Good morning. Hope you had a good Christmas and/or are having a good Hanukkah. In the home where I grew up, we discriminated against no holidays and celebrated them all. That was why I refused to ever join the War on Christmas, in addition to the fact that it didn't really exist. If it had though, I would have had my father pay some doctor to claim I was exempt because I had bone spurs.
The time between Christmas and the day after New Year's is always an interesting time for me. Some of the people I work with are working, others are not and nobody really expects anything to get done. In this town, there's really no Show Business between the last Friday before Christmas and the day after the Rose Parade.
I'm getting through the holidays as I always do by connecting and/or being with folks I like, meaning people who want to please folks they like. No stress. No arguing. Even the people I know who usually can't shut up about Trump shut up about Trump. If you want to resume telling others how horrible he is — and I feel some obligation to do so — refer them to this article by Richard North Patterson, which is the most devastating takedown I've ever seen of our current and maybe our final president. If you want to keep your holiday season free of the topic, bookmark the page and wait until a week from today to read it.
A pretty big rainstorm rolled through Southern California last night with a few lingering showers possible later today. When I got up this morning, I peeked out my bathroom window at the little cathouse in the backyard. Therein, looking safe and dry and eager for me to put food out for her was Lydia. I heard in my head a little snippet of Barry Manilow singing "I Made It Through the Rain." She was fine as I'd like to believe we all will be and not just until 1/2/20 rolls around and the world goes back to full power. In a way, we're all feral cats waiting out each passing storm.
My old buddy Bill Cotter read my piece on sneaking into NBC many years ago and sent me this…
Carry a clipboard, act official, and the world is yours.
I thought you might get a smile out of a related tale. I spent 14 years at Warner Bros. and parked on the lot, but I often had meetings and eventually a second office in the "Glass Building" across the street from the main lot. I would walk through the main Administration Building, and return there, and the guards pretty well recognized me from all the trips so they would just look at me as I walked by.
One day a friend of mine named Lloyd Friedman from New York came out for a visit. I was sort of surprised when he walked into my office as the gate hadn't called to tell me he was there. As we walked out through Admin later for lunch, the guard called out "Have a nice lunch, Mr. Friedman." That stunned me a bit and I walked over to the guard and said "I have been walking in and out past you for years and never once have you called me by name. Lloyd is here for exactly 30 minutes and you call him by name. What's up?"
The guard replied, "Why, that's Mr. Friedman from New York." By now, I was more than a bit confused, as he not only knew Lloyd's name but where he came from.
Well, Lloyd and I figured out what was going on over lunch. When he first arrived he had said "I'm Lloyd Friedman from New York to see Bill Cotter." At that time, Warner Bros. was owned by Warner Communication in NY, and the guard had added 1 + 1 and arrived at 3, assuming Lloyd was some sort of executive out from the parent company, so out came the red carpet treatment.
Yeah, crack security for sure. Somehow I doubt that would work today, but perhaps if Lloyd came back today with a clipboard…
There are a lot of stories about folks sneaking into TV studios and onto movie lots years ago. It was a lot easier than everyone thought. And for every one of those stories, there were three about guards at the gate not recognizing Jimmy Stewart or Barbra Streisand. When we were doing Pink Lady, there was no drive-on pass for Sid Caesar one day and the guard — who was far from a young kid — didn't recognize him. Sid just backed his car out of the driveway and went home. Someone from the security staff had to phone him there, apologize and promise he could drive right in thereafter before he'd agree to come back for rehearsals.
I don't think a clipboard would work today. In the last ten years or so, whenever I've been to a studio, I have to show I.D. and even if there's a pass waiting in my name, they call someone and triple-check, plus I sometimes I have to let them inspect my trunk on the way in and/or out. I think I used this line before but they almost put you through the same procedure Goldfinger had to use to break into Fort Knox. Some say they've gone too far, security-wise. Then again, we don't know about some of the attempts that have been made. Maybe there's a good reason.
The one and only Dick Van Dyke is making another of his rare live performances. He's playing the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood on Sunday, January 5. Tickets went on sale last night and they'll probably be gone by tonight. Click here to see if they have any left.
I've posted this before. As my Christmas gift to myself, I'm posting it again…
The kid in the above photo is me and I don't care that you don't believe it. It's me. I'm not sure where it was taken — some department store, probably May Company — or how old I was. Seven? Eight? Beats me. But it's me. And is it my imagination or does Santa look like he's telling me not to tell my parents about something he said or did?
I don't have a lot of great Christmas memories left to share here. In all my years of blogging and telling tales of my past, I may have exhausted my supply. There weren't that many to begin with.
I do not remember ever seriously believing in Santa or of Christmas being that big a deal around our house. It was a time of love and joy and gifts but with my family, it was always a time of love and joy and gifts. The main features unique to Christmas time were a tree in the living room, a lot of TV specials I had to watch and a certain synchronization of presents.
Our family consisted of me, my mother, my father, my Uncle Nathan, my Aunt Dot and my Uncle Aaron. Nathan and Dot were my father's brother and sister. Aaron was Dot's husband. Nathan never married. One year, my mother's parents came out from Hartford and stayed with us for the holiday season. Then after Grandpa passed away, it was just Grandma one year. After Aaron died, we'd invite Aunt Dot's best friend Sally to join us for Christmas Dinner if she didn't travel out of town to be with other members of her family.
Since Sally was going to bring me a present, I felt I should get her one…and I never knew what to get for her. All she seemed to want was that I address her as "Aunt Sally" and you couldn't wrap that and put it beneath the tree. I think I usually gave her candy but the real gift was that I'd make the card out to "Aunt Sally." The rest of us were real good at taking the gift-selecting burden off each other by hinting with a minimum of subtlety as to what we wanted.
So we usually had six or less people at the table…and then as people died, it went down to five and then four…and at some point, it seemed a bit depressing to have much of a celebration at Christmas. It just reminded those of us who were left of those of us who were not.
At any given assemblage around the table, at least one person was Jewish and one was Catholic — and then you had me who had never been Bar Mitzvahed but identified as more-or-less Jewish but really had a foot in both camps. Early in my childhood, there had been a bit of polite, respectful debate about the co-existence of the two faiths in one family and then there had been that ghastly mistake of enrolling me in a Sunday Hebrew school. But the religious situation was never that serious nor was it divisive. There didn't seem to be any point to it.
One reason I find the whole current "War on Christmas" thing so phony is that each year I intermingled with people of different religions and there was never an issue. Not for one second did anyone attach any significance to wishing someone "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanukkah" instead of some other preferred form.
Not just in our house but throughout the neighborhood and at school, one good wish was as innocent and friendly as another. No hidden meanings or schemes to demean any faith were inferred or assumed. "Happy Holidays" meant "I hope your holidays (whatever they may be) are happy for you." It's amazing that some people have become convinced that that innocent little pleasantry could ever mean something menacing.
I've always felt that way about religious preference or even bigotry. Just let everyone be whatever they want to be and respect it. I feel the same way about racial prejudice or about prejudice over sexual orientation. If you just respect that others are what they are, it works out fine. It only becomes a war if you somehow feel threatened and choose to start one.
Getting back to the photo up top: I've been staring at it, trying to figure out what was on my mind when it was taken. This is a guess but I think it's a good one.
I never really believed in Santa…or if I did, I didn't believe the guy in the red suit at the May Company was the real Santa because — you know — he'd be too busy just before Christmas to sit around a department store all day. Besides, I was well aware there was a Santa down the street at Bullock's Department Store and another one over in Beverly Hills at Robinson's and what about that Santa outside on Wilshire Boulevard near Rodeo Drive who was out there all day ringing a bell for some charity and posing for photos?
So if I did ever believe there was a real Santa Claus — and I don't recall that I did — I'd figured out that I couldn't meet him or sit on his lap. The guy at May Company was some outta-work actor or someone they'd hire to impersonate The Man Himself to draw customers into their store. At that age, thinking like that is not cynicism. It's figuring out the world around you and all the fibs — some of them, no doubt well meant — that you need to overcome if you're ever going to grow up.
By the time this photo was taken, I knew there was no Santa. So I'm thinking I was pressured by some relative with the camera to get in the line to sit on the impostor's lap…and what was on my mind was probably something like this: "What am I supposed to do here? Pretend this guy is the real Santa, meaning that I go along with a fraud? Tell him my list of stuff I want this year? Or maybe I should rip that fake beard off him and expose him as the fake he is?"
I'm pretty sure I didn't do that last thing. I probably went along with the hoax just to get it over with.
Or knowing me, I may have climbed up on his knee and whispered to him, "I'll make a deal with you, fella. If you'll pull some strings to get me that Sneaky Pete Magic Set I want, I won't blow the whistle and tell all the kids in line that you're just an office temp in a fake beard!"
And history does show that one year, I did get my own Sneaky Pete Magic Set. So maybe this is the year that I learned that while racial or religious prejudice doesn't work, blackmail sometimes does. Have a Merry Whatever.
I've really enjoyed reading about your exploits "crashing" the studios of NBC Burbank and gaining access to, well, just about every studio and every show that taped there. But I don't recall, or else missed, the backstory of how it all began.
How did you even get the idea to do it? What was your plan the first time you did it? How did you feel the first time walking in? How confident were you going in the second time? And anything else that went into the planning and continuation of your visits that you can share would be most welcomed.
You're right: I left this part out of the story. Okay, here's how I began doing it…
My first real writing job was for Laugh-In magazine, which was kind of a cross between a fan magazine for the show and an imitation of MAD. It didn't last long after I began working for it, inaugurating a pattern which has persisted to this day. Still, I continued to do freelance writing for the company that published it. For some time after the monthly publication ended, they were in occasional conversations with someone — I have no idea who — about doing some more with the Laugh-In people.
The publisher put out magazines for teens focusing on stars like David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman, as well as movie "gossip" magazines, most of which had Burt Reynolds and/or Elizabeth Taylor on their covers. There were talks about doing special features on Laugh-In in those publications and maybe putting out quarterly specials about Laugh-In and the performers on it.
None of that ever happened but one day when some of it looked likely, an editor there asked me if I wanted to work on such projects. I said yes. He asked me if I wanted to visit the set of Laugh-In and watch them tape. I said yes again, only more emphatically.
He gave me the number of someone over at NBC. It's a half-century later and I don't remember this woman's name but let's say it was Zelda Zekely. He said to call her and she'd clear me to visit the set. I called her and she cleared me to visit the set, which on the date in question was on Stage 5 at NBC. I did. I was fascinated and enjoyed it very much. A few weeks later, I went over to do it again. The guard called her office and didn't get an answer but since he remembered me from before, he cleared me again. This time when I visited the set, they were in Stage 3 which adjoined Stage 1 where Johnny Carson was taping.
The Tonight Show was then based in New York but they taped from Burbank now and then. So after watching Laugh-In for a while that day, I went over to watch Mr. Carson's show, standing in that little area where the show's production people sat or stood during the taping. No one stopped me. No one asked who I was.
I think it was during that taping that the following happened. Johnny was answering audience questions during a commercial break and someone asked who'd hosted The Tonight Show before Jack Paar. Johnny said it was not Steve Allen, as most people assumed. He told them a little about the show Tonight: America After Dark that had filled the time slot for not very long between Allen and Paar. He said it was hosted by Jack Lescoulie and later by some disc jockey guy whose name he didn't remember. Then he turned to the staff, amidst whom I was standing, and said, "Someone on my crack research team will know. What was the name of that disc jockey?"
Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins
Everyone on the staff muttered "I dunno," which got the intended laugh from the audience and I whispered to a man next to me, "Al 'Jazzbeaux' Collins." He in turn yelled it out and Carson acted shocked that someone really did know it, which got another laugh. I can't quite explain it but after that, I felt like no one would question my right to be there. It's like I'd proved myself useful to have around or something.
The next time I went to NBC, I just walked in and waved to the guards and they let me in. I watched some Laugh-In but I wound up wandering into other studios.
By now, I was freelancing for Disney, which was a few blocks away. I'd take the bus out there (I didn't drive yet) and spend the morning on that lot meeting with editors and picking up or turning in assignments. One day, my editor there — a lovely gent named George Sherman, who passed away way too young — and I were lunching in the NBC commissary with a friend of his when Gene Kelly — that's right…Gene Kelly, the guy who sang in the rain — walked by.
George's friend knew Gene Kelly and Mr. Kelly sat with us for a bit until he had to scurry back to NBC. He was then taping what turned out to be a short-lived variety series for them called The Funny Side. I mentioned that I might be over there later and he invited me to come watch them tape. (The show did not have a studio audience, at least not on that day.)
An hour or two later, I walked into the main entrance at NBC as I had the previous times and I was about to tell the guard that I'd been invited by Gene Kelly. Before I did, he nodded that he recognized me and waved me in. So I walked on in and realized I could probably do that any time I wanted as long as I didn't stay away so long that the guards forgot my face. So I visited any time I had to go out to Disney. Outside the entrance, there was a vending machine that sold Daily Variety and I'd sometimes buy a copy to carry on my way in so I looked more like I was in show business.
I was prepared with things to say (like "Gee, Zelda Zekely was supposed to clear me") if I got stopped but I never got stopped. I probably did this about twelve times, the last three of which were spent in part hanging around the studio where the Golddiggers from The Dean Martin Show were rehearsing. I was trying to strike up a conversation with…well, any of them but one in particular.
Finally on that last exploratory visit, I started noticing stagehands and security guys staring at me like, "Who the hell is that guy?" Before any of the Golddiggers could meet me and therefore fall madly in love as I'm sure would have happened, I decided to stop my network invasions. It just didn't feel like it would be fun to be hurled bodily from the premises and banned forever from Show Business. The next time I entered that building, I had a for-real pass and reason, and I was there to see someone about hiring me.
And I later did work there on a few shows and it was an amazing place, especially with Mr. Carson in permanent residence and the other stages full of shows and specials. I'd pass Orson Welles or Sean Connery or Doris Day and think that if I'd just wandered the halls there for two weeks, I would have run into every single recognizable person in the entertainment field. In today's television industry, there isn't a single place where even a fraction of that could happen. Or someone with as little authorization as I had could even get half past the metal detector.
A Good Day to you all and I hope you have your purchases purchased, your dining plans planned and your spirit spirited. I'm not looking (much) at the news because I assume the nation will still be there December 26th. Hope I'm right.
Yesterday, I had to go into Beverly Hills for a quickie doctor visit — nothing serious. I was in and out in eight minutes. But it put me one block from Rodeo Drive so I was at, like, Ground Zero for serious shopping. At one point, I was stuck in unmoving traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard for more than the eight minutes.
Via a miracle as great as any that has ever happened this time of year, I found a parking space in a public lot. But I had to wait in line to pay for said space and as I did, a lady ahead of me in that line turned my way and said, not necessarily to me but anyone in the line of fire, "God, I am learning to hate Christmas!" She then ticked off a killer "to do" list of shopping, wrapping, delivering, cooking, decorating and — worst of all — picking someone up at LAX on Christmas Eve. Some of those other things can be fun if you let them be…but no human being who cares about another human being should ever expect to picked up at LAX on Christmas Eve.
I said, "It sounds like you need a holiday from the holidays," and she laughed and agreed and that was about the extent of the conversation. But I thought how fortunate I am that I don't have to do enough of those things to turn them into chores. The last dozen-or-so years with my mother, it was understood that Christmas is a time to be good to your loved ones and often that could be best-accomplished by minimizing the shopping, the wrapping, the delivering, the cooking…
We kind of got around all the problems involving gifts by giving them to each other all year 'round for no calendar-centric reason. If I didn't give her one or vice-versa on 12/25, it was no big deal. I'd take her to a favorite restaurant — preferably one where she could order seafood — on Christmas Day but I also did that other days for no visible reason. The point was that we did what we wanted to do with no "we have to do this because it's Christmas" rituals. It's something to consider as you get older. Merry Tomorrow.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats was derived from the 1939 Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. Webber began developing the material in the late seventies and the show, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Gillian Lynne opened at the New London Theatre in the West End in 1981 and at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in 1982. The London version ran for 21 years (8,949 performances) and the Broadway one for 18 years (7,485 performances).
I did not see any of those 16,434 performances.
It's not that I don't like cats (the real kind). I love cats. As you may know, I've fed an awful lot of them in my backyard. I just fed Lydia out there, as I've been doing for something like eighteen years now, and I fed others before her. But I've never seen Cats on stage.
Avoiding the British staging was easy since I have never been to the United Kingdom. But avoiding the New York version was also not difficult. When I was in town during those 18 years, I just went to other shows. I was never in Manhattan long enough to see every single show on Broadway, nor did they all interest me. There were always enough shows that seemed more enticing…and since Cats seemed to have permanent residence, it was always a matter of "Well, maybe I'll catch that on my next trip or the one after…" Once its original cast and Betty Buckley had moved on, I had no reason to think, "I'd better see it now."
Eventually, it was like those TV shows that sit unwatched for months — even years — on my TiVo. I was interested enough to have them recorded but not interested enough to watch them so eventually, I deleted them. I walked past the Winter Garden Theatre in New York every trip east for a decade and a half and never felt the slightest urge to buy a ticket. Finally, I suppose I decided, "I guess I'm not interested enough in that." I know I felt that way about touring productions in Los Angeles and, I think, other cities where it was playing when I visited.
Would I have liked it? Hated it? I don't know.
The show got fairly good reviews when it opened. It won many awards, including a Tony for Best Musical. I knew people who saw it and loved it. I also knew some actors of the kind who work in musical theatre who had such affection for real cats that they dreamed of singing and dancing dressed as cats. A few of them did and I didn't go to see them.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it's humanly possible to have absolutely no opinion of Cats. All you have to do is not see it.
I have encountered people who didn't seem to know that. They went because they thought if something is popular enough, you have to purchase a ticket and go. Like it's mandatory or something. A few loved it, a few were indifferent but a fair number of them hated it — and it wasn't just "I didn't care for the show." It was more like, "There is something gravely wrong with humanity if that show exists, let alone is considered a smash hit."
I understand hating someone who harmed your loved ones. I understand hating someone who did something evil to you. I even understand hating a politician who you believe is harming the world and causing people to suffer. I don't think "hating" is a good way to go about it and I honestly don't think I hate anyone or anything unless, of course, it's a salad consisting primarily of finely-shredded raw cabbage with dressing. But I can understand why some people hate.
I just don't understand why anyone would hate a musical comedy the way some people I've encountered hate Cats.
I can think of one guy I met once at a party…I think if you murdered one or both of his parents and then staged a production of Cats, he would be angrier over the latter. He was screaming about how everyone involved in its making should be immediately spayed or neutered. A lady at the same party was convinced that no human being anywhere ever liked it, including the people who voted it Best Musical or bought the tickets to those 16,434 performances. She had not been to see it but, come on. People singing and dancing dressed as cats? How could that not stink?
Or so she felt.
I continued to have no opinion whatsoever of Cats, that show I had not seen. I did though form an opinion of people who couldn't shut up about how much they hated it, and it was not a favorable opinion…of them.
Fortunately, such talk died down as there were fewer and fewer instances of Cats being performed. But under the heading of "Here We Go Again," they recently made a movie of it.
Is the movie any good? I don't know. Attendance is still not mandatory. My pal Leonard Maltin liked it on the stage but felt much of the magic went away on the screen, though he did recommend it for families and said his wife liked it. Other folks though I see on the 'net are hysterical with rage that it was even made. Many are celebrating that it seems to be a failure at the box office, which as we all know is sometimes the case with movies we love.
You have every right to not like it, especially if you actually gave it a chance and saw it. I might not like it if and when I ever see it…and I might see it. The nice thing about movies in the era of home video is that they never go away. You cannot go now and see the original Broadway production of Cats. As once did not seem possible, it finally closed. But the movie will always be around and it will be exactly the same if I watch it twenty years from now. But I may get to it a lot sooner.
This is the time of year when my mailbox is full of "screener" copies of new film releases. Cats hasn't shown up yet but it still might…and there will always be the option of buying it or renting it or streaming it or whatever way Hollywood next invents to sell us movies. I'm thinking I may bring Lydia in from the back yard to watch it with me.
As I've written here before, I think that among the phoniest of phony outrages is when someone claims that someone else has stopped them from saying "Merry Christmas." I absolutely understand why some businesses tell their salespeople to use more inclusive greetings like "Happy Holidays" or "Best wishes for the Holidays!" or "Joy to the World." It's another way of saying you welcome the spending of the few non-Christians who might think there's an implied exclusion in "Merry Christmas."
I think it's dumb, when someone says "Merry Christmas" to you to think they're suggesting something of the sort. But I think it's a lot dumber to think that "Happy Holidays" is a negative…about the institution of Christmas or anything else. When You-Know-Who in the White House brags he's changed America so it's safe to say "Merry Christmas" again, he might as well be saying "I've reversed the ban on chocolate ice cream!"
I just saw a clip of him on TV taking credit for the M.C. ban. This is a time of year when there should be Peace on Earth. Actually, all times are good times for Peace on Earth but we'll never get there if we can't do it in the latter half of December. We should not be looking to demonize people who express benevolent sentiments just because they're not the "right" benevolent sentiments. And that's the last I'll say about You-Know-Who here until December 26 unless he does something really, really hateful or criminal. Please…be good to each other.
