Category Archives: To Be Filed

Baseball Legend Ernie Banks has died and people in and from Chicago feel a special sense of loss. One of them, our friend Bob Elisberg, explains why.

Okay, let's all go see if Abe Vigoda is still alive.

I put this up here on 12/29/03. It's about me meeting the woman who lived for years with W.C. Fields. Looking back, I see that for some reason, I left out my favorite of all the W.C. lines she quoted for me. One time when Fields was out of work, his agent suggested he go play golf with the powerful producer, Jack L. Warner. Fields immediately responded, "If I want to play with a prick, I'll play with my own." I wish I'd taken notes on the other ones…

I mentioned meeting Carlotta Monti the other day and a reader made me promise I'd tell how that happened and all that I recalled. It was around 1974, a period when I often found myself in Westwood Village, right outside the U.C.L.A. campus. My Aunt Dot was donating two days a week as a saleslady at the United Nations Gift Shop, which was a charity enterprise that sold globes and flags and little sculptures that you'd never want in your house. When I was in the area, I'd drop in and say howdy to Aunt Dot and one day, she introduced me to another of the women who volunteered their time in the store. When she said, "This is Carlotta Monti," little bells went off in my head and I thought, "Hey, I think this is the lady who was W.C. Fields' mistress." She seemed about the right age (just shy of 70) but I wasn't sure enough to say anything other than, "Oh, I certainly know of you." Matter of fact, I think I changed the subject swiftly and awkwardly and hurried off. Once home, I consulted her autobiography, W.C. Fields and Me and, sure enough, it was the same lady.

I checked with Aunt Dot to find out when Ms. Monti would be there again and took the book up to get it signed. We wound up going to a shop down the street for cola and coffee, and I could see that Ms. Monti was thrilled to have a new audience for her tales of "Woody," as she called him. The way she pronounced it, it rhymed with "moody" and no, I have no idea where the nickname came from. She was proud of the book and upset that "certain people" who knew Fields or defended his memory felt she'd exploited her relationship with him. These "certain people" (unnamed) were also upset that she had sold or was about to sell the film rights…and I recall thinking to myself, "That's one movie that will never get made." Two years later, it was. Filmdom would have been much better off if I'd been right.

She kept coming back to the fact that she was being criticized for writing about her life. Her side of it, which did not surprise me and which I am not suggesting was at all wrong, was that she'd given "the best years" of her life to Fields and received precious little. So selling her life story was her inheritance, and "Woody" would have wanted her to be comfortable in her old age. She said she had plenty more stories…enough to fill several more books, but would have to wait a few years before embarking on one.

I asked her to tell me one of these stories and she mulled several possibilities before telling of an aging prostitute Fields knew. She wasn't sure if "Woody" had ever been a patron but they were friends, and Fields was always trying to find a way to throw her a few bucks since she was too old to get much work in her main occupation. There's a tale that makes the rounds about some guy who's in the hospital, attended by nurses and/or nuns and one day, one comes in, locks the door and begins ripping off her clothes and performing sex acts on his person. This of course shocks the patient who is unaware the nun (or nurse) is a hooker that his friends have hired for this treat/trick. Well, according to Ms. Monti, Fields's friend specialized in such missions and owned all the necessary costuming. Now that she was older, he occasionally hired her for non-carnal nun impersonation. He'd arrange for her to be in some restaurant or other public place when he was with some pals and he'd start verbally abusing this nun and saying foul, vulgar things to her. This would horrify Fields' friends who would try to shut him up but he would persist…until finally, the "nun" would start firing back with even better obscenities, and Fields' cronies would realize they'd been had. According to Ms. Monti, "Woody" loved the reactions.

The other main thing I recall beyond the talk about him wanting to play Scrooge was that she felt Fields's last few years had been squandered by Hollywood. He'd had a bad check-up and from that point on, no studio wanted to start a movie with him in the lead. He was in constant demand for short cameos but many offers fell through and some of what he did film was never released. She made the comment that he might have lived longer if the business hadn't decided prematurely that he was dying.

She didn't have a lot of time that day so we agreed to get together again for a longer chat but never did. And though she lived almost two decades after our chat, she never wrote that second book. I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with her because…well, how often do you get to talk to someone who slept with W.C. Fields? These days, hardly ever.

Hal Roach was the greatest producer of comedies in the silent and early talkie eras. Mack Sennett was more famous but Roach ran the lot where the best pictures were made.

I was privileged to visit Mr. Roach for an afternoon at his home around 1983 during which I asked him about his films and he asked me about how easy or difficult it was to get actresses and other young women into bed "these days." It was an odd conversation but I'm sure glad I got to spend that time with him.

On 1/21/92 when he was one hundred years and one week old, Mr. Roach was a guest on The Tonight Show, guest hosted by Jay Leno. This is his segment and he tells a few anecdotes that are not exactly true…but who cares? When you get to be that age, you're no longer bound by the truth. He passed away in November of that year…

• I never bought anything from SkyMall. I never had the need for a combination garden gnome and doghouse that can double as a footwarmer.

• The owners of SkyMall are filing for bankruptcy. Apparently, they've given up on the dream of anyone ever ordering anything from SkyMall.

The PBS series American Masters is profiling Ricky Jay in its new installment. It debuts on some stations tonight and on others later this weekend. If you aren't familiar with the work of Mr. Jay, you oughta be. Describing him as one of the greatest sleight-of-hand magicians is a serious act of missing the forest.

That's right: Two Mushroom Soup Days in one week. But keep in mind that when I'm too busy to post on this blog, I still post more than most people do on their blogs when they're not too busy to post. Or something like that.

This will interest about three people, all of them in Los Angeles. We have a cut-off low heading our way in next week's weather and the weatherfolks don't have a clue where it's going to go or what it's going to do. It could bring us a decent amount of rain on Tuesday or not a drop. It could linger into Thursday or go away immediately. Most of the time, the National Weather Service does a superior job of predicting but every so often, they get one of these storms that causes the computer models to spit out contradictory data with each run. Even as we speak, the forecasters are trying to figure out how to word their statements so as not to say, "We dunno." But the truth is they dunno.

Back later with something.

Teller (partner of Penn) gives away some secrets of magic.

The Lumberjack Song. In Italian.

Peggy Charren, a children's television activist who has been credited with revolutionizing children's programming, recently died at the age of 86. Obits like this one hail her for her impact on the medium…

Frustrated with the vapid quality and hyper-commercialization of TV programs her children watched in her Newton home the late 1960s, Peggy Charren helped found Action for Children's Television, a grass-roots organization that brought about landmark legislation and sweeping changes in programming for young viewers.

I'm getting a number of e-mails asking me to comment because if you go to her Wikipedia page, it says, "Although denounced as an advocate for censorship by her critics, including animation writers Steve Gerber and Mark Evanier, Charren has insisted she is an outspoken critic of censorship, and has cited her stance against the American Family Association's campaigns to ban various programs." Since Steve is no longer with us, I'm the one getting asked how I feel about her and her work.

I believe the Wikipedia page is wrong to suggest that either Steve or I ever singled Ms. Charren out but we were among many writers working on cartoon shows in the eighties who doubted that the "parents' groups" (which sometimes did not actually represent any parents) were doing good things or even accomplishing much of what they claimed to be accomplishing. We criticized all those crusaders, not her in particular. One of these days, I'll write a long post about all this.

November 10, 2006: Actor Jack Palance passes away and I ignore his stellar career to bring you this moment of trivia…

Sorry to hear of the passing of actor Jack Palance, a classy presence in an awful lot of movies over the years. I'm afraid I never met Mr. Palance and have absolutely no anecdotes about him.

However, I can't help but mention an interesting sidelight to the man's stellar career. In 1970, the great comic book creator Jack Kirby introduced a villain named Darkseid (pronounced "Dark-SIDE") who has since become one of the great bad guys in the history of the medium. Darkseid has appeared often in the pages of DC Comics ever since and also made it onto TV cartoons and the toy shelves.

The style and substance of this master antagonist were based on just about every power-mad tyrant Kirby had ever met or observed, with a special emphasis on Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon was kind of the monster du jour for many in 1970 and he's still a fine template for various forms of villainy.

Beyond that kind of thing, it is not uncommon for comic artists to "cast" their creations, using someone they know or have observed as reference, and Kirby used Jack Palance as a model for Darkseid. I don't mean that he thought the other Jack had ever tried to enslave the universe…but Kirby had been impressed by one or more Palance screen appearances. They inspired some aspect of Darkseid…a look, a posture, a gesture, whatever. Most of all, it was probably a voice. When J.K. wrote dialogue for his comic book evildoer, he was "hearing" Palance in some film. (I have no idea which one. Another Kirby scholar has suggested the 1968 TV-Movie, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Palance in both title roles, but I don't see any points of comparison.) In the same way and in the same series, Kirby based the likeness of businessman Morgan Edge on actor Kevin McCarthy and super-heroine Big Barda on singer Lainie Kazan (right after she was in Playboy) while a villain named Glorious Godfrey was an amalgam of Billy Graham and Arthur Godfrey.

To the best of my knowledge, Jack Palance was unaware that one of his screen images was purloined for a comic book baddie, and no one seems to have thought of voicecasting him for any of Darkseid's animated appearances. And I want to emphasize that Kirby had no negative thoughts whatsoever about the actor. Quite the contrary, he thought Palance had a great screen presence, giving off a power that was worth putting to use in a comic book.

Also to the best of my knowledge, whenever Darkseid scored a triumph, he never dropped to the floor and did one-handed push-ups. But if I'd written more of his adventures, he probably would have.

Much to do today so you get the soup can…but I'll be back later with a Golden Oldie or something. (Hey, if you're browsing older messages in the Archives on this site, do me a small favor. If you come across one where there's a big hole because an illustration is missing, drop me a note and let me know. I keep finding those and fixing them.)

The most interesting thing to me about the second Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore was how totally the host has given up on Bill Cosby. (So has Jay Leno.) I think that's becoming the default position. Just as all mentions of O.J. Simpson in the media kinda presume we all think he killed those two people, all mentions of Bill Cosby will assume we all agree that most if not all of his accusers are speaking the truth.

Wilmore's stance is significant because it's a major black comedian willing to say it…and a guy who has an important forum. Leno's obviously matters less but it would matter a lot if he still had that nightly monologue in front of all of America.

I have to run to an appointment. More posting later tonight or maybe tomorrow morn.

The official creator credit for Batman goes contractually to Bob Kane. I don't know anyone outside Kane's family who doesn't think a man named Bill Finger is as deserving, if not more so, of that recognition.

Finger died in 1974. Some years later, Kane wrote that he wished he'd put his former collaborator's name on the feature but that never happened. Kane died in 1998 and since then, Kane has continued to be credited as sole creator and his reputation has plunged. It seems to me he's now more often mentioned as a guy who screwed over his partner than as a guy who gave the world one of its great fantasy characters.

Last Comic-Con, I had the pleasure to meet and appear with Athena Finger, the granddaughter of Bill Finger. She's fighting for her grandpa's honor, assisted by many of us. Here's an article about her and that fight.

I posted this on 8/11/02 right after watching columnist Robert Novak on the CNN series, Crossfire. Mr. Novak died in 2009. Crossfire was canceled in 2005, came back in 2013 and was canceled again in 2014. You'll notice I say in the piece that 20% to 30% of Americans smoke. Those are 2002 numbers. The current number (for 2012, the most recent year for which data is available) is 18%. That's according to the American Cancer Society…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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