I haven't written anything here lately about late night TV because I haven't seen anything on it worth writing about. Much to my amazement — because not so long ago, I was a tremendous fan of both Dave and Jay — I now find both their shows largely unwatchable. I TiVo Letterman when he has on a guest who seems worth watching. Lately, this has been about twice a month and generally, the show strikes me as something Dave is doing just because he doesn't know what else to do with himself. I record Jay most nights because he at least acts like he enjoys his work but after the monologue, I don't find a lot that I enjoy. The only talk show I do find interesting is Craig Ferguson's because he keeps doing things he's never done before. It also helps that Ferguson, unlike the other guys, is willing to allow a bit of spontaneity into the proceedings.
I'll sample Conan O'Brien's new show on TBS in the hope he'll be more like he was during his first ten years on NBC. At some point — around the time Andy Richter left that program — Conan seemed to decide his show was about him being funny and it didn't matter if the guests or anything else was. His last year or so hosting Late Night, I abandoned him for Ferguson and a lot of viewers did, too. My lasting impression of the early Conan series is of a lot of cleverly-written pieces with fresh concepts. Most of what I recall of his last few years is him doing his string dance, making funny faces and trying to top his guests.
Around the time Conan debuts, we're going to have a reopening of the healed sore that was the Tonight Show debacle. The press won't be able to resist rehashing it all, plus there will be new skirmishes. O'Brien has an interview in Playboy next month and you also have Bill Carter's book coming out...the same day Conan debuts on WTBS, in fact. Carter, of course, wrote The Late Shift, which most take as the definitive account of the Leno/Letterman brouhaha, though I have heard other versions from folks involved in those battles. Mr. Carter's new volume — The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy — reportedly depicts both men as having done much about which they should be embarrassed but paints Leno more as the injured innocent and O'Brien as the arrogant schemer. If you want to advance-order a copy, here's the place to do it.
In the meantime, the ratings news for late night talk shows is bad all around, though worse for Leno than for Letterman. Their two programs are approximately tied lately and in this case, a tie is probably a moral victory for Dave. That's, of course, if you just view the contest at 11:35 as Dave vs. Jay. Nightline on ABC has pretty consistently been beating both of them. Also worth noting, and it also can be spun a number of different ways, is what's happened with NBC at 10 PM. When Leno's prime-time show was there, it was considered a ratings disaster. The assumption was that more traditional programming at that hour would have to do better. Well, it hasn't. What's there now is drawing lower ratings than The Jay Leno Show did...and costing NBC a lot more. Isn't show business wonderful?
Dick Cavett offers a fine remembrance and some good video clips of the late Tony Curtis. And take a peek at the Comments section where a couple of readers clear up the mystery of whether Mr. Curtis did, in one of his costume-drama films, actually say, "Yonda lies the castle of my fadda." Apparently, he said something close to that but not in the film commonly cited.
Longtime comic book inker Mike Esposito has died at the age of 83. In the above photo, which I took at a mid-seventies New York comic convention, Mike is the gentleman on the right. The fellow on the left is his good friend and frequent co-inker, Frank Giacoia.
I wish I'd also taken a photo of Mike with his best friend and more frequent collaborator, Ross Andru. Ross and Mike were lifelong friends dating back to high school, bonding over their mutual desire to become professional cartoonists. Esposito got serious about it after his discharge from the Army in 1947 when he attended the (then) newly-formed Cartoonists and Illustrators School run by Burne Hogarth in New York. Andru was also a student there — one of the best, as evidence by the fact that Hogarth hired him to assist with the art on the Tarzan newspaper strip. In the meantime, Esposito began to get work as a penciller and an inker for Fox Publications and Timely Comics. In 1951 after Andru's Tarzan job ended, he and Esposito decided to team up and try to establish themselves as comic book publishers. Mikeross Publications did not last long but it produced one highly memorable comic — Get Lost!, which was one of the first and best imitations of Harvey Kurtzman's new comic book, MAD.
Thereafter, Andru and Esposito became primarily an art team for other publishers. Ross pencilled and Mike inked...and since Mike's end of it went faster than Ross's, Mike also picked up work inking other artists. They worked for most of the major houses but became best known for their long association with DC, particulary with editor Robert Kanigher, for whom they did Wonder Woman, Metal Men and hundreds of war comics. Later for DC, they drew Superman, The Flash and dozens of other features. During the sixties, Esposito began inking for Stan Lee at Marvel, working under the pen name "Mickey Demeo" so DC wouldn't find out. He inked almost every comic they published then and almost every penciller but especially stood out when handling Jack Kirby pencils (or layouts) on The Hulk and John Romita pencil art on Spider-Man. Eventually, Esposito did so much for Marvel that he began using his real name...but he also inked many comics under the name "Joe Gaudioso" and there were others. His friend Ross joined him at Marvel and they collaborated on Spider-Man and other strips. Andru passed away in 1993.
Mike was a jovial, dependable gent who was trusted by editors and liked by his peers. In the seventies, he gave assisting work to a number of young artists, helping them to learn the industry and gain a foot in the door. He was also a good friend to other inkers, always ready to aid a colleague with a deadline problem. For many years, friends tried to persuade him to travel to San Diego to be honored and interviewed at the Comic-Con International but he always declined, citing health problems and a reticence to fly. I'm sorry we never got him to make the trip because I think he would have been surprised and overwhemed to learn how many fans he had.
In the late sixties/early seventies, there were comedic treats for those of us who lived in L.A. and were smart enough to find our respective ways to KRLA on the local radio dial. Today, that station is a mess of second-string Limbaugh wanna-bes but back then, it was a solid Top 40-style station that didn't limit itself to the Top 40. And in-between the hits, one could often hear comedic brilliance from a group called The Credibility Gap that produced little segments and drop-ins. The membership of the troupe changed from time to time but the four main guys I recall were Harry Shearer, Richard Beebe, David L. Lander and Michael McKean. They did very smart, funny comedy that is still being ripped-off now and then by others.
This is Shearer, McKean and Lander from a 1975 episode of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show with Shearer doing his spot-on impression of Mr. Snyder, which I always found superior to the Aykroyd version. The group disbanded soon after this, though they occasionally reassembled or worked together in other ways. McKean and Lander were Lenny and Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley, McKean and Shearer were members of Spinal Tap, etc. Here's a ten minute clip that shows you the kind of thing they were doing back then...
October 23, 2010
