Monday, September 21, 2009

Monday Evening

Sorry I haven't posted anything since last night. Busy day here.

Eighty-seven thousand, six hundred and twenty-three of you have e-mailed me to ask if I (a) know about the heirs of Jack Kirby filing for reclamation of a number of Marvel copyrights and (b) will be commenting here or anywhere? The answers to those questions are yes and no...in that order.

The mystery of the Colbert Report start times seems to have been solved. Comedy Central is simply jamming more commercials into certain of their more-watched shows and they don't care that it messes up those of us who record via TiVo or VCR for later viewing. Or so I'm told by a person who works for Comedy Central.

Several folks, by the way, were bewildered that I watch The Colbert Report at 11:00 PM since it doesn't air at that time on your set. Well, I do. I have DirecTV and on this coast, one can watch Dr. Colbert at 8:30 PM, 11:00 PM, 6:30 AM, 11:00 AM and 4:30 PM. The 11 PM showing follows an airing of The Daily Show at 10:30 PM and both are apparently crammed with extra commercials.

Lastly for now: I'm a big fan of Jay Leno but I'm growing disenchanted with The Jay Leno Show. Before the week is out, I hope to write a piece here that explains why. (Another "by the way" — I was trying to figure out who the show's so-far anonymous announcer is. I just did. Here's a hint for those of you who like to identify voice actors and announcers: He's been on one or more of my Cartoon Voices panels at the Comic-Con in San Diego. And I'm embarrassed I didn't recognize him the first night.)

• Posted at 11:54 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

We have a solid gold nugget for you today, fun seekers — a slightly-abridged episode of This is Show Business, a panel show that ran on CBS from 1949 'til 1954. It was an odd affair. Performers would come on and seek help in dealing with some silly problem they had. Sometimes, they would perform...and I suspect some performing was edited from this kinescope. But the main part of the show was when they sat down next to host Clifton Fadiman to solicit advice from a panel of show biz experts.

The panel consisted of two regulars and a guest who changed each week. At the time of this broadcast, the two regulars were Sam Levenson and the great playwright, George S. Kaufman. (Levenson's seat was filled for a long time by Abe Burrows.) The guest panelist is Betty Furness...and the performers who come on with lame, phony problems are Larry Storch, Mel Tormé and the dance team of Bud and Cece Robinson.

The treasure here, of course, is the chance to see Kaufman, who reportedly relished his brief forays into television — mostly here and on Jack Paar's show. He's awkward in posture and gestures...and like the host, he keeps forgetting to talk towards the microphone. But he's George S. Kaufman and this is an unusual view of the man who was hailed as one of the great wits of his century. You even get to hear him plug his upcoming play, The Solid Gold Cadillac. (He says it's opening in Hartford on October 1st. That would be October 1st, 1953 so that helps us roughly peg the date of this broadcast. The tryout in Hartford, by the way, was a disaster...but Kaufman and his co-author Howard Teichmann managed to rewrite it into a solid gold hit by the time it opened in New York a month later.)

At the end, you'll hear host Fadiman mention that the following week's guest panelist would be the actress, Jackie Susann. This is the same Jackie Susann who later wrote best-selling potboiler novels like Valley of the Dolls. She was a frequent guest on This is Show Business, not because anyone knew who she was or cared but because she was married to the show's producer, Irving Mansfield.

One week on the show — perhaps the very next week — she told an anecdote about auditioning for a play Kaufman directed and being treated unprofessionally. The point of the story was apparently to embarrass Kaufman...but Susann wound up being the one who was embarrassed. Kaufman responded to her tale by saying it was "...entirely spurious." And in the ensuing discussion, it became apparent to all that Miss Susann had no idea what the word "spurious" meant.

Mr. Kaufman isn't all that witty in this clip but hey. How often do you get to see and hear George S. Kaufman?

• Posted at 12:08 AM · LINK