Category Archives: Uncategorized

Helen Thomas says that the press has been way too timid in dealing with the Bush administration. She's right.

Game show host Peter Tomarken and his wife Kathleen were killed this morning when a small airplane crashed just off the Pacific Coast, apparently due to engine trouble. Here's an article with the few other details that are currently available. Mr. Tomarken was 63 years old.

He had a background in magazines (he was an editor at Women's Wear Daily and Business Week, among others) which led him into advertising. Soon, he went from producing commercials to appearing in them and that led him into the world of game show hosting. He was best known from Press Your Luck, a popular CBS game show from 1983 to 1986 which still reruns on GSN. He also presided over Hit Man, Bargain Hunters, Wipeout and several other quiz programs, and did occasional acting jobs, usually as a TV news reporter. For a time, he was the host of a show on The Playboy Channel and a frequent emcee of infomercials. I thought he was always a classy and clever presence on my television, and the one time we met made me believe he was that way in real life, as well. He had a wicked sense of humor and would probably appreciate all remarks about him hitting the Ultimate Whammy today.

Today's video link is to a demo film, a little under five minutes in length, that was made in 1967 to try and sell a Wonder Woman TV show to ABC. Its producer, William Dozier, already had a hit on that network with the Adam West Batman series and he locked up a number of other comic book (or comic book-ish) properties to see if he could make lightning strike again. He couldn't. Not with this effort, not with a half-hour Dick Tracy pilot he produced, not with several others that never got anywhere near a camera lens. The only other show he was able to sell was The Green Hornet and it didn't last long.

The short Wonder Woman demo was written by Stanley Ralph Ross and the team of Larry Siegel and Stan Hart. That's right: It took three men to write this.

Stanley was concurrently writing many episodes of Batman. He later claimed — and I'm not sure I believe him — that he hated the idea that Dozier had of making Wonder Woman into a broad sitcom about a drab lady who imagines herself as the more beautiful, exciting Wonder Woman. On the other hand, eight years later, after ABC had commissioned and passed on another Wonder Woman pilot (the one starring Cathy Lee Crosby), they bought a very faithful adaptation of the comic book, the pilot of which was written by…Stanley Ralph Ross. Stanley developed the Lynda Carter version and claimed it was the way he'd wanted to handle the property all along. So maybe he did.

Stan Hart and Larry Siegel were a fairly new comedy writing team at the time. Shortly after this project, they were hired for The Carol Burnett Show, where they worked for many years and won many awards. They also wrote a lot for (and may still occasionally appear in) MAD Magazine.

In what you'll see if you're brave enough to click on the link below, Diana Prince is played by a woman named Ellie Wood Walker, who had few credits and who, I guess, was television's idea of an unattractive woman. On TV, it's okay for a lady to play someone who can't get a man as long as she's pretty enough. Portraying her alter-ego — the beautiful version of W.W. — was Linda Harrison, who was then the actress cast in every role at Twentieth-Century Fox that called for someone stunning but didn't have much dialogue. The same year, she played "Miss Stardust" in A Guide for the Married Man. The year after, she was Nova in Planet of the Apes. And the year after that, they stuck her in my favorite trashy TV melodrama of the sixties, Bracken's World where, amazingly, she was allowed to talk. She did fine.

Her nagging mother was Maudie Prickett, who managed to turn up at one time or another in just about every sitcom in the sixties. Narration was supplied by William Dozier himself, filling the same job he'd hired himself for on the Batman show.

Why didn't his version of Wonder Woman sell? Well, watch it and see. What's usually the case when a network commissions a brief demo film instead of a full pilot is either (a) they have so much faith in the premise and creative team that they don't feel the need to waste the time or money…or (b) they have so little faith in the project that, though they've been pressured into giving it a try before the cameras, they don't want to waste the time or money. Guess which was the case this time.

In July of '76, the satellite Viking Orbiter 1 sent back photos from the surface of the planet Mars, one of which seemed to suggest a face. This article by Richard C. Hoagland notes that in 1958, in a comic book called Race for the Moon, Jack Kirby drew a story called "The Face on Mars" that bears more than a slight similarity to what the satellite photographed eighteen years later. This is not the first time this kind of thing has been noticed in Jack's work and they're probably all coincidences…but they sure remind me of the many times Jack was unquestionably ahead of his time.

Yesterday, I posted that the name of Howard Stern had mysteriously disappeared from David Letterman's guest list for Monday night. Earlier today, I posted that I was told that Stern would be on.

What seems to have happened here is that the CBS website had Vin Diesel up as the main guest for Monday. This was wrong or outdated, but it caused several Internet sources to think that a change had been made and they adjusted their listings accordingly. But nothing had changed. The website was just wrong.

The CBS website has now been updated to reflect that Mr. Stern is on with Letterman on Monday night. So apparently, he was never off. It was just a false alarm.

Over at the Chicago Tribune, they have a nice profile on "local boy" Tom Dreesen. Tom's a great stand-up comedian and one of the nicest, most ethical guys I've ever encountered in the business. You'll have to register to read the article, which was pointed out to me by Bruce Reznick.

I am hearing from one source that Howard Stern will be on with Letterman tomorrow night. His name has vanished from some online program listings but that may not be accurate.

I mentioned these before (back here) but we now have cover art and Amazon links for two forthcoming DVDs collecting Laurel and Hardy movies. As Laurel and Hardy movies are just about my favorite things on film, I'm quite happy about this and want to see them do well so there'll be more releases. Neither of these sets really includes their finest efforts and we'd sure like to see those make it to good DVD releases soon.

Coming out in May: TCM Archives – The Laurel and Hardy Collection, a set that includes The Devil's Brother, Bonnie Scotland and some extras, including trailers, excerpts from other features, a documentary on short films, and commentary tracks by Leonard Maltin and Dick Bann. The Devil's Brother is the best thing on either of these DVD sets…a very fine period comedy with our heroes getting involved with a dashing highwayman.

And coming out any day now: The Laurel and Hardy Giftset, a collection that includes Great Guns, Jitterbugs and The Big Noise, plus trailers, some short promotional films, and commentary tracks by Randy Skretvedt. I'm not sure why this is a "giftset" and the three films are from the later, declining period of Stan and Ollie when they made films for Twentieth-Century Fox. But even weak Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy so I'm getting this one, too. (There will be a Volume Two later this year with their other three films for Fox — The Dancing Masters, The Bullfighters and A-Haunting We Will Go. The ones on the first volume are better.)

As usual, Amazon is offering a package deal where you can buy both sets together and save, save, save.

So here's the big question: One of these DVDs is from Warner Home Video. The other is from Fox Home Video. Is it just a coincidence that the designers at both studios picked almost the same type font, out of thousands and thousands of possible choices, for the names of Laurel and Hardy on the two covers? I'm assuming it is since I can't think of any reason for them to have coordinated such a thing…and if they did, the fonts would be exactly the same, wouldn't they?

It's the video that was made for the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington during Bill Clinton's final year in office. The short was directed by Phil Rosenthal, who was behind Everybody Loves Raymond, and it was intended to answer the question of what the outgoing president was doing all day. As such, it generally pleased both those who liked Clinton and those who enjoyed seeing him go. You probably fall into one of those two categories so you might enjoy it. Runs about six minutes.

The conversation was a bit more interesting on this week's installment of Real Time With Bill Maher — the episode that debuted last Friday night and repeats throughout the week — but I'm still not enjoying it as much as I did last season.

There's a curious exchange with Maher, Larry Miller, Gloria Steinem and Ramesh Ponnuru. Miller, who is more or less pro-Bush, is making the argument that wiretaps are necessary because, you know, we might hear someone planning another terrorist attack and be able to stop it. This is a reasonable point but it's also, insofar as I can tell, not in dispute.

Miller further insists that time might be of the essence and that there might not be time to go before a judge and get a warrant. And for some reason, no one else on the show says, "Larry, haven't you read anything about this? There's a provision in the law that says they don't have to wait for a warrant if there's insufficient time for that. They can wiretap and then apply for the warrant up to 72 hours later." Maher is usually sharp about this kind of thing but he doesn't point that out. He's not the only person muddying the issue, which is not about whether wiretaps might be a useful tool in protecting America. The point of actual contention is whether the president can or should be able to order wiretaps without any supervision by the F.I.S.A. court, either before or after the fact. How about if someone tries debating that?

The New York Times has an article up about Alan Moore and his various battles with DC Comics and with the folks who have made (or tried to make) motion pictures out of his graphic novels.

We were talking here recently about product placement in TV shows and movies. This got me to thinking about the first time I was ever conscious of this in a program I watched. Kids' shows of the fifties and sixties were filled with commercials that merged almost seamlessly with content but there were the more blatant crossings of that imaginary dividing line. One occurred a couple times on Quick Draw McGraw. Quick Draw occasionally employed the services of a bloodhound named Snuffles who had a "thing" for dog biscuits. Give him one and he'd hug himself in delight, then literally float up in the air and down to earth, breathing a sigh of ecstatic fulfillment.

And what kind of dog biscuits evoked this reaction from Quick Draw's pooch? Why, Gro-Pup T-Bone Dog Biscuits, of course. Above, you see Snuffles holding a box of them in a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon — and this is not a commercial. This is a frame-grab from a cartoon. Anyone here think it was probably just a coincidence that Gro-Pups were manufactured by the Kellogg's cereal people, and Kellogg's was the sponsor of Quick Draw McGraw? Didn't think so. In fact, in at least one cartoon, the box wasn't a hand-drawn abstract like the above but an actual, pasted-in photo of the real Gro-Pup box. This was shortly before Augie Doggie, another character on the Quick Draw show, began turning up on the Gro-Pup boxes in stores.

I actually noticed this shameless bit of payola when I saw the show at age eight. It did not make me want to run out and buy that brand of dog biscuits, possibly because we didn't have a dog. But I did think it was cheating and I still do.

As you may have heard, CBS is suing Howard Stern, who is retaliating with some pretty scathing comments about CBS head honcho Les Moonves. A lot of folks were wondering what Howard, who was scheduled to be a guest with David Letterman on Monday night, would say there…and how Dave, who is said to be a close friend of Moonves, would respond.

If they're ever to find out, it won't be on Monday. The name of Howard Stern has suddenly disappeared from Letterman's guest list and that of Vin Diesel has mysteriously appeared in its stead.

We will hear more about this. Whether we want to or not.

Sometimes, I don't link to something because everyone else on the 'net seems to be doing so, and I figure that by the time you get to this site, you've seen it. But then, dozens and dozens of people send me the link as if I'm unaware of it. That's happening with this video that re-creates the opening of The Simpsons in live-action…though with a lot of CGI in there. So I'm posting it just to save you all the time of writing me to tell me about it. In case you're wondering who made it and why, here's that explanation. And here's the video link…

There's a quote making the rounds from Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair. It seeks to answer the question of why George W. Bush always sounds like he's talking to an audience of very small children…

He speaks to the audience as if they're idiots. I think the reason he does that is because that's the way these issues were explained to him.

There may be some truth to that but I'd like to throw out another thought. I think powerful, successful people cling to certain management styles and techniques that have worked for them in the past. When Michael Dukakis was defeated in his presidential bid, someone asked him why, when it was obvious the last week or so that he was not going to win, he didn't try something different. His answer, and I think this is more typical than not, is that when you're in a crunch is not the time to abandon all the things that got you as far as they did. Especially in crisis situations, most folks' tendency is to retreat to the methods of past successes, even though what worked then and there might not apply here and now.

I saw some old footage on C-Span a week or two ago of Bush in his Texas governor days. I can see why this guy got elected. He had a skill for simplifying issues down to the point where they sounded like his position was the only moral or intelligent option. It may not have been an intellectually honest approach, painting the opposing path as something it was not, but there was always an edge of humility to it. He laid out his case as if the choice was more important than he was, and it didn't sound condescending, didn't make him sound like a Kindergarten teacher. Maybe it's just that as he's gotten more powerful (and in his mind, I'm sure, more successful), the humble part of that has gotten harder and harder to retain.

There are still some people out there who admire the man's tenacity and cocksuredness. Having occasionally suffered at the hands of people who were absolutely sure of their direction, long after open minds would have realized they were going the wrong way, I don't find that as admirable as some do. A lot of people say Bush doesn't care about the polls and that he's sure history will vindicate him as having done the right thing in Iraq. I don't think there's ever been a politician who didn't care about the polls, if only because bad polling numbers make it more difficult to accomplish one's objectives. I'm more inclined to view Bush as a gambler who got lucky for a time with a system…and now that he's losing, all he knows how to do is bet more on that system.