Yearly Archives: 2013

I seem to not have received a number of e-mails the last few days that honest friends of mine say they sent me. If you sent something that should have been answered, please send it again. Thanks.

Some time ago here, we had some postings about My Living Doll, a one-season (1964) CBS sitcom that starred Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar. It was intended to replicate the recent success of the same producer's My Favorite Martian on the same network. The formula went kind of like this: Here's this normal-but-excitable person and they suddenly have in their life this alien, inhuman creature who looks normal but whose very presence and odd powers creates all sorts of problems. And then each week is about the normal-but-excitable person trying to deal with one such problem while keeping the inhuman creature's secret a secret.

In this case, the normal-but-excitable person was a swinging bachelor played by Mr. Cummings. The inhuman creature was a lifelike female robot played by Ms. Newmar. Given Mr. Cummings' age at the time, I thought she was more believable as a robot than he was as a swinging bachelor but what do I know? The series, which was picked up by CBS without a pilot, didn't catch on and there was much sturm und drang on the set…so much so that after 21 of its 26 episodes, Cummings abruptly departed. Was he fired or did he quit? Reportedly, it was a little of each but since he'd been carrying the bulk of the storylines, that was not a minor change. By that point, they probably all knew it was over and were just filling out the order.

Eleven episodes have been put out on a DVD set you can purchase here. It's Volume One but a Volume Two does not appear likely. The negatives of the show were reportedly destroyed and so the assemblers of the DVD were limited to using 16mm prints in the hands of collectors, and could only find eleven. There have been rumors that other episodes have been located — or may soon be located — but last I heard, they were just rumors.

Here's the first part of the first episode and I doubt you'll make it all the way through…

Because of something I posted the other day, I received a few messages from people thinking I'd said the late McLean Stevenson was an awful person. That sure wasn't how I felt the few times I encountered him. I didn't like my very brief stint working on The McLean Stevenson Show for reasons explained here…but those problems had little to do with Mr. Stevenson. I didn't even meet him during that period.

I actually met him a couple of years before that, back when he was still Henry Blaking it on M*A*S*H. As I've mentioned here, I used to occasionally wander the halls of NBC Burbank. Sometimes, I had a legit reason to be there; sometimes, I snuck in. That's impossible these days at any studio but back then — we're talking 1970-1976 here or maybe a bit later — it was not difficult. You just had to act like you had a reason to be there and knew where you were going. If you did, you could get in to watch them tape Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In or one of Bob Hope's specials. I'd visit The Dean Martin Show and watch people who were not Dean Martin rehearse — because he didn't do that — or I'd see The Flip Wilson Show being assembled. My favorite stop was Stage 1 where they did The Tonight Show. I'd try to get there around 2:00 when the band rehearsed and I cannot tell you how wonderful that band sounded in person. And of course, the best moment was later in the afternoon when they rolled tape and Johnny made his entrance.

One day, I was over there on actual business and I went by to hear the band. On my way out, I paused in the corridor outside where the big nine-cubicle set for Hollywood Squares was sitting, apparently undergoing repair work. A man walked by and said to me, "They're reinforcing the upper tier for when Orson Welles is on the show." The man who said this to me was McLean Stevenson, who was guest-hosting for Mr. Carson that evening. I think he thought I was someone he knew but anyway, we got to talking and I told him I was going to watch that evening. To my surprise, he said, "You want a preview of my monologue?" I said sure and he said, "Come on."

As he led me into Stage 1, where the band was just leaving from its rehearsal, he said, "I'm not sure about this bit I've got for this evening. Tell me if you think this is funny." I took a seat in the audience, he stepped over to Johnny's monologue position — a little star embedded in the floor — and did his routine just for me. I don't remember much about it except that he said something about how if his jokes didn't work, you'd never see his face again on the show. He followed this with a pretty awful joke, reacted like the audience had just groaned, and then he reached behind himself, pulled a paper bag out of his waistband and put it over his head. He did the rest of the monologue that way, finally peeking out at the end for some reason I don't recall. "You think that's funny?" he asked me. I did and I told him so…and that night on the show, it went over pretty well. But that was about the extent of our conversation. I was not yet working in the TV business and felt a little shy about making anything resembling a suggestion.

Around 1986, I spent a month I wish I could get back as a story editor on MacGyver. Now that I think of it, instead of making the joke about hating to work on The McLean Stevenson Show, I should have substituted MacGyver. Some day, I'll tell you why. Anyway, one day in the Paramount commissary, I found myself in the cafeteria line next to McLean and I reminded him about our Tonight Show moment — which he vaguely remembered — and told him I'd written on his first sitcom — which he preferred to forget but had to talk with me about. We wound up sharing a table for a very long lunch, discussing what went wrong with that show from his perspective and mine.

That was the first show he did after leaving M*A*S*H in what some industry onlookers have suggested was one of the stupidest career moves in the history of television. He didn't see it that way. To him, it was more a matter of taking a very promising gamble that didn't work out…and getting out of a work situation where he wasn't very happy.

I don't want to pretend I'm recalling his exact words with reasonable accuracy so I'll just summarize what I remember him telling me. He wasn't happy on M*A*S*H. Unlike the other members of the initial cast, it was not his first series. He'd played supporting roles before and was looking to move up to leads. Originally, he'd auditioned for…I don't recall if it was Hawkeye or Trapper but it was one of those. Offered the supporting role of Henry Blake instead, his instincts told him to decline but his agents urged him to take it and the producers assured him that if the pilot became a series, Henry Blake would be more than a supporting role. When the show did become a series, Henry Blake did not become more than a supporting role…and often when he did get some great scenes, they'd wind up being cut. (A few years later, I repeated all this to Larry Gelbart, who was the guy in charge when Stevenson was on M*A*S*H. Gelbart said it was an accurate account: "When an episode runs three minutes over, you have to look for the easiest place to cut three minutes. The easiest place was usually Mac because he was rarely involved in the main storyline.")

Further troubles erupted between Stevenson and the business folks at Twentieth-Century Fox, which produced the series. He found himself arguing over a dilapidated dressing room, over a lack of respect (he felt) for the cast's time and comfort, and other matters of that sort. One morning when he showed up at the correct early-morn time on location, no one else was there, there were no toilet facilities, there was no coffee, etc. He began complaining and began hating the company for which he worked — though never, he was quick to note, the co-stars or creative folks. Then there was the matter of money. It is customary on a hit show for the cast to renegotiate its deal upwards and indeed, Alan Alda and most of the others did. McLean said that when he asked for the same percentage increases, he was refused and it was made clear to him that they didn't think he had much to do with the show's success at all. Gelbart also confirmed most of this to me.

During this period, Mr. Stevenson was exploring other avenues. He guested amusingly on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and was soon guest-hosting. Turned out, he was pretty good at it. (That was his summation but also mine.) At that point, as I knew from other sources, there was a very strong possibility that Mr. Carson would be stepping down. He didn't, of course, but he was making noises like he would and NBC was quietly discussing replacements. McLean Stevenson was one of those under serious consideration.

Then NBC offered him a deal that paid him many times what M*A*S*H would have paid him over the next few years and included the possibility of The Tonight Show.  If he'd known how much longer M*A*S*H and Carson would be on the air, he might have elected to stay put…but eight more years for M*A*S*H and seventeen more for Johnny seemed pretty darned inconceivable at the time. If he took the peacock's offer, he could escape a production company he hated and which seemed to not be too fond of him. He could make a lot more money, at least for the foreseeable future…and he could see if it was possible for him to ascend to leads and starring roles.

The NBC contract might have segued into The Tonight Show and if it had, then leaving M*A*S*H would have seemed like canny career management. It might also have been seen as such if it led to a hit TV series of his own…which it didn't but at least on that first one, that did not seem to me to be because of any failing on his part. I can't say why his subsequent shows like Hello, Larry and In the Beginning didn't click…though I will note that both of those were series that were developed without him and that in both cases, he stepped into the leads at the last minute to try and save the proceedings. That rarely bodes well for a program.

I have fond feelings for McLean Stevenson for two reasons. One is that in our brief encounters, he seemed like a helluva nice guy. That doesn't necessarily mean he always was. I know some pretty awful human beings who can be civil and charming for whole hours at a time. But it's hard to not judge someone by your personal experiences.

And secondly, there's this: Show business is a field that requires taking the occasional gamble. It's hard to gain without a risk…and when a risk doesn't pay off, there are always plenty of folks around to grin and say, "I knew that would never work." If they gave Oscars for Monday Morning Quarterbacking, I know folks who'd have more than Meryl Streep does. If Johnny Carson had flopped on The Tonight Show, there are those who would have said, "I knew he should never have left that game show of his." Or if The Simpsons had failed, half the people in TV I know would have said, "Why didn't they ask me? I could have told them cartoons in prime-time never work!" Matter of fact — and I think I told this story here once before — around the time the M*A*S*H pilot was made, I heard a top TV executive say that "…trying to turn that movie into a weekly situation comedy is the stupidest, most sure-to-fail idea I've ever heard."

I could forgive the last guy. That was just a bad prediction but at least he made it before the results were in. Then again, if you listed every single new TV series that was about to debut and sight-unseen predicted its failure, you'd wind up with a not-unimpressive batting average, probably no worse than industry analysts who went show-by-show, studied the scripts and pilots and made considered projections. I'm not faulting bad predictions; just the saying of "I told you so" when you didn't tell us so. I wince when I see people mocking McLean Stevenson for departing the cast of M*A*S*H after its third season. He was a very talented performer and I've always thought he deserved better.

The knee's much better, thank you. Whether it will still be much better when the cortisone wears off is another question but we'll face that when it happens. I still have no idea what I should or shouldn't have done that might have prevented this from happening. Thanks to all who sent words of support. Thanks too to the makers of the knee brace that also gave me support.

It's something like 66 days until this year's Comic-Con International and yes, it feels like I just got home from the last one. At times, I have this feeling that the con is always there — you know, it's like Disneyland. If I drove down to the convention center today and went in, I'd see all those booths and all those dealers and people walking around dressed like Zatanna. I just for some reason only visit it four or five days each July, do my ninety-three panels and go home for another year. At other times, it feels like Brigadoon, this magical village that mysteriously appears every so often. The nice part of the latter concept is that when I think of it that way, I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

Well, I am off on a busy day. Just wanted to report on the knee for anyone who cares. It's nice to think that no matter what happens this week, I can't possibly be in any more pain than I was on Friday…

I wrote an article some time ago about Rod Hull, a very brave and funny man with a very odd act. Here he and his Emu are on The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, which aired on CBS in 1974…

Over at Dateline Hollywood, they're saying that Last Call with Carson Daly was recently renewed for another year. I dunno what's up with this alleged new interview show with Alec Baldwin.

There's also this over there…

Looks like Jay Leno is going out on top. In his final May as host of The Tonight Show, Leno is No. 1 on the late-night heap for the first full week of the sweep and drawing some of his best ratings in months. That's a success story that could prove awkward for NBC at next week's upfront presentation as it sets the stage for Jimmy Fallon to take over The Tonight Show next year. It's a situation made all the more uncomfortable because NBC has been boasting about Leno's results, and the struggling network's only other heavyweights right now besides Leno are The Voice and Sunday Night Football. Then there's the fact that Fallon is in a far tighter race in his current 12:35 AM time slot than Leno is at 11:35 PM. With 3.4 million viewers on average for the week of April 29-May 3, The Tonight Show easily bested CBS' The Late Show With David Letterman (2.8 million viewers) and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2.5 million viewers). ABC ran a Kimmel encore show on May 3 as it usually does on Fridays. Over the frame, Leno matched his ratings result of the comparable week last year with a 0.8/3 among adults 18-49. That translated into 1.039 million viewers in the demo last week compared with Letterman's 0.6/3 (766,000 viewers) and Kimmel's 0.6/3 (820,000).

Leno's "farewell" months are likely to be studded with big guests and attention-getting stunts so he probably will go out on top. This was something that wasn't anticipated with the Leno/O'Brien handoff. They figured that while his last month or three might get big ratings because he was leaving, the year or two before that would be down so much that Conan would bring an uptick in the numbers. The network lost confidence in Conan pretty swiftly when that didn't happen even though a lot of that was due to their own bad prediction. I'm just rather fascinated to see what Jay does once he's a free agent. I can't think of another performer who ever left a show against his own wishes who ever had this kind of track record.

So can someone suggest a good piece o' software that will let you write blog posts offline and upload them to your site? I've been using w.bloggar for a decade now and it seems to be going the way of the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon and Alan Thicke's career. It was never that wonderful and I'm thinking there's gotta be another. My computer doesn't like Windows Live Writer.

It's been announced that Seth Meyers will be the new host of Late Night. A friend of mine over at NBC tells me that despite many submissions, no one else was seriously considered for the position. What was considered was not installing anyone in there at all and instead putting The Tonight Show back to 90 minutes and moving up what follows. "It came down as it always seems to these days to a matter of money," he writes. NBC is looking for the parlay of Fallon and Meyers to cost a lot less to produce than the combo of Leno and Fallon. My friend also speculates that in an effort to make things different from the hour before, Late Night with Seth Meyers may wind up looking a bit more like The Daily Show (or SNL's Weekend Update) than the shows formerly headed in that time slot by Letterman, O'Brien and Fallon. My guess is they don't know what the show is yet…but they do need to find a way to make it different.

Here's the New York Times piece on the announcement. There's no mention of earlier reports that NBC was signing Alec Baldwin to do a late night interview show. There's also no mention of Last Call with Carson Daly, which under different names has been there now since January of 2002. But then there's never any mention anywhere of Last Call with Carson Daly.

Several weeks ago here, I asked folks to send me their explanations for what it was that Jay Leno did during the whole Jay/Conan do-si-do that was so treacherous and unethical. I only got a few entries, most of them prefaced by, "Well, I don't believe this but some people say…" I'll be running a few along with my responses shortly but if anyone would like to get on this, we're still accepting indictments.

Not that anyone cares much but lately, I'm more bored by the late night shows than I've ever been. I can't get into either Jimmy or Conan at all. I like Jay's monologues and when he has a guest on that excites him. I like the latter with Dave but don't see that often. My fave is still Craig Ferguson but I wish he'd cut down the dancing and mugging. He also has nights when he seems to think the job description involves not letting guests finish paragraphs. I just got but have not had time to install a new TiVo for my office. It can record four stations at the same time so I may record more of the late night shows…but I bet I wind up watching them for less total time, especially when Jay goes off.

Michael Tomasky, who is far from a loon, believes the Republicans will try to impeach Barack Obama for…well, anything they think they can. I mean, it's not like there are any problems in this country that need real attention…

Folks are writing me to note it's Mother's Day and to ask if that makes me miss my mother who left at least this planet last October. No more than yesterday did or tomorrow will. We were never big on holidays in our family. We kinda went through life as if every day was a holiday. I was just as likely to give my mother a gift on any day as I was on Mother's Day. I was less likely to take her out to dinner on Mother's Day because she hated going to restaurants when they were crowded.

I felt so bad for her the last decade or so as she suffered with endless hospitalizations and diminishing vision that I have trouble missing her from that period. And it was during that period that I got through missing the woman she was before that. I do have one lingering void. Most days between 5 PM and 6 PM, I get that feeling that there was something I was supposed to do and I've forgotten to do it. Then I realize: If I didn't see her that day, I always phoned her between 5 and 6. That's what I keep forgetting to do, now that I can't.

I learned a lot about my mother while cleaning out her house before I sold it. I also learned a few things about me. One of the things she had stashed away in a drawer was a Woody Woodpecker comic book story I wrote and drew with crayola at age 7 — or, as we might put it, 12 years before I was writing the real Woody Woodpecker comic book. I also found my first typewriter — the one she got for me with many books of Blue Chip Stamps. I was about 15 when we picked it up and I pounded away on it until I was about 22. It was a manual with keys so unresponsive that I couldn't touch-type on it. I had to type with my index fingers and space with my thumbs. The ribbon on it still seems to be good but my index fingers aren't.

Neither of my parents ever understood my career but they trusted that I did. That was one of the best things they did for me. Another was that they pretty much let me find my own way in the world. I never got a lecture about "the birds and the bees" — or much of anything else for that matter. My father was too inhibited (I guess you'd say) to deliver a father-son lesson about sex so one day, long after another male parent might have seen his duty and done it, my mother sat me down. She said, "Dad and I were talking about whether you two need to have a discussion about sex and things like that."

I said, "I think I've figured it all out."

She said, "We figured you would." Then she added, "Dad will be very happy when I tell him he doesn't have to do it."

She was a great organizer. Several years there, we volunteered our home as a polling place and my mother supervised the voting and, before voting machines came in, the actual counting-by-hand of the ballots. She also ran programs for my school and did volunteer work for charities, and some election years she'd get involved at the local Democratic Headquarters. But her greatest bit of organizing may have been her management of The Tuna Fish.

We had a neighbor who had a son who worked down in San Pedro for a company that processed tuna and other fish, canning it for restaurant sales. They didn't output small cans of the stuff. They were all huge — about a foot in diameter, six to eight inches high…and unlabelled. That is, there'd be no label on the can.  Apparently, at some point on the assembly line, if a can lost its label, anyone who worked there could just take it home…and the son knew which ones were tuna and which weren't.  Whenever he went to visit his mother, he'd bring her one even though she didn't like tuna. Is that a son or not?  "Here, Mom…here's another ton of that stuff you won't eat!"

So she'd give it to us and my mother would direct the distribution of its contents to seven or eight neighbors. I mean, we liked tuna but you can only have it so often.  And there was no point freezing it since more was always on the way.

My mother would pick a date a few weeks in the future…say, August 3rd. She would then phone each of these selected neighbors and inform them that August 3 would be a Tuna Day; that on that day, Mark would be bringing them a free supply of tuna so don't, for example, serve your family a tuna-noodle casserole the night before. Everyone gratefully marked Tuna Day on their calendars.

Come Tuna Day, it would be my job to open the can. This was not easy as they were too big to fit in my mother's electric can opener so I had to use the manual kind. It took quite some time. Once I finally got the lid off, my mother would spoon tuna into eight or nine plastic containers, including a big one for us, and store them in our refrigerator, which she'd already rearranged so there'd be ample space. Then she would phone each neighbor to ask, "Are you ready for tuna?" This was to prevent me from carrying a container to a house down the block, finding no one home and then having to carry it back. We decided that between the hot sun and the volume of stray cats around, it would not be a good idea for me to leave it on the porch.

If the tuna recipients were there and primed to receive tuna, she'd dispatch me on my appointed rounds…and the neighbors would be very happy. A few insisted on tipping me a buck or two, then they'd take it in and commence making tuna sandwiches, tuna salads, tuna croquettes, tuna casseroles and such. One lady told us she made tuna chow mein…to which I say, "Hey, why not?"

Then one memorable Tuna Day, I got the lid off and the contents looked odd. I thought at first we'd gotten a bad batch and I asked my mother to inspect it. She did, and it took her a minute or two to come to the shocking realization…

It wasn't tuna. It was salmon.

She laughed and I laughed and she began calling the neighbors and telling them, "Mark will be right over but it's not tuna this time. It's salmon." They were all fine with that and they proceeded to make salmon sandwiches, salmon salads, salmon croquettes, salmon casseroles…and that one woman made salmon chow mein, to which I again say, "Hey, why not?"

The following Tuna Day, I opened the can muttering, "I wonder what it'll be this time? Tuna? Salmon? Anchovies? Tennis balls?" I think I'd have preferred tennis balls to anchovies. It turned out to be tuna and when my mother called Mrs. Hollingsworth down the street to tell her tuna was on its way, Mrs. Hollingsworth said, "Oh…don't you have any salmon?"

It's Stooge Sunday and this week, boys and girls, we get the real lowdown on the Third Reich. You know who the first actor was to ever play Hitler on film? Well, most folks think it was Moe Howard in this short comedy, You Nazty Spy, which was released on January 19, 1940. That's almost two years before the United States declared war on Germany. The Stooges were ahead of Washington…and why are we not surprised?

What else to tell you about it? Larry Fine plays Goebbels and walks with a limp. This is not because Goebbels walked with a limp. He did…but Larry had injured himself shortly before filming commenced. Nice how that worked out, isn't it? Also, one of the writers was Clyde Bruckman, who we wrote about here last Stooge Sunday.

This film was one of the Stooges' favorites and it's the one Moe most often brought up in interviews in later years. It went over so well, they made a sequel…which you'll see here next Stooge Sunday. Buckle up and get ready for take off…

Here's a site where you can waste a good half-hour of your life. Christopher Moloney goes around with a camera and movie stills and places the stills into photos he takes of the same locations. Do you understand what I'm saying? If not, don't worry. It'll all be clear once you go visit FILMography.

A few weeks ago, we linked you to Part One of a two-part piece by Dick Cavett about the late, already-missed Jonathan Winters. Here's a link to Part Two. Pay attention to what he says about how TV producers didn't know how to package Jonathan for television…and ignore Cavett's distaste for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He's just wrong about that.