Category Archives: To Be Filed

This is a good one but it's only online for 48 hours, several of which have already gone by as I post this. It's a full production of the quintessential Broadway musical, 42nd Street.

This is from the West End revival which opened in March of 2017. it starred Clare Halse, Tom Lister and Philip Bertioli. When it opened, Sheena Easton had the role of Dorothy Brock, the arrogant "star" of the musical within the musical but by the time they recorded this video, Bonnie Langford had taken over the role. Enjoy — but enjoy quickly…

• If Joe Biden wants Trump supporters to wear masks for the first 100 days of his administration, he should probably make it illegal to do so.

I've forgotten the precise sequence of my adolescent crushes but I think Abby Dalton came a bit before Mary Tyler Moore and somewhat after Betty Rubble. Ms. Dalton did an awful lot of TV and movie appearances before I became aware of her on a TV show called Hennesey, in which she starred with Jackie Cooper. It's one of those programs I haven't seen since it first aired — in this case from 1959 to 1962 — and I'm not sure if I'd like it now but I liked it then.

She was one of the reasons. She was very lovely and very funny so it wasn't a surprise that when Hennesey was canceled, she went directly to another series — in this case, The Joey Bishop Show. He played his wife on this sitcom and she was again very lovely and about as funny as anyone could be playing Joey Bishop's wife. I've met quite a few folks who worked on that series, including Joe Besser and Corbett Monica and not heard one extol the joys of working with Joey Bishop.

Abby Dalton worked on an awful lot of other shows — comedy, drama and game — and yes, I have a story about meeting her. It was at one of those Hollywood Show events where actors meet their fans and sell autographs and autographed photos. I went with my friend Jewel Shepard, who has herself sometimes been behind the tables there, signing still from her movies.

Jewel knows everyone I don't know and she introduced me to a stunning lady named Kathleen Kinmont, whose work I'd seen on screens large and small and we had a nice conversation. At one point, she asked me who among the celebs signing there, I most wanted to meet. I said, "Your mother." Kathleen Kinmont is the daughter of Abby Dalton, who was selling 'n' signing photos at the next table. I told her I'd had a teenage crush on her mother so she took me over and said, "Mom, here's another guy who had a crush on you." The word "another" stood out.

They're saying Abby Dalton was 88 when she died last week and I don't know how that can be. This particular Hollywood Show was in 2011 and given the way she looked then, she couldn't have been much over 65 at the time.

We talked for a while and she asked me a lot about myself. When I mentioned I did comic books, she said, "Oh, maybe you can help me." From under a stack of photos she was selling, she pulled out copies of the two issues of the Hennesey comic books that Dell published when the show was on.

She said, "Is there any chance you know who drew these? I've always wondered." By every chance, I could. I told her they were drawn by Gil Kane and she wrote the name down. (I did that from memory. If we'd opened them so I could check the art style, I would have told her that Kane did the first one and he might have contributed to the second but I didn't think so. It was a gang bang of several artists including Bob Fujitani and Mike Sekowsky.)

That's almost the end of this story except that, given what I'd heard about The Joey Bishop Show, I wanted to ask her if its star was as difficult as others had said. Before I could figure out how to tactfully phrase the question, I heard someone else ask her, "Hey, was Bishop as hard to get along with as people say?" To which she gave one of those proper, "I don't like to speak ill of the people I work with" replies…so I didn't ask her.

But a few minutes later, I was picking out one of the photos she was selling to purchase and have her sign. She had quite a selection there which reminded you how many films and TV shows she was in and what a career she had. I pointed to the ones from The Joey Bishop Show and asked her, "Are these cheaper because he's in them?" She laughed…and the way she laughed gave me my answer.

Gosh, I enjoyed meeting that woman. So lovely and smart…it's nice when they don't disappoint you in any way.

The second volume of Tex Avery cartoons is about to be released on DVD and Blu Ray. This one includes Little Rural Riding Hood, The Cuckoo Clock, Magical Maestro, One Cab's Family, The Cat That Hated People, Doggone Tired, The Flea Circus, Field and Scream, The First Bad Man, Out Foxed, Droopy's Double Trouble, Three Little Pups, Dragalong Droopy, Homesteader Droopy, Dixieland Droopy, Counterfeit Cat, Ventriloquist Cat, House of Tomorrow, Car of Tomorrow, TV of Tomorrow and Farm of Tomorrow. A lot of folks would tell you that Little Rural Riding Hood is the funniest short cartoon ever made. It's certainly up there.

You can pre-order this one from Amazon at this link. You can still get Volume 1 at this link. And somewhere on either page, there'll probably be one of those great Amazon package deals where you can order both with one click, thereby saving you…one click but no money. It's still worth it.

Here's another unusual interpretation of the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the show Sweet Charity. This is an Italian group called Broadway Shots…

Assuming you want to be vaccinated for COVID-19, how long might it be before you can get one?  I do not guarantee the accuracy of this but the New York Times has an interactive page that will give you an estimate.

Before you click on it — which you will do, despite what I'm about to point out here — remember that the prioritizing may change and there may be logistic problems in getting supplies of vaccine to where they can be administered. Also, there are different polls out there about how many people are even interested in getting vaccinated. The Pew Research Center poll says 60% will get it but whatever the number is, it'll change as people see how easy it is, how many of their friends do or don't do it, if there are reports of unexpected side effects, etc.

Also, what if I want the Moderna vaccine and the only ones available are Pfizer's and AstraZeneca's? And how will this work with the vaccines that require two doses a month apart? And can my health insurance plan do anything to move me up on the list?

So now that I've told you how worthless I think the Times estimator is, I'll tell you that it told me that in Los Angeles County, 703,500 people are ahead of me in line to get the vaccine. That might not be such a long wait if 40% of the folks in my town refuse to be vaccinated. It might go even quicker if I'm successful in my campaign to get comic book writers classified as essential workers.

Here's the link where you can check it out.

Sad but not surprised to hear of the passing of our pal Warren Berlinger, who went away yesterday morning at the age of 83 after a long and awful fight with cancer. Before he hit a certain stage of life, Warren was a very talented, oft-hired leading man type on TV, in films and on the stage. After he hit that stage, he was a very talented, oft-hired character actor in all the same places. I'm going to steal the career overview from something that our mutual friend Steve Stoliar posted on Facebook…

Warren had an endless string of stories, which was no surprise, because of his lengthy, prolific career. His Broadway work goes back to the original 1946 production of Annie, Get Your Gun and he scored a big hit in Blue Denim, both on Broadway and in the film version. Other films in which he appeared include The Wackiest Ship in the Army, Spinout, The Long Goodbye, Harry and Walter Go To New York, The Shaggy D.A., Cannonball Run, The World According to Garp and That Thing You Do, amongst many others.

He was also a frequent presence on TV in such series as That Girl, Love American Style, Operation Petticoat, Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, just to name a very few.

I'll add a few more: Warren was in the original Broadway cast of Neil Simon's first play, Come Blow Your Horn, and he starred in the London production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and later toured occasionally in this country. On TV, he had a recurring role on Joey Bishop's sitcom and was later in the cast of a short-lived TV series on NBC in 1971 called The Funny Side. I met him on the set of that show in a visit I wrote about here.

IMDB, Wikipedia and other online sources will tell you he was the nephew of Milton Berle, whose real last name was, yes, Berlinger. Other sites will tell Uncle Miltie was not Uncle Miltie to Warren. The truth, if you asked Warren, was that he was much more distantly related to Berle. He would sometimes however suggest jokingly that the legendary Berle phallus ran in the family. I don't know about that but having a long, successful career sure did. We're gonna miss that guy.

Here's a nice summary of where Trump's various attempts to overturn the election stand. Seems like they're just going through the motions to (a) keep those donations rolling in and maybe (b) to appease Trump's silly "never admit you lost" mantra. I'm posting that link for those of you who have, like much of America, grown bored with the whole thing and aren't following it that closely.

I've long thought that America didn't get angry enough about how the Iraq War, with all of its casualties and expense, was mounted on too many false assumptions and false premises by our leaders. I think we should be at least as angry about how much of the battle against the coronavirus has been hampered by phony claims about it going away on its own any day now, not being worse than the common cold or flu, how we won't hear a word about COVID after Election Day…

And that's about all the politics I have in me today so let me put in one of those little dividing lines and I'll move on to other topics…

I started this blog on December 18, 2000 so we're creeping up on one of those nice, round-number anniversaries. I can't think of anything to do here to celebrate but if you want to say thanks…

Obviously, I'd welcome PayPal donations to help out with the more-expensive-than-you-think job of keeping this blog online. (You may have noticed how outages have been practically non-existent since I switched to the more-expensive-than-you-think hosting company.) But I also know how things are tight for most people and they'll only get tighter for Christmas…so I'd be happy with more plugs on other social media and more questions sent in for ASKme.

And if you're doing your holiday shopping on Amazon, you can do it via my Amazon link and we'll both be ho-ho-hoing at no extra cost to you.

In the post before this one, I linked to a video of some folks doing an unusual interpretation of the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the show Sweet Charity — not to be confused with an infinite number of other songs called "The Rhythm of Life." About eighty of you wrote in to tell me that I already linked to that unusual interpretation of the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the show Sweet Charity so I've replaced it with a different unusual interpretation of the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the show Sweet Charity. Stay tuned for more unusual interpretations of the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the show Sweet Charity.

As you may know, we here at newsfromme.com are big fans of the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the Broadway show, Sweet Charity. It's been a while since we've posted some of the different ways this song has been immortalized in YouTube videos. Here's one…

• If Giuliani keeps this up, he's going to lose Trump the 2016 election as well.

Recently on Facebook, someone posted am image of the cover of Superman Family #181, which had a cover date of January of 1977. It was a very odd cover signed by Ernie Chua and I replied with a brief story about it. Several Facebook users suggested I repeat it here so I will…with slight alterations…

I own the original art to this cover. Ernie Chan had just changed his name from Chua back to the original family name and he was selling original art at a San Diego Con. He told me I could have anything in his display for half-price and this was marked at $10, I have a certain fondness for the kind of cover you look at and think, "What the hell was on their mind?" So I handed him a $5 bill. He was quite amazed that I wanted it.

A few minutes later as I was walking around the dealer room with it, Ernie ran up to me and handed me a very nice Batman page he'd drawn which he'd already signed to me. I tried to pay him for it but he said, "No, I insist. I don't want that cover to be the only piece of mine you have in your collection."

He said it was the first piece of art he'd signed as Ernie Chan since all the buyers he'd signed for earlier that day asked him to sign "Ernie Chua."
Incidentally, I pointed out to him that the Superman Family cover was inked but not signed by Vince Colletta. Ernie said, "I noticed. Vince inked in my name but there was no way he was going to put his name on a piece like that."

One correction to what I posted: I hauled the original cover out to scan it for this post and I noticed that on the back of it, the price of "$8" was written. So Ernie was asking eight for it and he gave it to me for four and threw in that very nice Batman page. Don't tell me I don't know how to get a bargain. (Later on, I paid Ernie to do a commission drawing for me and probably overpaid by enough that we came out about even on the deals.)

Showtime is now running a well-made documentary/portrait about John Belushi. It's cleverly crafted with some very effective animated sequences and loads of audio-only quotes from folks who knew him, many of them (like him) deceased. There are also numerous short clips from his work. As in most such films, the short clips are sometimes frustrating teases for the entire sequences which they don't show you. In a few cases, I could remember him doing something wonderful in the part they cut out.

But overall, I was not a huge fan of Mr. Belushi. I kinda wished he'd stuck around long enough to do some movies that would make me one. Animal House was about the only one I liked and while he was quite good in it, the many parts he wasn't in were as good or better. He was in some great sketches on Saturday Night Live but so was everyone in that first cast and most of them, I thought, showed more versatility and more allegiance to what I always thought was the First Rule of sketch comedy. That's the one that says you support the others in the scene. You don't make it "every man for himself."

Belushi moved me towards both a better and worse opinion of its subject. If the picture painted of him was true, he was one of those people who often mistreated others around him but had some sort of likeable, inexplicable quality that caused folks to hold him to a different standard and forgive behavior that they'd condemn in anyone else. I generally do not like such people, especially the self-destructive kind.

And yet, so many people in the doc who knew him spoke with such affection and respect that I kept thinking, "There was more to this guy than I thought." If a documentary can achieve that, it's probably a real good piece of work. You may like it even if you didn't like him. And yes, you know how the story ends…but that was one of the tragic things about John Belushi. Even when he was alive, everyone knew how the story was going to end.

From the 1996 Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, we have this fine number performed by Nathan Lane, Lewis J. Stadlen, Mark Linn-Baker, and Ernie Sabella. I've probably seen forty productions of this show and this was one of the best…

Happy December. I usually silence the ringer on my main phone line when I go to bed but I forgot last night. At 5:55 AM, I was awakened by what I assume was a Spam-type call. I didn't answer it but it was from Huntington Park, California where I know no one. Every single call I've ever received on my cell that was from Huntington Park was a robocall trying to sell me something.

I couldn't get back to sleep so I just stared at my bedroom ceiling — in particular at a little patch of light from the street outside — until I gave up and got up. I re-read something I'd written the night before…something with which I was quite satisfied when I turned in for the night. At (by now) 7:30 AM, I was a different person reading it and I didn't like what I read and erased most of it. I'm not sure if I need to re-read my work when I'm half-asleep more often or not at all.

All those fund-raising e-mails from Trump I've written about and quoted here have reportedly raised either $150 million or $170 million, depending on which news item you read. They all say that, though the people being asked to give it are being told it's to defend and maybe overturn the election, very little of that loot is going for that. It's going into a fund Trump can use for anything he wants. At times, Trump reminds me of a guy I once worked for who said things like, "In this world, you have to look at every single thing that happens and ask yourself, 'How do I make money off that?'"

It looks though that Trump's going to use at least a little of that money to lose Wisconsin three or four more times. That's at least entertaining.

Longtime TV producer/executive Herb Solow recently passed away at the age of 89. Herb was a "behind the scenes" guy involved with so many shows but the one most-often mentioned is the original Star Trek.

As his obit in Variety noted, "Solow was brought in by Lucille Ball after her divorce from Desi Arnaz to help revive Desilu Studios, where he helped develop and sell Star Trek to NBC — after CBS originally turned it down because it already had Lost in Space — as well as Mission: Impossible and Mannix to CBS. If you recall his name, it may be from this end-credit on Star Trek…

I could go on and on about other things he did. Among the other shows that might never have seen the light of a TV tube if not for Herb were Medical Center, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Then Came Bronson and Man From Atlantis.

At various times in his career, he was an agent at the William Morris Agency, the head of Worldwide Motion Pictures and Television Production at MGM, Vice-President at Paramount Pictures Television, and at Desilu Studios, Vice-President for Live-Action Production at Hanna-Barbara and Director of Daytime Programs for NBC and CBS.

He was well-respected and well-liked in the industry and he did so much, I feel uneasy about mentioning one of his really minor achievements but I must: In 1976, a team of two young TV writers made their first-ever sale to this man, Herb Solow. Those two writers were Mark Evanier and Dennis Palumbo. Thank you, Herb.