Category Archives: To Be Filed

Harry Enten (who's on Nate Silver's team) gives us scenarios for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and even Joe Biden should he decide he wants the Democratic nomination. I don't know how I feel about any of these people getting it. I keep thinking that there are events ahead that will change the whole race so much in both parties that we'll look back and realize what a waste it was to look at polls in September of 2015.

Jack Larson, who would surely have preferred to be identified as "Playwright Jack Larson" than "The guy who played Jimmy Olsen" has died. Mr. Larson, who often fibbed about his age, would probably also have liked it if all the obits (like this one) were not revealing he was 87.

He actually had a pretty impressive career writing plays and opera librettos but of course, his role as "Young Olsen" on the George Reeves Superman show was a hard thing to escape. The series was done on a pauper's budget but worked I thought, largely because of the acting abilities of the leads. And no one did more to make it a classic than Jack Larson.

I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions when he'd agreed, probably after much prodding, to make an appearance in connection with that role. He always seemed like it was a burden in his life, one he occasionally had to make peace with. He was very fond of Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane…and Noel, who loved the attention (and fees) she got for her past work on the series, occasionally dragged him to some event.

Both, of course, experienced the yin and yang of their casting in that classic series. The good was that it made them famous and that despite the rotten pay and killer hours, it was in many ways a great experience. The bad was the rotten pay, the fact that their contracts kept them from pursuing other opportunities at the time, and that when it was over, there seemed to be no acting work for either.

That led Larson into writing plays. As a guy who was such a good actor, he must have often wondered where that career would have gone if he'd said no to The Adventures of Superman.

One time, I went in to do an on-camera interview for one volume of those shows on DVD. Larson and Neill were scheduled after me and on my way out, I ran into them in the lobby. Noel, who I'd interviewed not long before at a convention, introduced me to Jack, though I'd met him before. Ginning up some small talk, I said to both of them, "They'll treat you wonderfully in there. The makeup lady is a special joy."

Larson blanched and said, "Makeup? Do I have to have makeup?" I said, "No, I had to have makeup. I don't look like I belong on camera unless they do the same job on me they used to do on Lon Chaney."

He said, "I just don't like makeup. I don't like being on camera at all these days."

I said, "Well then, you made the right career transition. But you were awfully good on camera when you did like it. You know, it's not the fabulous scripts and lavish production values that made those shows so popular that fifty years later, people want to buy DVDs of them."

He smiled and said, "It was George."

I said, "George and those two people who played reporters." I was serious about that. He grinned and I'd like to think he accepted the compliment. Because he really was terrific on that show. So was Noel. And George.

From 1967: Groucho Marx introduces Dick Cavett on The Kraft Music Hall. This was the stand-up routine that brought Cavett to a fair amount of prominence. The following year, he got his first talk show on ABC…

Two other points about the Emmy Awards: Another reason that awards shows may have seemed better back in the past is that generally (there are exceptions) the nominees and winners nowadays tend to be folks who've been in the business a short amount of time. Twenty or thirty years ago, people did not become stars so instantly. So there was more sense of history up there.

Also, once upon a time, Big Stars didn't make as much money as Big Stars do these days. I mean, even adjusted for inflation, Matthew McConaughey probably earns ten times what Rod Steiger got to star in a movie…and we're also much more conscious of the money involved. Everyone knows roughly the kind of dough that Leonardo di Caprio gets per picture. That makes it a little harder to root for the guy. Imagine watching The Price is Right if everyone they called to "come on down" was already a multi-millionaire.

None of this changes my main point, though. That's what award shows are: People who are already very, very blessed getting a tiny bit more blessed. There's a limit to how entertaining that can ever be.

I just watched this year's Emmy Awards and before I read any reviews or blogs about it anywhere, I want to say something: That's about as good as the Emmy Awards ever are. I'm not saying it was a great show compared to other things we see on television. I'm saying that's about as good as the Emmy Awards ever are.

Award shows seem to bring out the horror in some people, gasping at how awful the telecast was…and yes, once in a while, the Emmycast or Oscarcast or Whatevercast could have been better…but not that much better. These shows are, after all, about very rich, famous people honoring each other and thanking their agents and celebrating that they just got richer and more famous.

(Something I haven't made my mind up about: There's a trend in award shows especially among actors to get up there and talk about how awesome and brilliant the other nominees were. I haven't decided if that's humility — to show respect for others — or another way of saying, "The other nominees were phenomenal…so I must have been super-phenomenal to have beaten them!")

The shows might be more memorable if certain longshot people had won or if certain winners had started crying or had great emotional moments. Those things are, of course, out of the hands of those who produce and stage the telecast. When I say this is as good as these shows get, I'm not talking about such moments.

I'm saying — and I know I'm repeating myself so this is the last time I'll say it — this is about as good as the Emmy Awards ever are. If you're recalling a Golden Age where the Emmys or Oscars were more special, I suggest you were just younger and more impressed then. Or maybe certain nominees or winners simply meant more to you. I mean, I was thrilled when Jack Lemmon won an Oscar. It's silly of me to fault the Academy Awards because I don't love any of the current actors as much as I loved Jack Lemmon.

If you found it all dreary and corny and overflowing with ego…well, that's what you tuned in to watch, Bunky. Complaining about that stuff is like watching the Westminster Dog Show and griping that it's just hours and hours of pooches and bitches.

I'm enjoying Stephen Colbert's Late Show…and I just say that it's a pleasure for me to once again have a late night show I can watch each night, almost start to finish. (They all lose me during most of the musical acts…and I rarely get the feeling that even the hosts are that interested in some of the performances they introduce with faux enthusiasm. Do we think Dave had even heard of half of those musicians?)

Oh, there are things about Colbert's show I don't love. The opening where he comes out and dances with his bandleader looks like a parody of some other show where the host does that. The opening title with him doing his own announce — repeating what he just said — feels like filler.

He keeps asking the audience each night, "Are you ready to hear the new Late Show theme?" How could the people who come to his tapings not be ready for anything that's going to happen anyway? This is one of those crowd-rousing gimmicks that everyone uses to wring louder enthusiasm out of an audience — "Are you ready for what you're here to see?" — and I would have thought the cleverest guy on TV would be above using it.

A few of the prepared pieces injected into his guest interviews haven't been as good as the conversations they cut short. And the energy of the show feels a bit too hyped, like the audience has been threatened with severe beatings if they don't cheer and stand and chant enough.

I can overlook all that because the show's new and the host is terrific and I'm optimistic that it'll only get better. If it stayed "as is," I'd still watch because he's a good interviewer and he has some sharp material. Best of all, I just find it pleasant to spend an hour with the guy. He seems to genuinely enjoy doing his program and having those people on — a happiness his predecessor only managed to display on occasion his last decade or so.

Interesting to me is what he hasn't done yet. Colbert is probably the best "sketch" comedian to ever have a late night show and they haven't attempted anything that puts him into a character other than himself.

Also, except for a brief dance lesson Friday night, they haven't attempted what used to be a key component of this kind of program. That's the "demonstration" — someone comes on to teach the host how to cook or do a stunt or try a science experiment or something. In recent years, talk shows have done less and less of that and when they have, the spots have usually been largely scripted and rehearsed. Colbert's a great improviser. I'd love to see him try to do some of those segments without rehearsals and lines on the prompter.

As for the ratings…

I'm guessing CBS is a tad disappointed but they are making money — certainly way more than they made with Dave there the last 10+ years. Colbert is in no danger of being axed so he'll have plenty of time to refine his show and attract new loyalites. Also on his old show, the guy was really good at attracting attention (and therefore, viewers) with extra-curricular ventures like running for president or otherwise getting in the news. He hasn't tried any of that yet, either.

But he will and I'll be watching. If you aren't warming to the show yet, I'll let you know when I think it gets better.

You like photos of old movie theaters? Grauman's Metropolitan was one of the biggest ever with 3,387 seats. It was built in 1923 and torn down in 1961. Here's what it looked like.

The photo at left above is our pal Frank Ferrante who, as you know, plays Groucho Marx in a wonderful touring show that I plug here more often than I plug my own endeavors.

The photo at right is of Robert Kanigher, a writer and editor who worked in comics for years, mostly for DC. What do these photos have in common? Answer: They're constantly being misidentified on websites. Hundreds of pages identify the shot of Frank as the real Groucho and this photo has even turned up on several Groucho CDs and DVDs. The picture of Mr. Kanigher is often identified as a shot of Bill Finger, who worked for DC Comics for much of the same time.

Why the frequent mistakes? Because people are looking for a photo of Groucho or Bill Finger and they go to Yahoo! or some other search engine, search for the name and these photos come up. Right this minute, if I go to Google and search for "Groucho Marx," the shot of Frank is the second thing I see.

This is not because any person at Google thinks that's Frank. It's because of the way search engines work. Almost every time the Google "spiders" that crawl the Internet come across that photo, it's adjacent to the words "Groucho" and "Marx." Google isn't saying it's a photo of Groucho. It's saying that photo relates to the term "Groucho Marx."

Same deal with Kanigher. In point of fact, photos of Kanigher and of Bill Finger are very scarce. When Kanigher passed in 2002, I searched high, low and everywhere to locate one to use with my obit of the man. I couldn't find one and had to do without.

In 2014, we presented Kanigher posthumously with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. For this, as administrator, I had to track down someone in Kanigher's family so we'd have someone to present the award to. I located his daughter and she supplied several photos to me, the best of which was this one…though it was torn and had sections of his face missing.

I did some fancy Photoshopping to clean it up and it was used in the announcements and press releases and such. Anyone who uses it now has taken it from there, which is fine with me. But it's annoying to see people who are writing about the criminally-undercredited Bill Finger display it as a photo of Bill Finger.

(And you've probably figured out why they think that. If you search for "Bill Finger," it's one of the top hits. That's because of the award. That photo may never have appeared on the 'net more than an inch or so from the phrase, "Bill Finger.")

Devout fans of Groucho Marx or Bill Finger have been known to get exasperated when their heroes are represented by photos of others. The Marx fans have to put up not only with photos of Frank dressed as Groucho but of other folks like photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt in Marxian makeup.

They're right to be annoyed at art directors and web authors who can't tell the difference…but the root of the problem is that they don't understand this: Google Images isn't saying that's a photo of Groucho Marx. They're just saying that's a photo that is often accompanied by the words, "Groucho Marx."

DragonCon 2015 was held a week or two ago in Atlanta and one of the guests was Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. At a musical event, my friend Ken Plume led the crowd in a rousing rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" and guess who was among the surprise performers who joined in. Also up there, you may spot Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff and other notable folks. The tall guy with glasses near Mr. Jones is Kim "Howard" Johnson, the world's greatest expert on Python, who always comes through on this blog when I have a question about those silly boys…

• When Obama was 1st elected president, a lot of people said "Racism in America is over!" Notice you don't see anyone saying that lately?

As we have noted here, some chain restaurants focus on certain areas and certain states. It was a huge change o' policy recently when White Castle decided to open a single outlet in Las Vegas, far from their usual area. Here's the head of In-N-Out Burger explaining why they're going to stick to the six states they're in and — if she has anything to say about it — not expand to others.

Andy Rose read the piece I posted earlier today about Laugh-In and wrote…

Sorry to be pedantic, but the Bob Eubanks version of Card Sharks went on the air in 1986 and was taped at CBS. The NBC version was hosted by Jim Perry, and it went off the air in '81.

Not sure what Eubanks was doing at NBC in 1983…maybe an unaired pilot?

I erred. He was doing a show called Dream House. These things all blur together.

An oral history (i.e., a lot of short interviews) about Aaron Spelling. I had some very brief dealings with the man and the thing that impressed me the most was that while he was then the most successful of all producers in television, the thought never seemed to have entered his mind that he might be infallible or have some "magic touch" or anything close to that.

Over on Facebook, Skeeter Ullman sent me this message. Don't fault me for his punctuation…

so I wanted to ask about a laugh-in taping. how many were involved.obviously the joke wall and music numbers had the complete cast, but when taping blackouts did everyone hang around and how much time devoted to taping of a single blackout? that really fascinates me how they got that show togather wold love to find a mod world song from it

During that little period of my life when I was occasionally trespassing over at the NBC Studios in Burbank, I would occasionally drop in on Stage 3 where Laugh-In taped. They had no real studio audience but there were bleachers and anyone could come by and sit in them if they behaved themselves. Often, the NBC tour would wander through and if something interesting was being done, they'd stay for a while.

It was hit-or-miss. Sometimes, nothing would happen for a long stretch and sometimes, I'd catch them doing a batch of eleven blackouts, six of which might be in one show, two of which might wind up in another and three of which would never air. They were always taping stuff for different episodes and I believe one way they lured some big guest stars in to do quick cameos is by promising that the bits they did with the person would air in multiple programs, which meant multiple paychecks.

Another way: The Laugh-In folks kept a close eye on what else was taping in the building. At the time, there was a lot: Bob Hope specials, The Flip Wilson Show, The Dean Martin Show, Hollywood Squares, all sorts of other specials, Johnny Carson whenever he brought The Tonight Show out from New York for a few weeks, etc. If they found out that, say, Jack Lemmon was appearing with Carson next week, they'd go to Lemmon's agent and ask, "Hey, while he's on the premises, would he come by and do some bits for us?

Sometimes, they wouldn't ask in advance. They'd write some gags for a celebrity and then George Schlatter or someone would go visit the celeb in their Tonight Show dressing room and say, "Hey, you've got an hour before taping. Want to come over to our set and do some spots?"

In 1983, I was one of the writers on The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, a short-lived series that was darn near a Laugh-In clone in every way but ratings, produced by Chris Bearde, one of the main folks behind Laugh-In. Though the series was on ABC, we taped at NBC on the same stage Laugh-In had used, Stage 3, and we did the same thing, finding cameo guests in the corridors there. Once, game show host Bob Eubanks was taping Card Sharks Dream House across the hall in Stage 1 — the stage Mr. Carson used, though his show was in reruns that week. We wrote some Bob Eubanks lines and one of our producers went over and talked him into coming over between Card Sharks Dream House episodes and taping a few for us.

The following week when Johnny was back, one of his guests was Christopher Reeve. We wrote up some short blackouts for him and then our Exec Producer Dick Clark and I and one other writer went over to his dressing room to see if we could get him to come to Stage 3 and do a few of them. I hadn't written any of the jokes but Dick took me along because he was aware I was a comic book expert and figured that might give me some rapport with Mr. Reeve.

Christopher Reeve was about as nice and polite as human being as I've ever met. He read the jokes which all referenced Superman and then said he'd be glad to do anything we wanted as long as it wasn't about Superman. He was on with Johnny to promote a non-Superman film of his and was trying to remind the world that he was an actor who could do other things. He said it so graciously that you couldn't fault him…and he absolutely understood when Dick said that he didn't think it would work to have him on if he wasn't going to refer to Superman. (We weren't asking him to don the costume or even pretend to be Clark Kent, understand; just to appear as Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman.)

Laugh-In worked the same way and I'm sure they had similar turndowns. Most of the time though, these things were planned. Once, I snuck a peek at the taping schedule and saw an item: "5:00, Zsa Zsa Gabor cameos." It was 2 PM and I decided not to stick around for Zsa Zsa.

My observation was that no performers were on the stage or nearby unless they were in the bits being taped or waiting to be in the next one or two things on the schedule. I never saw Gary Owens there because he taped most of his spots in the morning so he was free to do his radio show and various voiceover gigs with the rest of the day. He'd sometimes go back to NBC after his afternoon radio broadcast so he could be in one of the "group" segments. Those seemed to mainly be done in the early evening.

There was no set time for how long it might take to tape a blackout — and they rarely did one at a time. I watched once as Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson did about twenty of the park bench spots. I think twelve or so had been written and they did each in 1-3 takes, then they ad-libbed a few more or some writer on the set would invent one on the spot. That whole segment probably took 40 minutes and then Ruth and Arte ran off to get changed while the crew taped some wild lines from Goldie or JoAnn or someone.

It was a very fun place to be at times (so was the set of our knock-off) but it was on-again, off-again, like a party that stops for twenty minutes at a time then resumes. The fast pace was in the editing room, not on the stage. On the stage, some of those things seemed to drag on forever but I still liked being there.

The Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles is about to host a new production of The Sound of Music directed by Jack O'Brien. It opens September 20 and runs through October 31.

I have two good seats for the September 29th performance at 8 PM. They're seats 4 and 5 in Row C in the orchestra. (Here's the seating chart.)  Alas, I have something else I have to do that evening and can't go. I would like to sell these to someone, preferably someone with a PayPal account.

The scalper sites are currently asking $180 each for seats in this row for this performance. With their service and delivery charges, two would run you $493.15. When I bought them, they were were $85.00 each and all the extra charges brought the total up to $187.00. I want $220.00 for the pair because that's what it'll cost me (or you) now to buy tickets in the same section for another date, though neither of us will get seats this good.

If you're interested, drop me a note.

[UPDATE: The tickets have been purchased.]