Number one hundred and forty-six in a series…
Go See It!
The fine artist Drew Friedman salutes the fine artist Frank Frazetta by showcasing some of Frazetta's work on movie posters. That work was not what he was best known for but there's some amazing things there. Some of it almost too good for the assignments. I did once hear Frazetta say, perhaps tongue in cheek, that art directors were not all that happy with what he handed in because no matter what he did, he was somehow unable to magically turn into Jack Davis.
Two small points. Drew speculates that some of the art on the poster for The Fearless Vampire Killers was by Gray Morrow. I don't know who did it but I doubt it was Morrow. It doesn't look that much like him to me. Also, a few years after this film came out, Morrow filled out a questionnaire for Jerry Bails' Who's Who in Comics project itemizing as many past credits as possible. Morrow listed poster jobs on a number of cheap, less prestigious films but he didn't list The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Secondly, Drew takes note of the revisions Frazetta made on his poster for The Night They Raided Minsky's. Bert Lahr was moved to a less prominent position and Drew says it was because Lahr died just before the film's release. Actually, Lahr died about halfway through the film's production and more than nine months before its release. I find it hard to believe Frazetta did the poster art long before the movie finished shooting. It seems more likely that someone just decided it was wrong for Lahr (in a supporting role) to get better placement on the poster than Norman Wisdom, who had the larger part. Frazetta also had to tone down the sexiness of the girls on the poster. (Talk about your false advertising: The dancers in the film couldn't have been less like the ladies Frazetta painted and still be of the same gender.)
But don't worry about these minor matters. Go look at the splendid Frazetta paintings.
Recommended Reading
Ricky Gervais discusses being famous. I'm kinda amazed at the number of people who aren't famous but are certain their lives would be so much better in so many ways if they were.
My Tweets for 2012-02-09
- Trump endorses Romney. Romney starts losing elections. I'm not saying there's a direct connection but… #
- The G.O.P. establishment will not let Rick Santorum be the nominee. He'd rather ban gay marriage than taxes on capital gains. #
- Rick Santorum would have done even better if he'd changed his name to "None of the Above." It's also safer to Google. #
Today's Video Link
Richard Belzer interviews Gilbert Gottfried about what some would call bad taste in humor. This runs a hair over twenty minutes and I guess I need a parental-type warning here because they say a lot of naughty words that will singe your ears if you aren't used to them. I think Belzer overstates the significance of Gottfried's routine right after 9/11 but I otherwise agree with most of this…
From the E-Mailbag…
Daniel Van Orden writes to ask…
I've seen the Henry Morgan hosting show before, but the fact that you posted this and are an expert in the field has me asking a question that has bugged me since the show was new.
Did the big time celebrities really just take $20/$40/$60 and cigarettes for appearing? They were frequently plugging their own shows or movies, but it seems cheap and awkward.
Celebrities who appear on game shows are and always have been paid a minimum of union scale, whether it be AFTRA scale or SAG scale, for appearing. They do it for the exposure and to plug what they have coming up…but there's also a little money in it. I suspect that on something like I've Got A Secret, they didn't take the $20 and may not have even taken the cigarettes. But for most, the money was probably secondary to the exposure.
On a lot of those low-money game shows, the prize money was really just a prop. On some, if the top prize was $100, they paid every contestant $100 regardless of what they actually "won" on the show. The money was trivial and it made contestants more cooperative and forestalled any complaints that the game wasn't fair. Of course, contestants on a show like I've Got A Secret usually got more than what they won. A lot of them got paid trips to New York and generous per diem cash.
Often, so did the celebs. One of the few times I got to talk to Buddy Hackett at any length was the day after Game Show Network had run an old What's My Line? on which he appeared. I asked him about it and while he had no memory of the specific appearance, he did tell me the following. He said he had a policy of never, ever paying for travel out of his own pocket. When he went anywhere to perform, the folks hiring him would pay for his airfare and hotel. If by some chance, he had a reason to go to New York and didn't have someone else to pay, he'd find someone to pay. He'd have his agents call up and book him on What's My Line? or some other game show or talk show in New York. Then that show would pay. He said, "I did a lot of shows just because I was too cheap to buy a ticket."
That Kid…Live!
Last evening, I attended a memorable event at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills. As mentioned here, there's a new DVD coming out of a TV version of The Jazz Singer starring Jerry Lewis. (And before I forget: If you're in L.A., you might want to know that Jerry will be signing them tonight at 6 PM at the Barnes & Noble in The Grove.)
To kick things off, there was a private invitational event at the Paley. Mr. Lewis was interviewed by Leonard Maltin before an audience that included Martin Short, Jeff Garlin, Marty Ingels and Shirley Jones, Kevin Pollak, Judy Tenuta, Richard Lewis, Richard Kind, Ruta Lee, Kat Kramer, Ken Davitian and many others. Adam Sandler also put in a brief appearance but didn't stay for the show at which Leonard asked questions as did half the folks I just named. To those questions, Jerry gave answers…which is not to suggest that his answers had much to do with their questions. He had amazing energy for a man who's 85 and he did these long philosophical discourses in seeming response to what he was asked. But if I showed you the questions and then I showed you the answers and offered you a hundred bucks for every A you could match with a Q, you'd barely make a nickel.
Nevertheless, the audience found it fascinating. What he did say, rambling though it was, was not without interest…and what the hell? He's Jerry Lewis. If we wanted answers, we'd watch Jeopardy! Last night, we were all Jerry's Kids.
One thing he did answer: Leonard asked him about the status of the musical based on The Nutty Professor. Jerry said he was working on a movie now but in two months, he's going to New York and the show is on and he expects it to open on Broadway on (I wrote this down when he said it) November 20, 2012. I don't know why that date but that's what the man said. That's what he said, all right. That's what the man said.
Other than that, he talked a lot about "my partner" or "Paul" which is how he said he always addressed Dean. He talked a lot about his love for working. He said some very nice things about Leonard, describing him as one of the few members of "the press" who knows what he's talking about. He spoke very seriously about working with Robert DeNiro in King of Comedy and saying essentially that if his [Jerry's] performance was any good, it was because he fed off DeNiro's skill and some of it must have rubbed off. He also said a lot of stuff that I can't summarize because even though I was sitting about ten feet from Jerry and heard every word he said, I had no idea what he was talking about half the time. I think Martin Short got a lot of material for a new impression of the guy.
Friends ask me what it is that I like about Jerry Lewis. I dunno. That he's Jerry Lewis, I guess. He is in a way the last of a breed. Name me one other human being who starred in hit motion pictures in the fifties and sixties and is still standing…and who also was a genuine star on TV, in night clubs, on radio, even in comic books. There may be one but Leonard and I put our heads to the question at the after-party and we couldn't come up with a name. Jerry has these periodic moments of volatility, lashing out at critics and female comedians and imagined foes but against that, he has this massive body of important work and some genuine generosity…and it all seems to come from passion, not selfishness.
For some odd reason, the event last night was subtitled "60 Years of Comedy." None of us could figure out where they got sixty years because Jerry started performing on stage in 1931 and was billed as a solo act by around 1940. Martin and Lewis were hot enough to appear on the first Ed Sullivan TV show (then called The Toast of the Town) in 1948 and that's sixty-four years ago. I haven't been wild about a lot of the films and other appearances but I can sure respect the history.
The new DVD of his Jazz Singer is another piece of that history. If you'd like to get a copy of it, here's an Amazon link. The clips they showed last night made it look well worth viewing.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number one hundred and forty-five in a series…
My Tweets for 2012-02-08
- Odd to see so many people who hold the wishes of our Founding Fathers sacred but who are dying to dismantle Ben Franklin's post office. #
Today's Video Link
This is an episode of the game show I've Got a Secret that aired the night of October 9, 1957. Why am I embedding this one? Because it was a disaster and that's always fun to watch from afar. The program was broadcast live so all of America got to see it like this.
The show's usual host Garry Moore was out sick so Henry Morgan, who was usually a panelist, filled in for him and Carl Reiner took Henry's place on the panel. At the beginning, they tried to phone Garry at home but it was apparently a last minute idea and the technical aspects of the call had not been tested. That got things off to a bad start but it was at the end when the proceedings got really awkward.
Thanks to good guessing by Jayne Meadows, all three rounds were concluded in record time. This left Morgan with every emcee's worst nightmare. He had no more games to play…and seven minutes of network airtime to fill.
The producer of the show that night was Allan Sherman, several years before he recorded an album of song parodies and became the hottest comedian in the business. You can hear him shouting frantic suggestions from off-camera to Henry Morgan on what to do. In his later autobiography, Sherman wrote of this episode…
Henry Morgan had replaced Garry Moore, who was off on his sailboat for a week (and therefore unreachable by telephone or letter). It was a terrible show. Awful. We ran out of program with seven minutes left. Seven minutes of empty airtime is seven lifetimes of catastrophe, and Henry chose this night to forget that he is one of the best ad-libbers in the world, and instead devoted the seven minutes to hollering at me in public on the air for leaving him with seven minutes.
As you'll see if you watch this, Sherman misremembered. Garry Moore was not on his boat. He was home sick. And Morgan did not spend the seven minutes hollering at Sherman. The hollering probably occurred after they off the air. In any case, the next day, Allan Sherman was fired as the producer of I've Got a Secret. This was not the first episode where things went wrong. Fortunately, he went on to bigger and better things. He may even have been grateful that the show was a disaster that night, thereby getting him out of that job and on to other activities.
The show should be viewable in the embed below. It's in three parts which should play one after the other. If you just want to see when the real vamping and filling occurs, start a couple of minutes into Part Two…
Briefly Noted…
I don't care how they refurbish the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland. They ain't getting me on it.
Recommended Reading
I know very little about the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the work it does. I suppose I just assumed that any group that was raising awareness of breast cancer and promoting the treatment of it was a good thing…and I still assume that. But this whole mess with Planned Parenthood has certainly done the Komen organization a lot of harm and exposed some negative sides of it. One of my pet peeves relating to allegedly selfless fund-raising is how merchants are able to say "a portion of what we collect is going to charity" even though only microscopic fractions are being so directed. Apparently, this is the case with an awful lot of products adorned with those pink ribbons.
Clara Jeffrey has been a critic of the Komen organizaton. She has much to say about what's wrong with it and what will need correcting.
The Decision
"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples."
Yeah, I think that's really it. I mean, Proposition 8 was also (like so many movements against Gay Marriage) an attempt to rally conservative voters to the polls so they'd also vote in the best interests of the G.O.P. pro-business agenda. But as a social force, Prop 8 was just some folks wanting their government to decree that gays aren't people the way straights are people.
Most of my right-wing acquaintances have turned loose of this issue. They've realized the argument that Gay Marriages threaten the hetero kind is a hollow position that requires double talk about tradition and procreation, even though procreation isn't exactly on the menu for same-sex couples. At the very least, most one-time opponents of letting gays marry seem to recognize that it's a losing position…and sometimes even that neither the world nor "conventional marriage" are ending in states where such unions are recognized.
I still wish this thing could be settled by a vote of the people rather than to reopen silly arguments about "judicial activism." If they put a repeal of Proposition 8 on the California ballot this November, it would pass.
Conventional Wisdom
If the new issue of Comic-Con Annual isn't arriving in your mailbox, as mine did yesterday, you can read it or download it here. This is a promotional publication for the Comic-Con International but it's also a good magazine full of articles, including one by me. It's so good, I hesitate to point out that the photo on page 24 of the Groo crew misidentifies our first colorist, Gordon Kent, as his successor in the job, Tom Luth. Other than that, it's perfect.
Verdict Watch
So any minute now, an appeals court in California is expected to issue a ruling on the infamous Proposition 8, the initiative that banned Gay Marriage in this state. Whatever they say, it will not be the final word on this. The matter will probably be settled by an eventual ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, though I don't see why it couldn't be settled by a new ballot initiative. I believe that if California voters were today asked how they feel about allowing two folks of the same sex to wed, the outcome would be a solid vote to allow it. Public sentiment on this issue has only ever evolved in one direction.