Saturday, March 13, 2010

Show Biz Labor News

The good news on the Hollywood labor front is that the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have voted to set aside past differences and to resume bargaining as a single unit. This is great but it would have been greater if it had happened before the last negotiation where they went their separate ways, AFTRA took a lousy deal and SAG was then forced to accept much the same.

There is as yet no renewed talk of a merger, though that has always made sense to most folks who aren't part of AFTRA's operating staff. At least everyone now knows the folly of dividing yourself and thereby allowing yourself to be conquered.

• Posted at 11:44 PM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

If you've been following Keith Olbermann's on-air tales of his ailing father, you may feel a sense of loss to hear that Theodore C. Olbermann has left us. Here is Keith's announcement, and I imagine he'll have more to say when he returns to Countdown.

• Posted at 11:37 PM · LINK

News Fit for Jehovah

I have this friend named Kim "Howard" Johnson and he knows everything about Monty Python. In fact, he knows everyone in Monty Python. Want proof? Take a look at this photo...

Kim is one of the six people in that photo. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one. Anyway, he's been talking to someone and he says that the Eric Idle concert, Not the Messiah, will be available in the U.S. of A., perhaps as a one-night-only theatrical event (as in England) and definitely as a DVD. In fact, he's currently working on bonus material for the DVD and says the show is spectacular but there's no release date yet. So fret not that you won't be able to see it. You will. We just don't know when yet.

• Posted at 9:28 PM · LINK

Violet Barclay, R.I.P.

Comic book artist Violet Barclay (aka Valerie Barclay) has died at the age of 88. Ms. Barclay was born in New York on November 5, 1922. She attended the School of Industrial Arts in that city but was unable to find work in that area after graduation. In 1941, Mike Sekowsky — who had recently begun drawing for Timely Comics (now Marvel), discovered his old classmate working as a restaurant hostess and got her a job inking for Timely. She worked there until 1949, then freelanced for other companies including Standard Comics, DC, St. John, Ace and ACG. When work became scarce in the field around 1954, she got out and worked as a model and a waitress until breaking into fashion illustration, mainly doing advertising art for some of the nation's leading clothing lines. She died February 26.

I'm afraid I don't have an illustration available that I'm sure represents Ms. Barclay's artwork. The panel above right is from a 1954 issue of Complete Love, published by Ace, and it's often offered as being both pencilled and inked by her. Is it? I don't think the pencilling is. The inking might be. She didn't have that distinctive or consistent a style and a lot of what has been identified as her work was clearly done by Chic Stone, who worked for Timely at the same time. Someone needs to research this better than I can.

Beyond her credits, Ms. Barclay is known today for a couple of reasons. One is that in his 1947 book Secrets Behind the Comics, Stan Lee introduced her as the "Glamorous Girl Inker" of several of the comics he was then editing. Women were rare in comics then and it was startling to some that there were any, let alone that one was glamorous. Another point of interest for some were the stories of romantic triangles in and around comic book company offices. Sekowsky was usually one point of a triangle and she was another. In a 2004 interview with Alter Ego and in other conversations, Barclay told some of those stories and they may well have been accurate. Then again, I know Sekowsky, with absolutely no anger towards her, remembered certain incidents in an entirely different manner.

I'm in no position to judge whose memories were more correct, nor is it much of my business. The one time I spoke to Ms. Barclay, she phoned me to ask how Mike was. She'd heard he was not well (he wasn't) and she heard I knew him (I did) and she still had great affection for him (and vice-versa). We had a nice conversation about him and about her career and she asked me to give him a big hug and a kiss for her (I didn't).

Mike told me his versions of the same history. I'm not sure I remember them well enough to repeat them and if I did, I wouldn't because he always refused to talk about her for public consumption. I did one formal interview with Mike "on background," meaning that I promised him it would never be quoted directly. He was unhesitant in telling me how certain people in comics were, to him, liars and cheaters and he even accused some of the kinds of deeds for which people go to prison. But about Violet Barclay, he would only say she was a sweet, wonderful lady. Maybe I ought to leave it at that.

• Posted at 12:42 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Back in this message, I told how in 1968, I helped a friend fish hundreds of 16mm film reels out of dumpsters outside CBS Television City in Hollywood. They were old TV shows that the network was tossing away — episodes of Amos & Andy, General Electric Theater, The Jack Benny Program, an obscure Allan Funt show called Tell it to the Camera and many more. One of the canisters was the show that is our video link for today...and for all I know, this video was transferred from the same print that my pal Mike and I rescued. (Mike kept them all and I have no idea what he did with them, except that I'm pretty sure one Jack Benny episode that is out on home video was transferred from one of those prints.)

Groucho Marx's popular radio show, You Bet Your Life, debuted in 1947. Late in '49, producer John Guedel was attempting to sell a TV version of it and so they hauled cameras into the studio and filmed a couple of episodes. This was partly so the television folks could see how much more entertaining Groucho could be when you could see him and partly to help make decisions on how to stage the show for the new medium. This video is one of those filmings. It's dated December 28, 1949 and I'm not sure if that's when it was filmed or if it's when the radio edition was broadcast. That date was a Wednesday and the show aired on Wednesdays but it sometimes also filmed on Wednesdays. The TV version went on the air October 5, 1950 and lasted until June 29, 1961.

Groucho did both versions — the radio version and the TV version — via what they then called the "transcription" method. This was at his insistence. He refused to do either program the way most others of that kind were done, which was live. Supposedly, he was deathly afraid of saying something off-color or of the show, which was supposed to rely heavily on his ad-libbing ability, just plain being dull. So they'd record (or for TV, film) a full hour and then edit it down to a half-hour. They also decided not to bet their lives (or anything) on his improvisational prowess. Comedy writers were hired — credited as Production Associates or under other titles — and they gave Groucho a pile of quips and jokes to use at his discretion. On radio, he had them on the desk in front of him, and you can see him refer to the pages throughout this video. On TV, the ad-libs were projected on an off-camera screen that Mr. Marx could see.

The great thing about this video is that it gives us a chance to see how the radio show was done. This includes all the departures and rambling that Groucho and his announcer George Fenneman were free to do because they knew it would all be heavily edited. You may not want to watch all 54 minutes and 30 seconds of this but you might enjoy a few minutes...

• Posted at 1:23 AM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

A lot of interesting responses to my piece earlier today about the charge that there's something evil about lawyers representing terrorism suspects. Here's what Jim Houghton sent me...

Well put, Mark. For whatever reason, the prevailing culture in this country during my lifetime — maybe it's been the prevailing culture throughout humanity throughout history, but I hope not — is that if someone has been arrested and charged with something, we can safely assume that they are in fact guilty by that simple fact. I suppose people don't want to consider that they could be wrongly charged in a serious crime, but the sad truth is, it happens.

It makes me crazy when people who don't trust the government to spend our tax money wisely or administer universal health care, apparently assume without question that the government is smart enough or honest enough to decide who to lock up without charges, and even whether to torture them.

When I watched Popeye as a kid, my mother made sure I understood that it was not real. Sometimes I worry that adults have lost their ability to understand that 24 isn't real, either.

You're right that folks tend to assume guilt if someone has been arrested and charged...and some of the lawyers now being smeared were representing suspects who weren't even charged. You know, I don't have a lot of confidence in our court system to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent...but I have even less in a system that doesn't even want to try to separate the two.

Here's an interesting take on it from a reader of this site named Don Yost...

There's yet another side to the legal representation argument. Back in the '70s I worked two years for the Shasta County Sheriff Department. There was horrible man who was being tried for raping and killing a number of girls and women here. I talked with the attorney representing him. The attorney told me that he was going to do his very best to represent the accused — not because he thought him innocent — but because he wanted to have the court make a decision where there would be no question as to whether he was represented adequately. The attorney didn't want the defendant subsequently released based upon a claim of shoddy representation.

Not much to add to that. I should say though that I do think it's possible to judge the character of some lawyers not so much by the cases they choose to take but by how they press them. For instance, I sure thought less of the attorneys who took on the O.J. Simpson defense but that was because of how they did it, trying to smear the police, confuse the jury and fan out a whole deck of race cards. I wouldn't though fault a lawyer for just defending someone. In our court system, everyone is entitled to counsel...even O.J. Simpson. And that's not just for his benefit. It's for the good of that system on which we so depend.

• Posted at 12:11 AM · LINK

March 14, 2010 • Current • March 12, 2010