I'm just a guy sitting here at my computer, blogging now and then when I need a break from my paying work. The Associated Press is a huge organization with offices all around the world, reporters, stringers, fancy equipment, etc.
I posted about the passing of Calvert DeForest last night here, shortly after Midnight, Pacific Time. How come it took the A.P. sixteen hours to get this news on the web?
That's what I wanna know.
Let's hear another number from Spike Jones and the City Slickers. Here they are destroying "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" and even managing to get in a good, offensive Asian stereotype at the same time. That's Freddie Morgan doing the solo and once again, Spike is wearing a suit that I wish I owned.
Ronald Brownstein writes about the relationship between George W. Bush and the Republican side of Congress. Quick summary: The latter didn't police the former so the former got away with all sorts of things it shouldn't have gotten away with. I think I agree and I think a rising number of Republicans agree.
The new A380 airbus landed in New York on Monday and received great attention. Peter Greenberg, who's the Travel Editor for The Today Show, was on that flight and he filed this video report which is posted over on the MSNBC website. One of the other travellers interviewed in his report is my longtime pal, Joe Brancatelli, whose name comic fans may remember from fanzines of the seventies and a column he did for Warren magazines. I worked with Peter Greenberg years ago, too — on a TV pilot idea that no network had the guts/foolishness to pick up.
I mention this because I know an awful lot of people and I'm always amazed how they intersect. I'm always telling friends that eventually, everyone I've ever met will meet everyone else I've ever met. So it was not unusual but still odd to be watching Keith Olbermann last evening. Olbermann replayed Greenberg's report and there I saw someone I knew from one part of my life interviewing someone I knew from another part of my life. Joe and Peter are both in the business of travel reporting now but still…
Over in the David Letterman newsgroup, Letterman authority Don "Donz" Giller has reported the death of character actor Calvert DeForest, who was a fixture of Dave's TV shows, first as Larry "Bud" Melman on the NBC show and later under his own name on CBS. According to Giller's posting, DeForest died Monday night from a heart attack after contracting pneumonia.
DeForest was born in 1921 and did not intend to have a career in show business. His mother was an actress and discouraged it, but he told interviewers he needed no discouragement in that area. He did, however, appear in a student film that caught the attention of Mr. Letterman. To his surprise, DeForest (who was then working in a Social Services office) received an offer to be part of a sketch on Dave's show and that led to regular appearances as the character, Larry "Bud" Melman. Dave and the writers especially loved putting DeForest into sketches and situations where the hapless actor had no idea what he was doing. DeForest read everything off cue cards and could almost always be counted on to pause or stand in all the wrong places. Once after he showed a tiny bit of on-camera professionalism, Dave reportedly remarked, "If he ever gets good, he'll be of no use to us."
When Letterman moved to CBS in 1993, his production company lost the legal rights to the name of Larry "Bud" so DeForest began appearing under his own name…but not often. Advanced age and frequent illness kept him from being on the show as often as Letterman and the producers might have liked. According to Giller, DeForest's last appearance was on the April 30, 2003 show where he was introduced as Saddam Hussein.
A tribute to DeForest had been planned for last night's show but Dave took ill with a stomach flu and missed the broadcast, which was hosted instead by Adam Sandler. Tonight's episode was taped on Monday night and the Thursday and Friday shows are both scheduled reruns. So one presumes Dave will be back next Monday and will say something then.
Our video link today is a clip of Larry "Bud" Melman on an early (1983) episode of Late Night With David Letterman. They sent DeForest to the Port Authority Bus Depot in New York to welcome arriving passengers, armed with nothing more than a microphone (which he didn't know how to use) and a supply of hot towels. Here's what ensued…
Your chance to own a true artifact of The Lord.
In the last years of his life, Stan Laurel spent a lot of his time answering fan mail. This website is attempting to collect them all so that they can be shared with the world. Fascinating stuff.
Tom Spurgeon has a long, probably definitive obit up for Jay Kennedy, who died last Thursday on a vacation accident. Jay was a historian of underground comics and, more lucratively, an editor of newspaper comic strips for King Features Syndicate. I never met the man but he was well-respected by everyone who knew him and a lot of good people are still stunned at the loss.
Sit back, click and enjoy a great old vaudeville/burlesque sketch. Years ago, I met a professor-type who was trying to research the origin of this one. What he found was about nineteen different comedians had nineteen different stories about how they wrote it and how everyone stole it from them. At some point though, it became part of the more-or-less public domain repertoire that comedians working in revues then drew from. There were a lot of comics doing this material, often in their own, personalized versions — some of which they copyrighted — on stages the world over. Later on film and television, Abbott and Costello had their interpretation and the Three Stooges had theirs, and there were a couple of other folks who did it now and then, sometimes changing the "trigger word."
You'll understand what I mean when you see it…and you'll probably remember the bit. Here are the Stooges doing what they did best: Beating the crap out of one of their own…
George W. Bush gave a speech this morning on where we currently stand with Iraq. Fred Kaplan has the summary and it ain't pretty.
This morning, Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked about Alberto Gonzales and he said, "We hope he stays." Since all these guys serve at (to use the cliché) "the pleasure of the president," doesn't it come down to he stays if Bush wants him and he goes if Bush doesn't? Rarely does a presidential appointee depart over the objections of the Chief Exec and every single story ever written about Gonzales, incuding those written by his supporters, has stressed his unwavering loyalty to George W. Bush. So what is this nonsense about "hoping" he stays?
The Disney DVD folks have issued a new, 2-disc version of Walt's animated Peter Pan. Here's an Amazon link to purchase it and here's why you might not want to. A number of animation websites (like this one) have erupted in discussion of the transfer which some say is not what it should be. I saw a bit of it in a store the other day and it looked wrong to me, but I (at first) figured the shop's TV was misadjusted or something. I mean, if ever there's a film restoration that you'd figure the issuers would get right, it's something like this, and it gets back to our oft-discussed topic. You know the one: How studios will put out a wonderful, complete, everything-a-collector-could-ask-for DVD of some movie…and then they convene a staff meeting to discuss how they can put out another version later on that the same people will feel they must also purchase.
One way, some have learned, is a better transfer. In fact, last time we discussed this, a friend in the business wrote to me and said the following about a movie (not Peter Pan) that his company was selling on DVD…
When we put [the movie] out, there was some talk of using the old transfer for the DVD. This was a transfer done some time ago, I think for when the film first came out on Beta. No, no, the boss said. We need a new, deluxe transfer. He was right. The studio spent a lot of money and had a beautiful transfer done. They restored many faded or damaged frames and it really looked superb. But when it came time to put the DVD out, they used the old transfer even thought the new one was all done and paid for. At first, I thought it was an incredible, horrible mistake. What lunkhead had used the wrong transfer? I found out later it was intentional. At the last minute, someone decided to save the good transfer for the next release in a few years. It was your old "let's make them buy it again" theory.
In other words, the image quality is supposed to get better and better from release to release, not the other way around. It's more than the right thing to do from the standpoint of honoring the work and respecting the consumer. It's just good marketing.
I'm not casting my lot completely with those who say the new version of Peter Pan is a bad transfer. Not yet, anyway. I've only seen about two minutes of it on someone else's set…but it was enough to send up a warning flag. The maddening part of this, of course, is that I'll probably buy the thing anyway, just for the special features. If the image quality is as bad as some say, I'll probably sit there watching the film, thinking to myself that in this version, the pirates win. I may lead an expedition to track down the guy who's responsible and make him admit he's a codfish.
Here's a great clip but it requires a little explanation. In the early days of talking pictures, the studios had a problem. It was pretty simple to sell silent films to foreign countries that didn't speak English. You just had to change the title cards. But when sound came in, the technology to dub movies into other languages was not there, and the producers didn't want to lose all that overseas revenue. The solution at some studios was, amazingly, to film some movies multiple times with multiple casts speaking multiple languages.
Our example today is of Laurel and Hardy, who did a number of these. They didn't do it with all their early talkies but they did it with some. They'd shoot the movie in English and then, using the same sets, they'd go back and do the film again in Spanish, German, Italian and/or French, depending on market conditions at the moment. A few of the same supporting actors could be used but for the most part, they'd bring in bilingual actors to take over the other roles. One interesting example is that Boris Karloff, who apparently spoke pretty decent French, was in the French version of their feature, Pardon Us. In it, he played a part that someone else played when the same film had been made in English.
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were monolingual so they had to fake it. Obviously, pantomime scenes were no problem and it was sometimes possible to use what they'd filmed for the earlier version in the foreign version. But when it came time for dialogue, their lines were written out phonetically on blackboards just off-camera and a coach taught them how to pronounce words and where to put a certain emphasis or gesture. I've heard mixed things from people who understand these other languages as to how well Stan and Ollie came across. They did this for a while…until dubbing became practical.
Foreign versions of their pictures are of special interest to us Laurel and Hardy buffs for obvious reasons but also because many contain material that was never in the English editions. Some films ran longer overseas and in several cases when The Boys were making shorts for the American market, they'd be making patchwork features for foreign countries — several U.S. shorts stitched together via the addition of new scenes to connect the storylines. Our clip is from the Spanish film, Los Calaveras, which combined two shorts — Laughing Gravy and Be Big — into a feature. (There was also a French version of the same thing called Les Carottiers.)
So here's five minutes of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy speaking Spanish. And remember: This is not them being dubbed. This is them reading Spanish dialogue off a chalkboard…
Years ago, my Aunt Dot used to say to me, "You have something in common with every person in the world. Before you criticize them, you should stop and figure out what it is you have in common with that person."
I've been very critical of Alberto Gonzales. In terms of upholding the Rule of Law, he has the most important job in our country and I've long felt that all he does is to warp it, trample it and misinterpret it to try and support the view that anything the current (and only the current) occupant of the Oval Office and his crew does is legal, constitutional and proper. George W. Bush could stick up a liquor store and Gonzales would argue it was within the president's power to do so.
But I tried to do what my Aunt suggested. I sat down and tried to figure out what I have in common with this man. I'll admit it took a while but I think I've got it. I think I know what I have in common with this man. Within two weeks, neither one of us will be the Attorney General of the United States.
The trial of Phil Spector starts tomorrow. He's accused of murdering a young actress named Lana Clarkson. I gather the case comes down to the fact that (a) Spector is a known looney and alcoholic who was drinking that night and has a history of irrational actions, some involving firearms and (b) there's testimony that at the murder scene, Spector said he'd shot her accidentally. Those are pretty damning facts. Against this, his attorneys intend to argue that Clarkson obviously committed suicide in the home of this rich guy she'd just met, and that the two men who say Spector said what he said cannot be believed because…well, uh, we all know that when someone dies at your home, the first police officer on the scene and your chauffeur always try to pin it on you.
Obviously, that's a pretty shaky defense but Spector has brought in a heavyweight legal team and there's a reason those guys get paid as much as they do. Also, O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake have done much to destroy the concept of the Open-and-Shut Case, especially against celebrities. True, they were able to argue that they weren't there when the murders were committed and Spector can't…but he has more money than either and that's gotta be worth something.
It all sounds like a courtroom drama I really, really don't want to follow. I met Lana Clarkson a few times when she was dating a friend of mine. She seemed very nice and very smart, and I'm positive I won't be watching when Spector's lawyers start killing her all over, trying to sell the idea that her career was in ruins and that she was suicidal. I didn't know her well enough to say with any authority that the latter wasn't the case but it sure doesn't jibe with the Lana I saw. What I am sure of is that almost everyone who acts for a living has those periods when the prospects of future work look as remote as hers might have at certain points…and that that's almost never a reason for picking up a gun and exiting stage left.
One of the fascinating (some might say "maddening") things about show business is that on Tuesday at 2:00, it can feel like no one will ever again let you within fifty yards of a camera or audience and that you stand a better chance of tap-dancing to Jupiter than of getting another acting gig. And then at 2:30, you get a call for an audition, they see you at 5:00 and Thursday morning, you're in make-up and a movie. That doesn't happen as often as you might like but it happens often enough that you have to go a long time — certainly longer than Lana had — before you believe it's all over. Lack of roles alone is rarely a motive for putting yourself in the Variety obituary column. In fact, it may be the opposite. You want to wait until that obit's going to be a little longer.
I think what I'm trying to say here is that while anyone could be irrational to the point of suicide, I'm suspicious of the simple explanation like, "She decided to kill herself because she hadn't had an acting job in a while." That always sounds to me like something a beginning screenwriter comes up with after they take one of those courses that teaches you to give every character a simple, one-line motivation for everything they do. In real life, it's never that uncomplicated. Richard Jeni had plenty of bookings lined up and offers.
I'm thinking I need to do something to affect the outcome of this trial and I don't mean what happens in the courtroom. I can't do anything about that. But I can do something to limit the damage that this trial does to me. I can not follow it. This may be rough — as you can see from a few posts back here, I still have a Pavlovian interest in the O.J. case — but I'm going to do my best. If this isn't the last mention of Phil Spector on this site until the verdict is read, we'll all know I've failed.