Category Archives: To Be Filed

Fans used to complain that DC Comics had misleading covers but this one sure was accurate: "America's Favorite Funnyman." Bob Hope was that, and he held the title far longer than anyone else ever has or will. I haven't really cruised the Internet much since I awoke to the news that he's passed away but I'd wager every current events/news website is making that point, probably under a banner that says "Thanks for the Memories."The obits were prepared long ago, and about all I can add to them is to recall a few times I had the honor — and he sure made you feel like it was one — of being in the presence of Mr. Robert Hope. He also made you feel like he excelled at being Bob Hope; that he knew precisely who and what he was, and that it was who and what he wanted to be: A very big, very busy star but eminently approachable in spite of the fact that you couldn't get near him. I felt this instantly the first time I met him…in, believe it or not, the bargain basement area of a May Company department store.

It was the one at the corner of Pico and Overland in West Los Angeles, a few blocks from where I then lived. It was January of '75 and Hope had just published The Last Christmas Show, a book about his overseas tours to entertain the troops. He was appearing at the store to sign copies and I was thinking of going, not so much to see him in person as to get an autographed book. But I figured the line would extend to around Bakersfield and I didn't want one that badly. As it happened, it was pouring rain that morning and it suddenly let up around a half-hour before the time of Mr. Hope's signing. "Aha," I thought wrongly, "There'll be a very low turnout."

So I threw on my raincoat and walked up to the May Company, all the time pondering what Bob "Mr. Topical Monologue" Hope might say or do.  At the time, Olympic swim champ Mark Spitz seemed to be the punchline to every joke so I imagined Hope saying something like, "I wouldn't say it's wet out there but on the escalator up, I passed a halibut, three salmon and Mark Spitz."

When I got there, I went up to the third level, where the line snaked all around the floor — hundreds and hundreds of people waiting for him. I decided not to wait in it. The signs said he was appearing for an hour and there was no way even "Rapid Robert," as some called him, could sign books for all those folks in that time. (Some people had already purchased and were holding three or four copies.)  He was due in twenty minutes so I decided to wander the store and return when he arrived to catch a glimpse of the man and — and this interested me more — see how he'd handle that huge crowd.

I went down to the store's basement where they sold cheap art supplies.  I'd been there about two minutes when some doors behind me flew open and an entourage of men stormed in from the parking garage. In the center of the group, flawlessly attired in a pale blue-grey suit, was Bob Hope. And by dumb luck, I was standing between him and the elevator to which they were leading him.

As if I mattered in the least, he walked up to me and shook my hand.  Then he took note of my damp raincoat and said, "Hey, looks like it's wet outside."  How had he not noticed that on his drive there?  In reply to him, I threw my line: "I wouldn't say it's wet out there but on the escalator up, I passed a halibut, three salmon and Mark Spitz."  He laughed…and I guess I thought, "Hey, I just made Bob Hope laugh."

Before I could grasp the significance (if any) of that, Hope's men swept him into the elevator and he was gone. I wasn't entirely sure he'd ever been there.  So I sprinted for the escalator and managed to make it up to the book-signing area just as he was arriving. The line of buyers broke into applause as he strode effortlessly to the front table and picked up a little microphone. "Hey, I wanna thank you all for coming," he said, and everyone laughed because he sounded just like Bob Hope. "Boy, it's wet around here," he continued. "On the escalator up, I passed a halibut, three salmon and Mark Spitz."  Everyone laughed again. Even I laughed a half-second before I realized: Hey, that's my line.

(It is perhaps worth noting that we all laughed in spite of the fact that we all knew he hadn't taken the escalator. It worked in the joke, and that was what mattered. There's an oft-quoted story about Hope appearing once in England and telling a joke where the punchline was something like, "They went to a motel." The audience howled even though at the time the word "motel" was largely unknown in England. An American journalist who was present asked one of the people who'd laughed if they knew what a motel was. The person said they didn't. The journalist asked them why they'd laughed then. The reply was, "Because we know he's funny and it seemed like the end of the joke.")

At the May Company, Hope sat down and began signing books and I suddenly decided that no matter how long I had to wait, I was going to get one. It took about ninety minutes — longer than the announced time of his appearance but still a lot less than I'd have guessed, given how many people were ahead of me.

They had it down to a science: One of Hope's helpers gave you a slip of paper on which you were to write what you wanted Bob to write.The helper would then look at it and edit it down or make you rewrite it to keep it brief or to remove things that Bob didn't want to write. They'd then pass your book to Bob with it open to the signing page and your slip placed just above where he signed, and he'd sign. The assistants were in control and they kept it moving so swiftly, you were almost afraid to try and say something to Hope. It disappointed a lot of people who'd come, hoping to exchange a few words or perhaps get a photo ("No pictures," the aides scolded) but you had to marvel at the efficiency: A ton of books were sold and signed, and Bob didn't look like the bad guy for not engaging you in a leisurely chat.

When it was my turn, I tried to remind him of our basement encounter, hoping he'd thank me for the joke or something.  He grinned and said thanks but I'm not sure he had any idea what either of us was talking about.  He just had to keep the line moving.  I went home, pleased to have an inscribed first edition, proud that I'd gotten even those few seconds of individual attention in the basement…and proud that I'd "written" something that fit Bob Hope so well, Bob Hope had used it.  I tried telling some of my friends about it but I wasn't a professional comedy writer back then and they obviously didn't believe me.

Back then, I was occasionally spending afternoons at NBC studios in Burbank where I had an almost-legal way to get in. Once you were in, if you acted like you belonged there and knew where you were going, no one ever stopped you from visiting tapings and rehearsals. In earlier years, I'd spent most of my time watching Laugh-In tape but that show was over by '75, so I'd go watch The Dean Martin Show rehearse (without Dean Martin) or watch The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (which sometimes even starred Johnny Carson). If Hope was there when I was, I'd watch from afar as he taped a sketch for one of his specials. My most vivid memories of those moments are of him yelling at his eternal cue card man, Barney McNulty, when the cards weren't in the right order or properly legible. Shortly after that day at the May Company, I was present when he was on with Johnny. I think it was a Friday show and he was plugging his latest special, which was to air Monday.

Poaching on the set, I managed to see how it was done: About thirty seconds before Johnny introduced him, Hope strode into Stage 1 with the inevitable entourage, perhaps even the same one. He was still reviewing a piece of paper with a couple of jokes on it as the band struck up his theme song. Then he handed the page to an aide, walked out to tumultuous applause, and sat down next to Carson, who expertly fed him the questions that elicited the just-studied jokes. The segment went about as well as such segments ever do, and my overall admiration was not so much at the wit but at the sheer expertise in the delivery. Bob and Johnny were both utterly in control and things went precisely the way both wanted them to.

At the first commercial break, Hope stepped out and told Johnny's studio audience that they were so good, he had decided to ask them to stick around after The Tonight Show was finished so that he could use them to tape the monologue for his special. The crowd almost gasped with delight. Hope explained that the rest of the special had been recorded a week or two back but he always did the monologue at the last minute so it could be more topical. He also explained that the stage we were in — Stage 1 — was his design. The steep rake was because when he was performing, he liked to be able to look up and see as many laughing faces as possible.

Sure enough, not one person budged from their seats as the Carson show concluded. A different curtain was flown in for Bob to perform in front of, and he took a few minutes to run through his cue cards with Barney McNulty. When all was in readiness, Hope stepped into position and did the monologue three times. The first time through, everyone laughed a lot. The second time through, they laughed a little less. And the third time through, they laughed more than the second time, because Hope began screwing with the wording and muttering things like, "We'll cut that one." Johnny Carson was just off-camera throughout and at one point in the middle of the third take, Bob stepped over to him and whispered something that I suspect was very dirty, and Carson got hysterical. Then Hope thanked everyone for sticking around — like they'd all done him a favor —and he and the entourage disappeared. Again, my overwhelming impression was of efficiency more than inspiration. The following Monday night, what aired was most of the first take with maybe five jokes cut, and perhaps one or two inserted from Take Two.

I met him one other time and actually got to talk to him when he appeared on The Barbara Mandrell Show when he did a guest appearance and one of the producers, Marty Krofft, introduced us. Among the things we discussed were that I told him I'd just been reading a book about Walter Winchell and asked him if he was ever going to make the long-rumored movie in which he would play the gossip columnist. He said, "Oh, definitely," though he never did. He started telling me what a fascinating son-of-a-bitch Winchell had been — though he chuckled when he told the following story, which I'd already heard.

One of his first screen appearances was in a dreadful short comedy called Going Spanish. Shortly after viewing it, Hope ran into Winchell who asked him how it was. "When they catch Dillinger, they're going to make him sit through it twice," the legend-to-be replied. Winchell printed the remark in his column and the movie studio dropped Hope's contract, proclaiming they had enough trouble selling his films without him knocking them in the press. I said to Hope, "Well, that sure hurt your career" and he grinned. He could grin because, I suspect, that was the last mistake he ever made.

Box office grosses for the movie of The Hulk seem to be plunging this weekend. This alone will probably do nothing to diminish the number of movies based on comic books. The prevailing belief will merely be that audiences wanted desperately to see a movie based on a favored comic book character…but that they just heard that this particular one didn't do justice to the property. It will probably also become conventional wisdom that the main thing that went wrong with the film was that the C.G.I. Hulk looked too much like a special effect. (I am basing this on Industry Buzz. I haven't seen the movie.) Some day, a couple of these films will tank almost immediately and that will greatly diminish the studios' interest in doing them…but not if they're going to keep opening strong and then dropping.

Folks keep asking me how I think Jack Kirby would have felt about the movie. Some presume that he would have been thrilled to see "his vision" reproduced so faithfully on the screen, especially since it's been acknowledged as such in so many reviews. Speculating on what Jack would have thought about something is risky since his thought process was often three steps ahead of reality. There were times I would have assumed Jack would react one way to a given situation and he would actually react in another, owing to the fact that he was looking at a much bigger picture than I could ever envision. I know I sometimes sound like the proverbial scratched record on this, but I continue to be amazed at how adept Kirby was at foreseeing the future. A lot of his statements that seemed unreal and off-center twenty years ago now seem a lot closer to actually occurring…and many already have. The Comic-Con in San Diego, for instance, has turned into exactly what Jack predicted back when it was attracting 3000 people and was only about comics.

All that said, I think I can say with some certainty that Jack would have resented the hell out of all these movies if they meant a lot of people making tons of money off Kirby work…with little or none of it going to anyone named Kirby. Jack was a Depression-era kid who believed that nothing was more important than providing for your family. When others spoke of doing work in the Kirby tradition and/or incorporated little mentions of his name in tribute, he was usually moved by the gesture but quite resentful when the project in question sent no bucks his way but megabucks to those retooling his work. If Jack were still with us and everything else was the same, he would be justifiably furious that the Hulk movie and allied merchandising are making millions for so many people who had nothing to do with the concept, design, creation, etc.

But if we're going to play "What If?" here, we need to remember that if Jack hadn't died in 1994 — My God, it's been that long — everything else would not be the same. Someone at Marvel, I'd like to think, would have seen both the moral and financial sense in offering Jack real money as a consultant of some sort. If they hadn't, someone else would have. Stan Lee has been quite skilled — and I mean this only as a compliment — at turning his status as co-creator of the key Marvel properties into both an active participation in film projects and a credit that gets him other, non-Marvel deals. I'd like to think something similar would have befallen Kirby, and he certainly saw that as a possibility. His battles with Marvel over credit were at least in part because he knew that being hailed as "co-creator of the Hulk" (or Fantastic Four or Thor or any of a few dozen others) had a financial value and that it could serve as the pension he never received directly from them. Alas,the company he helped build rarely acknowledged this during his lifetime — not on the Hulk live-action TV show, not on the Hulk cartoon show, not even in the Hulk comic books.

He gets, I'm told, a credit on the movie and I think that's great. But one of the many reasons I don't want to see the movie is that I don't want to find myself leaping to my feet and yelling at the screen, "Why couldn't you have given him that when it could have done him some good?"

Just back from a lovely evening at the Hollywood Bowl. It was "Hall of Fame" night as they inducted Roger Daltrey, The Smothers Brothers, Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane and Leopold Stokowski. All but Mssrs. Lane and Stokowski were present and performing. Nathan appeared via a pre-tape to explain that he was off to England to do a movie. Leopold would probably have been there except for the fact that he died in 1977.

But Daltrey (introduced by Brian Wilson) was great, LuPone (introduced by Joe Mantegna) was great, and the Smotherses (introduced by Michael McKean, Annette O'Toole and Fred Willard) were really great. Also appearing (and also great) were singing sensation Josh Groban and, of course, The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under the able baton of John Mauceri. Oh, yeah — and at the end, they had fireworks.

The Hollywood Bowl is one of those places I always enjoy being but it's a huge pain to get there and only a slightly smaller pain to get out. I remember several trips with my parents when I was a tot — once for Disney Night. They had the costumed characters from Disneyland dancing all over the place, and performances by Disney-related performers.

I remember comedian Gene Sheldon playing a banjo, doing an act that struck me as way too small for the stage. I also remember Henry Calvin coming out in his Sgt. Garcia character from the Zorro show, bragging to the audience about how Zorro was scared of him: "He would not dare come within five miles of me because he knows I would instantly spot him and conquer him with my expert sword work." And of course as he was saying this, Zorro (i.e., a stuntman in the costume) could be seen sneaking over the top of the Hollywood Bowl and climbing down a rope to the stage to sneak up on the unsuspecting Sgt. Garcia. Every kid in the place was screaming"Zorro" and Garcia kept saying things like, "Yes, I am talking about Zorro who is probably a hundred miles from me…" They milked this for about five minutes and it was very funny.

At the end, a lady dressed as Tinker Bell "flew" (slid down a wire) from a back row of the Bowl, all the way down to the stage. Then all the walk around characters wheeled out huge boxes, opened them and released hundreds of multi-color helium balloons. It was all a lot of fun, and I still recall it vividly, even though I was probably about nine at the time.

I remember a few other childhood trips to the Bowl — once to see Danny Kaye perform. The moment I recall best from that was that he had every adult in the place light a match or lighter (this was back when everyone smoked) and then he sang "Happy Birthday." I remember seeing the Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey Circus there and it seemed all wrong to do a circus in that configuration. And my parents took me to see Allan Sherman in two consecutive summers. One must have been 1963 because he performed almost everything that was on his just-released album, My Son, the Nut, including "Hello, Muddah…Hello, Fadduh." Then in 1964, he used the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra to perform Peter and the Commissar, the album he did with the Boston Pops.

Then I didn't go the Hollywood Bowl for a long time. I think the ordeal — parking, walking, sitting on hard seats — got to be too much for my father. When I was old enough to go on my own, I didn't. Not until September of 1980. The Monty Python boys did a four-night stand and I took a small posse to the final night. It was an odd crowd, packed as it was with Python fans, a surprising percentage of them in costume as Mr. Gumby. At a performance by a rock group that's had a lot of hits, audiences seem to want to hear the familiar tunes and they zone out when the lead singer says, "Here's something off the new album…" The Python attendees were the same way — less interested in the unfamiliar material than they were in seeing the Parrot Sketch, the Crunchy Frog routine, "Nudge, Nudge" and other classics they knew by heart. During a promo interview, John Cleese commented that about 90% of the folks in the audience were just as qualified as he was to perform any sketch in the repertoire. He was exaggerating but not by much.

Then again we have a lapse of two decades or so. The last few years, my friend Carolyn and I have gone to the Bowl…not often, but a lot more often than I did in the first 45 years of my life in Los Angeles. As I said, it's a huge pain to get there and a slightly smaller one to get home. But while you're there, it's pretty damn good.

Back in the sixties, Western Publishing Company (Gold Key Comics) began to have increasing problems getting their comics distributed. All the publishers were having this problem but it was most acute for Western. DC and Charlton owned their own distribution companies so they were able to push a little harder and at least they were paying their distribution fees to themselves. Marvel was distributed by DC until they jumped to a company owned by the same conglomerate that owned Marvel. The other companies, like Archie and Harvey, were hurt…but they (like DC and Marvel) were largely using their comic book publishing as a loss leader for the merchandising of the properties depicted in their comics. DC didn't consider it fatal when sales on the Batman comic went down since they were making money off Batman t-shirts and games and spatulas and such.

Western, however, did not control their own distribution, nor did they make any money off the merchandising of most of the characters in their comics. They had the Disney properties, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, etc. — all properties owned by others. The few comics Western did own did not yield any real licensing money.

So they began hustling to find a way to sell comics in other venues — bookstores, toy stores, anywhere. They explored other forms of distribution and to this end began experimenting with different sizes and shapes of comics. Long before anyone at DC or Marvel was ready to break from the conventional funny book format, Western tried oversize comics, paperback comics, comics bundled in plastic bags and a few other ideas. Some received limited test marketings or never made it that far. Others came out and were widely ignored. The one thing that did well for a time was the digest comic — a little paperback about 6 and 3/4" tall with (usually) a little under 200 pages. Today, the Archie people have done quite well with their digests and the rumor is that other companies are gearing up to try them — especially for "funny" comics, whose less-detailed pages suffer less when reduced in size.

I don't believe this format will ever catch on big. Archie's success with it has largely been a matter of skillful (and expensive) marketing. They've managed to get excellent display in airports and at supermarket checkout counters. It often costs a lot of money to get your wares into those locations…which can accept very limited amounts of product. I also think there's a fundamental problem with the format in that its very size makes comics look cheap and unimportant.

One thing that some publishers seem to have missed is a lesson that Western learned when they were the only publisher doing them. When the digests were successful, they were only successful in stores that were completely isolated from regular-size comics. If a store had both sizes, no one bought the digests. If a store didn't carry regular-size comics but the one across the street did, no one bought the digests. I forget the actual sales numbers I was shown but it was something like this: When no regular-sized comics could be purchased nearby, a store that carried the digests might expect a 75% sale, which was very good. If the same store had regular comics, the digests would sell 10%. Therefore, Western was in the odd position of trying very hard not to distribute one of their products to some outlets. This they did until the digests died out in the early-seventies — about the time DC and Marvel were both enjoying some success with larger-than-normal comics. Western's distribution was crashing anyway by then but I've often wondered if the appearance of the tabloid "super-size" comics made the digests just look so puny that they helped finish them off.

Someone wrote to ask me about the best night I can recall spending at the Comedy Store.  There were a lot of them, backstage as well as onstage.  One night, Garry Shandling was on, and he wouldn't get off.  Just wouldn't stop.  The audience was loving him but he was way over his time and the next comic up — Arsenio Hall — was backstage fuming.  Arsenio finally turned to me (because, I guess, I was the biggest guy around) and said, "Come on.  Help me get this guy off."  And before I knew it, he and I were on the stage, physically carrying Mr. Shandling off…as Garry continued to clutch the mike and talk about his hair.  Never saw an audience laugh so hard in my life.

Another night that comes to mind was one evening when Sam Kinison was in fine form.  This was when he was still something of a cult figure — the private "discovery" of a select group of Kinison fans.  A guy in the audience made the mistake of heckling Sam, and Sam turned on him.  He began calling the guy names and like a really demented high school kid, describing graphic sexual perversions that (Sam claimed) he'd performed on the guy's mother.  You instantly realized that Kinison had decided he was not going to be satisfied to merely get the heckler to shut up.  He wanted to see if he could drive the fellow out of the room in tears.  On and on he went, making up deviant sex fantasies about the heckler's mother, each lewder than the one before.  After three or four, the heckler had not only stopped heckling but was muttering, "Come on, I'm sorry.  I won't interrupt again." That was not enough.  Kinison kept after him until the guy finally threw down some bills to cover his check and stormed out of the club.  Sam ran down to the table, counted the money and looked at the check, then ran after the fellow screaming, "You didn't tip, you cheap [multiple expletives deleted]!  You're just like your mother!"  Sam was on a wireless mike so we were sitting there in the Comedy Store, listening to him out on Sunset Boulevard yelling at his victim for about three minutes, apparently as the guy got into his car and drove off.  Finally, Sam returned to the stage, calmed down and said, "So…anyone else wanna fuck with me?"  Then he went right back into the story he was telling when the heckler first heckled.  Needless to say, no one interrupted him again.

Maybe the best night — and there are many from which to choose — was one evening when a comedienne friend of mine, Louise DuArt, was the closing act in the big room.  That meant five comics would each do 15 minutes, then Louise would close by doing thirty.  The first comic was Argus Hamilton, who would hang around and serve as m.c. for the others.  Louise called and suggested I come that evening because (she'd heard) certain "surprises" were likely — and she somehow arranged for my date and me to get Mitzi's table in the otherwise sold-out show, Mitzi being Mitzi Shore, owner-operator of the place.  Sure enough, the announced line-up was strong enough on its own — but added to it were impromptu sets by Yakov Smirnoff and Roseanne Barr, both of whom were unadvertised.  I didn't think either was that great but there's still something kind of thrilling about a surprise guest star.

It was the same way after Louise finished her very successful set.  The evening could have ended there, as it was scheduled to, and everyone would have left very happy.  Instead, Argus Hamilton returned to the stage and everyone thought he was going to say, "Thanks for coming."  Instead, he said, "Have you got time to see one more comedian?"  The audience, of course, yelled "Yes!"  Hamilton asked, "If you could see anyone in the world, who would you like to see walk out here?"  One black woman screamed out, louder than anyone else, "Eddie Murphy!"  Argus glared at her: "Do you think I can just snap my fingers and Eddie Murphy will walk out here?"  And sure enough, as he snapped his fingers, You-Know-Who walked out.  The audience went crazy, and Murphy — who was practicing for a concert film or HBO special he was about to do — stayed out there for a full hour, talking to the audience and delivering one of the funniest stand-up routines I've ever seen in my life.  A lot of it was about how he'd just been asked to play Little Richard in a biographical movie.  He got a copy of Little Richard's autobiography, he said, flipped it open and found a description of Little Richard receiving anal sex on his piano.  Eddie went on and on wondering aloud how they'd film such a scene…maybe bring in a stunt butt or something.  Much of his time was spent chatting with the lady who'd hollered his name out to Argus, and who was unabashed about announcing that she was ready and eager to engage in any kind of sex act with Mr.  Murphy — right there on the stage, if necessary.  I think she was even suggesting some of the things Kinison had claimed to have done with that heckler's mother.

Now, I need to explain that this was the early show on a Saturday night.  It was supposed to end around 10:30 and then the Comedy Store staff would do a fast clean-up of the place and begin seating for the 11:00 show.  Because of the addition of Yakov and Roseanne, it was already 10:45 by the time Eddie walked out.  Throughout, you could see personnel fretting and hear the griping of people who were lined up outside on Sunset…but no one was about to cut off Eddie Murphy's mike or carry him off the stage.  Finally, a little before Midnight, he finished — to a tremendous ovation, of course.  Immediately, waiters begin shoving us out the door and as we exited, we all had to walk past the folks who had been waiting more than an hour longer than they'd expected.  They were mad about that, and even madder at reports that we'd gotten to see Eddie Murphy and they wouldn't.  I believe the biggest name on the line-up they'd be viewing was Charlie Fleischer.

Walking past the line, pedestrian traffic jammed-up and a bunch of us found ourselves face-to-face with some angry ticket holders for the 11:00 show.  One woman was yelling at us, "Liars!  You're lying!  You did not see Eddie Murphy! Eddie Murphy was not in there!"  Her theory, I guess, was that we'd all decided to play a trick on the folks outside: "Listen, let's all wait in here an extra hour and we'll make raucous laughing sounds.  Then when you leave, tell everyone in the line outside that Eddie Murphy was doing a set."  Something like that.  Anyway, she was screaming this when suddenly, a black stretch limousine pulled up at the curb. Everyone could see the Artists' Entrance (i.e., back door of the club) swing open and then an entourage of black men in dark glasses marched out and into the limo, with E. Murphy clearly visible in the center.  In ten seconds, the limo, Eddie and the entourage were gone…and the hysterical lady was just standing there with her mouth open and her chin scraping the pavement.

Those were the golden nights of the Comedy Store.  They don't make 'em like that anymore.

With no real explanation beyond that he wants to take some nights off, David Letterman decided to do four shows this past week instead of five. Usually, he does five, taping two shows on Thursday so he can have Friday off. This week, Tom Arnold did the Friday night show.

This has prompted speculation — among Letterman fans on the Internet and elsewhere — that Dave is somehow packing it in, giving up, whatever. There's no real evidence for that but the assumption goes something like this: Letterman and his people have long complained that they'd be more competitive with Leno if CBS would give them more promotion and better lead-ins. Now, they have as much promotion as they could ever expect, and CBS's prime-time ratings are substantially up…and not only is Leno as far ahead as ever but Nightline is even up. So the presumption, fueled somewhat by his recent on-air performance, is that Dave's disheartened. A more prosaic analysis might be that the five-a-week grind is wearing him down, and that he feels he and the show will be better off if he works a bit less.

That would not be an aberrant viewpoint. Very few TV hosts in history have ever felt they could maintain a five show work week. The politics of the Leno-Letterman face-off, along with Leno's own personal mania for hard work, seemed to dictate that both men perform at that pace. In ten years, Jay has never had a guest host (apart from the one recent night when he swapped jobs with Katie Couric) and Dave has had them only while in the hospital or recuperating. But guest hosts are more the norm than not for talk shows: Steve Allen and Jack Paar both took nights off on a regular basis. Johnny Carson sometimes was so absent from The Tonight Show that it almost became a joke. Once, when the Friars roasted Mr.Carson, Groucho Marx got up to the podium and said…

You know, I've tried to watch Johnny. I've tuned in three times. One time, Jerry Lewis was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The next time, Harry Belafonte was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The third time, I was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. I've never known Johnny Carson to host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. We're honoring a man who doesn't show up for work.

Carson somewhat abated such jokes by making his absences more predictable, and by solving marital problems that had apparently necessitated some of them. Eventually, it became standard that someone else would guest host on Mondays, a Carson rerun would be offered on Tuesday,and Johnny would take X weeks per year off altogether. (The Tuesday rerun was sometimes a new show during Sweeps Weeks.) If Letterman decides to go that route, he's going to have to allow guest hosts who have a fighting chance.

Tom Arnold was a disaster — and I say that as someone who inexplicably enjoys Tom Arnold, at least in the guest chair. But the show was awful, falling easily to the level presumed by Arnold's self-deprecating jokes. It may not have been his fault. He seemed to have a sore throat, and was facing a studio audience that wrote away months ago for tickets, and probably planned their vacations, expecting to see Dave. He also may not have had sufficient support or time to prepare. All of this is reflected in the overnight ratings. Jay had a 5.2, Nightline had a 4.2 and The Late Show guest-hosted by Tom Arnold had a 2.8. That's about as bad as it could be. You or I could go out there and do hand shadows for an hour and get a 2.8.

Guest hosting is hard. You're working in someone else's arena with some (not all) of their equipment, working with people who know you're a temp. The writers, for instance, are going to save the best material for the star. Everyone on the staff knows that if the show bombs, the guest host will get 100% of the blame. I mean, the regular star isn't going to come in tomorrow and start firing people because the show wasn't just as good with the guest host.

The folks who've succeeded in guest-hosting have not been thrown into the spot in which Tom Arnold found himself last night. Joan Rivers did pretty well sitting-in for Johnny, at least for a while, and Jay Leno did as well as you could do. Both were "permanent" guest hosts who could plan well ahead, hire their own writers and get involved in the advance booking of guests. Both also were coming back again, so the staff had a little more incentive to do right by them. The guest hosts who did well for Johnny before them, functioning on a "non-permanent" basis, were those like Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart who walked in the door with decades of prepared material and enough importance that they almost equalled Johnny's personal star power. (Dave had Cosby guest-host for him once a few months ago, but it wasn't Cos at his best.)

Working less might be a good idea for Letterman. (An even better idea might be to try some actual comedy bits, rather than to just screw around with Rupert, the staff and pointless games.) But if he's going to bring in guest hosts, he's going to have to give those nights a fighting chance — by booking people who have a shot at being good. Even if it may mean auditioning for his own replacement.

I hereby resolve to try and see more of my favorite movies in actual theaters, projected up onto big screens with others around to laugh and applaud. Between the VHS, Laserdisc and DVD versions — all of which I own — I know 1776 backwards and forwards. But I'd never before seen it like I saw it last night at the Egyptian Theater up in Hollywood…on a for-real movie screen with an appreciative audience. At home, you can pause a film and go to the toilet, and you don't have to pay eight bucks for parking…but those are about the only advantages that come to mind at the moment. The trade-off is that you miss the joy of laughing and applauding with others, and of seeing little details. Having never before viewed the film on a real screen, I'd never seen all the subtle reactions and little facial tics via which William Daniels fleshed out his starring role as John Adams. And even watching the Letterbox version at home on a large-screen TV, I hadn't noticed all the little bits of business and character support contributed by everyone in the corners of the frame. It really was a different, even more wonderful movie last night.

The print we saw was the new, restored "director's cut" approved by director Peter Hunt — who with choreographer Onna White, answered questions after. As you may know, this film has undergone some savagery over the years. Upon its original release in 1972, producer Jack L. Warner took it upon himself to cut the most political number, "Cool Conservative Men." This was done — and I once found it hard to believe but it seems to be true — at the behest of then-president Richard M. Nixon. Nixon had seen the stage version of 1776 when it was performed live at the White House — the first musical ever done in full there, by the way. He hated that number (and also, to a lesser extent, an anti-war song called "Mama Look Sharp"). A few years later when the film was made, producer Jack L. Warner screened it for Nixon who prevailed upon him to excise "Cool Conservative Men" — a song that made the right-wing faction of the Continental Congress out to be shallow and selfish. Without consulting anyone else, Warner cut the number and announced that, to prevent anyone from second-guessing and arguing the point, he'd had the negative of that scene destroyed. We'll never know if that cut contributed to the film's unimpressive box office but it probably didn't help.

As Peter Hunt explained in the post-screening discussion last evening, this movie was produced by Warner after he was no longer producing for Warner Brothers. Had it still been his studio, the negative presumably would have been destroyed as he'd ordered. But this movie was done for Columbia and apparently someone there felt Warner's word was not that of God, so they squirreled away the negative. For years, it was thought lost. When Pioneer was looking to release the film on Laserdisc a few years back, they did some searching and came across a mediocre but watchable print of that number and some other excised footage. To the cheers of film buffs everywhere, they released a "restored" version and we suddenly had a much better 1776 to watch.

This incarnation was not perfect, however, and it displeased Peter Hunt. In restoring that number and some other footage Warner had trimmed, they also put back some footage that he [Hunt] had cut, such as the last part of the "Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve" song. A few years later, someone at Sony (successors-in-interest to Columbia) found the original negative, and Hunt was invited to supervise a definitive cut. That's the version that's out on DVD — click here to order a copy if you don't have one. And that's the version we saw tonight. He said it's basically what he originally intended to have released to theaters in'72.

It's a stunning film, really it is. Some of the lyrics are awkward and clumsily rhymed…and for a musical, it sometimes goes surprisingly long without anyone bursting into song. But the latter is not necessarily bad and the former is easily forgiven — both, because the story is so compelling and well-told. It is, of course, the story of the writing, voting-on and adoption of the Declaration of Independence.About halfway-through, you actually forget the real history and sit there thinking, "Boy, they're never going to get that thing signed." The audience loved it. They cheered every name in the opening credits except Jack L. Warner's, and laughed a lot. There was even meaningful applause when Ben Franklin said the line…

Those who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

The stage and screen versions of 1776 were done during the Vietnam War. How amazing — and in some ways, sad — that it's all still so relevant today.

The release of the new X-Men movie means I'll probably be subjected to another round of questions from folks as to how I liked it. It probably shouldn't annoy me but it does that these queries are never preceded with the question, "Say, did you see it?" People I know in and around comics just kind of presume not only that you've seen the film but that you raced to see it Opening Day. Sometimes, they even frame their question as, "So, how many times have you seen it so far?" and they're almost crushed when I answer, "Counting the next time once."

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie and promptly paid money to see it a second time. It may have been Network, and then only because I was then dating a lady who I knew would love it. The only times I can ever remember hurrying to catch a film right when it opened were a couple of Mel Brooks movies, back when he was in good form. This was not because I couldn't live without seeing the movies themselves but because Mel tended to turn up at the early screenings in Westwood and put on an extra show, chatting with the audience and heckling the trailers. Right in the middle of the inevitable ad for L.A. Times home delivery, you'd hear this very Jewish voice from the back of the house yell, "SHOW MY MOVIE, DAMN IT!" That was worth a battle of Opening Day crowds. Nothing else I can recall ever was to me, and now that movies are so promptly available on DVD and on my little satellite dish, there seems like even less reason to rush.

Actually, I have no desire whatsoever to see the new X-Men movie, just as I had no desire to see the Daredevil movie, the Spider-Man movie, the Blade movie, the last few Batman and Superman movies, etc. I saw the previous X-Men movie only because I was then working for Stan Lee Media and Stan hosted a special screening for the staff. One day in lieu of working, we all trekked over to a nearby theater and free box lunches were distributed. So I was being paid to be there and fed, and I think that's about what it would take to get me to the sequel.

I came to the realization some time ago that though I've collected comic books all my life, I'm not particularly a fan of the characters as they exist apart from certain creators. I love Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita, and perhaps a few other incarnations…but I'm not particularly a fan of Spider-Man, per se. I haven't read the comic in about…well, for a year or three after Peter Parker married Mary Jane, I dragged myself through a lot of issues I didn't much care about and finally stopped. I'm not saying there haven't been some wonderful issues in there — I haven't looked — but my affection for one body of work did not transfer with the characters. It isn't that I dislike a new version because it isn't the old version. I just feel no reason to automatically like it. I loved James Bond movies when they starred Sean Connery. When others took over as 007, it was, for me, a brand new ball game. I enjoyed the first few Roger Moore films but I enjoyed them the same way I might enjoy any new movies: On their own merits and not because they "continued" something for which I'd had a passion in the past.

The first X-Men movie left me generally cold. I had seen and loved Chicken Run the week before and what with all the conspicuous make-up and special effects in X-Men, found myself connecting a lot less with its characters than I had with a batch of animated hens. Others at the screening were just thrilled to see Wolverine and Storm and Professor X and I don't even know all their names up there…but I was not a huge fan of the comic book, or at least of the version of it that was adapted to the screen. I respect the craft that went into many of its issues but I'm afraid that I have just read too many super-hero comics in my life. I was starting to o.d. by the time the new X-Men came along and was never able to give it the kind of attention that it seemed to ask of its readers. Had I followed the comic more religiously, I'm sure I would have received a certain tingle to see much of it brought to life. But I didn't.

When I described these feelings to a friend, he urged me to go see the Spider-Man movie: "You loved the Steve Ditko version, right? Well, that's what this is." I'm sure he's right, and I'm also sure that I'll get around to seeing it and that I might even enjoy it. Actually, there might be a kind of Catch-22 here: The more it resembles the Lee-Ditko version, the more I'd probably connect with what's on the screen. At the same time, the more of Ditko that's in there, the more I'll probably sit there resenting the fact that he's not receiving a cent for it. It's a small, perhaps unimportant emotional point but one that is easily deferred. I'll deal with it someday, maybe if the film's on a double-bill with Chicken Run 2, just as I'll see all of these super-hero movies. Right now, I have other things to do that strike me as preferable — so I'll do them, and put up with all the questions about how much I liked the new X-Men movie and how many times I've seen it. If I were a better fibber, I might just tell them, "Six and I'm going back tomorrow to sit through it three more times." I'm sure it would make some of them happy.

This Thursday, early in the AM, Cinemax is running a rarely-seen Jerry Lewis movie called Don't Give Up The Ship which holds a great many memories for me. Please forgive the rambling nature of what follows and the fact that my recollections of the film itself are a bit fuzzy, but there's a fine reason for that. The last time I saw it, I was seven years old.

I think it was the first movie I ever saw, at least in a theater. My parents took me to the Paradise, which was located on Sepulveda Boulevard less than a half-mile north of Los Angeles International Airport. This would have been in 1959. The second time I set foot in that theater was in 1974 to see the animated Disney Robin Hood. A week later, the Paradise closed down "temporarily," never to reopen. The structure is still there but it was refashioned into the Paradise Office Building a few years later. Soon after, the other movie theater in that area — the Loyola — was turned into the Loyola Office Building, though they left its free-standing box office out front, almost to taunt us as we drove to the airport.

But back to Don't Give Up The Ship and what I recall of it: The Paradise had a "crying room" — a little private booth in the back where the parents of bawling babies could sit and watch the films with their noisy offspring and not disturb others. There were no crying kids in the place that afternoon — not even me — so my parents sat us in there. That was in case I didn't behave (I did) and so that they could explain things to me, if necessary. It wasn't necessary. I enjoyed the film, and I recall laughing myself silly at one scene where Jerry played a baby taking a bath and someone stuffed a sponge in his mouth. The storyline — and again, this is from memory and going back 44 years — had Jerry as some sort of Navy official who was in trouble with highers-up because he had misplaced a battleship. He scurried around for the whole movie trying to find it until it turned out that one of those highers-up had ordered the ship used for target practice. Throughout the film, my father kept going out and returning with popcorn, sodas and ice cream bon-bons.

That's about all I recall, but that isn't bad for 44 years ago. There was another movie on the bill but I was too restless at that age to sit through two, plus I was full of bon-bons, so we left after the one. The next day (or maybe a few days later), my father bought me the Dell comic book adaptation of Don't Give Up The Ship. That may be part of the reason I remember the plot. The comic was a lovely souvenir, expertly drawn by a superb artist named Dan Spiegle. Thirteen years later, I would begin a long, pleasurable association with Mr. Spiegle, writing comics for him to draw.

At age seven, I was often taken to the pediatrician for shots and to treat a wide array of stomach aches. My pediatrician was a lovely man named Dr. Arthur Grossman who kept getting written up in local newspapers because he was also an accomplished musician, and because his medical practice welcomed a lot of stars' kids. A day or two after I saw my first movie — or at least, my first Jerry Lewis movie — I was sitting in his waiting room talking with a kid around my age with some comic books I'd brought along, including that Dell adaptation of Don't Give Up The Ship, and the kid — like it was the most natural thing in the world, said, "Oh, yeah, my dad did that one." Just as I was wondering if I should believe him, Jerry Lewis walked into the office. Thinking it would please him, I quickly told Jerry that I had just seen his new movie and I showed him the comic book. Jerry's reply was along the lines of, "Who the hell cares?" and "Leave me alone." For some reason, this did not bother me or cause me to stop going to Jerry Lewis movies. I guess I just figured I had said the wrong thing and that Mr. Lewis was grumpy because his kid was sick.

Twenty-three years later, I was writing a TV show on which Jerry Lewis was guesting. Attempting to strike up the kind of immediate friendship you need in such situations, I told him how much I'd enjoyed many of his movies. He asked me which ones I'd liked. I mentioned The Bellboy, which pleased him since I hadn't said The Nutty Professor. Apparently, though the latter was the one he thought was best, it was also the one that people who didn't know much about his career always named. The show's producer, Marty Krofft, was listening to all this and, trying to get Jerry to show a smidgen of confidence in our writing staff, said, "Mark here knows every microscopic detail of your life and career" — a slight exaggeration. I instantly found myself challenged to tell Jerry something unbelievably obscure about himself. Racking my brain, I told him he'd taken his kids to a pediatrician named Dr. Arthur Grossman who had offices on Wilshire Boulevard, just east of Robertson.

Mr. Lewis did a double-take greater than anything he ever did in front of a camera and you could tell he was very impressed. He asked me how the hell I knew that, and I told him about meeting his son in the waiting room and I pulled the comic book out of a folder I had it in.  I'd brought it along in case I could get him to sign it…which he did.

But also since I never know when to shut up, I went on to tell Jerry the story of him being rude to me, which led to him apologizing profusely. I apologized back for mentioning it and told him how much I'd enjoyed Don't Give Up The Ship. To prove this, I explained that I remembered its basic plot even though I hadn't seen it in (then) twenty-three years, and I gave the summary that I gave above. Jerry grinned and said, "That's about how long it's been since I've seen it…and you remember more about that movie than I do."

I've set my TiVo to record the movie on Thursday. If anyone reading this is in touch with Jerry, please let him know it's on. I'm curious as to whether either of us will like it now.

My private menagerie began one Spring day in 1991 when my then-secretary spotted a sadly-underfed cat foraging through my garbage pails.  Tracy immediately emptied my cupboard of canned tuna, fed the kitty, then ran out to buy a supply of proper cat food.  From that day forward, I fed the little charcoal-colored stray, whom we initially named Jack.

(How did we arrive at that moniker?  Well, we were trying to think of what to call the cat when my phone rang, and Tracy said, "Let's name him after whoever that is who's calling."  The person calling was a fine writer-comedian named Jack Burns, so that was that…for a while.  We later realized we had the gender wrong, so we amended it to Jackie.)

For over twelve years, Jackie showed up once, sometimes twice a day to be fed.  For about half that time, she defended her claimed turf against all encroachments, chasing off every bird, every squirrel, every animal who ventured inside the fence.  There were moments there, I thought she was going to come after me.  But she eventually became too secure, or perhaps too old, to be so territorial.  It's like a really cheap petting zoo out there now.  Jackie began allowing in possums, raccoons, rodents of all sizes…even other cats.

I never knew where Jackie lived, though I sometimes spotted her crossing a very dangerous boulevard to get here.  I imagined her making the rounds, calling on other homes where they knew her by other names, checking out what they were serving.  If she didn't like the menu, she'd head over here for "comfort food" — usually either Alpo canned meals or Friskies dry.  For a time, I tried having her share my home, but Jackie hated being an indoor cat, and the litter box I bought for her exuded an odor that Hans Blix would quickly identify as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.  So I finally gave up and returned her to the outside world where she clearly belonged.

But I took care of her.  One night about eight years ago, a friend who tried petting Jackie found a huge swelling on the cat's abdomen.  We boxed Jackie up — which she liked about as much as you would have enjoyed being stuffed in an old file box — and drove her over to one of those 24-hour pet hospitals on Sepulveda Boulevard, just south of Santa Monica.  There are three or four there, which are said to charge a small-to-medium fortune for emergency animal care.  This turned out to be true.  They drained an abscess and deduced that Jackie had been spayed/neutered by a gross amateur who had done more harm than good.  "If we do the rest of the repair here," they told me, "it'll cost about the price of a new car."  Instead, they recommended a fine, compassionate vet who could redo the incision for a more reasonable fee.  By a happy coincidence, the recommended vet turned out to be located on the same block on which I live.  He was also nice enough — since this was not technically "my" cat I was bringing him — to charge me half-price, which still ran $300.  (The worst part was that I had to keep Jackie inside for a few days of healing.  She liked it even less, and the aroma was even worse.)

Until recently, Jackie was a happy pussycat and a regular part of my life.  Every evening, and sometimes in the afternoon, she'd turn up on the back porch.  She'd eat.  She'd patrol the yard.  She'd eat some more.  She'd drink from the pool.  Sometimes, she'd demand to come in, whereupon she'd walk around the kitchen for two minutes, rub her scent glands against all the cabinets, then insist on going out.  Every once in a while when I let her in, she'd make a bee-line for the living room where I have exact replicas of Paul Winchell's ventriloquist dummies seated on a couch.  I'd go in there and find her washing herself while sitting on Knucklehead's lap.  She never much liked being held by people…but Knucklehead was okay.

By now, you probably see where this is heading.  The last two weeks or so, there was no sign of Jackie at the back door.  She'd occasionally missed a day or two in the past, but never a whole week.  Since she was at least twelve years old, I had to accept that it was over; that I probably wouldn't see her again.  Yesterday afternoon, my maid noticed a foul smell emanating from my basement, and I guess I knew what it was, but I had a brief moment of denial.  I called my plumber, told him I thought I had a busted sewer line or something, and he came right over…and told me I did not have a busted sewer line.  What I had was a dead cat under my house.

I checked around outside.  Every possible entrance under the structure seems sealed to me, so I don't know how Jackie managed to crawl in there to die.  Somehow though, she managed it.

It always strikes me as ludicrous when people try to project human thought processes onto animals; to presume they think like we do.  But at the moment, it seems oddly logical that Jackie's dying instincts led her to the place where they always took good care of her.  Maybe that's true, or maybe I'm just grasping for a comforting notion at a time of loss.

You know, at a moment like this, you tell yourself that it's just a cat, and that she had a longer, better life than most of them do.  You tell yourself that it's silly to get emotional about it.  And I'm sure that, in a day or so, I'll be over whatever sadness I'm feeling at the moment.

In the meantime, there was an ugly job to do.  I'd told the plumber I could handle the removal, so he departed — but then I discovered I wasn't up to the task.  It wasn't that it was a dead cat.  It was that it was that dead cat.  I finally paged my gardener and had him come over and put Jackie in a large trash bag out in the front courtyard.  Later today, the "Dead Pet Removal" squad of the Sanitation Department will come by and haul her off.

That may sound insensitive but I look at it this way: The average life of an outdoor cat is only three years.  Jackie lived four times as long just since Tracy found her.  If I could last four times the average life span of an indoor human, they can stick me in a Hefty bag and haul me off the same way.

While testing out the channel-changing hook-up for my new Series 2 TiVo, I chanced to alight on Court TV and — shame on me — got hooked watching a little of their coverage of the preliminary hearing for Robert Blake.  The case against him seems overwhelming, and his attorneys are spending a lot of their time impugning the integrity of those who gathered evidence.  One investigator was asked, "Isn't it true you told friends that you were upset you hadn't gotten on TV during the O.J. Simpson trial?"  There was also a brief dust-up when a prosecutor referred to the date of "the murder" and Blake's lawyers objected, insisting the word was prejudicial and that it would be better to refer to "the killing."  This does not make it sound like they're sitting on a pile of exculpatory data.

Court TV is practically orgasmic to have a Hollywood Murder Case to exploit, and is throwing up specials and daily summaries and Breaking News bulletins.  For some reason, during the chunk I saw, they kept cutting to comments by a lawyer who was pointedly identified as "Michael Jackson's lawyer."  No, I don't know what he has to do with Blake, other than that tabloid-type journalism loves to link hot stories together.

The defendant is upset with Jay Leno for treating him as if he's already been found guilty.  On the one hand, I think that's misplaced anger.  If the police are announcing they have associates of Blake to testify that he tried to hire them to whack his wife — and one was testifying when I tuned it — Leno is hardly jumping to or spreading unwarranted conclusions.  On the other hand, there is something about Robert Blake that strikes me as so pathetic, the jokes are almost like picking on the mentally ill.  (And I guess it's theoretically possible that he didn't do it, in which case the jokes are just helping to destroy an innocent man.)

I know it's not fashionable to feel sorry for violent criminals and if he did it, he deserves the maximum penalty.  Surprisingly — for a case in L.A. involving a celebrity — he may very well receive it.

But there's something else here that differs from the O.J. case.  Jokes about Simpson always had to be tempered by a proper reverence for the loss of the two people he hacked to death.  In l'affaire Blake, no one is mourning the victim because there seems to be a consensus that the deceased was not a very nice person.  Blake's whole defense, such as it is, seems to be that there were a lot of people who had reason to want her dead.  That changes the dynamic.  It opens up new areas of humor and makes the whole thing one big Freak Show with no compassion required for anyone.

Simpson also looked maddeningly arrogant and determined to have a life after the trial.  His one-time gridiron heroism caused many to want to believe he didn't do it, and his skin color gave an opening to those who wished to make the case that the L.A.P.D. had racist underpinnings.  So he had some people on his side, whereas Robert Blake just looks like a loser; like a guy who did what he's alleged to have done because he was already on the downside of life.  He did it, as he did the interview with Barbara Walters, almost as if he had nothing left to lose, his career and a large piece of his mind having long since departed.

I am all for what some would call Bad Taste Humor.  As long as it's funny, do it.  But I recall that Johnny Carson would sometimes stop doing jokes on a given topic because he sensed that it was beginning to turn too tragic to be funny.  And I guess the whole subject of Robert Blake offing his wife is starting to look that way to me.

• Sunshine Patriot by William Saletan, Slate
• Vice Grip by Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly

Disney's stage version of The Lion King opened in New York on November 13, 1997 and immediately became one of the biggest smash-hits the town had ever seen.  About a month later, I called in a favor (a very big favor, obviously) and obtained tickets to see it at the New Amsterdam Theater.  What follows is the review I wrote after that night…and what will follow this flashback is my review of the touring company performance which I caught last night in Los Angeles.  Here's what I wrote back in '97, and please note that the rumors about them adding a second company or doing more than eight performances a week never evolved into anything more than rumors…

Before I turn reviewer here, I should own up to a possible conflict of interest: I am a Disney stockholder.  I own one share.

This means I get all sorts of neat mailings and stockholders' reports.  For those of you who are into science-fiction, I recommend the latter, especially the parts about Michael Eisner's salary.

I also receive quarterly dividend checks, the most recent of which was for 13 cents.  They spent 32 cents in postage to send this to me, plus probably a buck or two in processing costs.  How this company can possibly stay in business, throwing around money like this, is beyond me.

Actually, one of the things the Disney organization does very well is to throw around money.  They tend not to throw much of it towards employees below the executive level, and it sure doesn't make it down to us stockholders.  But they do lob it around and usually to good effect.

Nowhere is this more in evidence than on 42nd Street where the New Amsterdam Theater, shabby and in disrepair for too long, has been reborn.  This is the work of checks, from both the city and the Disney folks, far larger than the ones the latter sends me.  The theater — the whole block, in fact — has received a stunning makeover and is now magnificent.  I dunno what scalpers are getting lately for seats to The Lion King, but it's probably worth it just to walk into the New Amsterdam and stare at the ceiling.

Large amounts of Disney Dollars have also been spent to put The Lion King on the boards, and it already looks like a brilliant investment.  They're hurriedly putting together new companies of the show to play other theaters.  Okay, that's how it usually works.  A show's a hit on Broadway and they assemble a road company to go play Toronto and Chicago and so on.  But what's staggering about the success of The Lion King is that they're reportedly discussing another company to play New York City.

That's right.  They're turning so many folks away down on 42nd Street that someone thinks it would be cost-efficient to procure another theater in or around Times Square and open a second production of The Lion King in town.  And if that cannot be arranged, word along the Great White Way is that they're dickering with the unions about adding some cast and staff, rotating them about and doing more than the customary eight performances a week.

This is almost unprecedented in theatrical history.  Apparently, there was a now-obscure show way back in 1917 that was then so non-obscure and in-demand that its producers opened a second, concurrent production at another theater.  That was the last time doubling-up was even a viable notion.

Disney, of course, has one big advantage if they decide to clone The Lion King: No one is coming to see the actors.  As must delight the corporate hierarchy, the sets and costumes and especially the staging are the stars, so duplicating the show is just a matter of writing checks — something, as noted, Disney does well.

And the sets, costumes are staging are wonderful.  Director Julie Taymor has placed a surreal, colorful impression of the jungle on the stage of the New Amsterdam.  Though not one real animal appears anywhere in the production, the theater is alive with antelope and giraffes and hyenas and birds and even an elephant, all limned in costuming and puppetry.  The impact is, with a few exceptions which I'll get to, artfully stunning and effective.

So I should be writing here that it was a wonderful evening and that it's one of the greatest shows I've ever seen.  The truth is — and I'm just as amazed at this as you may be, especially if you've read the reviews — I didn't like it very much.

I am, I must admit, darn near alone on this.  The audience this evening stood and cheered and generally left as happy as I've ever seen a crowd exit.  Despite the fact that the plotline precisely replicates the movie, which I liked a lot, I found the show uninvolving and even, particularly in the second act, occasionally boring.  My problem — and it may just be my problem — is that I think the staging is so wonderful, so much the show, that it smothers the story.

This was not the case with Beauty and the Beast.  For me, the Broadway incarnation expanded upon and enhanced the scenario, bringing it to life on a whole new level.  But then, that property enjoyed an advantage: It was the tale of a lord and his palace staff transformed into monstrosities, and of their struggle to regain human forms.  This was all done well in animation, but it simply meant more to see them, on stage, transformed back into actual human beings, as opposed to more realistically-drawn cartoon characters.

No such enhancement occurs with Simba and the tale of his ascendancy to the throne.  In the movie, there is a key plot moment: Simba is caught in a stampede and nearly trampled into a smear before he is rescued by his father.  It is a scary and memorable scene, and I don't see how the film could have done a better job of it.  The moment is re-created on stage for the musical and, again, they do a clever job, the ingenuity of which brings applause.

But it isn't scary.  Not in the least.

You're not watching a life-threatening stampede, you're watching a staging trick.  That's what the audience applauds: Look how resourcefully they're symbolizing a stampede on stage.

Well, that's not what you're supposed to be thinking; not if there's a genuine narrative in progress.  You're supposed to be thinking: Geez, Simba's in a lot of trouble.  Therein, to me, lies the problem.  I never stopped watching the staging and started watching the characters.

It's especially unsettling with regard to three animals from the movie — Timon, Pumbaa and Zazu.  (In the animated edition, Timon was the meerkat voiced by Nathan Lane, Pumbaa was the warthog voiced by Ernie Sabella, and Zazu was the uppity hornbill voiced by Rowan "Bean" Atkinson.)  It may have been due to someone's concern for the ongoing merchandising of those characters, or it was just felt that kids would notice their absence or remodelling.  The lion characters — Simba, Mufasa, Scar, etc. — are just played by folks wearing mane headdresses.  But Timon, Pumbaa and Zazu have been faithfully replicated as puppets and, while their handlers do skillful jobs of manipulating them and aping the film voices, the puppeteers are intentionally and jarringly visible.

We're supposed to just ignore them, and we try, but it's like trying to overlook one Siamese twin.  Zazu has a little clownlike man in a derby hat sticking out of him for the entire show and it's impossible to look at the puppet and not at the funny little man.  (By the way, they expanded Pumbaa's part by adding a seemingly-endless array of fart jokes and, yes, they even used that word.  Walt would have been so proud.)

So that all didn't work for this reviewer.  I also found the songs undistinguished, particularly the new ones but also those I'd liked in the movie.  (There are some splendid musical moments involving African dance, but they have little or nothing to do with Simba or his crown or any of this.)  For me, the whole evening was one of those Grinch-like experiences, where you're up on the hillside, looking down at Whoville, wondering why everyone but you is having such a wonderful time.

I didn't…and I am well aware that it won't make one bit of difference to the Walt Disney Company.  The Lion King is one of the biggest hits to ever roar on Broadway and it will probably be running there when the kid playing the Young Simba is old enough to play the Adult Simba.  Though I didn't like the show, there are two reasons I'm pleased for its success…

1. Broadway needs future playgoers.  Some years ago, someone — it may have been me — was suggesting that the theatrical community should subsidize a permanent and ongoing production of Peter Pan in some Times Square house.  No matter how much it lost, they should underwrite it and keep it going, so that youngsters can be taken to it, and introduced to the theater.

This may no longer be necessary, thanks to Disney.  Beauty and the Beast — which I think is a wonderful show — is still running, and The Lion King may at least work well on that level.  Disney plans other such productions and, in light of their success, others will doubtlessly follow.  So Broadway — which in many years past offered nothing to which you could take a 9-year-old — is becoming more the kid-friendly environment.  That's great.  And the other reason I'm delighted to see The Lion King succeed is —

2. Like I said, I own the one share of stock.  This show is making millions and — who knows? — maybe one of these days, my dividends will be half the cost of the stamps to send them to me.

Okay, that's what I wrote back then.  Lemme tell you about last night.  (By the way, my stock has since split and I now own two shares of Disney.  But in spite of this, I shall pull no punches…)

I enjoyed it more this time.  I still found the show quite non-involving, still found myself watching the staging more than the story.  But, perhaps because I went in expecting that, I found more to admire — mainly, the dancing and the art direction.  It may have helped that, this time, my seats were farther back, better situated to watch pageantry instead of people.

But I also found myself thinking about the show a slightly different way, which is to say not as a standalone from the movie.  Back when I was in elementary school, we were taken one year to see a production of The Magic Flute, and we did not attend it cold.  The group putting it on had issued a study guide and, in advance of our field trip, our teacher explained the plot to us, told us who Papageno and Tamino and Pamina were, and even played us some of the score and told us to watch for certain moments, and what they would symbolize.  We were not taking the field trip to see a story but, rather, to see an interesting interpretation of a story we sort-of already knew.  (In this particular case, we wouldn't have had a prayer of grasping one moment of what occurred on stage without all that briefing.  Even with it, we all were frequently lost.)

It dawned on me last evening that The Lion King, to some extent, works on that level as a theatrical production.  The staging tricks do not always serve the story but it's like, so what?  We already know the story.  We can fill in the blanks.  The movie was the study guide, and inherent in this presentation is a presumption that we already know and are familiar with the movie.  (The Broadway production of The Producers seems to make a similar assumption at times.)

Viewed on that basis, I liked the show more this time around, though I still liked Beauty and the Beast more, probably because it was less about the stage trickery.  I do think The Lion King is a worthy effort, if only for its sheer beauty, but I still don't get why Tony Award voters chose it over Ragtime.  Maybe I'm just bitter because, for all its unprecedented success, I still haven't seen that big jump in my Disney stock dividends.  And that means a lot now that my portfolio has doubled.

Here, from the same interview I quoted from earlier, are Phil Silvers' recollections of working on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  In this case, I've edited out a few of my questions…

It was a great honor.  Everyone wanted to be in it.  Stanley Kramer?  Spencer Tracy?  No one turns down being in a movie with them.  Plus, the idea was to include all the great comedians in Hollywood so everyone wanted to be in it.  I knew comics who said, "They wanted me but I turned it down," but they were lying.  Nobody didn't want to be a part of it.  Even when we were out in the desert and it was 120 degrees in the shade, no one said, "I wish I hadn't agreed to do this picture."

The best show was off-stage.  Jonathan Winters carrying on.  And Milton [Berle] and Mickey Rooney.  Everyone had stories.  We used to drive each other crazy.  Like with Berle, he was always trying to steal the scene, get a little extra.  If there was a scene where he didn't have a line, he'd be trying to insert something.  One time, I let it drop that Stanley had invited me to view the dailies.  That wasn't true.  Stanley didn't let anyone see the dailies.  He couldn't.  He already had too many stars, too many egos to deal with.  But I let it drop that I was seeing dailies and I told everyone, "Watch.  In ten seconds, Berle will be on the phone to his agent yelling about, 'How come I don't get to see dailies?'"  So I told him and sure enough, ten seconds later…"How come I don't get to see dailies?"

I almost got killed twice during the filming.  Well, not exactly killed.  But they had this scene where I ride my car down into the river and it sinks.  I thought the stuntman was going to do it but Stanley said, "No, your reactions are what will make it funny," and he was right, of course.  The car was on pontoons or some sort of raft, so they could lower it like it was on an elevator.  There were — what do you call them?  Guys in suits with tanks? — frogmen there to pull me out because I can't swim.  I almost drowned but it was a great gag.  I didn't want them to cut it.  The same thing happened with that film I did for Disney.  [Boatniks]  I swim now but I didn't swim then.  What I'll do for a laugh.  I almost drowned, both times.

The other time in Mad World, I actually did get hurt.  I had to run after Spencer Tracy and I pulled a muscle in my groin.  It hurt like hell and I was out of commission for three or four days.  Every day, they're calling and asking, "Can you come back?  It's just a close-up, no movement."  I didn't want to screw up the film so I came back.  It was agony but I did it.  If it had happened to Berle, he'd never have missed a day of shooting.

I wore this suit and tie throughout the whole movie.  Actually, it wasn't the same one.  They kept getting ruined.  I think we had five or six when we started and finally, the last week of shooting, we were down to one.  No, wait.  They started with ten or so because the stuntmen were always destroying them.  The wardrobe people kept saying to me, "Don't ruin this one."  I don't know why.  It was just a plain, off-the-rack men's suit.  I could have gone into any men's store in L.A. and bought ten more exactly like it.  But everyone was worrying that I'd ruin my last suit so they wouldn't let me eat lunch in it.  There were some other actors who were in the same situation.  Sid Caesar and Edie Adams had these clothes that were all torn and stained with paint so they couldn't even be dry cleaned, and there were several duplicates of each.  But they weren't as worried about running out of them as they were about me ruining my last suit.

I loved working with Spencer Tracy.  We had a couple of scenes that got cut.  I loved working with all those comics.  Buster Keaton was there but I didn't really get to know him until we did A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in Spain.  I spent most of my time with Berle and Ethel Merman.  They were like an old married couple, yelling at each other.  Jonathan Winters…God, to watch him just improvise.  I improvise all the time but he kept turning into different people, making different sounds.  The only guy I never really got along with on the set was Dick Shawn.  Strange guy.  Very talented but it was like he was speaking some other language.

Kramer didn't have to direct me much.  I played the same Bilko I always played.  I could have done it in my sleep, except that you couldn't sleep with all those comics around.  Buddy [Hackett] — I used to call him "The Bear" — said, "Blink and you lose your position."  No one was stealing scenes or catching flies but if you weren't at your best, they were ready to pounce and move in.  You know what "catching flies" means?

I did but he told me, anyway…

Catching flies is what we used to call it in burlesque when another comic moved on your line or did business.  You're trying to talk and he's doing something — maybe even pretending to be catching flies — to get the audience's attention away from you.  Berle was the master at it and also the toughest taskmaster when he caught anyone else doing it.  Kramer didn't let us do any of that.  Sometimes, he'd say, "It won't match."  Whatever you wanted to do, he'd say, "It won't match," but he wouldn't explain why.

It was probably the best movie I was ever in.  Maybe Cover Girl was better, I don't know.  But I know we all felt like something, like it was really something special.  I would've been crushed if they'd left me out.

Later, when the tape wasn't running, Mr. Silvers said (approximately), "The greatest thing is when you work with talent, when you're surrounded by performers who are really good, like I was in Mad World.  That's when you think, 'I guess I must be as good as they are.'  And if you aren't, you have to become that good in a hurry."

What a night, what a night.  Last evening (12/4), around 600 fans of the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World crammed into Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.  The occasion was a special 39th anniversary screening and panel discussion of one of the longest, richest comedies ever made.  And what fans they were of it, as expertly produced and directed by the late Stanley Kramer.

One of the interesting things about this movie is that a certain amount of its humor flows from having some knowledge of the actors involved.  For example, there's a scene where Phil Silvers — cast in his eternal role as an avaricious con-artist — is in desperate need of a ride somewhere, lest he lose out on his shot at the $350,000 everyone is chasing after.  (I'm assuming here you already know the plot.  If not, basically, it's that that amount of money is buried somewhere and one person after another gets caught up in mad pursuit of it.)

So Silvers flags down a car and as it pulls up, we see that its driver is Don Knotts.  Enormous laugh.  Even before anything is said or done to Mr. Knotts by Mr. Silvers, the audience is laughing…because they know that Phil Silvers is a predator and Don Knotts is prey, and the match-up just seems so perfect as to be funny.  It's like a joke where the set-up is so good, you're chuckling long before you get anywhere near the punch line.  Mad World is full of such moments in which the audience is one notch ahead of the film.

Tonight, some in the house knew the film so well, we were two notches ahead.  In the above scene, we were laughing before we even saw that the driver was Don Knotts.  We all knew it would be Don Knotts because we all knew the movie.  So we laughed before we saw Don and when we finally did, we applauded him.  Matter of fact, most of those present applauded the first on-screen appearance of each great comedian and character actor, which meant a lot of applause.

Some of it was for folks who were actually present.  Not all those who were announced showed…but Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters and Peter Falk were there at the beginning, and Mickey Rooney, Marvin Kaplan, Stan Freberg and Edie Adams were there throughout.  The latter four participated in a panel discussion that followed the screening, where they were joined by casting director Lynn Stalmaster, editor Robert C. Jones, agent Marty Baum and one of the stuntmen.  (I am embarrassed that I missed the stuntman's name, especially since I enjoyed talking with him afterwards.  But he was the person who, though Caucasian, donned a rubber mask and doubled Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.)  [UPDATE, later: It was Loren Janes.]

Here are some general thoughts and revelations from the discussion…

Marvin Kaplan revealed that he replaced Jackie Mason (!) who was originally slated for his role as one of the gas station attendants.  I'd never heard that before.  I also didn't know that Arnold Stang's stunt double was Janos Prohaska, who later gained fame playing animals (like Andy Williams' bear) and creatures in science-fiction movies.  I worked with Janos many years ago and never heard him mention this.

Marty Baum, an agent who represented many of the stars of the film, told a very funny story about how Stanley Kramer wanted character actor Ed Brophy for a key role.  Baum didn't represent Brophy but, smelling a commission, fibbed that he did and almost made a deal, only to find out later than Brophy had passed away.  The punch-line to the anecdote was Kramer shouting, "You sold me a dead actor!"

Mickey Rooney said…well, I'm not sure just what Mickey Rooney said, except that he loved It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,which was a total departure from his past comments on the movie.  He also told us his life story and mentioned something about Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable being dead.  Basically, Mr. Rooney seemed to be doing the Dana Carvey impression of him, only not as well.

The stuntman whose name I have thoughtlessly forgotten [Loren Janes] said that the stunt crew — maybe the best ever assembled for a movie — loved working for Stanley Kramer.  At one point, a clip Kramer showed on a TV talk show was found to be a few seconds over the length that the Screen Actors Guild allows without additional fees to its members.  Kramer was ordered to make a substantial payment to all the stunt folks, all of whom tried to decline the extra bucks.  Kramer insisted…so when they received the checks, the stuntmen all endorsed them over to Mr. Kramer and sent them back.

Stan Freberg told the tale of trying to direct the commercials for the film — a difficult task, for it involved getting the actors to stick to his script.  At one point, watching Freberg floundering in the attempt, Kramer wandered over and told him, "Now you know what I go through."

And of course, there were other fine tales that were a part of the discussion.  Kramer's widow, Karen Sharpe Kramer, co-hosted and accepted an award on his behalf.  She spoke of how pleased her late husband — known primarily for dramatic films with a "message" — would have been proud that so many people turned out for his one grand attempt at comedy.

It really was a nice evening.  It had been too many years since I'd seen the film with a live audience and I enjoyed it far more than any home video viewing.  I had forgotten just how funny most of those people were in the thing.  You remember the stunts and the "big" gags and the special effects…but the most wonderful part of it all is watching great comic actors wringing every dram of humor out of their roles — the little "takes" by Milton Berle, the perfectly-timed facial tics of Sid Caesar, the voluminous smile of Phil Silvers, etc.  I know a similar kind of film (The Rat Race, which I didn't see) was recently attempted but I think it's futile.  There simply aren't the kind of great character thespians now that they had then.  Sad but true.