn't the first time we'd heard a favorite TV person had died. Lou Costello had passed away three months earlier. But Mr. Costello's death was pretty normal and anyway, he wasn't Superman. The death of Superman cried out for twists and turns and a surprise ending...and while you played with all that, it was easy to forget how dreadfully sad it was. There was something about George Reeves on TV...some little twinkle and sense of humor that underscored his acting. When I've interviewed Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane to his Clark and Superman, I always ask her, "Was he as nice a man as it seems to us watching at home?" She always replies, "Even nicer." I think I'd rather remember that than the way it ended.
Here's another musical number with Lulu from The Red Skelton Show in 1968. It features her. It features The Tom Hansen Dancers, one of whom is the gentleman who fixed my leaky roof years later. And it features Burl Ives. Mr. Ives was one of my favorite musical performers but he was not, shall we say, "gifted" in the terpsichore department.
I once heard a choreographer refer to a proposed number on a show we were doing as a "Burgess Meredith job." Since Mr. Meredith was not at all part of our cast, I asked what that meant. The choreographer said that was her term for having to stage something with someone who couldn't dance one entire step without being off the beat and awkward. Like all who staged dances for a living, she did a lot of Burgess Meredith jobs...once in a while, even with Burgess Meredith.
I assume Tom Hansen staged this one. He did a pretty good job camouflaging the fact that Burl Ives was almost as bad a dancer as...well, he's not quite as dreadful as me but he's close. There's one point in there where all he has to do is walk and he still manages to start on the wrong foot. And just think: This was done on tape so they may have done it twenty times and this was the best take.
Nevertheless, I'm still a fan of Burl Ives. I still have a crush on Lulu. I'm still grateful to whichever of the dancers fixed my roof. And I've got to get me an outfit like the ones they're wearing.
June 17, 2009
