Friday, February 26, 2010

Set the TiVo!

Those of you who were moved by that article about Roger Ebert may want to catch Oprah on Tuesday. Her guests are Mr. Ebert and his wife, Chaz. Reportedly, Ebert will be answering questions using his new computer voice — the one mentioned in the article — that was constructed from recordings of his voice before he lost it. Wonder if the Academy has thought about having him present an Oscar at the upcoming ceremony.

• Posted at 11:36 PM · LINK

Caesar Salad

The writing staff of Caesar's Hour. Front row, left to right: Gary Belkin, Sheldon Keller, Mike Stewart and Mel Brooks. Back row, left to right: Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin and Larry Gelbart. Note the absence of Woody Allen from this picture.

Yesterday marked sixty years since the debut of the legendary Your Show of Shows, the legendary TV program starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Howard Morris and Carl Reiner, among others. It was a live show on Saturday nights which, contrary to the impression most folks have of it, was not ninety minutes of comedy sketches featuring those four folks. It was a variety show with dance numbers and music — including frequent helpings of ballet, classical and even opera — and other elements, including superb comedy by Caesar and Company. It ran on Saturday nights from February 25, 1950 until June 5, 1954 and then, like Germany after the war, they decided to break it up.

Ms. Coca went off to do her own series. Its producer, Max Liebman, went off to produce a series of spectaculars. And the comedy core of the show (sans Coca) refashioned itself as a new series called Caesar's Hour. Caesar's Hour was on for three more years and then Sid and some of the same crew did a series of intermittent specials.

Much has been made of the legendary writing staff of the various Sid Caesar shows which included, at various times, Mel Brooks, Lucille Kallen, Mel Tolkin, Aaron Ruben, Mike Stewart, Larry Gelbart, Danny Simon, Neil Simon, Selma Diamond, Sheldon Keller, Gary Belkin and many others. Carl Reiner was also a writer, though he does not appear to have ever received that credit. It's a little sore spot with some of those folks, and with TV historians, that so many confuse who worked on what.

At the moment (I'm sure it will be changed shortly) the Wikipedia page for Your Show of Shows has the following paragraph up...

Writers for the show included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, and Carl Reiner who, though a cast member, always sat in with the writers. A common misconception is that Woody Allen wrote for Your Show of Shows; he in fact wrote for its successor program, Caesar's Hour, which ran from 1954 to 1957. Caesar, Coca, and Liebman had worked on The Admiral Broadway Revue from January to June 1949.

Almost right. As he told people over and over and over again, Larry Gelbart never worked on Your Show of Shows. Larry was hired on Caesar's Hour and he later wrote some of Sid's subsequent specials. He said this explicitly many times and sometimes got kinda steamed about having to say it. If you want to do a Google search on the subject, you'll find a dozen places where Larry insisted he never worked on Your Show of Shows. You'll also find ten dozen articles which say Larry Gelbart was one of the writers on Your Show of Shows and even won a couple of Emmys for it.

Over on this page for the wonderful Archive of American Television, you can view lengthy, fascinating oral histories of several key folks who worked on the Caesar shows (including Mr. Caesar, himself) and I recommend spending some time there. The interviews are fascinating and if you do watch them, you'll hear several of the interviewees, including Larry Gelbart, make the point that Larry Gelbart never worked on Your Show of Shows. The interviews are right next to a history of Your Show of Shows that someone took from Wikipedia. It includes the paragraph above that says that Larry Gelbart wrote for Your Show of Shows.

I believe, by the way, that the paragraph is also wrong about Woody Allen working on Caesar's Hour. Allen has said on several occasions that he only worked for Caesar on a couple of the later specials, collaborating usually with Gelbart. In his online interview, Gelbart says the same thing.

Could somebody who knows Wikipedia better than I do please go fix this? I know how to change a few words over there but I'm lost as to how to insert footnotes and supporting evidence. Change the bit about Gelbart and footnote it with his online interview for the Archive of American Television. Change the line about Allen and footnote it with page 111 of Eric Lax's biography, Woody Allen. It may be necessary to change some of the linked pages for Gelbart, Allen, Caesar's Hour and a few others, as well. And don't do it for me. Do it for Larry. This kind of thing really pissed him off.

• Posted at 10:27 PM · LINK

Con Game

Lotsa folks are writing me to ask what I think about rumors that the Comic-Con International will be moving to Anaheim or maybe even Los Angeles when its current contract with San Diego expires. I think they're not exactly rumors. I think it's a fact that the convention is talking to other cities...but that's all that's happening.

And what's more, they're always talking to other cities. The convention is a wildly successful enterprise that pumps megabucks into the San Diego economy. If you were running a convention center or chamber of commerce in a city that thrives on convention business, your fondest dream would probably be to wrest the con out of San Diego's grasp and relocate it in your yard. You'd probably be approaching the Comic-Con people often with tempting offers of bigger and better facilities, more hotel space, more financial considerations, etc.

And the Comic-Con people would listen to you and let you do your little dog-'n'-pony show because, first of all, they're polite and secondly, they're in the convention business. They have to know what else is out there if only so they can go back to San Diego and say, "Hey, the Pismo Beach Chamber of Commerce just offered us free clam chowder if we move the con to a Motel 6 they have up there. What are you going to do for us?" And of course, the Comic-Con needs to consider alternatives in case the day comes when San Diego just plain doesn't work for them.

I don't think that day is coming soon. The responsible folks in San Diego would have to be pretty damn irresponsible to let a con that puts $60 million annually into the local economy get away.

As I've said here before, I don't think the Comic-Con would be as wonderful in another city. Of the three towns generally mentioned — Los Angeles, Las Vegas or Anaheim — I think L.A. would be the worst, even though I could literally get there in 15 minutes by bus. (And I'd probably take a bus because parking at the L.A. Convention Center is sometimes less convenient than driving to San Diego.) Anaheim might be the best of the three, depending on how proximity to Disneyland affected traffic, room availability and so on.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part but unless San Diego is really, really stupid, I think the con's staying put. And yes, it's true that if Comic-Con ever did leave S.D., several outfits would trample over one another to get in there, lock up the San Diego Convention Center and stage a new comic book convention there, on or around the same dates. That wouldn't be the same, either.

In any case, there really isn't any news here...yet. Comic-Con is talking to other suitors and will soon decide if they're going to extend their presence in San Diego through 2015 or if they're going to go elsewhere when the current contract is up after the 2012 show. That's not really news...and the fact that there are a lot of news reports about this suddenly doesn't mean it's news. Because those reports were obviously planted and encouraged — or at least, the first recent ones were — by someone hoping to make something happen by fomenting speculation that something is about to happen.

• Posted at 11:52 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Because the Olympics were shoving around his time slot, my TiVo didn't catch Keith Olbermann on Wednesday. Thanks to Ye Olde Internet though, I was able to catch this "Special Comment" he did that day in advance of the Thursday summit on Health Care Reform. It included a plea to the participants which I doubt they even heard, let alone acted upon. Still, it was a powerful thirteen and a half minutes on Olbermann's current struggle with an ill father and how it relates to the slimy scare tactic of trying to defeat reform by claiming that it would establish "Death Panels." As if the current system, with skyrocketing costs and insurers denying coverage, isn't a Death Panel in and of itself.

This is long but having dealt with similar issues in my own life, I felt it was uncommonly honest. And if you may someday have to cope with making medical decisions for a loved one, or maybe if you won't, it's certainly worth thirteen and a half minutes of your time...

• Posted at 12:54 AM · LINK