Category Archives: Show Biz

And speaking of Jack Benny, you might enjoy this little anecdote about him from Dick Cavett.

My buddy Stu Shostak, who's kind of like the Rupert Murdoch of Shokus Internet Radio, has the skinny on that photo I posted earlier of Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker, Ed Wynn and Buster Keaton…

That photo of Wynn and Keaton was taken during the filming of a March of Dimes special called The Scene Stealers, that was shot in 1960 and syndicated to local stations to help raise money. The premise was that Wynn and Keaton were vagrants out to do a good deed for the MOD and they snuck onto a movie lot (in this case, Paramount), then went from studio to studio to try to get stars to donate their time for the charity.

Stu also sends the sad news that actress Connie Hines, who was best known for her starring role as Alan Young's spouse on Mr. Ed, passed away yesterday. Last February, Stu did a great two-hour interview with Mr. Young and Ms. Hines on his radio program and he's repeating it tomorrow (Sunday) from Noon 'til 2 PM Pacific Time on his station. That's Shokus Internet Radio and to listen, just go to that website at the appropriate hour and click where they tell you to click.

Speaking of Buster Keaton, as I was earlier today: I'm intrigued by this photo which someone sent me a year or three ago. It's a shot of two stars of the TV show Bonanza, Lorne Greene and Dan Blocker, with comedians Ed Wynn and, of course, Mr. Keaton.

I'm presuming it was taken on the set of the one episode of Bonanza in which Mr. Wynn appeared — an episode called "The Ponderosa Birdman" which, research tells me, first aired on February 7, 1965. Keaton wasn't in that show but he was filming a lot of guest appearances then in various TV programs and movies, so I'm guessing he was shooting on the lot and came by to see his old pal, Ed. And there's something amusing to me about the fact that Buster is perfectly in character…and not smiling.

The L.A. Times archive folks dug up a 1959 article about a man named Louis Pollock. Pollock was a screenwriter who was blacklisted in 1954 not because of any political activities on his part — that would have been bad enough — but because some folks had him confused with a storeowner named Louis Pollack. Pollack (the storeowner) refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and the mix-up seems to have harmed the career of Pollock (the writer).

It would be a nice ending to this tale if, after the confusion was cleared up, the career of the writer Pollock had flourished. But a check on his IMDB listing does not list a whole lotta work after things were cleared up. It only lists one 1985 job on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which was quite a coup for Mr. Pollock when you consider that he passed away in 1964.

I couldn't help noticing that IMDB lists him as having been an uncredited writer on Lady and the Tramp. Since that movie came out in June of '55, it's possible — though I should think unlikely from the timing — that Pollock did whatever he did on it after he was blacklisted. Mr. Disney, despite all the tales of his right-wing politics, was willing to surreptitiously employ blacklisted writers. As I explained here, my old neighbors Al and Helen Levitt worked on several scripts for Walt during the period when they were effectively barred from writing under their own names. You'll notice that in that piece I wrote, I mentioned that one of the points they made about the blacklist was how sloppy its enforcement was, often confusing one person with another and blacklisting the wrong guy. Well, now here's Louis Pollock as a perfect example of that.

This month marks the fifty year anniversary of Second City, the Chicago-based institution that has output an amazing percentage of America's comedy talent the last few decades. Here's an article on the celebration.

There have been an awful lot of books released lately about comedians and comedy writing and just, in general, being funny. Back here, I recommended William Knoedelseder's book, I'm Dying Up Here, which is all about Comedy Store and about the 1979 strike that occurred there.

I would also recommend The Second City Unscripted by Mike Thomas, which is an oral history (i.e., a buncha interviews) with performers and writers who passed through the portals of the Harvard of improv comedy. There have been other books of this sort but this is one of the best…and being the most recent, it includes Stephen Colbert and other recent superstars of the Second City style of mirth. There is much to be learned herein by actors, even if they never venture into improv, and about how to play well with others.

And I'd also recommend Last Words, the posthumous autobiography of George Carlin. I dunno how much of it was written (or dictated) by Mr. Carlin before he left us and how much was the work of his co-author, Tony Hendra, who completed the work after. It's a pretty seamless whole though, and a nice insight into the life of the gent I think is the best stand-up comedian who ever lived. My one little quibble with it has to do with George's legendary Change of Life — the point in his career when he shifted from being a short-haired comedian entertaining the Merv Griffin audience to a long-haired one aiming at a younger audience. No doubt it was wrenching and courageous and ultimately satisfying for the man…but I always thought he was a bit of a pretentious bore on the topic, treating it as a major turning point in American culture. Since he was never pretentious or boring about anything else, it really stood out, and this book gives it a bit more importance than I think it deserved. But hell, he was George Carlin and he did plenty to erase pretension and fraud from our lives.

Lastly, I have less enthusiasm for Twenty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss, the autobiography of Tom Davis, who with Al Franken was a charter writer (and occasional performer) on Saturday Night Live. I always liked the man's work (or at least, the team's work) but his book rambles and it skips over vast gaps of his life and you can tell it was written by a fellow who did an awful lot of drugs. That is, you could tell if he didn't mention it on almost every page. His recollections of certain events are at odds with what has been reported elsewhere. Compare, for example, his account of the death of comedian Steve Lubetkin to what is said about it in the Knoedelseder book. Starting with his title, Davis makes a joke of how much he doesn't remember and then proceeds to prove it, even to the point of sharing e-mails he sent to Franken asking him to refresh his recollections. If you're interested in the early days of SNL, there are some good anecdotes and insights but it's one of those books where you want to reach in, tap the author on the shoulder and ask a lot of follow-up questions.

I have a whole pile of other books on comedy to get through. Watch for a follow-up post one of these days.

I love ventriloquists. I also love people who do something so well you can't imagine anyone doing it better. I was therefore in theatrical ecstasy last night attending The Two and Only, a one-person (one if you don't count puppets and ventriloquist figures) show starring Jay Johnson. You may remember Jay from his regular role as, of all things, a ventriloquist on the long-running sitcom, Soap. He talks about that in this stage production but he also talks about how and why he became a voice-tosser…and there's a touching, eye-moistening tale about his mentor, a ventriloquist named Arthur Sieving, who worked with a wooden partner named Harry O'Shea. Mr. Sieving built Johnson's first professional figure, Squeaky.

Before he got Squeaky, Johnson worked local events and amusement parks with a Juro-brand Jerry Mahoney figure. Back in the fifties, the Juro company manufactured thousands of these wonderful toys — in three editions. One was a small, clunky one with a movable mouth. The middle range one was built more like a real ventriloquist figure, albeit a bit smaller, and had a moving head in addition to the moving mouth. And then there was the high-end model, which added in moving eyes.

The model with the moving eyes was scarce. Johnson had the middle version…and so did every kid in the fifties who watched Paul Winchell on TV performing with the "real" Jerry Mahoney and thought, "I wanna do that." Most of us entertained our parents and the neighbors then, lacking the kind of drive you'd have to have to practice enough to be professional — and perhaps lacking the talent — we gave it up. And obviously, I'm using the first person here because I was one of them. That photo above of the kid with the Jerry Mahoney figure? That's not Jay Johnson. That's me.

Jay did not give up. As he explains in his show, he practiced and he practiced and he practiced and then he practiced some more. This is not merely a matter of learning how to talk without moving your lips. A ventriloquist has to be an actor, a puppeteer, a comedian and a bit of a magician. A lot of it is misdirection and acting, making the audience forget that the figure (what non-pros call the "dummy") isn't alive and isn't speaking on his/her/its own. Johnson is as good as anyone who's ever done this for a living. Like a great illusionist who gets you to wondering if maybe he somehow did really saw the lady in half, he makes a large part of your brain accept that there are two separate brains and mouths up there. In the 95 minutes or so he's onstage, Jay relates the history of his profession with surprising insight into its effect on the masses through the ages. He discusses his passions and what it all meant to him. And every so often, he hauls out a different friend made of cloth and/or wood and brings it to life. He also manages to be very, very funny.

He put this show together a few years ago with the help of directors Paul Kreppel and my old pal, Murphy Cross. They refined it in local theaters and then took it to Broadway where it won a Tony Award. It's back in Burbank for a limited engagement (too limited, I think) at the Colony Theater. If you can get there before December 13, get there before December 13. It has my highest recommendation. The guy is incredible.

In fact, I'll show you how incredible he is. Here's a clip from an appearance he made with Mr. Letterman. Keep an eye on his face. A lot of ventriloquists can talk without moving their lips but they adopt a frozen smile that makes them look like demented flight attendants. That inhibits their ability to react and be the proper straight man for their little wooden partners. Not Jay Johnson. Like I said: I can't imagine anyone doing this any better…

Nikke Finke posted this item on her blog under the headline, "Why Hollywood Moguls Are Such Dickwads?" (The URL title is "Why Are Hollywood Moguls Such Asswipes?" I wish she'd make up her mind.)

I found this interesting: Tobey Maguire last night was a guest on Conan and said the Sony Pictures execs wouldn't give him the Spider-Man suit even after he shot the first and second movies in the franchise. (Insiders now claim he never asked…) Calling it humilating, he said he mentioned it on Oprah. Only then did the studio send him not just one but two Spidey suits.

I don't get how the headline fits the item. First off, it doesn't even pretend to tell us "why." And though not one person in this town would question that moguls can be dickwads — if not asswipes — this isn't much of an example of that.

Then, you have to presume he asked for one. Finke admits the record isn't clear on that. Secondly, you have to presume he asked the appropriate Hollywood Mogul. If he asked, say, the person in charge of wardrobe, they probably didn't have the authority to hand over studio property worth — what? — a hundred grand or so? These movies are an ongoing franchise and it's kinda possible that they might need those costumes again.

Plus, there's this: Mr. Maguire just signed for Spider-Man 4 and 5 for a reported $50 million plus a share of profits. If he wanted a costume, his agent could have just called up the head of Sony and said, "Hey, Tobey would also like two Spider-Man suits and a couple of Maseratis," and they would have had them at his door within the hour.

And there's really this: A man named Steve Ditko designed that costume. What Tobey Maguire gets paid per day for wearing it is probably more money than Mr. Ditko has earned in his entire life. That strikes me as maybe a bigger injustice than the fact that Maguire had to ask on Oprah to get one.

I found this thanks to a link from my pal Aaron Barnhart. It's an article about the blacklisting that went on in the fifties, more specifically at CBS. What's chilling is that it incudes a reproduction of an actual "do not hire" list with names like Zero Mostel, Jack Guilford [sic], Leonard Bernstein, Howard da Silva, Gene Kelly, Burt Lancaster, Garson Kanin, Ruth Gordon and Philip Loeb. Philip Loeb is the actor who committed suicide because of what the blacklist did to his career.

Last evening, I journeyed with two buddies of mine — Alan Burnett and Gordon Kent — to the city of Cerritos, which is located about thirty miles south of Los Angeles.

First stop was an outlet of the Five Guys hamburger chain. As I've mentioned here, these places are popular in the East and South but almost non-existent (so far) in California. There are three in the state, one of which is on a Naval Base that is not accessible to the general public. But they serve the best "fast food" burgers I've ever had and the best french fries of any kind, so when I'm in any city that has 'em, that's where I head. Alan, Gordon and I were going to see Lewis Black at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts and, knowing there was a Five Guys about four miles from there, I persuaded my friends that was the place to dine.

They agreed with my opinion of the hamburgers and especially of the fries. Five Guys uses fresh potatoes at each of its locations and fries them in peanut oil. They're so good, I can't understand why every restaurant doesn't do that. When you taste one, you just know that's the way a french-fried potato is supposed to be.

Then it was over to the Performing Center. As usual, comedian John Bowman had the thankless task of opening before an audience that hadn't come to sit through an opening act. He easily won the crowd over by talking about, among other things, the fact that he wouldn't get paid unless he did his twenty minutes…so we were stuck. He also did a great impression of Lewis Black.

The genuine article then took stage and held a full house captive for about 75 minutes, all of which was new to me. Topics included the economy, why he thinks marijuana should be legalized, why he thinks anyone who supports either the Democratic or Republican party is an idiot, what it's like to follow Vince Gill on stage, Sarah Palin, Lew's parents, and what his (my) generation is leaving for the next one in line. None of it was particularly quotable but all of it was either funny or too painfully true to be funny.

Black's delivery is, of course, half the show. Someone else delivering the same lines wouldn't have the same impact, in part because Black sounds so sincerely indignant about it all. He has a way of connecting with the audience, getting us all on the same wavelength of outrage and cynicism to the extent where the audience starts laughing at the setups, never mind where he's going. If you've never seen the guy in person and you get the chance, don't let it pass you by. I try to go every time he's in Southern California — especially when he's near a Five Guys.

While in Vegas, I did not attend any of the ninety-seven thousand productions of Cirque du Soleil currently playing in that town. That had to wait 'til my return to Los Angeles.

Woke up at 9:30. Caught the shuttle to the airport at 11:30. The plane took off at 1:20 and landed a bit ahead of schedule at 2:12. Carolyn met me at the airport and we went for a late lunch, then out to Santa Monica Pier where a Cirque show called Kooza is currently packin' 'em in. This one is different from the others because…well, I guess it isn't. You've got your haunting music, your colorful (but sometimes bizarre) costumes, your incomprehensible and ignorable plot line, your intermittent clowns and your people doing physically impossible feats.

There are three women who bend and balance with amazing poise and flexibility. There's an amazing juggler. There are four tightrope walkers who'll have you holding your breath. There's a lady who flies about via trapeze. There's a gentleman who balances on a precarious perch, a dozen chairs high and does one-handed handstands. There's a pickpocket. There's a unicyclist who balances a lady all over his body while unicycling. There are people who leap on a teeter-totter and send others hurtling through the air. Then there's this thing, which they call The Wheel of Death…

I dunno. Even if I were a trained athlete with the physical prowess of those two guys, I'm not sure I'd want to make my weekly paycheck by being in or on something called The Wheel of Death. Carolyn had a better name for it. She called it The Double Hamster.

In person, of course, it's even scarier than it is in a teensy YouTube embed. During an act like that (or the tightrope daredevils who close Act One), I find myself reminding myself: These folks do this eight to nine times a week on stage and goodness-knows-how-many-more in rehearsal. Just because it's the first time I've seen it doesn't mean it's the first time they've attempted it. Still, there are moments — including one "slip" I suspect was planned — when you find yourself wondering if you're about to see a human being maim themselves before your very eyes.

I was a bit disappointed by the last Cirque troupe that made its way through Southern California. That show, which is now in Tokyo, was called Corteo and it wasn't quite as jaw-dropping as some others I've seen. Kooza is a lot more fun. It goes from here to Irvine, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Houston and Miami — in that order.

Now to go unpack…