Category Archives: Video Links

The Writers Guild of America hosted a reception at Comic-Con and also shot a couple of videos.This one has me at the beginning, middle and end…and the reason I seem to be shouting is that I was recorded in the midst of a very noisy party. Somehow, the microphone picked me up just fine but not most of the party walla so I sound like Chris Wallace on election night…

From 1968 and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson…

Here's a few clips from Winchell-Mahoney Time, a show I enoyed watching when I was a kid. It was on from 1965 to 1968 and it featured one of my favorite performers, Paul Winchell, and his little stock company of dummies and puppets. If you do a search on this site, you'll find lots of pieces I've written about Paul and what his work meant to me.

Winchell-Mahoney Time was his longest-running series of many, and it was also a show that made him a helluva lot of money…and not in the usual way. 288 shows were taped and a few years later, someone at the production company — Metromedia — decided the programs had no future commercial value and it wasn't worth the shelf space to store all the videotapes…so they discarded them. Winchell sued on the grounds that since he was a profit-participant in the show, he had a contractual right to be consulted on that decision and should have been given an opportunity to get the tapes. A jury awarded him a big check. Wikipedia says it was $17.9 million. I recall it as seven million, which is still a nice piece o' change. Maybe they awarded him $17.9 mil and it got whittled down to or Paul eventually settled for the seven. However much it was, I recall it made him awfully happy. Here's one of the few bits that survives of that series…

Take this one full screen.Then watch and enjoy…

Our pal Frank Ferrante is still performing in Teatro ZinZanni in Seattle…and at Teatro ZinZanni, it's always Cocktail Time with Caesar…

Here's a curio from the days when prime-time network TV shows had individual sponsors. One company would be the sponsor of a series. They might swap out a few commercials with other firms — usually ones that shared the same ad agency — but Chevrolet, for instance, sponsored Bonanza and other programs.

In September of '64, an episode of Bonanza ran without commercial interruption so that they'd have time at the end for this promotional film. Lorne Greene and others on that show stepped out of their characters to help unveil the 1965 lineup of Chevy models…and they even got help from other actors on other concurrent shows sponsored by Chevrolet. Take a gander…

Tim Davis sent me a link to this. It's footage from I Love Lucy interspersed with 8mm home movie footage shot on the set. Amazing…and very appropriate for today, which would have been Lucille Ball's 100th birthday. And she'd have been here to celebrate it if she'd taken more of that Vitameatavegamin…

The original voice of Elmer Fudd was provided by a radio actor named Arthur Q. Bryan. Here's thirty seconds of Arthur Q. Bryan…

I know lots of funny people. For instance, I know Bill Kirchenbauer, who many of you will recall from the TV shows Growing Pains and Just the Ten of Us, as well as his many appearances with Mr. Carson on The Tonight Show. Some of you may even remember him as Tony Roletti, the dreadful lounge singer on Fernwood Tonight.There was a moment in American comedy when half the comics out there seemed to be doing a bad lounge singer character but Bill was doing his before any of them. Here's an old clip of Bill doing stand-up…

Like I said, funny man. Bill has a new project that is less funny than important. It's a series of videos designed to raise awareness of the widespread problem of Diabetes and to wake people up to the fact that it's all quite treatable if they'll just do something about it.They're the Adventures of Captain Glucose and Meterboy and I think it's a great idea. Years ago, I heard the stats and was stunned to hear how many people let Diabetes become a crippling or even life-threatening problem just because they don't become aware of their conditions and/or seek proper treatment.

I think it's such a good idea that I've been trying to think of new venues in which Cap'n Glucose and Meterboy can spread their message…and things I can suggest to Bill that will enable the cause to reach a larger audience. Anyone out there got any ideas? Better still, anyone out there got a connection to a big pharmaceutical corporation that might want to take what they make in about three seconds and fund a whole series of these cartoons or a widely-distributed comic book or something? Drop me a note if you have an "in" anywhere that I can pass on to Bill. And in the meantime, here's the first installment of their adventures. I'll feature others but they oughta have a much bigger audience than just you folks who are wise enough to visit this blog…

Here's a quick clip from a show I worked on as a writer way back in 1983. It was called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour — not to be confused with a later, unrelated program of the same name on MTV.The folks at ABC bought five episodes, aired them on Tuesday night against The A-Team, looked at our ratings and then never ordered any more. I don't think I wrote this bit, which features fast-talker John Moschitta and in her pre-Saturday Night Live days, Jan Hooks. I did design the little show mascot with the hat and he was animated by Sergio Aragonés…

It's been a while since I could feature a commercial here with the great Daws Butler. Here he is, Snagglepussing for Kellogg's Cocoa Krispies…

Oh, before I get back to work, I'm going to post this and maybe another Keaton photo. At one of our Cartoon Voice panels at Comic-Con last week — was it only last week? — we had the wonderful Chuck McCann on the dais. At the end, I thought we needed to go out on a laugh so I got Chuck to tell one of my favorite stories…and no, it doesn't have anything to do with voicing animation but it's about kids' TV and Soupy Sales so I figured that was close enough.

So here I am, cuing Chuck into the anecdote.The lady on the right side of your screen is the also-wonderful Laraine Newman…

Here's one of those moments in baseball that you just have to see…

Take five minutes to watch lovely penguins…

You've probably seen Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project in which prominent folks assure gay and lesbian teens that the bullying and verbal attacks can and will cease…and it seems to me that most of the advice in these videos is just as valid for straight folks. Here's Stephen Colbert with a brief story that is of value to all…