Category Archives: To Be Filed

It's not polite to tell a lady's age but when the lady in question is the First Lady of Cartoon Voices, it's not exactly a secret. June Foray is 99 years old today and that's just one of many amazing accomplishments in her long, amazing life. Others involve the staggering number of times in which her voice was heard in animated cartoons, radio commercials, records, dubbing other actors in movies, narrating films and TV shows, etc.

There was a long period in that life when she would get up early each morning, drive herself into the Hollywood area and spend the day going from job to job to job to job, often not returning home until late in the evening. You all know how she played Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha and almost all the female voices in Jay Ward cartoons…how she played Granny (owner of Tweety) and many supporting roles in Warner Brothers cartoons…a couple of Smurfs…witches for Disney and really every cartoon studio in Southern California…and so many other cartoon characters.

Well, all that is just a small part of what this woman did. For 20-30 years in this town, if you needed a thoroughly dependable male voiceover artist, there were many men you could call in. If you needed a female, you said these four words: "Get me June Foray!" Not all that long ago, the late Earl Kress and I were honored to assist June with her autobiography and one of the big problems we had was that even June couldn't tell us all the things she'd done. I'm still learning about jobs we should have included.

I was also honored to hire June on many occasions for cartoons I directed…and believe me, I was not doing her a favor. Other way around. I was merely getting the best person I could for the job.

I worked with her many times and June was always early. Always. One day, she was sitting in the waiting room, complaining not in the slightest that the engineer wasn't ready yet to record what she was there to record. A young, beginner actress was there for some other job and she recognized June.

The beginner told the old pro how much she admired her, how she had learned so much from studying her work, how she hoped someday to have the kind of career June had had…and was then still having. She asked, "Do you have any advice for me, Ms. Foray?"

June said to call her June, then asked her, "What are you doing here today and what is your call time?"

The newbie said, "I'm here to record some lines for a movie trailer spot and my call time is 11 AM."

It was around 11:10 when this conversation took place. June asked her, "And what time did you get here?"

The young lady said, "I was here at 11."

June said, "Then you were a half-hour late. You should have been here at 10:30."

The young lady said, "But I was here on time. And look — they still aren't ready for me."

June said, "That doesn't matter. They could have been ready for you at 11. You also could have hit unexpected traffic or had car trouble or something else on your way here. My call time was 11 and I was here at 10:30." (And she was. She was there waiting for me when I arrived…and remember, this was June Foray doing a job for someone who loves her and thinks she's the best in the business and wouldn't have minded one teensy bit if she'd been late.)

The young lady didn't get it. She said, "I don't see what the problem is. They said to be here at 11 and I was here at 11." Another human being might have at least paused to think, "Hmm…this is June Foray, the woman who has had the greatest success in my chosen profession. Maybe she understands something I don't." But this young lady just didn't get it.

What she might have learned from June is that if you're going to do a job, do it right. I might have booked June for her ten-thousandth voice job but she did it right. You don't get to your ten-thousandth job — or for that matter, to the age of 99 — doing things any way but right.

In the many tributes to the late Gene Wilder, people mentioned his great roles in The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and many others.  I don't think anyone mentioned perhaps his greatest performance — as The Stomach in this award-winning commercial designed by artist R.O. Blechman.  The other two voices were done by Luis Van Rooten, a prolific radio actor who was also heard in Mr. Disney's Cinderella as both the King and the Grand Duke.  Forgive the bad edit in the middle…

What I did was to have a great evening. First, there was dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. I'll tell you about that in a day or so. Then it was off to The Theater at the Ace Hotel (that's its name) in downtown L.A. to see the gent who is now my favorite currently-working stand-up comedian. His name is Jim Jefferies and I can't recall having a better time watching a stand-up perform. Funny…brilliant…and hard-working. He did close to two hours and that was after fifteen-or-so by an opening act.

I was surprised there was an opening act and so were most of those present. If Forrest Shaw was billed anywhere, we all missed it and I always feel sorry for performers in that position. No one came to see you and whereas audiences once regarded you as a surprise bonus, now you're just an unexpected obstacle to the person they came to see. Moreover, they sometimes they don't even get that you're part of the show and they're supposed to pay attention.

A lady seated in front of us asked the folks around her if he was a comedian who was there to perform or if he was just someone sent out to introduce Jim Jefferies. Shaw was indeed a comedian — a pretty good one — and he'd have done better if during his set, audience members weren't straggling in to take their seats and/or engaging in distracting private conversations. It was almost like, "Well, we didn't come to see him so we can talk while he's on." Somewhat annoying. Mr. Shaw deserved better.

Shaw was kind of a gateway drug to the headliner, in that he said the "f" word and discussed his own genitalia a bit less often than Jim Jefferies. When Jefferies finally did take the stage, the audience stopped talking to each other, listened and had a great time. Among the topics covered: Porn (there was a lot about porn), Black Lives Matter and racism, Donald Trump, Canadians, Gay Marriage, Gun Control and a private party where he performed in front of Al Pacino, Warren Beatty and other celebs. It's not the kind of act you take your grandmother to see but I thought it was very funny and at times, very smart.

An odd thing happened when he got to Donald Trump. He asked if there were any Trump supporters in the house and maybe two dozen people (out of maybe fifteen hundred) indicated they were backing the guy. Jefferies was just sorta praising those people for their courage when a fight broke out in the audience about two rows behind where we were sitting…an actual fight even though only two or three punches were thrown.

Near as I can figure out, what happened was this: A Trump supporter had identified himself as such in response to Jefferies' question. A non-Trump supporter then poured a beverage on the Trump supporter, whereupon the Trump Supporter whirled and threw a punch at the non-Trump supporter who punched back…and then it got broken up.

On stage, Jefferies (who seemed to enjoy the moment in an odd way) quizzed the men about what had happened, then ordered them both ejected. Security, which was already on the job, carried out the command while Jefferies segued back into talking about Trump.  He was shaking his head about the whole thing but, like a good comic, incorporating it into his performance.

As you might guess, he's not a fan of Mr. Trump…but one of the things that impressed me about Jefferies was that he wasn't just up there telling his audience what he thought it wanted to hear. He said a lot of things some of us didn't want to hear…and when he did so, he not only made us all laugh, I think he made some of us think, "Hey, that guy's got a point." There are a lot of comics who try to do that and fall short on both counts. He was also in total command of the stage. The fisticuffs in the audience didn't shake him. A heckler in the balcony didn't shake him…and he put that guy away in a most entertaining manner that pretty much ensured no further hecklers.

I'd quote lines but this kind of thing is always a "you had to be there" moment…and anyway, I'm sure this will all be an HBO or Netflix special before long. Better you should hear it from him than from me. But if you've liked this guy on TV or YouTube and he's coming your way soon, get tickets in a hurry. I've never seen a great comedian who wasn't way better in person than he was on HBO and this man is a great comedian. Just don't bring grandma and if you do, warn her not to heckle.

I agree with some (not all) of what Matt Taibbi has to say about false balance in news coverage. Yeah, reporters are just reporting the kind of stuff a lot of the public wants to see but that can also become a self-fulfilling rationale. Yeah, they're covering what they're covering because that's what the public is reading…but maybe one reason the public is reading it is that that's what the media is giving them and spotlighting. And since when is it not the job of a reporter to cover what's important even if the public doesn't want to hear about it?

But read Taibbi anyway. He does make some good points even if I find much of his piece arguable.

Kevin Drum on Donald Trump's plan to cut domestic spending by between 25% and 29%, depending on how you score things. It's about $150 billion and it ain't possible.

One of the best things you can do during the day in Las Vegas is to go see magician Mac King at Harrah's. Afternoon shows there are often lame but Mac's is terrific, which is why he's been doing it there for sixteen years.

There's a pretty elementary trick called the Cut-and-Restored Rope which every beginning magician learns. I did it when I was ten. Mac took it and jazzed it up and made it more elaborate and now it's the envy of professionals everywhere. The last time Mac was on Penn & Teller Fool Us, he didn't fool them — didn't really try — but Penn did say something like, "We're glad you didn't do the rope trick because we've never been able to figure that one out." Here it is…

Here are a couple of short questions that fell into my inbox. The first one's from Johnny Achziger…

Many times you'll see in old Gold Key comic "REPRINTED BY POPULAR DEMAND." Really? Was there actually a demand for reprints? And if not, why would they advertise that it was a reprint? I never understood why they'd put that on reprinted stories. I assume they reprinted as a money saving prospect, but why make note of it?

There was no known demand from readers. Gold Key rarely had letter pages and so they rarely received letters. When I worked for them in the early seventies, they got about two a month and I doubt any of them said, "We want more old stories," with this exception: As comic book fans became more aware of the name Carl Barks and knew that it denoted the writer-artist of some of the best Disney comics ever done, there were a few letters asking for more Barks reprints…though by that time, the company had stopped identifying reprints as reprints.

When they did, any demand they had probably came from the folks at the firm who controlled the budgets. I'm a little fuzzy as to why they put that announcement on most (not all) reprints but I vaguely recall there was a reason.

I believe it had something to do with the fact that so much of that material was sold to companies in other countries that translated and reprinted Gold Key comics. There had been some sort of mix-up where a publisher overseas bought reprint rights to some story they thought was new but it was actually a reprint of a story that publisher had purchased and printed years before, and the publisher hurled accusations of deception.

Or something like that. Like I said, it's a bit fuzzy. I think that's why they identified reprints for a while until someone decided it was no longer an issue.

This question comes to us from Simon Cummings…

Before Garfield and Friends, were you offered a writing job on Heathcliff, either by Ruby-Spears or later DiC?

Not by DiC, but when the Ruby-Spears animation studio was doing a Saturday morning show of Heathcliff, I was hired to write a prime-time Heathcliff special for Halloween.

This is another one of those endless stories about how in show business, your projects often fall through for reasons that have nothing to do with you. I had written an ABC Weekend Special called Bunnicula that everyone liked a lot — everyone but me, I believe. Actually, I thought it was okay but due to network dictates, the show ended up deviating way too much from the popular children's book on which it was based. Changing another writer's work that much always makes me at least a little uncomfy.

Anyway, ABC loved it and the idea arose — I dunno whose it was — to run it in prime-time. ABC then felt the need to do some Halloween programming. After all, candy companies advertise. But the network also wanted to save money and it would cost them next-to-nothing to run Bunnicula one evening. The problem was that it was a half-hour and there was no half-hour time slot to put it in that made sense. They would have to pre-empt an hour episode of something and then what would they put in the other thirty minutes?

So someone else — maybe even the same person? — decided Ruby-Spears, which had produced Bunnicula, should quickly produce a Heathcliff special and they'd run them back-to-back. I was hired, a very rough outline was approved and I started writing. I was on page 10 or so when I got a call to stop. ABC had screened Bunnicula in-house and decided that the animation on it, though OK by Saturday morn standards, was not ready for prime-time playing.

There was then a brief discussion about maybe having Bunnicula reanimated: Same script, storyboard, soundtrack and design but better animation. They worked out what it would cost to do that and then another one of these mysterious someones said, "Wait a minute! The whole idea behind running this was to save us money and now it's running into money. Let's just forget the whole thing!" So they forgot the whole thing, including the Heathcliff Halloween Special.

I don't recall if I got my whole fee or if I settled for a partial amount but I do know I never got past page 10. Which was fine with me. I read over those pages a few months ago and realized I had no idea where I was going with it. I may have been lucky I didn't have to finish that one.

The best thing you can say about Donald Trump's latest economic plan is that some of it (not all) isn't as nutty as his last one. But like all Republican plans for the economy, it's predicated on the assumption that if you slash taxes for wealthy people, there will be all sorts of wonderful economic growth that will make up for the huge deficits it will create. This has been tried over and over and it's never worked as predicted but, hey, why let that stop anyone? Jonathan Chait has more.

Here are two clips from a self-congratulatory special that CBS did in 1978. This one starts with Mary Tyler Moore singing a song all about shows that appeared on CBS. It was written at a time when all the advertising research told the networks that they had to sell their programming with the word "family."

If you listen to the lyrics and considered what shows and stars were mentioned and which ones weren't, you might guess it was written by a gay man who thought the biggest stars were the ones who'd appeared on Broadway — and you'd be right. It was Jerry Herman and some of the couplets are pretty darned clever. At one point, there's a clip from My Favorite Martian and a lyric that goes, "Mr. Walston with antenna…" Quick: Guess what Mr. Herman rhymed with that…

As you can see, the excerpt ends with the beginning of a big parade of everyone they could round up who'd ever been on a regular series on CBS…except Merv Griffin, who claimed they omitted him because someone at the network was sore at him for beating them in a business deal. But don't worry: Here's the clip of that parade. Notice that some of those folks apparently weren't there for the big taping so they were edited in — Bill Cosby and the Smothers Brothers, for example. And it's all announced by the voice of the robot from Lost in Space, Dick Tufeld…

A quick question from Mark Thorson, who is also one of my most diligent spotters-of-typos on this blog…

It is my understanding you have to belong to every union for which you qualify, so a writer-director would be a member of both DGA and WGA. You've written several times about your membership in WGA. Are you or have you been a member of any other unions?

The WGA is my only current union unless you also count ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. And come to think of it, we should count ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Years ago, I joined the Screen Actors Guild because I was an extra in a sketch on one show, plus I had done a few audience warm-ups on different shows and that's a SAG job. At one point, I got a notice to join AFTRA because of other warm-up jobs I'd done and I filled out the forms and sent them in and they were supposed to do something and send me a bill and they never did…and I never followed-up because by then, I'd stopped doing warm-ups. So I guess I never joined AFTRA.

I went on Honorable Withdrawal (or whatever they call it) from SAG and also from The Animation Guild. I joined the latter back in my Hanna-Barbera, Ruby-Spears and Disney days and even picketed in one strike. But when I stopped working for those studios, I moved to inactive status. That's a much better union now than it was when I was an active member. Back then, I was very much torn between my beliefs, which are basically pro-union, and my feelings that The Animation Guild — which then had a different name — was run badly and to some extent as a puppet of Management. I'm happy to say that's ancient history.

• Trump won't release taxes or medical records or even explain his secret plan to defeat ISIS. But Hillary's the one who's hiding stuff.

The other day here, I mentioned a Red Skelton movie called A Southern Yankee, which was made in 1948. My buddy Tom Galloway suggested I mention to you that it's on Turner Classic Movies this evening as part of their Slapstick Festival. On my set (it may be different on yours), it starts at 11 PM following The Bank Dick with W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I don't think Mr. Fields, Mssrs. Abbott and Costello or Mr. Skelton were in any movies that were much better than those.

Another great of comedy was represented in A Southern Yankee. At the time, Buster Keaton was out of favor with audiences…or maybe just the folks who then ran studios. He was also out of money so he worked as an uncredited gagman on a lot of movies, this one included. You don't sense the Keaton mind in many of the others but you sure do in this one.

As I wrote here, I once had the chance to hang out with Red Skelton once or twice a week for a while. I kept peppering him with questions about his work and he kept telling me dirty jokes — often the same dirty jokes, each time I encountered him. At the time, Buster Keaton's features were just becoming available to me for viewing at local film fests so I asked Skelton over and over about Keaton. Over and over, Skelton would say something like, "Oh, great comedian but a very sad little man. Oh, so this nun runs into two sailors on shore leave…"

In other words, I didn't get a lot out of them about working with Keaton. But I did hear the story about the parrot in the whorehouse four times, including twice in one encounter.

Anyway, those are three fine comedies there…and the Skelton one is followed by The Inspector General, one of Danny Kaye's better efforts. Then comes Always Leave Them Laughing, which starred Milton Berle and Bert Lahr. This is not one of anyone's better efforts but it does have some nice scenes with Lahr. I wrote about this movie here.

Speaking of Keaton: When he was at his best, he was the best…and on Saturday evening, TCM is running what I think is the best film he ever made and one of the best anyone ever made. It's The General and like most comedies, it's a lot better when you're sharing the experience with a live audience. If you can only watch it on your home TV with a friend or two or even alone…well, you'll enjoy it but try some time to catch it on a big screen with a big audience. Even better.

Keith Olbermann has a new show on the web. Once he gets fired from this one, he's going to just go door-to-door and rant in folks' living rooms.

None of that however means he's wrong in most of what he says. I'd quibble with a few of his statements about Donald Trump here but even if you throw out anything even slightly questionable, it's still a helluva case against the Republican nominee…

When Jersey Boys vacates the August Wilson Theater in New York next year, it will be followed there by a musical based on the movie Groundhog Day. The producers plan to begin previews of the show in March…and then in the spirit of the film, the actors will do the same thing over and over and over and over…

Here's a replay of a piece I stuck up here on 5/13/10, a month before the Little Orphan Annie strip went bye-bye. This one got a few people mad at me and wondering if lack of cole slaw in my diet had made me demented. Others wrote to say I'd said something they were thinking but it seemed kind of unAmerican to admit to not loving Little Orphan Annie. If nothing else, I helped make it safe for those who want to admit to that…

The Little Orphan Annie newspaper strip ends on June 13. It started August 5, 1924, the creation of cartoonist Harold Gray, and I have to say that its appeal has long eluded me. I know its popularity had something to do with the taste then for Horatio Alger melodrama and that it really became a smash during the Great Depression…but I never understood why people of that era were so infatuated with the thing.

It's nice to think that an affluent industrialist might take in a poor, parentless waif…but Daddy Warbucks always seemed like the worst kind of rich guy to me, filled as he was with patronizing speeches about how if you're not wealthy, it could only be because you haven't worked hard enough. It also never struck me that Annie had a particulary happy life. She always managed to look sad and homeless, even though her dialogue was peppered with clichés of optimism and hope. And of course, every few weeks something awful would happen to her and she'd be a sad case until someone came to her rescue.

I have friends, some of them scholars of comic strips, who love Orphan Annie and when I tell them I always found it a talky, reactionary bore, they tell me, "Oh, no! Read these weeks of it and you'll see how wonderful it can be!" So I read those weeks of it and I always decide it's even more of a talky, reactionary bore than I'd thought before.

Perhaps my problem was that I first read the strip in the sixties when Gray really sounded like he was cribbing dialogue from pamphlets for the John Birch Society and there was very little in the strip besides that. It was just Daddy Warbucks standing around, lecturing people about some strange, friends-of-Richard-Nixon interpretation of the American work ethic. And then every so often, Gray would think of something awful to do to Annie and she'd be a sad case until someone came to her rescue.

Gray died in '68 and that's when Little Annie truly became an Orphan, handed off thereafter from one creative guardian to another. While I'm sure others will argue, I thought it was one of those rare cases when a strip got better when it was no longer done by its creator, particularly when Leonard Starr was in command from 1979 to 2000. Some of the others were good, too…though as Annie lost papers, they weren't playing to much of an audience. I read a few of those sequences and liked them more than anything I ever read by Harold Gray. I also preferred the Broadway musical and the movie made from it…though I didn't like either that much.

At times after Mr. Starr quit, the syndicate tried to find someone who'd write and draw it for rates commensurate with its income as a newspaper strip, which meant Depression Era wages. At one point, they got so desperate that they even offered the gig to a writer-artist team, of which I was the writer. I told the artist, "Well, if you want to do it, I'll do it," and then hoped he'd say no as I pondered what the heck I could bring to a feature that to my mind had outlived its relevance some time around when the New Deal kicked in.

I sat there with my eyeballs probably as vacant as Annie's, pondering for almost a half-hour before the artist called and said (to my relief), "I just found out what the job pays. Forget about it." I assume the others who then took it on got more than they'd offered us. They must have.

While writing the above, I was interrupted by a call from a nice lady from CBS Radio who interviewed me about Annie's demise. I pretty much said what I just wrote above but she threw me when she asked what I thought would take Annie's place in the world. I should have said, "I don't think Annie has a place in the world and hasn't for a long time."

Instead, I muttered something about how, well, I guess someone could come along and whip up a strip to cheerlead for victims of the current economic downturn. If they could just get everyone who's currently out of work to follow the strip, it could make its creator as rich as ol' Dad Warbucks.