December 6 at 7 PM, Roy Disney will be speaking and signing a new DVD over at the Barnes & Noble store in The Grove here in Los Angeles. Make a note to drop by and hear him.
December 9 at 6 PM, Rachael Ray will be speaking and signing a new cookbook over at the Barnes & Noble store in The Grove here in Los Angeles. Make a note to stay away from The Grove.
Danny Fingeroth, who knows a thing or three about super-heroes, writes the following about the musical, It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman!…
I saw the show in 1966 at a Wednesday matinee and remember being disappointed that it didn't actually seem to be about Superman. Jack Cassidy played a character who wasn't part of the Superman supporting cast from the comics or the TV series, yet he was very much the star and the center of attention. That could be why the show wasn't successful. Whatever you may have thought about, say, the Batman TV show, it was very much about Batman and/or his villains, not about a guy who wasn't any part of the character's core mythology or well-known supporting cast.
Yeah, that's another thing wrong with it. No Lex Luthor, no Jimmy Olsen…and I think Perry White only has about three lines. Jack Cassidy was then a big deal on Broadway and it may be that since he was available, they were more interested in building the show around him than the relative unknown who'd be playing Superman. It throws the show even more off balance when it's done without a major star in the role because then there's really no reason to devote so much attention to that character.
By the way, everyone: Bob Holiday, who played Superman in that show, has a website that contains almost no information about the original show. He doesn't even have a plug up for his book on the experience, Superman on Broadway, which may or may not even be available these days. But if you do go to Mr. Holiday's site, check out the video clips of him teaching Steve Allen how to fly on the game show, I've Got a Secret. And thanks for the message, Danny.
This is Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" last night on the lessons of Vietnam…
By the way, Greg Eckler sent me the following last night…
I hope you'll let us know about the ratings. It's a fortuitous booking coincidence on par with Hugh Grant on Leno in 1994, which happened to be the night Leno surged into first place never to look back.
I have suggested to incredulous friends that Leno could still take the night because Jay is just that dominating, plus the story just broke and plenty of people don't even know about it or that Richards is on the show.
Let us know if Jay can make a game of it. If it's even close, it will reinforce what a destroyer Leno has become.
Well, it's interesting. I think people charting such things sometimes place too much emphasis on that night when Jay Leno had the scandal-plagued Hugh Grant on as a guest. True, that was when Leno began outrating Letterman…but all Grant did was move up the date. Jay had been gaining and Dave had been dropping before that. Great ratings for one night do not change things all that much, especially with shows that are known quantities and which most of the public has already sampled. In the many years since, Letterman has had the occasional night when he had something spectacular to get tune-in — the nights he came back from illnesses, the first time he had on Hillary Clinton, Oprah's return to his guest chair, etc. All it ever meant was one night he'd be up and the next night, the numbers would be right back where they were before…sometimes, even a bit lower.
Last week, Letterman had an extremely good week against Leno. Maybe it was Impressionists Week that did it but that, coupled with a strong CBS Monday night lineup, caused Dave to tie Jay on Monday. (Monday is usually Letterman's strongest night of the week.) Last night, Leno got a 4.4, which is about what he always gets on a Monday. Dave got a 5.3, which is about a point more than he usually gets on a Monday…so he got some extra tune-in without taking anyone away from The Tonight Show. That's kind of the way it works these days. When Letterman's numbers are up it generally doesn't mean he's luring anyone away from Leno. It means that the folks who like Dave's show are watching it three times a week instead of two or are staying tuned for the whole hour instead of going to bed at Midnight. Or something like that.
Will the Michael Richards apology change the dynamic of late night? No, because that's just one night. But Dave's doing a little better anyway, and he might be on a solid upswing. He still has a long way to go before he can put a dent in Leno's track record…and since Jay's announced he's leaving soon, I'm not sure any of that matters as much as it once did. Not that it ever mattered a lot.
In case you haven't heard, Michael Richards put in a remote appearance on last night's Late Show With David Letterman. A few nights before at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood, his stand-up act degenerated into a racist tirade. A lot of people walked out on him…I suspect not so much because he was up there yelling the "n" word as because he seemed to be offering some sort of "anger management" breakdown instead of entertainment. It might all have just been one bad set in a comedy club but someone captured much of it with a cell phone camera and it made it onto the Internet. Here's a clip of what Richards said last night when he appeared via satellite with Dave…
I don't know Michael Richards at all. Maybe he is a racist at heart or maybe he's a comedian who had one too many of something and then did a very bad job of ripping off an outta-date Lenny Bruce bit that wasn't all that funny when Lenny did it. Either way, I suspect he did himself more harm than good with the apology. Then again, the man is not exactly ever hired because he projects a calming image of stability so I doubt it will cost him a lot of work. I do think he deserves some credit for not announcing that he'd been molested as a child and then promptly checking into rehab. Perhaps that's next.
It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman! — a Broadway musical based on you-know-who — opened on March 29, 1966 at the Alvin Theater in New York. As shows go, it seemed to have everything necessary. It was based on a popular property and at the time, America seemed hungry for that kind of thing. The Batman TV show had debuted only two months earlier and it was still an immense fad, with "POW! ZAP! BAM!" appearing everywhere you looked. But there were more reasons beyond that to figure Superman's musical would be as powerful and invulnerable as its title character.
There were songs by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, who had provided the scores for Golden Boy and Bye Bye Birdie, so they kinda knew what they were doing. Its producer-director, Harold Prince, was one of the top producers in Manhattan and he was beginning to enjoy similar success as a director. The cast was strong — Tony nominations would go to three of its actors, including Jack Cassidy who had top billing and who was a pretty big star at the time, hitting all the talk shows to plug his new gig. All but one of the reviews were positive. Some were raves and the only negative one — from Douglas Watts in The New York Post — sounded pretty elitist. Mr. Watts admitted he had no fondness or even knowledge of Superman in any form…and who's going to listen to someone like that? So all in all, it sounded like a hit.
Not so. The show closed the following June 16 and posted a total loss of its investor's money. At $600,000 it was then one of the most expensive musicals ever produced, and therefore its biggest flop.
I didn't see the show in New York, of course, but was always curious as to wha' happened? How could a show with so much going for it not run longer than it did? Last night, I saw a concert-style production of the show…and while it's not utterly fair to judge the material by a version done with no sets, few costumes and sparse rehearsals, I think I came to the following conclusion: It isn't a very good show.
Which is not to say I didn't have a good time last night. This was another production of the Musical Theater Guild, which is a rep company of gifted performers that puts on these down-'n'-dirty staged readings as they did recently with Li'l Abner and Merrily We Roll Along The cast, toplined by Damon Kirsche (who did such a fine job playing Abner for them), worked wonders with what I came to feel was not particularly bulletproof material.
You ever see a production of this show? You might have, because it's had a much longer life in terms of local groups putting it up than is usual with a play that only lasted 129 performances on Broadway. Usually only something Sondheim can close that quickly and still be seen again…and then there was Mack and Mabel, which keeps coming back because people love the Jerry Herman score. Superman doesn't have a great score. There's only one song — "You've Got Possibilities" — which had any life outside of the show, and the book is quite silly. Like a lot of adaptations of comic books into other forms, the authors seem to have struggled with whether they respected the underlying material or felt they could do naught but mock it. The storyline has something to do with a gossip columnist (the role Cassidy played on Broadway) trying to expose Superman's secret identity…and with a mad scientist who, having been denied a Nobel Peace Prize he thought he'd earned, decides to use psychiatric scheming to bring down Superman's confidence and therefore destroy his powers. In just a minute or so of psychobabble, Superman is convinced he can't fly and he no longer does…until at the end, he has to in order to rescue Lois Lane. It all makes for a pretty campy, unsatisfying Man of Steel.
(Another problem the storyline has: At the end, everything is pretty much the way it was at the beginning, and that's never good. Just looking at the two big hit musicals based on comic strips, you have Li'l Abner, which ends with Abner marrying Daisy Mae, and Annie — also with an Adams/Strouse score — which ends with Annie getting a family and no longer being the Little Orphan. But at the close of Superman, we're right back where we started: No one knows Clark is Superman, Lois is still in a frustrating love affair with the guy in blue, etc. Can you name another hit musical where the lives of the protagonists are unaltered at the final curtain? I can't.)
Seems to me this show is performed occasionally these days because people love the character and a musical based on him looks like it'll be fun to stage, fun to see. The version last night was fun to see but only because the cast was having a good time, playing broad and not worrying too much if they mucked with the material and ad-libbed. I was sitting behind my friend Marv Wolfman, who actually saw the original in '66, and he said he had a very good time last night, but not because of the show itself. That's a pretty good summation of the evening.
One last thing I'll mention. An article I read some time ago said that the original show lost that $600,000 for one investor but didn't say who that investor was. I've always wondered if it was either DC Comics or one of the firm's owners at the time. DC funded some of the adaptations of its properties, such as the George Reeves Superman TV show so it would not have been uncharacteristic for them to put up the bucks. I asked Irwin Donenfeld, whose father founded the company and he said no…but Irwin told me a number of things that I decided were not true, and he might not have known. This isn't an obsessive mystery with me but it's something that arouses my Comic Historian curiosity. DC was sold not long after and maybe the sale was motivated in part by someone's desire to replenish their personal fortune after taking a bath on Broadway. Might have happened that way.
I usually don't crib an entire posting from another weblog but this one by Ezra Klein over on Tapped is too well-put not to quote in full…
As Kevin Drum points out, the Iraqi people overwhelmingly want us to leave. They do not believe our presence stabilizes or protects and, as a result, they support attacks on our troops. All the better to get us the hell out.
The question, of course, is why we don't. What's the compelling national interest in occupying a country that deplores our presence? That murders our soldiers? That depletes our treasury? That shows no sign, hint, or hope of molding itself to our desires?
There is none. Instead, we remain in Iraq because the current Administration is afraid to put a loss on the board. We remain in Iraq to avoid a blow to our national self-esteem. So long as we've boots, guns, and grunts in their country, there's always the chance that a stretch of good weather and the tranquil vibes unleashed by the global orgasm for peace will calm the region down, and we'll be able to dart out in a moment of relative optimism and goodwill, reputation intact. To leave now, conversely, would be to admit defeat. And no one making the decisions — not the elected officials protecting their legacy nor the colonels seeking promotion — will be the one to codify our humiliation. That's understandable on an individual level, but in the aggregate, it means we're not merely asking men to die for a mistake, we're asking them to perish to protect our ego.
I not only think this neatly summarizes the reality of the situation, I think it's fast becoming a national consensus. Or will.
I haven't linked to a good animated cereal commercial for a while so how about this one? It's a vintage spot for Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes. The late, great Thurl Ravenscroft provides the voice of Tony and his little nephew (son?) is voiced by Hal Smith, who is probably best remembered today for his role as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Here you go…
So the O.J. Simpson "If I Did It (nudge nudge, wink wink)" specials and book are cancelled. Not surprising. I am curious, of course, to know if the same kind of money is still going to him or his kids or wherever it was going. Also, is the book cancelled or is Harper-Collins merely washing its hands of it? One assumes that there'll be some publisher out there eager to publish…or that at the very least, copies of the text will leak onto Ye Olde Internet.
Assuming the money is still being paid, I don't know that this is "good news" or (at least) as good as it would have been for the shows and book to appear and then be shunned and ignored. But there is something nice in the fact that it'll be quite some time before any respectable company thinks of getting into business with Simpson.
And was there really a "confession" involved in any of this? Did Simpson confess or was that something Judith Regan and her associates exaggerated in order to hype an ambiguous, highly speculative account of the murders? You have to wonder if the reason they cancelled the whole, sordid ball of wax was that someone in Rupert Murdoch's office looked over the shows and read the book and said, "We're selling this as Simpson's confession. If it was that, we'd go ahead with it…but it isn't enough of a confession to get us off the moral hook."
The Cartoon Network folks have set up a nice little webpage called Saturday Morning Forever which features classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, most of which (I can't help but point out) never — or almost never — ran on Saturday morning. But there are some real goodies over there from the early days of H-B. This link will take you directly to a classic Quick Draw McGraw cartoon where you can thrill to the exploits of El Kabong as written by the great Michael Maltese and voiced by the incomparable Daws Butler and Don Messick.
The page loads slowly and you may have to sit through an ad or two. But hey, it's a free cartoon. How often do you get that these days? I mean, besides on my webpage. Thanks to Robert Spina for the tip.
Jerome Robbins was one of the great directors in the history of musical theater. Even people who had good and sufficient reason to detest him as a human being admired his prowess as a director. In 1989, as one of his final contributions to his art, he supervised the creation of Jerome Robbins' Broadway, a show comprised of scenes from his many shows.
It made for quite a wonderful evening in the theater and I always wondered why it didn't have a longer run — only 633 performances in New York, plus a touring company that I saw in L.A. At the time, Las Vegas was experimenting with the importation of Broadway hits and I thought it would be an ideal show for that town. It was full of familiar material — some of it a bit sexy — and it could be cut to almost any length by dropping this or that number. Perhaps there was a large nut involved in obtaining all the rights. In his autobiography, Arthur Laurents — who wrote the books for Gypsy and West Side Story — told of Robbins, with whom he did not get along when those shows were produced, having to come to him years later and humbly ask for permission to include scenes from them in the compilation. No doubt some of the authors took the opportunity to settle old personal issues with Robbins, but some probably demanded hefty sums.
Our clip today is a five minute sampler from Jerome Robbins' Broadway, which had a pretty good cast. If you look fast, you'll see Jason Alexander playing Pseudolus in the "Comedy Tonight" number from A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum and I think that's Charlotte D'Amboise as Peter Pan. I'm not sure why this little montage was assembled but I'm glad someone put it together.
In addition to listening to the Bob Keeshan interview today, I've also been amusing my ears with Shokus Internet Radio, which is the new online station being set up by my friend Stuart Shostak. I mentioned this the other day here but that was before I'd spent some time listening to some of the "test" shows he has playing in rotation, in advance of the station's official launch. Stu has a couple of goodies there, especially The Soundtrack Show, which oughta interest the kind of person who comes to this website.
I'm fairly new to the world of Internet Radio and I'm fascinated by it. There are channels that play rock or folk songs of showtunes or classical jazz…but there are also "niche" channels, like several that only play music heard at Disney theme parks or old Jack Benny radio shows or things like that. So I've been sitting here today, working on a script but with various Internet radio stations — mostly Stuart's but also a few others — on Live365, a network I'd never explored before. There's some very pleasant listening to be found there. You can tell that some of the stations are "programmed" by people who really know and are passionate about the material they present.
The only downside is one you'll all understand. Usually, I work with the TV on. So every time the phone rings today, instead of muting the sound on the Internet radio channel, I reach for my TiVo remote and hit "pause." Which doesn't do a damned thing.
Speaking of Kid Show Hosts, as we've been doing here…
A great way to waste hours on the Internet is to watch the oral history interviews of the Archive of American Television. This Academy-run project is interrogating significant folks in the world of broadcasting and from time to time, they put some of the videos up on Google News so we can all enjoy them instead of getting our work done.
There's a great one up now: Seven parts which comprise a 3-and-a-half hour interview with Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan. It was recorded in 1999, five years before he passed away. I'm about halfway through it and his perspective is quite interesting. I got to spend some time with Mr. Keeshan when we worked together on a show and I found him to be a thoughtful and serious gentleman with a genuine concern about the impact of television on kids. We had a few friendly debates about rather trivial aspects of the whole situation…and let me tell you: It ain't easy arguing with Captain Kangaroo. I mean, come on. Even out of costume, he's Captain Kangaroo. I was terrified of offending him and not just because I was afraid Mr. Moose would drop ping-pong balls on me if I did.
Despite that, I felt he paid great attention to what I said and gave it proper consideration. At one point, he said — and I wish I could remember the exact words but this is close — "I hope you understand that I respect your viewpoint. At times, I fear I have the tendency to come across to adults as if I'm treating them like children…when in my mind, the opposite is true. I always believe I'm talking to children like they're adults." The secret of his success may lie somewhere in that belief.
I don't know that historians of kids' TV have ever properly assessed his impact beyond the confines of that one little long-running show on CBS. I believe he did a lot to make broadcasters everywhere conscious that that they had a responsibility beyond the sale of Cocoa Krispies; that in entertaining younger audiences, they had to be constructive as opposed to exploitive. More importantly perhaps, he made parents aware that they had a right and a duty to expect that. Having been a kid when he went on the air, I was somewhat conscious of what changed in my daily programming, not always to my liking or (I now think) benefit. It was years later that I began to realize how much of that change was due to the industry's reaction — and in some cases, overreaction — to the success of Captain Kangaroo. I expect that in later parts of the online interview, he'll be talking about that. I certainly hope so.
Seymour Hersh (who's generally been right) says that the C.I.A. (which hasn't) has concluded that Iran is far from developing a nuclear weapon capability. Dick Cheney (who really hasn't been right) may not let that dissuade him from wanting to invade with all those extra troops that John McCain says we should send to Iraq and which we don't have in the first place.
Every time I've worked on a flop TV show — and I've had ample experience at that, thank you — there comes a moment when you know it's over. And then there comes a moment when you know it's really over. And then there comes a moment when you know it's really, really over.
The last of these stages is usually denoted by some person — the last guy you'd figure to do this, the guy who always thought we had a hit — going around, telling everyone, "I never thought this would work." It meant that things were going so badly that even he was trying to distance himself from the show…trying to make people think it was someone else who thought it was a great idea.
Odd how I was reminded of that this morning when I read that Henry Kissinger is saying that in his opinion, a military victory in Iraq is no longer possible.
Looks like it's really, really over. Which, alas, doesn't mean they're going to stop dying over there.