Monthly Archives: December 2010

I am, as you know, in favor of the Affordable Care Act…that piece of legislation that some call "Obamacare." I think it doesn't go nearly far enough but I think it's a good first step. I have several correspondents who are opposed to it and they often send me links to articles that, they think, will get me to change my mind. This morn, two separate individuals sent me the results of a new CNN poll (link to PDF) which they thought would convince me that since a majority of the public is against the A.C.A., it must be bad. I don't know why they think this. They all hate Obama and always have. When he won a significant majority vote in this country (a real vote, not a poll), none of them said, "Oh, well then he must be good." But somehow, since a majority of Americans don't (they say) want Obamacare, it must be bad. Anyway, here's the question they cited from this poll…

As you may know, a bill that makes major changes to the country's health care system became law earlier this year. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor or generally oppose it?

54% said they were opposed. 43% said they were in favor. So if we're talking about what America wants, it would appear 54% thinks Obamacare should be cut way back or repealed or something of the sort. But as several sites are noting this afternoon, that's not a fair representation of what this poll said. In fact, it's basically lying…because the follow-up question, asked of those who answered "oppose" was as follows…

Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach toward health care is too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough?

Turns out, the 54% who'd said they opposed the legislation breaks down like this: 37% thinks it's too liberal. 13% thinks it's not liberal enough. In other words, 13% thinks like I do that it should go farther.

So to present it the way my correspondents did and as others are doing is just dishonest. A true representation of this poll would be that 37% of respondents think the A.C.A. is too liberal while 56% think it's either just right or needs to be more liberal.

Of course, one could suggest that it's just one poll so maybe it shouldn't be taken that seriously. Right, Hank and Roger?

Several friends have written to say that they also doubt the tale Milton Berle told in his autobiography about having fathered an illegitimate child. I should have mentioned another reason I find it questionable. In the book, Berle makes a big deal of saying that he will take the secret to his grave; that the young man in question will never know he was sired from the loins of Mr. Television. But Berle tells enough of the story that if it is true and his son or some friend of his read it, they could easily figure it out. If you really want to carry a secret to your grave, you don't divulge any part of it…and certainly not as much as Uncle Miltie did.

A reader of this site named Ray sent me this link to a story I'd never heard. A man in Arizona named Bob Williams found out one day he was the illegitimate son of Milton Berle. This is a different illegitmate son than the one Berle wrote about in his book. He didn't mention this one there. He also didn't feel the need to take this secret to his grave as he told this son and admitted it to a reporter. Make of that what you will.

I mentioned my old employer, TV producer Jimmie Komack here. This prompted questions from Dave Harvey…

As is often the case when I read your posts, it prompts some additional internet browsing. I looked up James Komack on Wikipedia and IMDB, and was wondering if you could answer a couple questions.

Do you have any knowledge of the Milton Berle illegitimate son story? Did Mr. Komack ever verify or refute this story?

Komack was a highly successful writer/producer for a long time, but for the last decade or so of his life, he has zero IMDB credits. Was that Hollywood ageism at work, or something else?

Thanks for your always engaging website.

Well, I didn't know Jimmie all that well. During the season I worked for him on Welcome Back, Kotter, he and our star Gabe Kaplan weren't, to put it politely, quite getting along; you know, the way Israel and Palestine don't quite get along. The Kotter staff more-or-less broke into two camps — the Komack camp and the Kaplan camp — and my partner and I were on the Kaplan side.

Despite this, I got along okay with Jimmie and liked him even though there was no real reason to. He seemed to get a kick out of the fact that I knew his background, dating back to when he was a stand-up comic and about as far down that ladder as you could possibly be. He had an amazing career, working his way up to an actor, then a director, then a producer and finally the executive producer of a few hit shows.

He struck me as very savvy at knowing how to appease the networks at that moment…and that's about the only skill of his I ever saw. I'd be very surprised if any of the dozens of writers he employed over the years would say, "That Jimmie Komack…he knew comedy." His three big producing successes (The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Chico and the Man, and Welcome Back, Kotter) all struck me as cases where he let someone else run the show…and was wise enough to have it be the right someone. After that, it was a lot of short-term flops and failed pilots especially when he got more involved.

One day while I was working for him, he had two new series cancelled…on the same day. ABC cancelled Mr. T and Tina starring Pat Morita. NBC cancelled, without ever airing a single episode, a series called Snip! starring David Brenner. Both axed the same day. I remembered that back when Komack had appeared in the Broadway play and movie of Damn Yankees, he'd had a line where he said, "Three for five! Three for five!" His character was proud that he'd gotten three hits in five "at bats." So I went into his office and called out, "Three for five, Jimmie! Three for five!"

There are moments in this world when you start to say something and just as you pass the Fail Safe moment — the point where there's no stopping yourself — you realize maybe it's the precise wrong thing to say. As I reached that moment, I caught a clearer glimpse of his expression. He looked like his whole family had died and I knew he wouldn't laugh at what was already coming out of my mouth. Indeed, he did not. He stared at me with horror and hatred as if to say, "Why are you bothering me in my hour of grief?"

Then a very long four seconds later, he "got it" — he still had three hits out of five series he'd sold through his own company — and he started laughing uproariously. I remember that because in all the time I worked for him, it was the only time I said or wrote anything he seemed to think was funny.

One day, he asked me into his office and in an odd way, quizzed me if everything was all right with me, personally. Was I happy? Was I depressed? I told him apart from the insane hours I was working, everything was peachy. He said, "Well, you know…if you ever have a problem, personal or professional, you can come to me. My door is always open if you just want to talk." I had no idea what that was all about. Neither did several others in the office who heard similar things from him. A week or two later, the star of Chico and the Man committed suicide and we all went, "Aha!"

He was very pragmatic and realistic about where he was in the TV business. He used to say, "When I get cold, I'll get ice cold." After a bunch of shows beyond his three hits failed, he got ice cold. I don't think he suffered from ageism at all. I think he just had too damn many flops. When your ratio goes out of whack like that, buyers wonder if you've lost your touch…or maybe never really had one in the first place. Either way, they don't line up to buy from you.

The next-to-last time I saw him, he was about to direct the third Porky's movie and he was talking about how this would be his comeback (he didn't use that word) and how he'd be back again. The film was roundly disliked and didn't do much business…and I think that was it for Mr. Komack. He didn't do much of anything after that.

The last time I saw him was during the '88 Writers Guild strike. There was a big upcoming vote and some of us who wanted the then-on-the-table offer to be defeated were scurrying to amass proxies from members who wouldn't be attending the meeting. I was working at WGA HQ and Jimmie came in with his. He wanted to entrust his vote to someone who'd vote against the offer and when he found out I could be that person, he came over and gave it to me. It was a brief but awkward conversation as he was not in great health or spirit. I'm surprised he made it to '97, which is when he died. Some time before then, he tried and failed a few times to assemble a Welcome Back, Kotter reunion TV-movie.

We never discussed the Berle rumor and I guess I need to explain what that's all about. In his 1975 autobiography, Milton Berle "revealed" that he'd once gotten a prominent actress pregnant and that she'd had the baby but convinced another man (one who married her) that it was his. The actress, her husband and the baby were all unnamed in the book but Berle said that the kid had grown up to be a prominent TV producer with several hits on the air. This has led some people to deduce it was Jimmie Komack.

Jimmie never mentioned it to me but I don't believe it. For one thing, the timetable doesn't work out. Berle was born in 1908 and Komack in 1924, and the story Berle tells in his book of getting this woman pregnant did not occur when he was 16 years old; more like in his mid-to-late-twenties. Secondly, in the book Berle talks about how a "kid" who claimed to be a TV producer approached him at a charity event about maybe appearing in a pilot he was producing.

Berle didn't know who the kid was, didn't think he was legit and brushed him off. Only later did Uncle Miltie find out the "kid" had several hit shows on…and that he was the son of that actress — i.e., his son. What's wrong with that tale? Everything, starting with the fact that Berle and Komack had traveled in many of the same circles for years and must have crossed paths many times before that charity event. Also, Komack was fifty years old when he had his second hit (Chico and the Man) — hardly a kid — and I don't think his mother was in show business.

So who was Berle's illegitimate son? My guess is no one. I think he made the whole thing up, just as he probably made up the story he told in the same book about coming out to Hollywood as a kid and playing the newsboy opposite Charlie Chaplin in Tillie's Punctured Romance. Berle had three children, all adopted, and he was hypersensitive to rumors that he was gay. People do whisper such things when you spend half your career prancing about in women's clothing and acting like a campy drag queen.

I do know I never saw Komack taking after his alleged father like that. Then again, like I said, I didn't know him that well.

Hey, remember that couple that lost it all on the first episode of The Million Dollar Money Drop? They had the right answer but the show didn't know it and ruled them wrong.

Since they blew the last, "all or nothing" question, they probably would have gone home with bupkis anyway but due to outrage on the Internet, the producers have announced they'll have that couple back to play again. This is not only fairness, it's just Good Television. On a show like that, you want contestants for whom the audience will root. Aren't you more inclined to root for that couple than for someone new?

Mark Thorson, who reads this site and sends me invaluable typo corrections, sent me the link. He asks, "…how can that happen unless they film some new shows?" Answer: The producer is assuming there will be more shows. Perhaps they already have a network order.

Which big retailers are naughty around the holidays and which are nice? Consumer Reports is making a list and checking it twice.

There could still be a late arrival but it looks like this is going to be the first Christmas in quite some time when no one sent me alcohol. All my friends know I don't drink that stuff…not even beer or wine. Somehow, each year, one or more friends forget and I wind up with a bottle or three that has to be given away. Once in a while, the recipients of this regifting are very impressed with the rarity and price of some wine or liqueur and very glad that I don't appreciate or want it.

In the eighties, the rerouting of such gifts was easier. My mother worked each holiday season at Jurgensen's, a gourmet-type grocery and liquor store in Beverly Hills. Until they promoted her to a job that anyone else could have done, she was the head gift-wrapper…and let me brag: My mother in her prime was the best gift-wrapper you ever saw. They were exquisite. If you were fortunate enough to get a gift wrapped by my mother, you might well not open it because what was inside could not possibly be as beautiful as the exterior. I sent out some expensive gifts back then and it only dawned on me later that I could have gotten away with giving bags of garbage if I'd had my mother wrap them. No one would ever have found out.

Anyway, when I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter, my mother and I invented the Instant Gift Redirect. Our Executive Producer Jimmie Komack used Jurgensen's that year to send wine to everyone he knew. My mother spotted my address on a list and called me up and said, "I have a bottle of Chateau Lafite Something [I forget the name] here for you from Jimmie Komack. What do you want me to do with it?"

"Send it to my agent," I told her and I gave her the address and told her what to write on the card. The next day, she called up to say, "I have a bottle of wine here for you from your agent. What do you want me to do with it?" I told her to send it to Jimmie Komack.

We did this for years…as long as she worked for Jurgensen's. Sometimes, it wasn't as neatly symmetrical as that but it spared me having a lot of bottles around I didn't want. Often of course, I received wine that didn't come from Jurgensen's but we had a solution for that, too. I'd take those bottles over to my parents' house when I visited and my mother would sneak them into Jurgensen's and send them out for me via Jurgensen's delivery methods. After we did this for a while, she felt guilty so she told the manager and offered to have the costs deducted from her paycheck. The manager laughed, decided it was a great idea and he began bringing in unwanted bottles that had been delivered to his home and having them sent out to others.

My favorite moment in all this came when I was working for a producer named…well, I'd better not give his real name because he might still hire me again. I'll call him Howard Producer and tell you that he was a very important Hollywood-type person and he was also a wine snob. The one time he allowed me into his home, I was subjected to a ritual that was apparently required of all visitors — a tour of his wine cellar. It was huge and temperature-controlled and filled with bottles that he fingered like rare Ming Dynasty artifacts. Though I tried to explain to him that I did not know one wine from another, he would cradle one and say, as if it was the most impressive thing one could possibly say, "This is a 1947 Bordeaux from the hinterlands of greenbriar country and it was bottled on a Thursday by the infamous Maria." Then he'd wait for me to adopt a jealous expression and indicate that I realized what an awesome thing that was to own. I learned to just go "Wowww" a lot. I also learned that he took his wine seriously. Didn't even snicker when I asked, "Hey, you got any Manischewitz around this dump?" and followed it up by inquiring, "What's a good year for Ripple?"

So, getting back to Jurgensen's: That same year, my mother called and said, "I have a bottle here for you from Howard Producer. Where do you want me to send it?" I thought for a second and told her, "Send it to Howard Producer." I thought it would make a nice Christmas present…give Howard back his own wine.

It saved me shopping for something. It saved me getting it delivered and paying for it and it also saved me having to figure out to do with that bottle of wine. But the best moment came when we went back to work after the holidays. Howard came by my desk to thank me for the wine. Then he leaned in carefully and said, "Listen, next time you send out wine to people as a gift, check with me and I'll suggest a few. It's important to make a good impression in this town and you don't want people to think you're the kind of guy who'd give out that kind of wine."