Something Else to Read

Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 10:20 PM

This evening, I attended a monthly meeting of a group I belong to called Yarmy's Army. It's a social/support club of folks in show business — mostly comedians and comedy writers, mostly older than me. We sit around and eat and tell anecdotes. I can't recall the names of all the folks who were there tonight so I'll just name ten in no particular order: Thom Sharp, John Rappaport, Greg Lewis, Hank Garrett, Jack Riley, Chuck McCann, Budd Friedman, Arnie Kogen, Kerry Ross and Mike Preminger.

Mike Preminger and I go back to when I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter. He was the warm-up comedian at most tapings, including the memorable one I wrote about here when Groucho came to the show. If you're going to go read it, you might want to read the column before it first.

Mike's a very clever guy who I guess does more writing these days than performing, though he's good at both. He has a new website on which he's posting some of his funny stories and observations. Go read a few and see if you don't get hooked. It might be a good place to go the next time this site gets hacked.

This Weblog

Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 8:44 AM

Hey, whadda ya know? It's still up.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 2:23 AM

So this guy travels the world and everywhere he goes, he shoots a second or two of video of himself. Then he goes home and makes this…

Odds 'N' Ends

Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 2:22 AM

I spent half of yesterday fixing websites and half working on Groo. What do these two jobs have in common? Neither one will ever be perfect, I'll probably have to do both of them next week and they pay about the same. But it is nice that this blog hasn't had a hostile takeover for something like sixteen hours. Let's see how long it lasts.

A number of you wrote about my comment that Sammy Davis Jr. was half-Jewish. I didn't mean it by dictionary definition. That's just the way it was always phrased when it was discussed on TV, and I think Sammy even put it that way. If you want to argue the point, dig up Joey Bishop and discuss it with him.

Several of you wrote to ask about the secret, forbidden screening I attended in the early seventies of Animal Crackers. I wrote about it here.

And by the way, if you'd like your copy of Steve Stoliar's book autographed, he sells them that way at his website.

Last night on his show, Jay Leno had Janet Jackson on and somehow allowed her to turn her entire spot into an infomerical for Nutri-System. Somehow, no matter what he asked her, the answer to every question included a recommendation of Nutri-System. Johnny would never have let a guest get away with that.

I think that's about all I have right now. I'm going to post a video link, go to bed and hope this site is here in the morning. Good night, Internet.

Truthiness in S.C.

Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 1:38 AM

Stephen Colbert wanted to sponsor the ballot for the South Carolina primary and to include a referendum question on whether corporations are people. He was denied both things but one pollster went ahead and asked how people would have voted if he'd gotten his wish, and also if he'd been a candidate on that ballot as he once discussed.

Book Marx

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012 at 4:37 PM

stevestoliar03

The man at right in the above photo is, as you've probably guessed, the real Frank Ferrante…Groucho Marx. Like at least a third of the people who'll read this, I've been fascinated by Groucho Marx for years and have tried to see everything he ever did and read every book about him. That can be tough because there have been some very bad books about Groucho.

The man at left in the photo is Steve Stoliar. He didn't write one of those bad books about Groucho. He wrote a very good one called Raised Eyebrows. It's subtitle is My Years Inside Groucho's House…and Steve was not a cat burglar or the guy who rented the place after Groucho died. He was a kid hired to archive Groucho's crates of souvenirs and memorabilia, and as such was a key witness to the last years of Julius H. Marx. I had a few brief first-hand glimpses into those years and Groucho's relationship with the troubled and controversial Erin Fleming, the lady who managed his last years and who seemed to have been more caretaker than caregiver. I envy Steve his proximity to the guy above in the beret and we should be grateful for all he did for Dr. Hackenbush…but I sure don't envy him being around That Woman.

Fortunately for us, Steve is a writer…a darn good one, too. His book recounts his story in a non-sensationalized manner and there isn't a word in it that seems false or self-serving. A case can be made that Ms. Fleming was good for Groucho…or perhaps good until the final year or so. Another person I know who was around some of that thinks she was not good for Groucho but as good as he was likely to get, given the way he'd alienated so many around him, along with certain troubles within his family. You can make up your own mind about all that or do like me and find your own way to view the ambiguity. Above and beyond the Marxian lore in this book, there is much to think about regarding old age and how folks who get there can and should be taken care of.

How Stoliar got into Groucho's home is also a good story. Back in the seventies, one could often go see Marx Brothers movies in local theaters…which was a much better way to see them than at home, no matter how big your flat screen is. I took dates to see A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races and Duck Soup and Horse Feathers — all the good ones except for Animal Crackers, which was then unavailable due to a rights snag. But I eventually got to seeing Animal Crackers. A small storefront theater in Westwood ran a 16mm print one night, advertising "A Marx Brothers Movie" but not the title. I found out which one it would be and rounded up a posse of my friends…and we went, all the time fearing a police raid. We also thought this might be the only chance we would ever have in our lives to see that film.

Thanks to Steve Stoliar, it wasn't. He was attending UCLA around that time and he launched a campaign on campus. The rhetoric was not unlike urging some foreign government to free a political prisoner but in this case, it was urging Universal Pictures to free Animal Crackers…and sure enough, it did result in a release. It also resulted in Steve meeting Groucho and Erin and getting that low-pay, high-prestige job. But you'll read all about it when you read his book, which I highly recommend. I liked it in its original hardcover when it came out some time ago. I like it even more in its new, expanded paperback edition which sports a great Drew Friedman cover and moves the story forward a few more years since the first pressing. Here is an Amazon link to order a copy. Please do. I've never met Steve except via Facebooking but we've agreed to have lunch soon. If you folks buy enough copies because of this plug, maybe he'll feel grateful enough to pick up the check.

That Old Hack Magic

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012 at 4:24 PM

To those of you who came to this site earlier today: No, I probably wasn't "hacked" again. It was probably a continuation of the earlier hacks. Last November, someone got into my wing of the file server…and I'm not sure how they got in, though it appears to have been through the Steve Gerber site. They installed two "cloaked" sites here — websites running off my server but hidden deep within its files so I didn't know they were there. One sold prescription drugs — especially those designed to induce erections — and the other sold counterfeit Louis Vuitton, Prada and Balenciaga purses. I thought I'd cleaned all that stuff out but I apparently hadn't. They'd also planted little "time bomb" viruses designed to bring my site down, perhaps as punishment for deleting theirs. The virus-laden files crashed me a week or so ago. I cleaned out (I thought) the time bombs. Today, I was crashed again, apparently because I'd missed something. I have deleted more suspicious files and reinstalled much software and now I think I'm clean. But I thought that before.

I'm installing additional security and scanning every damn file on the server and let's see if I've gotten it all now. I think I have but will not be surprised if this site crashes again soon. So don't you be surprised.

Well, That Was Fast…

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012 at 3:20 AM

I am informed by many that the Sammy Davis clip I just posted is from The Julie Andrews Hour which aired on ABC on March 3, 1973. Ms. Andrews and Mr. Davis performed scenes from many Broadway shows so I guess they got the necessary permissions. Fiddler on the Roof had closed on Broadway by then so its producers were presumably not terribly fussy about allowing permission for it to be excerpted and performed by almost anyone.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012 at 2:43 AM

Okay, where is this from? The fine chanteuse Shelly Goldstein sent me this link to Sammy Davis singing "If I Were a Rich Man" on some variety show, supposedly around 1969.

Point of interest: The original production of Fiddler on the Roof was still running on Broadway in 1969. It didn't close until 1972. There's usually a "grand rights" restriction on the usage of show tunes like this. You can't present them in anything resembling the context of the show without special permission from the producers of the show and that is rarely given while the show is still in first run. Right now, you could put on a ball gown and go on The Tonight Show and sing "Defying Gravity" and all you have to do is pay the royalty or have someone pay the royalty to Stephen Schwartz and the producers of Wicked. But you can't paint yourself green, put on a witch outfit and go up on a hidden elevator while singing it without a special o.k. because when you do it that way, you're doing a scene from that show.

So I want to know where this number was performed. I was thinking Sonny & Cher, partly because of the weird premise and partly because of the bad audience sweetening but they didn't go on until '71. Maybe it isn't '69 then. I also want to know if the producers of Fiddler on the Roof blessed it or were outraged or what.

Not that it's bad. Sammy was a great performer and his expressed desire to do a Black company of Fiddler was not as ridiculous as some might think. The show was very popular — and culturally relevant — overseas with a Japanese cast…so why not Black? And Sammy was, after all, half Jewish.

So…anyone know anything about this?

From the E-Mailbag…

Posted on Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 8:23 PM

My friend Bob Foster, who I haven't seen since the big Animation Guild party last Friday, sent me this. "SDCC" stands or San Diego Comic-Con, one of many names the Comic-Con International had before it became, now and forever, the Comic-Con International…

Speaking of people who hesitated to attend conventions but changed their mind for some reason…

I remember when Dick Moores came to SDCC (1975). I was sitting at his table at a banquet. (Inkpots?) I understand he'd never been to a convention, and had done very little comic book work (mostly on Disney and Warner Bros. characters), certainly no superhero comics. But he'd been a very good comic strip artist since 1931 when he assisted Chester Gould on Dick Tracy, wrapping up his 55-year career on Gasoline Alley. He didn't think anyone would know who he was, but when his name was announced and the room gave him a thundering ovation he wasn't expecting, there were tears in his eyes. I'm glad he got to experience the love and appreciation the fans had for him.

Yeah, there was a point where I thought the Inkpots were kinda silly. I didn't even show up to receive mine in…I think it was their second year, 1975, and a lot of my friends and I made jokes about them. One was that the people at the front table would welcome you by saying, "Here's your badge…here's your program book…and here's your Inkpot Award." But then there came a couple of instances like the one you describe where it was obvious they did a lot of good, if only as an excuse for an audience to applaud someone who deserved applause but had rarely heard any. I can think of no less than a dozen examples but the one that comes first to mind is Fred Guardineer.

Fred drew comic books almost from the time there were comic books. He was in Action Comics #1 and that was nowhere near his first job. In 1955 when the industry went into recession, Fred got out and worked for the post office for the rest of his working days. He had very little contact with the comic book community until 1998 when Dave Siegel located him in a nursing home and got his family to bring him down to the Comic-Con to see the event and to be on the Golden Age Panel. Even before the panel, Fred was astonished to learn how many people remembered and loved that work he'd done so long ago.

When the panel started, I presented an Inkpot Award to Joe Simon and a pretty-crowded room — maybe 500 people — stood and cheered. Then I whipped one out for Fred. He was a last-minute addition to the convention and the panel so he really wasn't expecting it… and the room erupted again, even louder than they had for Joe. It wasn't that they didn't love and respect Joe…but Joe received lots of honors in his long career. This, everyone sensed, was the first and maybe last time to applaud Fred Guardineer.

Fred was in a wheelchair. As the crowd clapped, he started to struggle out of it to get to the podium as Joe had. I whispered to Fred, "You don't have to get up." He whispered back to me, "No, this is the first time I ever got an award and I'm going to stand for it." I'm not sure what was wrong with his legs. Maybe it was just being 85 years old. All I know is he made it to the lectern mike to say thanks and I was holding him up by the back of his pants. He was crying and I could look out and see his family — a daughter, a son-in-law and some grandkids, I think — and they were crying. He later told me it was the greatest moment of his life. (He later made it to a couple more cons before passing away in 2002.)

I have about twenty-five very special Comic-Con memories I will never forget. One was standing there, holding Fred Guardineer up by the back of his trousers while he made this wonderful speech for the greatest moment of his life. It was one of several moments where I decided that maybe awards like the Inkpot weren't such dumb ideas after all.

Recommended Reading

Posted on Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 6:14 PM

The current issue of Playboy — the one with Lindsay Lohan on the cover — has a rather interesting interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News. I don't agree with everything he says, particularly in his insistence that Fox News doesn't advance a deliberate political agenda. But I was surprised at how many times in the piece I didn't think he was full of luncheon meat and there were many points where I nodded in agreement. The entire interview is online over at the Playboy site which means (a) it won't be up forever and (b) if you go read it, you might catch a glimpse of an undressed woman in some corner of your monitor. If that will horrify you, proceed with caution.

Recommended Reading

Posted on Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 11:04 AM

One of the more interesting figures in the current Republican dogpile is Jon Huntsman, who's probably going to turn out to be the only G.O.P. candidate who made it into the debates but never got his turn as Front Runner. A lot of people think Huntsman is a Liberal masquerading as a Conservative. The other day, Keith Olbermann was urging the man to 'fess up and become the Democrat that he really is.

Only he really isn't. Huntsman hates Medicare and abortions and taxing the rich just like the rest of his fellow debaters. He just doesn't seem to hate them enough to get his party to notice he's there. When it got down to six contenders, you started to see articles where the person who finished fifth, ahead of Huntsman, was referred to as being fifth in a field of five.

Here, just to give the man a little notice, is an interview with Jon Huntsman. Sounds like he's starting to get a little ticked off at being ignored.