Category Archives: To Be Filed

• 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.

One of the more thrilling afternoons of my life came about when I had a brunch-interview with the great Phil Silvers.  It took place at Nate 'n Al's delicatessen in Beverly Hills in 1982, a little less than three years before he passed away.

Expecting it to last an hour, I only brought along about 90 minutes of tape, but Mr. Silvers was in a talkative mood.  This was in spite of the lingering effects of a stroke that had thickened his speech and created odd holes in his memory.  He could recall the name of the landlady at a hotel he'd lived in for two weeks while touring in burlesque, but not his current phone number.  He could (and did) rattle off whole pages of dialogue from plays he'd done on Broadway decades earlier but had no memory whatsoever of The Chicken Chronicles, a movie he'd made five years before our chat.

My recorder ran out of tape long before Silvers ran out of anecdotes.  Fortunately, I captured this remembrance about the "Make Way for Tomorrow" dance sequence in the 1944 film classic, Cover Girl.  (I did not have to edit any questions from me out of what follows.  Charmingly, Silvers did not require questions.  He jumped from one topic to the next without prompting.  And I just sat there and listened.)

Cover Girl was another Blinky role for me.  I played the same character in every movie…Blinky.  The guy who ran in in the next to last reel and said, "I got the stuff in the car."  I never found out in all those movies what the stuff in the car was.  Cover Girl was my first good movie.  In this one, Blinky was named Genius but I was still Blinky.  I was Blinky in every movie I made until I did Bilko.  After that, I was Bilko in everything I did, which was fine.  Bilko paid a lot better than Blinky.

We made Cover Girl at Columbia.  At the time, Harry Cohn was God there.  There was a different God at every studio.  When you worked for M.G.M., Louis B. Mayer was God.  At Columbia, it was Harry Cohn.  I got along with him but no one else did.  He liked me because I was a gambler.  I gave him tips on horses.  They always lost but he didn't blame me because to a gambler, a bad tip is better than no tip at all.

A man named Charles Vidor directed Cover Girl but from where I sat, Gene Kelly was the man in charge.  He and his assistant Stanley Donen took over the choreography from the man they hired to do it.  I don't remember his name but he choreographed the scenes with the chorus girls and then Kelly did everything else.  Stanley Donen did some of it but it was mainly Gene.  There was this song, "Make Way for Tomorrow."  It was supposed to be a six minute dance down the street with Rita Hayworth and Gene dancing and leaping over trash cans and doing cartwheels.  I watched them rehearse it for three days and I thought, "Thank God I don't have to do that."

The fourth day, Gene came over to me and said, "I think it would strengthen the story if you were in the number."  There was a drunk who had a tiny part in it.  I think it was Jack Norton, who was the drunk in any movie that had a drunk in it.  I thought Gene meant I'd do a little bit like that in the number so I said, "Yes, sure, I'll do whatever you want."  The next thing I know, Gene and Stanley had redesigned the whole number for three people and I was one of those three people.

He did not design it for a non-dancer, which is what I was.  It was designed for Gene and Rita, who were the two best dancers in the business.  I had to come up to their standard.  They danced up and down stairs.  I had to dance up and down stairs.  They leaped over boxes.  I had to leap over boxes.  All the time, I'm thinking, "I'm dancing next to Gene Kelly, doing the same steps.  Everybody's going to be comparing us.  If we're out of step, no one's going to assume Gene's the one who's wrong.  Gene was still a newcomer on screen but everyone knew he was the best dancer to come along.

It was rough.  They were going to shoot it in pieces but Gene insisted we rehearse it straight through, start to end.  I don't remember how long it took to learn.  Rita, I think, required four weeks.  It must have been longer with me but I did it.  Whatever Gene and Rita did, I did, and I did it as well as they did.  And Gene was right.  It did strengthen the story.  It was a surprise for me to be in that number and to dance it like that.  When we were done shooting, I ached all over.  Every muscle in my body hurt.  But I felt like I could do anything.

In later years, every time I had something to do in a film or a TV show that I thought I couldn't do, I thought back to that number.  And I said to myself, "If you can do that, you can do anything."

Phil Silvers was, indeed, a man who could do anything.  Later, after the tape recorder was no longer running, he lamented the physical problems from his stroke and said, "If I could do that number in Cover Girl, I ought to be able to walk across the street on my own, don't you think?"

My TiVo recently decided I must like old reruns of Hawaii Five-O and has been recording them whenever it has space available. In truth, my TiVo is wise, though a bit out of date. I did like Hawaii Five-O, at least for the first half of its 284 episodes. Along about its eighth year, it began to get a bit too repetitive. I also had a little problem watching its star, Jack Lord.

Mr. Lord, rumor had it, ruled his show with an iron fist and the belief that he was its one and only S*T*A*R. Such was his mania to preserve this reality that word began to leak, even while the show was up and operating, that its cast and crew seriously disliked the man who played Supercop Steve McGarrett. Writers and producers complained — within earshot of reporters — that he was rejecting scripts because they even slightly showcased other members of McGarrett's squad or didn't properly portray his character as brilliant, flawless and loved by women everywhere. Other cast members, sometimes anonymously, suggested the S*T*A*R had come to believe he was all that and more in real life. (Here's a link to an article that ran in TV Guide in 1971. For its time, it was surprisingly harsh about a major TV star.)

Ordinarily, I would not take such bad press at face value. But I ran into Jack Lord twice in bookstores, and heard tales from friends who'd also had the dubious pleasure. The way he acted — brusque and demanding, treating salespeople as servants to be ordered about — certainly made the reports easy to believe.

And ordinarily, I would not let that affect my enjoyment of a TV show or movie. But in this case, it did…at least a little. It somehow made the whole character of Steve McGarrett seem pompous and hollow.

That, coupled with the repetition, kind of ruined Hawaii Five-O for me, at least as a weekly pleasure. Recently, thanks to TiVo, I've been watching a few again. I like them as an occasional treat, but am reminded of the fact that every episode seemed to be a new arrangement of about eight of the same twelve scenes. Here is a list of them…

1. The governor puts pressure on McGarrett. Someone is murdering people all over Hawaii and getting away with it, but the governor somehow thinks that alone doesn't motivate McGarrett to catch the killer. The state's chief exec has to make it clear that, despite the fact that McGarrett's office has solved every crime in the state for the last ten years, they'd damn well better wrap this one up soon or there could be some big changes. (This scene sometimes prompts a brief outburst from McGarrett — "Get off my back!" — but he quickly recovers his equilibrium, apologizes and promises to work harder. And the governor understands that McGarrett is under a lot of stress because he cares so.)
2. McGarrett seals off the island. With a known criminal out there somewhere, McGarrett decides to prevent anyone from arriving on or departing the island of Oahu. "This island is like a rock," he usually says. "No one gets on or off until we catch this guy." One can only wonder what impact this would have on Hawaiian commerce or tourism if the Hawaiian police did it once, let alone every other week.
3. McGarrett sends the Hawaiians to search the island. The Hawaiian aides who work for McGarrett are there largely to be sent out on ridiculous missions. So McGarrett has evidence that the suspect eats grilled cheese sandwiches and he says to Kono (played by Zulu), "Get the boys and search the island. Visit every delicatessen, every coffee shop, every place someone could possibly get a grilled cheese sandwich. Someone must have seen something."
4. The Hawaiians quickly find an incredibly good witness. This one usually connects with the previous one: "We're in luck, Steve. Chin Ho found a druggist who runs a lunch counter on Molokai. Seems he distinctly remembers selling a grilled cheese sandwich to a man just four days ago. He thought the man was acting odd so he watched him walk to his car and wrote down the license number."
5. McGarrett gets philosophical. Sitting alone in his office, usually late at night, McGarrett muses on the nature of the criminal they're pursuing. One of McGarrett's aides (usually Danny Williams) finds him there and hears a speech that includes the phrase, "What kind of man…?" as in, "What kind of man would murder six accordion players, three stationers and an overweight nun, and leave a large bowl of tapioca to identify himself?"
6. McGarrett gets mad. This usually consists of him staring out his office window and saying, "He's out there, Danno…and he's mocking us."
7. The beautiful witness in swimwear. McGarrett, in a suit and tie despite the 90-degree weather, visits and interrogates a beautiful woman who is lounging by a swimming pool. She is obviously attracted to him.
8. McGarrett goes casual. McGarrett's underlings visit him at home or on a weekend retreat with either a new nugget of information or just to hear him brainstorm the problem at hand. In this scene, they're all in suits and ties despite the 90-degree weather while McGarrett is lounging by a swimming pool wearing shorts, a loud Hawaiian shirt and a broad, floppy straw hat. Just to show he's a regular guy who doesn't always wear a suit and tie.
9. McGarrett is windswept. This one seems to have begun in the later seasons, when comedians and TV critics were making jokes about Jack Lord's hair being sculpted of plastic. At some point, McGarrett's investigation would carry him to a high cliff or pier where breezes would blow his hair around. (Also sometimes achieved by having him meet someone coming off a helicopter or riding in one, himself.)
10. The Amateur Actor. After about the third season, there was apparently a shortage of professional actors in Hawaii who hadn't appeared several times on the show, and the producers didn't want to fly someone in from the states for a bit part. So there's always one scene where someone (often, a uniformed cop) has two lines and is so awful, you just know it's one of the camera operators or the caterer's brother. This one is invariably a highlight.
11. Some innocent remark gives McGarrett the answer. This one was actually seen in about half the TV detective shows ever done. Someone makes a stray comment like, "Well, let's get your mind off the case for a while. How about a cup of coffee?" And then Mannix, Barnaby Jones, Cannon, McCloud, McMillan or McGarrett says, "Wait a minute…coffee. Coffee is made of beans. That's it! The killer is hiding in the old abandoned bean warehouse, just outside of town!" And, of course, he is.
12. "Book him, Danno. Murder one." He didn't always say this as the last line of an episode of Hawaii Five-O. It just seemed that way.

Apart from #10, I grew tired of seeing some sequencing of these scenes in every episode. If you think I'm oversimplifying, they run the show every morning on the WGN Superstation. Watch and see. Aloha!

The Writers Guild is currently engaged in one of its semi-annual screaming matches over whether to amend the credits manual.  Long ago, the WGA assumed the right of final determination over who gets to have their name come after the words, "Written by…" on a movie.  This was a good thing since too many screenplays wound up being credited to a star or a producer or a studio executive's nephew who didn't write a consonant.  (Mae West used to have it in her contract that she would be credited as the writer of her movies, regardless of who actually filled the pages.  There were other, less blatant but still unfair applications.)

The WGA established strict rules as to how much you must have contributed to a screenplay in order to get your name on the movie.  These rules have always been a source of contention but lately, with Hollywood on a kick of having 93 people work on every script and end-credits that run longer than some movies, the sore feelings have gotten exponentially sorer.  The guidelines favor the original writer, even when little or nothing he wrote makes it to the screen, and prevent any more than (usually) three writers from receiving screen credit.

As per usual for WGA brawls, emotions are running high and a lot of writers are accusing one another of unconscionable greed and un-writerlike motives.  Also as per usual, both sides have some valid points.  One group argues that it demeans the role of the writer to put a laundry list of authors on-screen; that saying "Fifteen people wrote this movie" is tantamount to saying nobody wrote it and certainly not the first guy, who probably did most of the heavy lifting.  Against that, another faction argues that it demeans the role of the writer for someone to make a large contribution to a script and not receive any credit at all.  If the Caterer's Assistant gets a credit and someone who wrote several key scenes doesn't, that doesn't say much about the importance of the writer.  Or of the believability of screen credits.

I think both sides are at least partly in the right.  The trouble is they're working towards separate goals.  You can configure the rules so that their main goal is to reflect the reality, whatever it is.  That means if 22 guys worked on a script, you put 22 names on the screen in some fashion.  Or you can hold, as some do, that it's desirable to discourage producers from hiring 22 guys; that they shouldn't be so hasty about firing one author and bringing in the next.  Awarding all or most of the credit to the first guy might nudge the business towards that attitude.

As I said, there's a lot of yelling and screaming about this, in part because loads of money is involved.  A movie earns its credited writers all sorts of residuals and home video fees.  If you write a movie and it's rewritten, you would not only lose prestige if the rewriter gets screen credit, you could lose a hell of a lot of cash.

What we have in the current credits manual creates, I believe, a lot of problems.  Credits often do not denote who really did what, and dishonesty is never the best policy.  It also does cause some to assume that the guy who got his name on the movie is just the guy who got his name on the movie, and not necessarily the person whose work we're seeing.  At the same time, I think it's Head-in-the-Sand Time to not admit that restricting the number of screen credits has utterly failed to stop producers from calling in a legion of rewriters.  Producers are going to hire as many of us as they want and nothing will stop this, other than the WGA passing and enforcing a rule that forbids rewrites.  The majority of the Guild membership would never forego the income and allow such a rule, let alone the studios.

So am I therefore on the side of those who want to revise the WGA Credits Manual to allow more "reality?"  To make it easier for production executives, directors, stars and other rewriters to get their names on a movie with which they fiddle?  No, I don't think I'm in favor of that, either. I believe that we presently have a flawed system which can only grow more flawed via repair.

As with the last time credit manual revisions were proposed — a stormy, angry vote that went down to overwhelming defeat — the changes being proposed are relatively minor and are barely a baby step to addressing the problems.  The main amendment presently before us hinges on the dubious (I think) concept of assessing the percentage that a given writer contributes to a script.  Presently, for a production executive to receive credit on a script he or she rewrote, that exec has to have written more than 50% of what gets on the screen.  The proposal now before us would lower that to the same standard as any participating writer, which is one third.

Those numbers are discussed as if someone could just feed a script into a calculator, punch two buttons and arrive at a firm percentage.  This is ridiculous.  You can study different drafts of a script and say that Writer A wrote 40% of the final version but that's going to be a very approximate number.  A writer's contribution is just too subjective, too open to different weighings.  If you write an unfilmable 300 page screenplay and I go in and, without adding a word, rearrange all the scenes and chop it down to a filmable 105 pages, what is the exact percentage of my contribution as a writer?  If I write a murder mystery that doesn't make a lot of sense and you come in and author two key scenes that clarify everything and change whodunnit, what is the percentage of your contribution?

Suppose someone writes a movie for Eddie Murphy to star in and Eddie hates all the dialogue and you're called in to rewrite it.  You paraphrase everything and then, when it gets before the cameras, Eddie starts ad-libbing and he further paraphrases everything.  What is the precise percentage of your contribution to the finished film?  (Keep in mind that arbitrations are based wholly on what's committed to paper, so what Eddie does is not considered writing.  What you did is, even though little of what you did got on screen.)

This is all so arguable that it's not worth fiddling with.  Why substitute one set of vague numbers for another?  It is certainly not worth the level of rage we had the last time this kind of proposal was made.  I am all for protecting the credit of the first writer, especially when we're dealing with his or her original idea.  I am all for making it difficult for production execs, stars, rewriters and especially directors to claim they wrote or co-wrote the movie.  On the other hand, there are cases where the film that gets made is the one the rewriters wrote and, for good or ill, it bears little resemblance to anything the first scribe envisioned.  In those cases, I think it's unfair to history — let alone, the individuals involved — to give all or most of the credit to Writer #1.

Those who think our system of credits is imperfect are right.  But that's not because of the difference between someone writing 33% of a movie and someone writing 50%.  It's because weighing the respective contributions of several writers to a collaborative project is an impossible judgment that can only ever be approximately correct.  And it's because, as a Guild, we can't decide if the goal of screen credits should be to reflect who actually writes the movie or to try and influence who actually writes the movie.

If the latter, there might be merit in a much talked-about suggestion, which is to allow participating rewriters to receive some acknowledgement in a film's end credits — like, say, "Additional Dialogue by…"  This idea is not part of the current proposal.  I need to hear more debate on that one before making up my mind, if and when that's ever actually proposed.

But with regard to the current proposals, changing arbitrary percentages is silly.  Given that the last thing the Writers Guild needs is more of its members yelling at each other, I think we ought to accept the current credits manual, flaws and all, and leave it alone.

And by the way, this entire article was written by one person.

I have this friend named Pat O'Neill.  We get along fine in person and on the phone.  Nice guy.  On various discussion forums on the Internet, however, I rarely agree with him and often strenuously disagree to the extent where people write me and say, "Boy, you must hate Pat O'Neill."  I don't.  I don't think I "hate" anyone in this world…but if I did, it would have to be for something a lot more offensive than posting things I utterly disagree with in newsgroups.

I mention this because I'm about to disagree with Pat again.  The other morning, over in the rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe newsgroup, he posted the following…

Most commonly on these groups any decision a publisher makes that cancels a "critically acclaimed" title whose sales are in the toilet is derided.  In general, these groups act as if publishers were in business to publish the GROUPS' favorite comics, as opposed to publishing the comics most likely to be profitable.

Pat is right and wrong about this…and I should add that I was, as well, since I used to say almost the exact same thing in fanzines when someone would start weeping that their favorite funnybook had been axed.  But I think I was at least partly incorrect for two reasons, one large and one small…

One is that, first of all, a fan has every right to complain when something he likes is taken from him.  Such passions ought to be balanced with a little pragmatism and awareness of how things have to work in the Real World, true.  But I think it's unfair and probably unwise to demean or attempt to change that passion.  You can't expect someone whose only relationship to a work is as Enthusiastic Audience to suddenly snap to the mindset of one of the bean-counters in the accounting department…nor should they.  What a cold, unenjoyable media it would be if we all had to hook our sympathies up to the financial end of things and to accept every decision as a calculated profit/loss reality.  If I love something, I shouldn't have that love trampled by the business department expecting me to view it through their eyes.

That's the small reason.  The larger is this: When a publisher cancels a "fan favorite" comic book due to poor sales, there's a very good chance that publisher is wrong…often in the long term and sometimes even in the short term.

An amazing number of times — too often to dismiss as flukes, I believe — a publisher has cancelled The Invincible Flurp and all the Flurp fans get up in arms and protest, and the publisher says, "Don't you [idiot] fans realize that this is a business?  That Flurp sales are in the crapper and we're losing money and that we're not in business to lose money?"  And in the long run, with hindsight, there is ample evidence that the publisher simply gave up too quickly on a comic that might have built a new and profitable audience had the company stayed with it longer or done a better job of marketing.  (It has also been the case, though some have denied it, that someone in the office simply misread the numbers and terminated a profitable title, or killed one deliberately because of personal issues with its makers.  I don't think anyone will ever admit that in print, at least about themselves, but almost anyone who's been in the business for any length of time will tell you it's happened.)

Throughout comic book history, publishers have often been way too short-sighted and timid and terrified of losing even a very modest amount of money on new product.  At times, the financial risk in publishing the established sellers becomes so non-existent that they cannot bear to assume even a microscopic risk to publish something new.  Something different comes along and they don't know how to sell it and are afraid to try.  Usually, it works like this: Super-hero books are selling decently and, in a moment of uncommon wisdom, someone says, "We need to expand the audience and reach folks who don't like super-hero comics," so they launch some non super-hero comics, often with great confidence and a determination to build and nurture another marketplace.

That's until the first sales figures come in on the non super-hero comics and they don't immediately yield the guaranteed profits of the super-hero books.  Then someone has a panic attack and, without waiting for the folks who don't like super-hero comics to have time to find the new, non super-hero books, the publisher says, "Wait a minute!  Why am I publishing these when I could sell more comics per month by replacing them with super-hero titles?"  That has happened way too many times, despite the fact that the potential loss, even if the new books never catch on, is not all that great.  It also happens despite the facts that…

A. There are dozens of cases where a new comic was declared a flop and then, for reasons other than the publisher believing in it, it was brought back or continued a little longer…and it became not just a hit but a huge hit.  Marvel Comics' two biggest properties — Spider-Man and the Hulk — were both initially and prematurely declared failures and were cancelled.  And had we been around then and protested those cancellations, someone at the company could have said precisely what Pat O'Neill said above.  Later on, the publisher declared the then-new Conan the Barbarian comic an utter failure and actually did say what Pat said when fans protested its probable cancellation.  But as with Spidey and Greenskin, the Barbarian stuck around long enough to develop and show a following.

B. Sometimes, the sales of the comic book itself are only part of the story.  All the major companies have published comics that were, going strictly by this month's sales, unprofitable…but because the property was licensed for a movie or toy deal, loads of cash rolled in.  There were many years where Wonder Woman was technically losing all kinds of money on the newsstand but that comic served as a very effective loss-leader for very lucrative merchandise.

C. There are also dozens of cases where, years later, a cancelled comic still has a loyal following.  No one can ever prove that Bat Lash (to pick one example of dozens) would or would not have found an audience had it run another year or so but, given the extent to which people still recall it fondly, you have to wonder.  More to the point, some abruptly-cancelled comics are probably analogous to a movie that is declared a flop at the time of its debut but which, in re-release, proves to be enormously popular and profitable.  DC, for instance, has made an awful lot of money reprinting the old Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams issues of Green Lantern-Green Arrow which, back in 1971, was declared a money-loser that had to go.  Some don't think it was unprofitable then but, even if it was, the foreign sales and reprints have since made it one of the more lucrative things DC published that year.  Had they kept it going, it would have been a very good investment.

This is not unique to comics.  TV networks are often too quick to cancel a show if its initial ratings do not soar.  Seinfeld, which may turn out to be the most profitable live-action TV show of all time, was — like Spider-Man or Hulk — an "immediate flop" that many of the business-types wanted to junk, and might have.  The TV version of M*A*S*H, which may be the current holder of the "most profitable of all time" medallion, was definitely in that category, as well.  (I once worked for a producer who kept on his wall, a framed memo from a high executive at Paramount.  Going by early ratings, the exec was declaring Cheers a bomb and asking if the studio's lawyers could extricate them from having to produce any more episodes.  Next to it was framed a then-recent statement of the show's grosses, which of course made the first memo look even stupider.)

Fact is — and I'll bet it's the same in almost any field — business decisions are not always firm, intractable judgments.  A creative field like comic books is probably especially subjective.  The folks who have to decide what to publish and what to cancel might like to pretend that they have no choice…that they're only going by the numbers and you can't argue with them.  But you can.  Like William Goldman says of the movie business, "Nobody knows anything."

If you love a comic book and the publisher kills it, don't let anyone tell you you're naïve to protest or lament its passing.  Worrying about the profit or loss of the company is the company's job, not yours.  And besides, there's a very good chance that even as a dollars-and-cents decision, they're wrong and you're right.

Here's another one of those "incredible coincidence" stories you won't believe.  But I have witnesses to this one, and am quite prepared to take a polygraph that it happened just the way I say it happened.

For much of a decade, I wrote and voice-directed a cartoon show called Garfield and Friends.  This was great fun because the Powers That Be (aka Jim Davis, creator of the lasagna-loving feline) allowed me to write pretty much whatever I wanted, and to cast whomever I felt suitable to do the guest voices.

One week, I penned an episode entitled, Lifestyles of the Fat and Furry, which burlesqued the then-popular TV series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, hosted by Robin Leach.  The program chronicled the indulgent creature comforts of folks with vast amounts of fame and/or cash, usually both.  Teetering tenuously on the ledge of self-parody, the show drew much of its charm from the fustian, hyperkinetic narration of Mr. Leach.

Having written my parody of their parody, I set about to secure Robin Leach himself to do the voice of Robin Leach.  I figured he could handle the role.  About a week before we would be recording the voice track, I phoned his office in Los Angeles.  They told me to call his office in New York.

I called his office in New York.  They told me to call his office in Connecticut.

I called his office in Connecticut.  They told me to call his office in London.

I called his office in London.  They told me that Robin was on a six-week expedition down the Brahmaputra River, or somewhere equally remote.  Wherever it was, he wouldn't be back 'til long after our tape date.  So I shrugged and booked Frank Welker.

Frank Welker is the most gifted, amazing voice magician who has ever stood before a microphone in Hollywood.  Frank can sound like anyone or anything.  He is heard constantly in animated cartoons but also logs many hours doing voice matches and dubbing in live-action motion pictures.  You hear him often in movies without knowing you're hearing him.

I knew he did a mean Robin Leach so I arranged with his agent for Frank to come in and play the part.  I gave him a call time of 2:00.

Nine AM that morning, I walked into Buzzy's Recording Studio on Melrose Avenue for a full day of Garfield recording.  I asked Marie at the desk, as I always did, if we were in Studio A or Studio B.  She said — and I swear, I'm not making this up — "You're in Studio A.  Robin Leach is in B."

Robin Leach???

That was what the lady said.  I walked directly into Studio B and there — standing at a microphone, wearing a shirt imprinted with images of hundred dollar bills — was Robin Leach.  In person.

I explained to him what we were doing over in A, and how I'd attempted to contact him, and how I'd given up and hired an impressionist, and he couldn't have been nicer.  "Well, if the offer's still open, I'd be delighted to play me," he said.  About an hour later, after he finished the spots he was recording, he came over to our studio and played Robin Leach like he'd been doing it all his life.

In fact, he played himself with enormous good-humor and that same sense of show biz and self-mocking that had made his show a hit.  He exaggerated the vocal quirkiness of the Leach style more than I'd probably have allowed a mimic to do.

Robin was long gone by 2:00 when Frank Welker showed up.  "Well, I'm here to do that Robin Leach bit," Frank announced.  "I was warming up in the car on the way over."

"Uh, Frank," I said sheepishly.  "I'm sorry but there's been a change of plans.  I have a different role for you to play…not Robin Leach…"

Frank was puzzled.  "What happened to the Robin Leach role?"

"Well, I don't know how to tell you this but, uh, we found someone who does a better Robin Leach than you do…"

Frank is a wonderful, cooperative person but he seemed a bit affronted — like his honor had been besmirched.  He looked hurt so I added, "I'm sorry…I thought this other guy was a little better, Here — you can hear for yourself."  And I told Andy the Engineer to run a few seconds of the voice track we'd recorded earlier that morn.

As the mellifluous tones of R. Leach boomed through the speakers, I saw shock upon the face of the best impressionist in the business.  There, framed by stark horror, was the realization that someone had bested him in the category of Robin Leach impressions.

(I finally told him the truth.  I didn't have the heart…)

It isn't there now but there used to be a wonderful old movie house in Culver City called the Palms Theater.  It was a friendly place to see a film — not fancy but comfy, not plush but cheap.  The big, first-run movies went to the fancier theaters in Westwood, all of them affiliated with national chains.  The Palms, fiercely independent to its dying day, usually offered up two second-run pictures, with a few trailers and a cartoon sandwiched between.

The best thing about the Palms was its recorded announcement.  I don't know who recorded them but he always commenced with "Shalom, Bubala," and he was always hysterical.  My favorite, which I shall now attempt to re-create, came when they booked a double-feature of Walter Matthau pics.  It went very much like this, and it will probably be funnier if you read it aloud…

Shalom, Bubala.  This is the exotic Palms Theater on picturesque Motor Avenue in beautiful Culver City.  This week, we are featuring Plaza Suite, starring Walter Matthau and Lee Grant, Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton, and Walter Matthau and Barbara Harris.  We are also featuring A New Leaf, starring Walter Matthau and Elaine May.  In other words — Walter Matthau, ad nauseum.  Here's your chance to get so sick of Walter Matthau you'll never have to see another Walter Matthau movie as long as you live.

Drive up to the theater where our parking lot attendant, Walter Matthau, will show you where to park.  Then buy a ticket from our box office attendant, Walter Matthau, and have it torn in half by our ticket taker, Walter Matthau.  Visit our refreshment stand where our counterman Walter Matthau will gladly sell you a large, Walter Matthau-sized soft drink and a box of Jujubees, every one of them in the shape of Walter Matthau.  You will be seated by our usher, Walter Matthau, and then our projectionist (Walter Matthau) will start the program, commencing with a Walter Matthau cartoon, a Walter Matthau newsreel, and coming attractions of more than seventeen thousand Walter Matthau films.

Next week, we're featuring two more movies.  We don't know what they are yet but we can guarantee you that they won't have Walter Matthau in them.  In fact, we will give you a double-your-money-back No Walter Matthau guarantee.

If you read it the way the guy on the phone read it, it's hysterical.  (And here's an interesting example of how just the right word is important in comedy.  If you read the same speech with Jack Lemmon's name in there, it's only about half as funny.  Try it and see.)

I used to go to the Palms about once a month — sometimes with my parents, sometimes with a date — but I made a point of phoning each week to hear what the "Shalom, Bubala" guy had to say.  I wasn't the only one.  People who had no interest whatsoever in going to the Palms Theater used to call in sufficient quantity that the Palms had to install extra phone lines.

I can remember some of the movies I saw there — Airport, Paint Your Wagon, The Odd Couple…(This last was obviously before the "No Walter Matthau" policy went into effect).  I even remember the first time I took a date to the Palms.

It was Blue Water, White Death, a documentary about sharks that I'd have passed on, had it not been for Liz.  She wanted to see it and I was willing to take Liz anywhere, just as long as I could sneak my arm around her.

I was just buying two General Admissions at the Palms (not from Walter Matthau) when Liz said to me, "I feel I have to see this movie.  I have a terrible fear of sharks."

I stopped in the doorway, right by the non-Matthau usher.  "Why do you have to see this movie if you're afraid of sharks?" I asked.

"I'm hoping that if I confront my fear, I will get over it," she replied.

Well, it sounded good in theory but she spent the entire movie with her nails dug into my arm and/or thigh, and left the Palms so upset that she asked me to take her straight home.  This was not what I'd had in mind for the balance of the evening.  I haven't seen Liz since that night.  I have, however, seen her fingernail marks on my arm and thigh.

And I haven't seen the Palms Theater since shortly after that.  One day when I drove past, the marquee proclaimed, in lieu of movie titles, that it was "Closed until further notice."  The next time I cruised Motor Avenue, it said, "Closed forever."  And the next time, there was no marquee…or Palms Theater.

It looks like Walter had the last laugh.

The E! Network is rerunning the very first episode of Saturday Night Live on Monday.  Actually, it wasn't even called that on its first broadcast in October 11, 1975.  The now-forgotten Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell had prior claim on the title so the new late night program was called NBC Saturday Night.  Didn't matter.  For some reason, everyone — fans, TV critics, everyone — just started calling it Saturday Night Live and a few months after the Cosell show evaporated, the SNL name went on the NBC show officially.  (I believe some prints of some of the reruns were altered to slap the name on them.)

What I find most interesting about that first NBC Saturday Night is that the idea seemed to be to throw everything at the wall and then see what stuck.  Today, we think of the show as 90 minutes of sketch comedy with one guest host and one musical act.  But when they started out, the sketch comedy was but one of many elements and not even the most important.  In addition to comedy sketches, the first episode featured…

• Stand-up comedy.  George Carlin hosted and he did three stand-up spots.  There was a monologue by Valri Bromfield and Andy Kaufman did his record pantomime to the theme from "Mighty Mouse."  (An additional stand-up spot didn't get in.  Just before airtime, a kid named Billy Crystal was told he'd have to trim his routine to the bone and at the advice of his managers, he walked.)
• Two musical acts: Janis Ian and Billy Preston performing two numbers apiece.
• "The Land of Gorch" featuring the Muppets.
• A film by Albert Brooks.
• A spot with Paul Simon plugging his appearance the following week.
• Five pre-recorded parody commercials.
• Weekend Update with Chevy Chase.

The Chevy Chase spot was probably the biggest hit.  The other sketches — the kind of material that would become the core of Saturday Night Live — were few in number and short in length.  There was the cold opening with Chase, Michael O'Donoghue, and John Belushi.  (Although he would not be counted as a member of the original cast, O'Donoghue had more to do in the first episode than some who were and was billed as one of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players."  So was character actor George Coe, who quietly disappeared from the troupe soon after.)  There were a few other short skits, the longest of which — a courtroom scene — was an old routine that had been done almost precisely the same way on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.

Then the second week, Paul Simon hosted and the show was devoted primarily to music.  In addition to Simon, they had Art Garfunkel, Phoebe Snow, Randy Newman and the Jesse Dixon Singers.  Add in another Muppets spot and another film by Albert Brooks and there wasn't much time for sketches.

It wasn't until the third week, hosted by Rob Reiner, that sketch comedy had a significant chunk of the show.  Even then, the longest comedy segment was the Albert Brooks film, which was so long they had to insert a commercial break in the middle of it.

Producer Lorne Michaels was later quoted as saying something like, "I had the ingredients from the start but it took me a while to figure out how much of each to include."  If you watched the episodes in sequence, you'd see it take around four episodes (over five weeks) before they decided they had a sketch show, and a while longer before they began to subordinate everything else to that.  That was a quick discovery process.  Michaels had originally negotiated a deal with NBC that gave them 17 shows and with it, an understanding that they'd tinker with the format and probably not solidify things until around Show Ten.  Ordinarily, one of the great lies of network television is when they say, "We won't even look at the ratings for the first few weeks" but in this case, they seem to have at least been sincere about giving the show room to develop.

That would probably not happen today.  Despite the history of shows like SNL and Seinfeld that were given time to grow and which became insanely profitable, a TV show is now expected to debut in pretty much its finished form.  Not long ago, a producer sent the following to me in an e-mail.  It's from an article he was writing about a recent, unhappy experience…

What I learned was that nowadays, a show goes on the air and based on the ratings of the first one, it's declared a provisional success (if they're good) or a provisional flop (if not).  If you're a provisional flop and your ratings go up the second week, you might have a fighting chance at proving yourself.  If you're a provisional flop and you go down the second week, it's pretty much over.  You're a bomb and the smell of death rises into the air.  Your promotion disappears, your guest stars drift away, and advertisers write you off.  It's a premature verdict but it has a way of coming true from its own momentum.

Lorne Michaels' new show had some things going for it when it debuted.  For one thing, it had no competition.  For another, NBC was looking to open up that time slot for new programming and it would have been embarrassing and injurious to that effort not to stick with the new show for a time.  They also had nothing else to put on.

As it happens, the first Saturday Night did pretty well and it was hailed as something innovative.  Looking back on that first episode, it's hard to see why.  So much of the show was George Carlin's stand-up act…funny but hardly a major breakthrough in television programming.  Apart from Weekend Update, the freshest bit of material on the first broadcast was probably Andy Kaufman's "Mighty Mouse" routine…and he wasn't even a regular.

No matter.  The show appealed to a generally-neglected, younger audience.  It felt new, even if it wasn't, and in TV, that can be the hard part.  In a few more weeks, it would actually start to be innovative.  One can only wonder how many hastily-cancelled shows might have managed that if they'd had a few more weeks.

One of the gauges of America's pulse after 9/11 was the late night talk show.  Much was said and written about how Dave, Jay, Bill, Conan, Jon, Craig and Saturday Night Live dealt with the disasters, especially with regard to the first new broadcast each show had to do after that day.  At the time, I was touched by most of the entries and thought most of the hosts did a fine job in a difficult situation.  Recently though, I was given some tapes of all those "first broadcasts back" and I watched all of them at least partway through.  Most, including ones I really respected at the time, I now found unwatchable.

While I do not question the sincerity or grief of anyone, I found all the shows overly maudlin and mannered and, with the possible exception of Mr. Maher on Politically Incorrect, horribly simplistic.  Somehow, they all reminded me of those horrible moments on the news when some reporter asks the survivor of a tragedy, "How does it feel to lose your home and family?"  I always feel that pain is being paraded and emotions exploited for no good reason.

(One thing which kinda jolted me was how everyone kept talking about "more than five thousand dead."  The total has since been revised to more like 2819, which is still, of course, ample cause for all the sorrow we can muster.  Still, I find it odd that in the last year, this happy downgrade hasn't attracted much attention.)

I also, watching the tapes, was struck by how much importance was attached to the difficulty of resuming production on a comedy show…as if that was one of the significant tragedies of September 11.  And some of the tears — especially Dan Rather's on Letterman — now seemed horribly affected and mannered.  I don't think he said one thing that was insightful or informative that night.  It was all a matter of "look how upset I am, how upset we all are."  Those who enjoy the bully pulpit of a national audience ought to be offering something constructive and healing, as opposed to ratcheting up the despair.

I am not suggesting that any of the late night shows did bad jobs, or could have been expected to do better jobs.  They did what they had to do for those airings and I'm not sure that it matters much that some of it may seem inappropriate, nearly a year after the fact.

Still, I think it's interesting and not unhealthy to note how sensibilities have changed, largely for the better, since September 11.  The cliché of that week was "everything has changed" and I suspect most folks today would suggest that things have changed a lot less than we thought they would.  Some of us thought World War III was commencing and that at the very least, the attack would overshadow everything we did and everything we said for years to come.  It hasn't.  We are a far more resilient people than we thought at the time, as evidenced by the fact that people are finally starting to deal with problems of that day and asking some hard questions instead of moaning and sitting shiva.  Watching those late night talk shows, I saw a lot of crying and reverence and even the occasional bit of eloquence.  But I didn't see anyone talking about recovery or moving on or doing anything positive.

The anniversary of 9/11 is upon us and television is pulling out all stops to show respect for the dead and to celebrate our pain…and I'm sure Dave, Jay, Conan and the others will offer a respectful dose of all that.  But I wish one of them would remind us that not everything has changed and that we show respect for the departed by doing everything we can to prevent further disasters, not by wallowing in grief and airing endless montages of old news footage.  I suspect though that, in an industry where everyone is terrified of being accused of insensitivity and lack of patriotism, it's easier just to salute the flag, curse out Osama, and cry about our dead.

A few nights ago, Game Show Network ran a 1957 episode of To Tell the Truth in which one of the contestants was Jack Bothwell, a New Jersey restaurant host who said that, in his younger days, he'd played Freckles in the famous "Our Gang" comedies produced by Hal Roach.  As per usual for the program, Bothwell and two impostors answered questions from the panel whose mission was to identify the real Jack Bothwell.  In this case, their problem was a little more difficult because — as the show's producers obviously were unaware — all three men answering the questions were impostors.  You see, there was no character named Freckles in the "Our Gang" films and Jack Bothwell never appeared in any of them.

We are nearing the day when a great industry will draw to a close…people claiming falsely that they were kid actors in "Our Gang."  There have been a staggering number of them, some claiming to have played Spanky or Alfalfa or some other actual character; others bragging of a non-existent role like Freckles.  Not that long ago, the ABC news show, 20/20, did a whole profile of an older black man who, they said, played Buckwheat.  Some of these folks have published books or sold autographs.  Others just seem to want the stardom.

There are other explanations for some of the fakes.  There were several "Our Gang" imitations offered up by Roach's competitors and in later years, some of the grown-up kid actors who'd been in those knock-offs either got confused or, more likely, decided there was more prestige in saying they'd been in "Our Gang" than in, say, "The Kiddie Troupers."  There were also kids who played bit parts or extra roles in "Our Gang" who later decided they'd been regular featured players.

And there's one other interesting source of fake Our Gangers.  At the peak of the series' popularity, there was a gent touring the mid-west, working a "Harold Hill" style scam.  He'd breeze into some small town and give an interview to the local paper as Robert MacGowan, director of the famous "Our Gang" series.  That was the name of the actual director but this wasn't him.  The fake MacGowan would announce that he was interested in getting some rural, small town values into the shorts and that he was scouting for kids who could act.  Naturally, hundreds of parents would drag their offspring down to meet him and he would suggest to each that Junior would be a natural; that he could go directly to Hollywood and earn thousands a week if only he had a little more polish and seasoning.  The phony director — and there may have been more than one con artist working this line — would introduce an acting teacher (actually, his wife) who had just arrived to help his talent search and who, for a nice fee, could make the child camera-ready.  There were a number of variations on the scam, including some that involved actually using locals to film what the bogus director said was a genuine "Our Gang" comedy.  One can easily imagine a kid who was in one of them later believing (or choosing to believe) he was actually in an "Our Gang" movie.

None of this, by the way, seems to explain Jack Bothwell.  He appears to simply have been a fraud.

The other interesting thing about that spot on To Tell the Truth was that one of the fake Bothwells was a former police officer who had recently joined the staff of another game show.  His name was Barney Martin and he later became quite a successful actor.  Oddly enough, he got more answers correct than the "real" Jack Bothwell.  Asked where in Hollywood the Hal Roach Studio was located, Martin said it was in Culver City (correct) whereas Bothwell said he didn't know because his "Our Gang" movies had been shot on the East Coast.  In truth, no "Our Gang" films were made there.

Mr. Bothwell made the rounds of talk shows and did personal appearances before he passed away around 1967, complete with newspaper obits about his career in "Our Gang."  I don't know if anyone ever called him on his little fib but I do know he wasn't telling the truth on To Tell the Truth.

Gosh.  If you can't believe a 40+ year old game show, what can you believe?

I don't smoke.  I've never smoked.  Not a puff, at least not directly.  I have, however, ingested enough second-hand smoke to, in the opinion of a leading respiratory physician, do some serious damage to my nostrils.  But I, myself, have never smoked.

I've never smoked for pretty much the same reason I've never taken a ball peen hammer and hit myself repeatedly over the head.  Both seem like enormously unappealing, self-destructive things to do to one's self.  Logically, of course, I know that so many intelligent people have smoked and/or continue to smoke that it must have some positive reward but I just don't understand it.  Actually, most of the smokers I know seem to regret they ever started.

Anyway, the point is that I don't smoke and I hate being around smoke.  When people around me insist that they have the right to smoke around me, I used to insist that — in that case — I had the same right to vomit on them. One time, years ago, I actually did.  I have a hunch that, thereafter, that smoker was a little more prudent about where he lit up.

All of this said, I find myself in this curious conundrum: I more or less agree with those who oppose a ban on smoking in certain public places, such as restaurants.  Yesterday watching Crossfire, I found myself in general accord with Robert Novak and those who are arguing against New York's pending law that would forbid all smoking in eateries.  I don't want to be sitting in the Carnegie Deli, partaking of a side of Marlboro aroma along with my corned beef sandwich…but I feel the greater damage may lie in allowing government to get this deep into what could and should be a market-determined decision.

I think the law should be not that smoking is banned in restaurants (as it is in many cities) but that those that did allow it would have to post a conspicuous "Smoking Allowed" sign out front and perhaps mention it in all advertising larger than a certain size.  Folks who smoke could go to these places.  Folks like me could avoid them.  Eventually, as business thrived or suffered, restaurants would configure their policies to serve the public in proper proportion.  Surveys suggest that anywhere from 20% to 30% of Americans enjoy (if enjoyment, it be) the occasional smoke.  I suspect that if what I propose were to be enacted, most neighborhoods would wind up with 10% to 15% "Smoking Restaurants."  The reason the percentage would be lower would be because (a) even many smokers prefer not to eat around it and (b) when a non-smoker and a smoker dined together, it would have to be at a non-smoking establishment.

Now, I already know some of the objections and will attempt to answer them here…

It's unfair to waiters and other employees to make them inhale all that second-hand smoke.

Absolutely.  And I am not suggesting that a restaurant that is now non-smoking should be allowed to suddenly let everyone light up Marlboros.  I think the default would be non-smoking and that an establishment would have to give its patrons and employees ample notice before allowing it.  Since waiting tables is largely a transitory existence, that would give employees time to find employment elsewhere.  It's like if a vegan restaurant were to decide to start serving Prime Rib.  The staff in such places is usually anti-meat, and they have every right to be anti-meat.  They just shouldn't be able to prevent the owner from changing his cuisine.

This kind of thing has been tried with "smoking airlines" and other establishments that went bust, and even a non-smoking casino in Las Vegas that went bankrupt.

The casino was already in deep financial trouble before they tried that policy and the airlines that have tried it have been marginal, as well.  But even if every business that permits smoking goes broke and no "smoking" businesses remain, fine.  Let that be determined by market demand, not by government oversight.

Restaurants in some cities tried having smoking areas and it didn't work.  The smoke kept drifting into the non-smoking area.

That's not what I'm suggesting at all.  A restaurant would have to be one or the other and could not try splitting one business into two so they could have it both ways.  Hotels, let's note, seem to be doing okay with smoking rooms and non-smoking rooms on separate floors…and occasionally they convert one into the other, depending on what their customers seem to demand.  Why couldn't restaurants be one or the other?

If your favorite restaurant went smoking, you wouldn't be able to go to it.

True.  It would cease to be my favorite restaurant. It would also cease if it purged its menu of everything but cole slaw.  But so what?  They have the right to do that and I can find another favorite restaurant.  Should the government step in and insist they keep my favorite items on the menu?

But this is different.  This is about protecting the health of people.

Which people?  Non-smokers?  I'm all for protecting their health, especially since I am one.  But if we have clearly-labelled smoking restaurants and they go in, isn't that the same as if they go to a hotel and ask for a smoking room?  Should we be protecting them from that?  As for protecting the health of smokers, what difference does it make if they can smoke in a restaurant when they can go outside and smoke, smoke at home, smoke in their cars, etc.?

As I keep saying, I hate smoke.  But I think it's important to be consistent to one's principles and one of mine is that people have the right to do whatever they want to themselves as long as it doesn't harm others.  I think you have the right to ingest alcohol or drugs, so long as you don't go out and drive.  I think you have the right to kill yourself.  And I certainly think you have the right to smoke so we shouldn't enact unnecessary laws to make you a social pariah, especially when folks like me can avoid the smoke with minimal effort.  I really feel strongly about this.

On the other hand, any time I find myself agreeing with Robert Novak, I figure my opinion is at least a little suspect.

A piece I posted over on my News page about Bill Cullen brought an amazing amount of response, including this note from Rich Twoley…

I had never realized how on those quiz-panel shows, the producers were making an important decision when they decided who to start the questioning with.  Did that apply to all shows or just I've Got A Secret?

All shows.  But it was especially evident in the famed "Mystery Guest" segments on What's My Line?  People occasionally accused a show like that of being rigged…of giving the answers to the panel.  There was, of course, no reason why they should do that, since the show was most entertaining when the panel was lost and guessing wildly off the target.  In fact, on What's My Line? and a couple of other game shows (especially The Name's The Same, which Game Show Network occasionally resurrects), it's obvious they were sometimes giving panelists false leads so their questions would be funnier.

On What's My Line?, they had to prevent the panelists — especially Bennett Cerf and Dorothy Kilgallen, who were fierce competitors — from knocking off the Mystery Guest too quickly and prematurely ending the fun of the game.  This was difficult because the main source of Mystery Guests was folks who were either performing in New York at the time or making the rounds to promote a soon-to-open movie or other project.  If Bob Hope had a film opening in Manhattan any day now, there was a better-than-average chance he'd be the Mystery Guest.

Kilgallen was a reporter and before each broadcast, she'd go over the newspapers and press releases to make up a list of likely Mystery Guests.  Cerf went her one better: As the publisher of Random House books, he had a whole staff that dealt with publicists and book tours and who was in town for promotional purpose.  He'd have the staff make up a list for him and, before the show and during commercial breaks, he'd pull it out of his pocket and cram for the Mystery Guest spot.

To make it more difficult for him, the producer (Gil Fates) would usually have the questioning commence with Cerf.  If he didn't…if the person before Cerf asked, "Do you have a movie opening this week?" and the Mystery Guest said yes, the odds were that Bennett would nail it on his first question.  Having him ask the icebreaker question generally ensured that the game would at least last until each of the four panelists had asked a question.

The problem got worse in later years when they did the syndicated What's My Line?, which Game Show Network has just begun rerunning again.  Apart from occasional guest shots, Cerf had departed but Soupy Sales was on the panel, and Soupy was too good at guessing the Mystery Guest.  He knew every obscure show biz celebrity — and on the syndicated version, some of them were pretty damned obscure — and, no matter what the vocal disguise, he could recognize most voices.  Fates, who was still producer, appealed to Sales to go easy.  Not only was the entertainment value of the endgame suffering but the shows kept running short and it was necessary to pad with lame interviews.  The Soupman, however, wasn't about to miss a chance to win.  To try and cut down on his quick identifications, the producer instituted a new rule, which they called "Fates' Law."  It specified that if a panelist guessed a name and was wrong, the panelist had to remove their blindfold and sit out the rest of the game.  It slowed Soupy down, but only a little.

I mentioned in the Cullen piece that one obstacle to a new wave of panel-type game shows might be a lack of great panelists.  Another could be a paucity of experienced game show producers who know how to set up and run a contest for maximum entertainment value.  Guys like Gil Fates had done them for years in the formative days of television — and some even in radio.  They perfected the rules of their games and how to make them work.  In today's TV industry, where shows have to prove themselves quickly or get axed, they'd never have the chance.