Category Archives: To Be Filed

If you watched yesterday's video of Dick Sinclair's Polka Parade, you may have recognized the young gent doing live commercials for Farmer John Sausage. Yes, that was Tom Kennedy, who later became a top game show host. Also, I should mention that Dick Sinclair's Polka Parade was sometimes called Dick Sinclair's Polka Party when it popped up in various forms over the years. I know not why.

I am told there are but a few openings left in the class I'm teaching this Sunday for the Women in Animation group — and by the way, you do not have to be a woman to sign up for it. It's all about how to get work (and how not to get work) in Cartoon Voiceovers and how to do the work (and how not to do the work). Details on the class are here.

The dates of Comic-Con International next year are July 18-21. No, I don't know when memberships or hotel rooms will be available. I'll do my best to let you know in advance but don't count on me for this. We still, by the way, don't know where or when the 2013 WonderCon will be. I'm hoping for that town where Tony Bennett left his heart.

Here's another (brief) rave review for The Nutty Professor, which is trying-out in Nashville. The first one I linked to was from the website Broadway World and it was from a reviewer who, to put it nicely, likes an awful lot of things, especially if they contain strenuous dance routines. I'm told the New York Times sent a critic who'll soon be reporting on the production. At some point, the show will get a non-rave review and we'll probably see Jerry call a press conference to denounce the sick, troubled individual who just had to go piss on the dreams and hard work of the show's beloved cast and crew.

Obama biographer David Maraniss discusses the silly twisting of facts that Obama detractors have engaged in to claim that the president was Kenyan-born or Muslim-sworn.

Leonard Maltin writes of the late Tony Martin. That man had a helluva career.

Hey, here's something I'll bet most folks don't know. You may recall Mr. Martin in the Marx Brothers movie, The Big Store. He sang a song called "The Tenement Symphony," a treacly ode to mixed ethnicities and the glories of squalid living.

In the final shooting script of Blazing Saddles, there was a scene where Bart (Cleavon Little) goes back to visit the guys on the work crew. They all crowd around him and marvel at the sight of a black man as sheriff. All that is in the finished movie.

What isn't is that suddenly, Tony Martin appears. He's dressed in a tux with a cowboy hat and he says — this is from memory, I don't know where my copy of the script is — "Don't you all see what this means? A tin star on a black man's chest. This is a tremendous step forward for all of us, whatever our heritage, working side by side to bring all of America together in a grand symphony of brotherhood."

And then he begins performing "The Tenement Symphony" with a full orchestra and gets about sixteen bars into it before the work crew boss comes in and shoots him or shoos him off or something.

The first time I met Mel Brooks, I asked him about the scene. He said it had never been filmed because they were unable to clear the rights to the song. In a way, I'm glad. If they had, my friends and I — knowing the number from the Marx Brothers movie and finding it hilarious even in that context — would still be in the floor of the Avco Theater in Westwood, laughing.

As Eliot Spitzer notes, Mitt Romney's tax proposal is pretty simple: Lower 'em on people with incomes over $200,000 and raise them on people with incomes under $200,000. And I'll bet you there'll be people who can't turn loose of the idea that Democrats raise taxes while Republicans lower them…and won't believe this proposal will do what all the non-partisan analysts say it'll do.

If you look back on this blog since its inception, you'll see frequent mentions of my pal, Bruce Reznick. I've known Bruce since high school (that was some time back in the previous century) and we had two things in common. One was that we were both younger than most of our classmates, having skipped a few grades. I'd skipped two and Bruce had, I think, skipped about eleven. He was the brightest guy I knew and has since gone on to a profession befitting someone who's a lot smarter than I am. Or you are, most likely.

The other thing we had in common was a fondness for good comedy writing as practiced by folks like…oh, like Bruce's father. I think I was the only kid at University High who was impressed that his dad was Sidney Reznick, one of the best in the business. (I also went to school for a time with Clyde Beatty, Junior. I was the only one of his peers who knew what Clyde Beatty, Senior was famous for.)

Sidney Reznick was one of the men who made others funny. Among those he made funny (or at least funnier) were Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Steve Allen, Phil Silvers, Ed Wynn, Jackie Gleason, Henry Morgan…the list goes on and on. He even once put words into the mouth of Hubert Humphrey. I always enjoyed it when Bruce was in town and we could take his old man out to a deli and hear anecdotes. He was a delightful wit and he just left us a few days shy of what would have been his 93rd birthday. Here's a link to an obituary in Hollywood Reporter and here's my thank you to Bruce for sharing him with me.

Here's a show I remember from my childhood…and you might if you're around my age (60) and you grew up in Los Angeles. It's Dick Sinclair's Polka Parade, a live weekly show of…well, polka music. I recall watching it with my parents and wondering why Mr. Sinclair was hosting a polka parade since polkas are about playing music and dancing, and he seemed able to do neither.

I only have a vague sense of its history from articles I read a few decades back. Sinclair was a radio personality and was also throughout his career very involved in the programming of stations. He was hosting a radio show where he played polkas — and he apparently studied and knew that genre well…knew every polka record ever made and every polka ever written and didn't just play the same tunes over and over.

His broadasts were popular enough that someone got the idea to do a TV version with live musicians. It was sponsored by Farmer John Sausage and it was good for them because as we all know, people who like polkas buy a lot of sausage. I guess. For a while, Sinclair and his polkas were on Saturday night so that folks could watch Lawrence Welk on the ABC network and then switch over to KTLA Channel 5 and get a bonus helping of music — all polkas, all the time. Welk played occasional polkas but Sinclair didn't mess around with that non-polka crap.

I vaguely recall hearing somewhere that he and his producers would watch Welk's show (this is all live TV, remember) and if Lawrence played a polka they were planning to play, they'd yank it out of their rundown. That is, unless it was "The Pennsylvania Polka" or "Roll Out the Barrel," both of which they played often by request. Many of the acts that appeared on Dick Sinclair's Polka Parade became local celebrities and would get booked into L.A. functions and advertised as "As seen on…"

This episode appears to be from 1957 and if I saw it when it aired, I was five. The TV show went on for some time after but I've been unable to ascertain for how long. I can however tell you when Dick Sinclair stopped hosting a polka show on radio. Answer: He hasn't. At least, the last time I looked, he was still doing it on weekends on Cable Radio Network and it probably sounds a lot like this…

Comic Book Resources has posted a good report on a panel I moderated at Comic-Con with folks who were active in comics in the seventies. I could tell you about the panel but Michael May did such a fine reporting job that I don't have to. (Minor point: Herb Trimpe, advertised as a panelist, was absent at my suggestion. Herb had work to do so I told him, "Skip the panel. I have enough people on it.")

CBR also has the latest on our friend Roger Slifer and alas, the latest is not good. Roger was struck by a hit-and-run driver on June 23 and he has been in a coma ever since, his breathing maintained by machine and not his own, sadly-damaged body. Roger was and will always be one of those "didn't have an enemy in the world" guys and this is very sad. Very sad.

Jim Brochu calls my attention to this rave review for the musical version of The Nutty Professor which just opened in Nashville. If they're all this good, this thing may actually make it to Broadway.

That's not as easy a transition as some folks think. There's a shortage of theaters and there are shows that have the backers to open on The Great White Way if only they could secure a venue. But then they also don't have reviews like this going for them to say nothing of the star power of Jerry Lewis.

I saw this on someone's site and had to steal it.  Good advertising idea…though someone will probably remark, "Yeah, served without hate and served without chicken!"

And while we're on the topic: Here's a good essay by attorney Mark J. Randazza on the First Amendment rights of Chick-Fil-A. I agree.

Boy, I wish I had a great anecdote about Gore Vidal.

Here's one of those stories that none of us like for basic, human reasons: A man named Caleb Medley who was seriously injured in the Aurora shootings, has a pregnant spouse and is without health insurance. For those who oppose the Affordable Health Care Act (aka "Obamacare"), such stories present a political problem, as well. What are we as a supposedly-compassionate nation going to do for such people?

To say that private charity can help them is one of those "Let them eat cake" moments. If it does, it will be because of the sensational nature of this story. If instead of a crazed shooter in a movie theater the exact same injuries had been sustained in an auto accident, there would not be much of an outpouring.

And to say that Republicans will "repeal and replace" is to count on what won't be a viable option for many years, too many to help those now suffering. That is, if it ever happens. Right now, Republicans don't seem to have much interest in crafting a real alternative plan for the "replace" part. I suspect that's because if they ever did propose one that might work, it would have too much in common with what they'd be replacing and are presently condemning.

Anyway, the link is to a sad story but there's one happy note: The then-pregnant mother, Katie Medley, has delivered a healthy son. If you would like to donate to help this family, this webpage seems to be the place to go. I sent some bucks. If you've been thinking of donating to support this site, please send it there instead.

Just fixed a funny typo in the previous item. I wrote "…as with many programs of my mouth" instead of "…as with many programs of my youth." Dunno how that happened. The "m" key isn't that near the "y" key.

The other day I embedded an episode of the Yancy Derringer TV show. I remember this show quite fondly…though as with many programs of my youth, my memory recalls something with a much bigger budget and higher production values. As you may know, I'm convinced someone went out and refilmed all the old Man from U.N.C.L.E. shows to make them look cheap and tacky. They couldn't have looked that way when we first saw them.

I also recall some elaborate fight scenes and stunts on Yancy Derringer. Publicity for the series sometimes asserted that its star, Jock Mahoney, did all his own stunts. He had a background in that area and I seem to recall him (or allegedly him) doing a few that you might not want your star doing if you had more episodes to film. But mostly, the show had a lot of talk…and sometimes when it looked like things were heading for a knockdown-drag out brawl, Yancy's faithful companion Pahoo would step in with a well-pointed knife and scare the potential brawlers into keeping their hands off Mr. Derringer and his nice white suit.

Our pal Bob Elisberg noted some interesting names in the credits. The story was co-written by the co-creator of the series, Mary Loos. As Bob notes to me in an e-mail, "She was the niece of Anita Loos, who wrote (among many things), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Also, the recurring character of Madame Francine was played by Frances Bergen, wife of Edgar Bergen and mother of Candice. Meanwhile, the lass from Ireland was Maggie Mahoney — wife of series star, Jock. By a previous husband, she was the mother of Sally Field!

And as many have told me but I didn't know when I embedded, the complete Yancy Derringer is coming out in October on DVD. It's a four-disc set with all 34 episodes and you can advance order it (as I just did) for $31.44 at this link. As there seems to be a dearth of decent Yancy Derringer photos on the web, I stole the above image from the box cover.

I'm eager to see which theme song will be on this DVD or if both will be represented. There were two — the classy instrumental that you heard on the video I embedded and a thing called "The Ballad of Yancy Derringer" that I gather was cobbled up by someone who noticed how much money "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" had earned and how much it had benefited that TV series. You can hear the Derringer song here and it's quite awful. [Caution: That site may start playing it the instant you get there.]

I seem to remember it popping up on the second of the show's two seasons and maybe just in the reruns. But at some point, I think whoever was syndicating the show edited it into the end credits of every episode…or maybe they just stuck it on one set of end titles and aired that one on every off-network rerun, making all but one episode's end credits wrong. I hope the DVD set has them all correct because as Elisberg noted, they can be quite interesting.

It's always a treat to see any film footage of my two favorite performers…and "behind the scenes" film is especially rare. This is six and a half minutes of unedited, silent home movie footage shot on the set of Should Married Men Go Home?, a silent film that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made in March of 1928. Even though there are no words, it speaks for itself…

My posts about illegible book designing continue to bring me messages like this one from a gent who asked that I withhold his name…

Regarding your recent posting about book design and illegible type, let me just say that, as a graphic designer myself, the key driver of this trend is the fact that most of my graphic designer peers and colleagues simply do not read. This is purely anecdotal on my part, but I've been in the field for 15 years and I'm personally appalled at the number of graphic designers who not only don't read for pleasure, but they usually don't even read the text which they are laying out. For most of them it's just a textural element whose sole purpose is to add visual interest to a layout.

The biggest offender of this is one of the former superstars of the field named David Carson who was really famous in the 1990s (at least, as famous as most graphic designers are likely to get). He used to work for surfing, skateboarding, and music magazines, and he was chiefly responsible for ushering the grunge type fad that defined much of that decade. I once saw him speak at an AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) event and he spoke of a story that he was once tasked with laying out for one of the magazines he was working for. He didn't like that particular story so he decided to set the type in a "dingbat" font (essentially a decorative pictograms font made up of stars, check marks, boxes, and a variety of other decorative elements). His view (and he was proud of this) was that since he didn't like the story and since he held it in contempt, he was going to make sure no one else could read it either.

This is obviously an extreme example, but the lack of respect that most designers have for the written word in general is very, very real.

On the phone to me the other day, a colleague said that as far as he was concerned, the worst thing that ever happened to book design — and I think he was talking about books relating to comic books — was the success of Chip Kidd. I said I thought Chip's designs were very imaginative and wonderful. The colleague said, "So do I. The trouble is that his success convinced a lot of designers without his skill that they needed to make themselves more important than the book."

I wouldn't blame Kidd but I think that's part of the problem there. On a TV show I worked on, we once had a costume designer who didn't want to read the script or hear what anyone else thought of how the characters should look. She told us she was just going to design whatever she thought looked good — never mind if it fit the story — because all she cared about was winning an Emmy and all the Emmy judges cared about (she insisted) was how the clothes looked, regardless of context.