Category Archives: Video Links

A lot of you who grew up in Los Angeles are going to be really happy to see this. The best of all the horror movie hosts we had out here on local TV was Seymour, the alter-ego of a TV director and actor named Larry Vincent. At least, my friends and I all loved him. A few monster film purists were less than delighted with him because he did tend to ridicule many of the movies he showed and to occasionally tamper with them by, for example, Chromakeying himself into a scene every once in a while. But a lot of us watched some very bad movies — and remember, this is before home video so you couldn't tape it and fast forward your way through — waiting for Seymour's appearances in or between the films.

Between 1970 and 1973, he was on KHJ and then KTLA and I watched him, interviewed him in '72 for a paper called The Monster Times, got to know him a little and even wrote some gags for him to use on his show. If he hadn't died in '75, I think he would have been a very big star. I did this article about him in 1999 and most of it quotes the piece I wrote in 1972 when he was still the rage of local television.

You haven't heard much about Seymour because darn near nothing exists of his work…just a few blurry photos and bad audio clips. Since I posted that article, I've received dozens of e-mails from folks who are doing documentaries or TV retrospectives or who are just fans looking for footage. As far as I can tell, there isn't any. All the tapes were wiped…every last one of them.

There aren't even many stills around of Larry. You see that photo atop this piece? I took that. One evening when I was on his set watching him do his show, I whipped out a camera and snapped a couple of snaps before a crew guy scolded me, proclaiming that photography was not allowed. So my not-allowed picture is one of about three decent ones that seem to be around. I have a few more I have to dig out and digitize.

It's like someone went in and tried to erase every last picture and piece of tape that ever existed of poor Larry "Seymour" Vincent…but we have a spot of good news! One minute with poor video quality (a blooper, I think) seems to have survived. James Fetters, author of this book about local horror hosts, has posted it for the world to enjoy. So world, enjoy. This may be all you ever get to see of a very funny man who had way too short a career…

Enough about Bin Laden! Let's deal with some of the really important issues on this blog…

Here's my new favorite TV show. The brilliant actor-filmmaker Chuck McCann is launching his own program on the Internet featuring his talented friends and his talented self and this is kind of a "test" broadcast to get some of the bugs out. Chuck is about as clever a human being as I've met in my life and on his show, he's going to present some of the new clever things he's coming up with along with clips of past clever things he came up with.

Some of both are in this preview installment which runs about 38 minutes. Give it a watch and join me in looking forward to further installments, which I intend to embed here for your enjoyment. Heck, never mind you. I'll embed them for my enjoyment. And don't be surprised when ads pop up in this thing. It's UStream and they stick them any old place…

You may be sick of seeing this photo of Obama, Biden and others in the White House Situation Room monitoring the capture assassination of Osama Bin Laden. I'm not sick of it. I'm a little more intrigued every time I look at it.

A lot of folks are speculating on what these people might be watching at the moment this photograph was taken, and this article addresses some of that. (Conclusion: We dunno.) The video below is of a segment that points out things that are not obvious in the picture if you look at it casually or see a small version. (The large, high-rez version can be downloaded here.)

Me, I'm intrigued as to why they picked this one to release. White House press photographers take hundreds of photos if the President is greeting the Girl Scout who sold the most Thin Mints. I suppose the classified nature of this session might have been reason to take fewer but surely there were more and this one was selected because (I'm guessing) Hillary Clinton's expression made it seem dramatic and no one else was yawning, picking a nose, looking away, etc.

But even more intriguing is what's not in this photo. Some politicians or advisers might have said, "This is an important photo op. We have to arrange things to sell our desired narrative, which is that Our Guy is heroic and he was in charge." If that person had been advising Obama, the President would have been in the center and he'd have been wearing a jacket and tie, gesturing and saying something to look very macho, like maybe he had just pointed to Bin Laden and said, "I'm in charge here and I say blow that mutha away!" Instead, he looks concerned and serious…but passive. If you had no idea who any of these people were, could you pick out the most powerful person in the room?

One of the things that many of Nixon's aides said about him — and it was this that made some of them suspect there was a taping system before that became common knowledge — is that in meetings, he would say things like he was saying them for the historical record, trying to convey the image he wanted posterity to have of him. Before the tapes became an embarrassment and they were all subpoenaed, that was their purpose. He was going to edit them and pull out the moments that showed Richard M. Nixon making decisions that turned out to be bold and insightful and correct.

I don't think any of that kind of strategizing went into the decision to release this photo. But wouldn't it be fascinating to see all the others that were taken?

Ho-hum. Another talking dog…

In 1969, the Three Stooges didn't have many offers to do any stooging so their manager Norman Maurer came up with an idea. Norman was a former comic book artist (at one point, the partner of Joe Kubert) who'd married Moe's daughter and become a successful producer and writer of both live-action movies and animation, some of which featured the Stooges. He was also a very clever man with a good head for business. I worked with him years later on the Richie Rich cartoon show and I always thought there was a little of Richie in Norman.

At the time, he had some connections in the TV syndication market and an idea on how to put Larry, Moe and Curly Joe into a new series even though they were getting too old to do much of their traditional physical comedy. Moe Howard was 72, Larry Fine was 67 and Joe DeRita was a mere 60 but in poor health. Still, all three still liked the idea of performing and really liked the idea of travelling, especially if someone else was going to pay for it.

This led Norman to envision a series he called Kooks Tour, which would be a kind of funny travelogue. Each week, the Stooges — ostensibly retired — could travel somewhere and get into as much mischief as they could handle but a big star of the show would be the scenery. There were, Norman knew, tourist bureaus that would contribute to the budget of such a program in order to bring it to their corner of the world and he worked a deal with the folks who made and sold Chryslers to kick in for some product placement.

Still, that budget would have to be pretty low. They would do it with 16mm cameras and a large part of it would be travel footage with Stooge narration, and with Norman's whole family working on it, both in front of and behind the cameras. In the clip below, one of the two male campers is Norman and the other is his son Jeff, who writes TV under the name Jeffrey Scott. (Hi, Jeff! Lunch soon?) The woman who encounters Curly Joe is Lois Goleman, Norman Maurer's administrative assistant. Joan Howard Maurer, Norman's wife and Moe's daughter (and a terrific lady I haven't seen in too many years) was credited for Costumes. Norman wrote and directed and also wound up stunt-doubling for various Stooges in some shots.

They all travelled to Wyoming and Idaho to shoot an hour special that Norman thought he could use to sell a half-hour weekly series…and the idea might have worked but Larry took ill. Before filming was completed, he suffered a stroke that ended his performing career and therefore the Three Stooges as we knew them. There was later a brief attempt to replace him in the act with longtime Stooge supporting player Emil Sitka but it went nowhere. Larry and then Moe passed in '75 and Joe left us in '93.

Maurer gave up on Kooks Tour as a series but edited the completed footage as well as he could. He recouped some of the investment by releasing it into the home movie marketplace and later when home video came along, it had a brief life there, billed as the Three Stooges' final film. I find something oddly pleasant about it. I guess I like the idea that those three nitwits really did retire and spend their last years travelling together and being less violent buddies who still got into trouble. Here's about ten minutes of it…

Immediately following the Royal Wedding, the speedy Fred Landau had a clever song parody up on YouTube and we linked you to it. Reaction was so strong that he went ahead and produced a more polished version with a great vocal by Jan Horvath. So here's the upgrade…

Here's a blast from my past…a video which should not be on YouTube. But before they delete it and haul the uploader off to prison for the rest of his or her natural life, I thought I'd share it with you. It's an episode I wrote for the old Garfield and Friends show entitled "The Lasagna Zone." This is the late Lorenzo Music as the cat, Thom Huge as Jon and Binky…and Gregg Berger as Odie.

Frank Welker did the amazing Rod Serling impression and as I recall, he did it without reference. I was going to bring a tape of the real Mr. Serling to the recording session for Frank to listen to but I skillfully left it home and was relieved when Frank said, "Not necessary." Berger and Welker did all the other voices you'll hear as well. Hope you enjoy it.

From CBS News Nightwatch for August 7, 1990: Host Robert Krulwich interviews the First Lady of Cartoon Voicing, June Foray. This clip apparently starts after she'd already demonstrated the voices of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale and perhaps a few others. The gentleman on the couch is Bill Hurtz, who was one of the best directors at Jay Ward's operation. Thanks to our pal Barry Mitchell who uploaded this to YouTube and told me about it…

Seth Meyers did pretty well as the comedian tonight at the White House Correspondents Dinner — and that is not an easy room…

Fred Landau, whose song parodies I've featured here before, was very busy this morning…

Bob Elisberg told me about this. It's a great public service message from Brazil…

There's a new production of Anything Goes playing on Broadway these days. It stars Sutton Foster and Joel Grey and here's a few minutes of it…

From 1990: The original cast of Forever Plaid — Stan Chandler, David Engel, Guy Stroman and Jason Graae (Hi, Jason!) — perform a number from that show out in the street in front of Macy's Department Store as part of that year's Thanksgiving Day Parade…

Here's an interesting curio — a 1955 TV exposé on the evils of comic books. The host is Paul Coates, who was an L.A. Times reporter who doubled as a TV host, usually covering pretty salacious or controversial topics. One might suggest his broadcasts exploited these subjects, putting some pretty racy stuff on the airwaves under the cover of condemning it. He was an occasional partner with L.A. TV newsman George Putnam, who did a lot of films and telecasts with a tone of outraged public scolding of "sins" that are now, for good or ill, commonplace.

The most interesting part of this 25-minute show is the conversation with Senator Estes Kefauver, who had headed up the inquiry into comic books in Washington the year before…and according to some, expected to ride that crusade right into the White House. You can judge for yourself how sincere or accurate he was…and probably guess what I think.

Coates interviews kids who read comics, as well as one comic book artist who apparently regrets the work he did. He's Ellis Eringer and his main credits were on the kinds of comics not addressed in this program. He was primarily an inker for Disney and Disney-type comics in the sixties, mainly for Western Publishing but occasionally directly for Disney Studios where comic book material was often produced for overseas publishers. He also occasionally inked Disney newspaper strips, particularly Donald Duck. He did do some romance and horror comics early in his career and the romance work he's talking about was probably when he drew a few stories for Harvey's love comics (like Hi-School Romances) between 1949 and 1951. Those were pretty tame books that did not quite match his lurid descriptions.

The other interesting thing about the show is who the director was: Irvin Kershner, then a staff TV director at KTTV…and the Associate Producer was Andrew Fenady. Just three years after this, Roger Corman would hire Fenady and Kershner to make Stakeout on Dope Street, a pretty lurid (for its day) and cheap movie about drug trafficking. Fenady and Kershner co-wrote the script, Kershner directed and Fenady produced and played a role. It was a much more respectable job than making shows like this one…