The Tony for the best musical revival went to the new production of 42nd Street, now ensconced at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts located on — where else? — 42nd Street. If it had been up to me, I'd have given the award to the new production of Follies but the winner is […]
The Tony Awards were held on June 3. On June 5, three of this season's Broadway entries — Bells Are Ringing, Jane Eyre and A Class Act — announced they would close the following Sunday and a day later, Follies posted a closing date of July 14. Something of the sort happens almost every year […]
Gene Deitch, an animation director with a long and varied career, has penned an on-line autobiography which is presently posted on the Animation World Network site. Here's a direct link to Mr. Deitch's memoirs, which are well worth the attention of any cartoon buff. Any cartoon buff will also enjoy my pal Jerry Beck's website, […]
The original production of Follies hit Broadway in April of 1971 and lasted a little more than a year (522 performances). The book was by James Goldman, the songs were by Stephen Sondheim, and the whole affair was a critical but not a financial success. Briefly, Follies is the tale of a troupe of former […]
I'll probably do you a favor if I don't rave overlong about the new musical version of The Producers, which I saw last Wednesday evening. Is it good? Yes. Is it a wonderful evening in the theatre? Again, yes. Is it as spectacularly earth-shattering wonderful as the reviews, buzz, Tony Awards and wait for tickets […]
It's not something that will ever make my résumé but last year, I worked for two months at Stan Lee Media, the Internet company founded to promote the new creations of the exiled guru of the Marvel Universe. My personal affection 'n' respect for Stan sucked me into an enterprise that everyone seemed to know […]
A new trend in show biz biographies is something I call a "corrective." You, famous and beloved celebrity that you are, pen your autobiography. Then, a few years later — probably after you're dead — someone else writes the book that unearths your skeletons and says, in effect, "He made half that stuff up. Here's […]
Sight unseen, I'm going to recommend The John Buscema Sketchbook, a forthcoming release from my pal J. David Spurlock and his Vanguard Press. (How can I recommend a book I haven't seen? Well, I've seen David's other entries in his "sketchbook" series about folks like Al Williamson, Carmine Infantino and Neal Adams, so I know […]
Frightening statistics dept.: Gary Grossmann is a rabid fan of Groo and other aberrant comic books that I do with Sergio Aragonés. He's been helping me with a complete Groo Index that will soon be added to this site and he informs me that, as of today, we have done 3793 pages of Groo stories. […]
Today, we have a correction to make. In an article on this site, I state that the first voice job done by the great Stan Freberg was for a Warner Brothers cartoon called For He's A Jolly Good Fala. It involved him doing an impression of Franklin Delano Roosevelt but when F.D.R. died, the cartoon […]
Good article by Michael Kinsley (here) on the Republicans' silly belief that they have some sort of mandate or entitlement to lead. What I'd like to see is someone point up the inherent silliness of talking about "the reds vs. the blues" and showing the map of which states went for Gore and which went […]
Programming note: Starting Monday, June 11, the Trio cable network is running old episodes of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Monday through Friday…and they're running them in the hour format, with only a few trims to accommodate more commercials. These shows were briefly (and unsuccessfully) syndicated in chopped-up half-hours some time ago; oughta be interesting to […]
I want to elaborate on something mentioned earlier here. There have been many histories written or, more often, written and televised about the making of Sid Caesar's various TV shows: Admiral Broadway Revue, Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour, Sid Caesar Invites You, As Caesar Sees It and a couple of subsequent specials. Way too […]
One of the great things about writing comic books is also one of the bad things: It demands constant and consistent output over a long period of time. To make anything resembling a living, you have to write three or four complete stories a month, often juggling them simultaneously, finishing one and then leaping, sans […]
I expected not to like Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the new Showtime movie written by Neil Simon and drawn from his days working for Sid Caesar. Critics have been generally unkind to it and, besides, I liked but did not love the Broadway play of the same name, which also starred Nathan Lane in […]