I've always loved Phil Silvers. Loved him in everything he ever did, even that one episode of Gilligan's Island he was in. (Did you know Mr. Silvers was one of the owners of that show? He was. A few years after Bilko went off, he returned to CBS in a new sitcom — The New Phil Silvers Show — and it was a flop. But because he was a big star when he signed on for it, he got ownership of the show and his production company, Gladasya Productions, got a commitment from the network for financial participation in a series that didn't star him. That series turned out to be Gilligan's Island and I think Silvers told me he'd made more money off that than he did off playing Sgt. Bilko.)

Anyway, I was fortunate to have a very long interview/brunch with Mr. Silvers around three years before he left us for that big Off Track Betting parlor in the sky. Our chat took place at Nate 'n Al's Delicatessen in Beverly Hills and it was quite thrilling and even included a cameo appearance by Milton Berle. Mr. Berle came in, saw that Phil was being questioned by some clown with a tape recorder and rushed over to horn in on the interview. Oddly enough, he appeared just as we were discussing how Silvers had turned down the lead in the original production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and was replaced by…Milton Berle. (Berle later dropped out and was replaced by Zero Mostel.)

Some time ago, I posted two excerpts from that chat on this site. This one is about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and this one is about the big dance number from the movie, Cover Girl. You'll want to read the latter in conjunction with today's clip…preferably before. Silvers was enormously proud of his participation in that number, dancing alongside Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth and matching them step for step. This was quite a feat for a guy who was not, unlike Mr. Kelly and Ms. Hayworth, a trained dancer.

One thing I hadn't realized until now is that in the interview, Silvers described it as a six-minute dance number. It isn't. They dance for a little over three minutes. But I'll bet if you had to do it, it felt like six…or a lot more. Anyway, go read the interview then come back here and watch the performance. And now I'm going to bed because just watching the performance again made me tired. Also, it's four o'clock in the friggin' morning. Good night.

Several folks have sent me a link to an online petition, apparently instigated by the Goldman family, protesting the forthcoming O.J. Simpson broadcasts. It's called Don't Pay O.J., but the text is a little muddy as to whether they're more bothered by Simpson getting the public forum or Simpson getting the chance to make money. Perhaps the distinction doesn't matter in this case.

I must admit I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of bringing pressure against booksellers not to carry his book. Bookstores, of course, have the right to not carry anything they find tasteless but they shouldn't be put in the position of evaluating and judging content. As contemptible as Simpson is, he still has his First Amendment rights…and I like the idea of a book dealer who carries everything and lets the buying public decide what they will and will not buy.

Forgot to mention: Among the people I ran into at the P.P.B. luncheon was Chuck McCann, who mentioned that a crew is currently prepping a little documentary on him that will be included on the forthcoming DVD release of all the Cool McCool cartoons. Also ran into voice actor supreme Wally Wingert, who is heading up that crew. (Wally is responsible for the extras on the new DVD of The Groovy Goolies.)

Cool McCool was a very silly animated series that ran on NBC for 20 episodes, the first of which aired in September of '66. McCool was a suave but occasionally inept detective who looked like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau but acted more like Maxwell Smart, whose series had been the big prime-time hit of the previous season.

The show also had enormous overtones of Batman in it, presumably because Bob Kane was one of its two creators. That's right: Two. Kane is almost always referred to as the sole creator but the on-screen credits said the series was the concoction of Kane and Al Brodax, who was the producer of most of the King Features animated efforts of the sixties such as the Beatles cartoons. Cool McCool was one of the methods by which Kane cashed in on the success of the Batman TV show, the one with Adam West. It went on the air in January of '66 and was an immediate hit. He and Brodax must have whipped up Cool McCool and sold it right away in order for it to debut on NBC when it did. Most of the villains McCool chased down were thinly-veiled knock-offs of Batman villains. The Penguin was turned into The Owl. The Joker was turned into The Jack-in-the Box. The Riddler became the Rattler and so on.

The late Bob McFadden was the voice of Cool McCool. That's Mr. McFadden in the photo above. He was a New York-based stand-up comedian, actor and voice performer who did thousands of commercials in his time and an awful lot of cartoons. He was heard on the Linus the Lionhearted show and Milton the Monster and umpteen others. He even did the Karloff-type voice of Frankenberry in that cereal's commercials. (He had a long association with monsters. In addition to Milton and Frankenberry, McFadden had a hit novelty record — "The Mummy," which he performed with Rod McKuen. Dr. Demento still plays it several times a year.) McFadden passed away in 2000.

The female voices on the show were provided by Carol Corbett and the male voices not done by McFadden — which included all the villains — came out of Chuck McCann. I'm afraid I don't know much more than that about the show. One of the reasons I'm eager to get this forthcoming DVD whenever it comes out — I don't think there's a release date yet — is to read the credits and find out who was responsible. By the way: The DVD pictured above is not the DVD that Wally's assembling. That's the cover of an old British release. It's hard finding visual material on this show.

Another reason I want to get The Complete Cool McCool (or whatever they call it) is to see if, like the Peter Falk show I just mentioned, it's still good. Not everything I liked when I was younger is. Every time The Man From U.N.C.L.E. pops up on a channel I get on my satellite dish, I try an episode and find myself wondering what I ever liked about that show. Same with the Raymond Burr Perry Mason shows and about 80% of all the Woody Woodpecker cartoons that were ever made. Matter of fact, I think some of those shows have been quietly remade to lower their production values and quality. They couldn't have looked that bad when I was a kid. We'll see if Cool McCool is still cool.

This afternoon, I attended a luncheon of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, an L.A.-based group of folks who've been involving in radio or TV for a couple of decades or more. Several times a year, they have these ceremonies that honor a great in the field of entertainment and today, the Guest of Honor was Peter Falk. Is there a more respected, beloved actor out there than Peter Falk? I sure can't think of one.

This was an unusual P.P.B. luncheon. Usually, the dais is packed with everyone they can get who ever worked with the honoree, and everyone talks so long that the proceedings threaten to become a dinner in their honor. This time, there were only a few speakers and they all kept it short. "They," in this case, were Joe Mantegna, Robert Culp, Ed Begley Jr., Dabney Coleman, Paul Reiser, Hal Kanter and Shera Danese. Ms. Danese is also known as Mrs. Peter Falk.

All of the speeches were warm and wonderful. Dabney Coleman was properly acerbic, Robert Culp told a funny story about being upstaged by Falk in one of the latter's first stage role, and Ed Begley surprised everyone by doing the best Peter Falk impression most of us had ever heard. As a matter of fact, when Falk finally got up to thank everyone, he sounded less like Peter Falk than Ed Begley did. After the festivities, Falk signed copies of his new autobiography, Just One More Thing: Stories from My Life, for those of us willing to buy a copy and wait in line. I, of course, was. Flipping through it, which is all I've had time to do, it seems like a nice, anecdote-filled overview of a stellar career.

As I think of it, one of the things missing from this afternoon was a full sense of how stellar that career was been. While we ate, they ran a montage of highlights from Falk's film work. (In his acceptance speech, he said his favorite part of the afternoon was when all his actor friends who were present were forced to watch his clips.) It was an amazing reel, not because of what was in it but because of what wasn't: No clip from Pocketful of Miracles or The Princess Bride or Murder, Inc. or Murder By Death or any of his TV work except for Columbo. They didn't even have time for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. How many actors have so much fine work to their credit that you have to omit stuff like that? No one even mentioned a 1966 TV series Falk did called The Trials of O'Brien, which I'd love to view again, just to see if they were all as good as I remember. I know he was. He's always good. He's Peter Falk.

For no particular reason, I seem to post any news I come across about the musical version of The Producers. The latest headline in that area is that Mel Brooks has confirmed that the Vegas production, which opens 1/31/7 at the Paris Hotel there, will clock in at 88 minutes and that there will be one act with no intermission. I have no desire to see the show truncated like that but I'm fascinated to see what they're cutting and, I suppose, to know how well it works.

Also, the New York production is in talks with a new star to step into the lead. Can you say, "Tony Danza is…Max Bialystock?" I can't, either. But that's what they're saying.

This is about the upcoming specials on Fox in which O.J. Simpson will tell us that he didn't savagely murder two people but if he had savagely murdered them, here's how he would have done it…maybe.

A lot of folks are outraged about this and they should be…although as outrages go, it doesn't sound as bad to me as some of the things that are still causing human beings to die and will cause a lot more to perish in the future. I mean, O.J.'s killing spree seems to have stopped at two, whereas the Iraq War is getting people killed every day. So far, 2,850 have died and that's only counting American soldiers, which is all a lot of Americans count anyway. The rate of death is increasing and it will probably continue to increase as long as George W. Bush equates changing plans with losing. And Global Warming may well kill more people per second than Simpson has killed in his entire life. Even if it doesn't turn out to be quite the threat some make it out to be, the suppression of facts about the problem — and reluctance to deal with it honestly — should spark plenty of outrage.

But maybe some of us only have the capacity for outrage over lesser issues, and O.J. Simpson is one of the greater lesser issues. The other night on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno paused in mid-monologue to suggest a nationwide boycott of the companies that sponsor the broadcasts. And Bill O'Reilly told his audience that he will personally boycott the products of those who advertise during the shows. (Actually, since advertisers often buy blocks of commercial time without regard to specific programs, it would be more correct to say he's going to boycott the wares of anyone who doesn't specifically pull their ads from the Simpson shows.) Here are his exact words…

So here's what I'm going to do as a citizen. I'm not going to watch the Simpson show or even look at the book. I'm not even going to look at it. If any company sponsors the TV program, I will not buy anything that company sells — ever.

So here's my question: This is the stand of someone who wants companies to be financially discouraged from supporting things like the Simpson programs. But the corporation that stands to benefit most from those shows is Fox Broadcasting, owner of both the network airing the O.J. programs and the news channel that airs O'Reilly's series. Does it make a lot of sense to boycott Harry's Cheese Doodles because they bought a package of advertising on Fox and didn't demand that none of their spots air during the O.J. shows…but not boycott Fox for airing the shows at all? For that matter, those Simpson hours will contain commercials for other Fox programming. There'll be a lot of Fox promos if most advertisers pull their commercials. If there's an ad in there for Fox News, does that mean that O'Reilly will have to boycott his own channel? That he can appear on it but not watch it?

This could be interesting.

I've been a member of the Magic Castle in Hollywood for around a quarter of a century, which means I've seen a lot of great magicians. One of the best — and that isn't just my opinion, it's everyone's in the world of magic — is Whit Haydn. He's an amazing manipulator of cards and a historian of cheats and swindles. (He's also a fine teacher. I took a class from him once at the Castle and learned to do a couple of his tricks about one ten-thousandth as well as he does them…which is still not too terrible.) Anyway, in our clip today, you'll see Whit performing a trick called "The Ambitious Card." A number of magicians do their versions of this feat but no one does it better.

Over on the Wizard site, there's a brief interview with Howard Chaykin about his work with master comic book illustrator Gil Kane. It's worth a read for anyone interested in Gil's work but I was amused by this line…

I was never a big fan of Joe Giella's inking on him, but I loved what his green did on him, as well as Murphy Anderson's.

Obviously, that sentence doesn't make any sense. It would have, however, if the editor/transcriber had been aware that the person who replaced Joe Giella as Gil's inker was named Sid Greene. I have a hunch that's what Howard actually said.

Ellen Knickmeyer on how things are going in Iraq. In case you don't have time to read the whole thing, I'll summarize: They're bad. People are dying at an alarming rate. And no matter what we do, it's not going to get better. There. I just saved you five minutes of depressing reading.

Where were you on New Year's Eve, 1996? I was on Las Vegas Boulevard, crammed in among seventy-seven trillion people who gathered to watch the Hacienda Hotel get blown up and brought down. With me was a lady friend of mine who'd danced in the Lance Burton show when it was in the Hacienda's showroom. She hated the place and wanted to be present for its demise.

It took us a long time to make our way through the crowds to get to our vantage point for the implosion. It took even longer to make our way back down The Strip…and in between, we experienced the awesome pleasure of inhaling about four tons of dust from the demolition. Still, it was almost worth it for the fireworks display that preceded the nuking of the Hacienda. (Very typical of Las Vegas. On New Year's Eve, that street is naturally packed with folks partying and celebrating and even — you may be shocked to hear of this going on that night in that city — drinking. No "added attractions" were needed to draw a mob…but someone decided too much was not enough so they wanted to also blow up a hotel…plus, they set off something like a half million bucks worth of fireworks. If you like excess, Vegas is your place.)

I wrote about that evening in this article which you can read elsewhere on this site. And then you can come back here and play today's clip, which is six minutes of someone's home movies from that night. You won't experience the thrill of the fireworks display, which had to be seen live to be believed and appreciated. But you also won't have to breathe powdered hotel or have drunks melt your windbreaker with their breath.

We've already told you (a couple of times) that Shokus Video is a great place to look for copies of old TV shows, as well as a fine service for transferring your old home movies to DVD format. Now, my pal Stuart Shostak is branching out and building his media supremacy into the challenging world of Internet Radio. He won't be officially launching his online network until early next year but there are already some preview shows available online at Shokus Radio. The kind of programming he has planned will appeal to the kind of person who comes to this weblog, and I've agreed to be a frequent guest on the channel. It doesn't cost anything to listen so hop on over and see what's playing at the moment. This schedule page will tell you what that is and there's a place somewhere there you can click and begin enjoying Shokus Internet Radio.

An e-mail from comic shop entrepreneur Joe Ferrara just reminded me that today is the 91st birthday of Marty Nodell. Mr. Nodell had a long and wonderful career as a cartoonist and advertising designer and managed to launch not one but two great American icons. He was the artist creator (along with writer Bill Finger) of Green Lantern and he was the first artist to draw the Pillsbury Doughboy. I used to get them confused and try poking Green Lantern in the tummy to hear him giggle.

It's been a pleasure to know Marty and to have him on many convention panels. He's a fine gentleman and a wonderful source of comic book history…and hey, how many of us get to start one great character, let alone two? Congrats, Marty! Hope to see you again soon.

This may interest game show fans and it may interest animation fans. In 1969, there was a short-lived daytime game show on NBC called Lohman and Barkley's Namedroppers. It was hosted by Al Lohman and Roger Barkley, who were two very funny Los Angeles radio personalities back then. (This was when every city in America had at least one set of guys on the radio who were more or less imitating Bob and Ray. Lohman and Barkley were the best of many who did it in L.A.)

Namedroppers was kind of like To Tell the Truth, only backwards. There were three celebrity guests in each game and the hosts would bring out someone who had a relationship of some sort with one of the celebs. Each celeb would then tell a different story about how he or she knew that person, and then twenty contestants (who played for a week at a time) would vote on which story to believe and win cash and prizes if they were right. I recall it as a pleasant show that ran around six months without capturing the rapt loyalty of daytime viewers.

All of that is for the game show buffs. What will interest the animation folks is that in this clip, the "namedropper" is Ward Kimball. He was there plugging, "It's Tough to Be a Bird," which is a short he directed and co-wrote for Disney in '69. (It won the Academy Award that year for best animated short subject.) He's identified as a casting director but he was actually one of the all-time great animators. He's the guy who animated most of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio. He's the man who animated the crows in Dumbo. And he's the one who animated the wild musical sequence in The Three Caballeros, which a lot of cartoon scholars think is the funniest bit of animation ever done. He was also, as you'll see in the clip, a pretty good liar.

Someone reading this will have a brilliant suggestion. I have a couple of crates of old 35mm slides that I want to have scanned into computer images — jpgs or tifs or bmps or whatever's easiest. I'm not looking for anyone to crop or color-correct them. I'll do that. I just want them transferred and put on a CD Rom.

Who does this without charging a couple of appendages? Depending on the price, I may want somewhere between 100 and 400 transferred and I also have about a hundred 35mm negatives that could use digital conversion. I could buy a scanner and do it myself but I'll never get around to making the time so I'd like to have someone else handle it. Anyone have a thought?

I have a new favorite book of comic strip reprints. I'm not sure what the previous holder of that honor was but it now goes to the first volume of Popeye: I Yam What I Yam, which is just now coming out from Fantagraphics and which I received today. This is not the first time they've reprinted the classic strip by Elzie Segar but it's one of those rare times when I don't mind an "upgrade" that compels you to buy something for a second time. The previous issuance resulted in some nice volumes which I've read over and over. But now, the Fantagraphics folks have given a first-rate treatment to a first-rate strip…a much more attractive volume with more complete runs and better reproduction.

If you only know Popeye from his cartoon appearances and the later comic strips, you don't know how wonderful he can be. Mr. Segar was a brilliant cartoonist who created some of the most vivid, well-rounded personalities to ever appear on a page of newsprint funnies. Popeye…Olive Oyl…Wimpy…their exploits are positively addictive and Popeye is a much more interesting guy than the animated version who gets in trouble, pulls out a can of spinach and punches out Bluto to save the day. (And I'm not knocking the cartoons, which were fine for what they were, especially in the Fleischer era. But like I said, if you only know them, you don't know Popeye.)

The worst thing I can say about this first volume is that it collects early strips (1928-1930) and that the material got even better after that. The dailies are in crisp black-and-white and the Sundays are in color and the whole package is an enormous bargain at about twenty bucks. Here's a link to order it from Amazon. The entirety of Segar's work with the squint-eyed sailor will be collected in six volumes so this isn't even a very expensive commitment on your part.