I haven't linked to one of these in a while. It's a commercial for Kellogg's Corn Flakes featuring Huckleberry Hound and the characters on his original show. The great Daws Butler did all the voices except for Boo Boo, who was voiced by Don Messick. Pixie the Mouse didn't have a line but if he had, his voice would also have come from Messick. I suspect Pixie had a line but it was cut for time.
I loved these characters when I was seven years old and I'm still fond of them today, in part because they were such an element of my childhood. Another part would be that I got to know Daws Butler (and to a lesser extent, Don Messick) and loved them both. And it's nice to hear them and see these characters involved in something with better animation than they usually had even if it is being used to move a product…
Hi, Mark. Could I ask you about a line in one of the Garfield cartoons? I can't find the episode because there doesn't appear to be one that has dinosaur in the title, so I am just going to describe it for you.
Basically, it was a Barney parody. The dinosaur wanted to use a kiddie show in order to force all the people and their kids to obey him. In the end, Garfield foiled his evil plan and ended up convincing him to try his luck in show business with Garfield as his agent. However, the dinosaur became so successful, he fired him as his agent. Garfield then exclaimed, "The nerve of him. I taft-hartlied him on his first acting gig. And he couldn't even read a script."
What does it mean to "taft-hartly?" For a Bulgarian man, I am pretty in tune with American pop culture over the years but I have no clue what that means.
Well, first of all it means that you stumbled onto one of those jokes I occasionally put in something I write, knowing full well that about ten people will understand it. Don't feel bad that you are not one of those ten.
It was an episode of Garfield and Friends called "The Beast From Beyond" and it was kind of a spoof on Barney the Dinosaur, who was then big on TV in this country. The character was named Sidney and it might interest someone to know that Sidney's voice was supplied by Stan Freberg doing pretty much the same voice he'd once supplied for Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent on Time for Beany. Another "inside" joke.
The Taft-Hartley Act was a packet of laws passed in this country in 1947. It changed some rules for labor unions, weakening them in many ways. But when we say we "Taft-Hartleyed" someone, that's shorthand for saying we invoked one particular provision of the Act. It means you gave them a job in some field even though they were not (yet) a member of the labor union to which one belongs to work in that field. It generally applies to their first job. If they continue to work in that field, they are expected to join the appropriate union. (There are ways around this but most people don't want to use them.)
So let's say you're a new voice actor and I give you your first job doing a voice on my cartoon show. Since there's a possibility this may be your only such job ever, you don't have to join the union and fill out all those forms and pay that hefty initiation fee. I gave several people their first voice jobs so they were "Taft-Hartleyed" and then, if and when they got a second job, they joined the union. Basically, it means to hire someone who is not (yet) in the union. When we did this cartoon, I think I had just done that with one of several folks who got their first professional job on the show and went on to long and very real careers.
Some months ago here, I linked you to a number of American musicals as performed in Korea — some in English, some in Korean. Here, suggested to me by Micki St. James, is "We Both Reached for the Gun" number from the show Chicago in Korean.
In the number, Roxie Hart sits on the knee of the gent playing scummy lawyer Billy Flynn and she makes like a ventriloquist dummy. I've seen this number staged with the lady playing Roxie doing her own voice but trying to make it sound like it's coming from Flynn. I've seen it done with the actor playing Flynn doing both parts. I've seen Roxie's voice provided by someone not on the stage. I'm not entirely sure which of the latter two options this is…
The weather forecast for San Diego throughout Comic-Con calls for it to be partly cloudy and 72° during the day and 65° at night. That is pretty much the forecast for San Diego about 85% of the time.
There are still people around who somehow think it would be a good idea for Comic-Con to move to Las Vegas. I have dozens of reasons why that would be a very bad thing, one of which is the weather. Next week in Las Vegas, it will be 110°. How would you like to cosplay as Iron Man in that climate?
Here's a short Q-amd-A that Jon Stewart did recently with the live audience at his TV show. I'm putting it here because at one point in it, Mr. Stewart reveals something that I believe is very true about how TV shows are staffed these days.
The Internet is full of people asking the musical question, "Is Donald Trump going to run for president again?" I don't know why we're wasting valuable data bytes over this when the answer is pretty obvious: He's sure gonna try. And I don't mean just in 2024. I mean every time he can for the rest of his life. There are many reasons for this but let's just do four…
When Trump runs for office, there are people who send him money and not just small amounts. Trump likes people sending him money.
No one, not even Trump, knows exactly the full list of legal indictments and trials he may face but whatever it is, he'll want to claim that it's all political, ginned-up by people who know he'll easily retake the presidency and must be stopped.
By running, he'll get way more attention than he will receive by not running. Trump lives for attention.
And crowds. And rallies. And people cheering him. And you get the idea.
He also may think that once he announces, his very presence in the race will scare off a lot of potential challengers and leave more donations and attention for him. Why would this man not run again? And any setbacks or losses he experiences along the way will all be explained as conspiratorial sabotage by his opponents.
This piece first appeared here on 12/14/14 and there's nothing to update in it…
I attended Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. Somewhere on this blog, I've doubtlessly used the joke I used all through my time there: That I was the only person on campus who knew who Ralph Waldo Emerson was. The principal thought he made radios.
There were things I liked about being at Emerson…and if I could think of one just now, I'd lead off with it. Mostly, I view my three years there as a waste of time, at least in the classrooms. Outside the classrooms, one could do a certain amount of the kind of growing-up you have to do at that age, learning (somewhat) how to get along with others. But inside the classrooms…well, I can't remember a whole lot that went in one ear and didn't trickle quickly out the other. Oddly enough, I may have gained the most valuable "taught" knowledge (as opposed to the self-taught kind) in a group of classes I absolutely hated at the time.
Students were required then to take half a semester of Wood Shop, half a semester of Electronics, half a semester of Metal Shop and half a semester of Drafting. That's if the students were male. The female ones took classes in Homemaking and Cooking and things like that. This was, of course, back when the best thing a female could aspire to be was a wife and mother. It did not escape me even then that boys could stand to learn some things the girls were studying and vice-versa. I still don't know how to sew a button on a shirt and I seem to have passed the age where that's learnable.
My problems at Emerson were not so much the classes as the teachers. Metal Shop was taught by Mr. Delak who was also a gym teacher and who talked like a prize fighter who'd taken one too many to the head. He talked in halting phrases and rarely employed a word with more syllables than letters. He was okay, I guess. My problem there was that I can't think of too many skills I've ever been less likely to need in my life than riveting.
Less okay was Mr. Platt, who taught Electronics and explained things with a thick Southern accent. He kept talking about "sotta" and I wasn't the only student who took half a semester to figure out he was referring to "solder." I had other problems with him but I had them all on a grander scale with Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. Mitchell, who taught the Drafting class and Wood Shop, was the least okay. Both he and Mr. Platt had this fixed idea of what a guy was supposed to like and be like. He was supposed to revel in the shop classes and there was something wrong with any male who didn't love that stuff. Their attitude was along the lines of "A man builds things with his hands" and you could detect the subtle insinuation that if you didn't run a drill press once a week, you were probably queer. (I typed that sentence before I realized how phallic it sounds…)
Mr. Mitchell took an instant dislike to me and I, therefore, took one to him. He obviously thought I was a smartass…which was probably true but I still think that's not necessarily a bad thing to be when you're 13. If you think you know better than everyone else at that age, there's a good chance you do…and if you don't, well, that's a good time to learn you don't.
I got through Drafting class with Mr. Mitchell and may even have shown a teensy flair for it. It was, after all, drawing of a sort and I had some interest in drawing. Also, I was the best letterer he'd seen in years. Well, why not? I'd learned from the masters, not of Architecture but comic books. At any rate, my lettering impressed him and I didn't broadcast the fact that I had zero interest in a career doing what he was teaching us.
It was when we got to the Wood Shop class that things splintered. Mr. Mitchell treated woodwork as some sort of sacred male ritual. I was not able to hide how silly I thought a lot of it was. What he taught was, to me, a potentially useful skill, not a rite of male passage and a future profession.
And yes, I know woodwork can also be an art and a very fine one…but not at the level Mr. Mitchell taught it. Over the course of our ten weeks, we were to build three items: A key rack, a memo pad holder and one project of our own choosing from a catalog of plans he had. Our grades were based not on how creative we were but on how precisely what we made adhered to the diagrams we were given.
The memo pad holder I made in Wood Shop.
My key rack got a "D," not because it didn't look nice or hold keys but because it didn't look exactly like everyone else's. And he further marked me down as a problem student because I couldn't hide my disinterest in Wood Shop. "We need to work on that attitude of yours," he'd say to me, once while he was holding a circular saw. It felt…threatening. My memo pad holder notched a "C-minus" and the less said about my elective project, the better. By that point, Mr. Mitchell thought I was the worst student he'd seen in years.
He reached that view about four weeks into the ten-week course. One evening, Emerson had this ghastly event called "Parents Go To School Night," designed to promote better teacher-parent communication. One or both of each pupil's parents would show up at Emerson that evening, hear an address from the principal in the auditorium, then go from classroom to classroom in a compressed version of their child's daily schedule. Instead of an hour, they'd spent fifteen minutes in each classroom listening to the teacher discuss the curriculum and then answer questions.
It made sense on paper, I guess, but whoever made up the timetable gave the parents the same barely-sufficient seven minutes we had between periods to get from classroom to classroom. We could do that each day because we knew where we were going and also, it wasn't nighttime on the campus when we were there, plus we were young enough to walk up and down stairs and between buildings that were often far apart.
My father had the fine sense not to go at all. My mother, like all those parents who did attend, got repeatedly lost and was late for most "classes." She missed one entirely because even with a huge map, she and many others couldn't find Bungalow B-22. I had a class in the well-hidden Bungalow B-22 and I thought you should have received an "A" in any course taught in it if you could locate it.
Alas, she was able to make it to the Wood Shop where she listened to ten minutes of Mr. Mitchell bragging how he taught the most important class at the school…the one that made capital-M Men out of small-b boys and gave them a profession that would serve them well in later life.
Finally, Mr. Mitchell took questions and my mother — and this will explain a lot about me to my friends — asked, "What do you do when you have a student who hates the whole idea of woodworking and is only in this class because it's required?"
When she got home, she told me, "The minute I said that, Mark, I knew I'd gotten you into trouble. He scowled, jotted down my last name and said, 'If your son feels that way, ma'am, I think you have the problem, not me.'"
The next day, Mr. Mitchell called me over to his desk. "Evner," he barked — he always called us by our last names and mispronounced mine — I met your mother last night." Only Mr. Mitchell could make the word "mother" sound like an insult. "She said you hate the whole idea of woodworking. What are you doing in my class if you hate it?"
I said, "They make me take it. I don't like doing push-ups either but they make me take gym, too."
Wood.
Once again, he told me "we" needed to work on my attitude. "I teach woodworking but I also teach discipline and learning to follow instructions." He then assigned me the messiest job he had during the clean-up session at the end of class: The paint locker. You had to be real careful not to get smears of flat gloss multi-hued latex all over your jeans. As I did it, I just told myself, "Well, if I do, my mother's the one who's going to have to get it off or buy me new pants. And it'll be her fault."
For the rest of the term, Mr. Mitchell snapped at me, snarled at me and generally acted like a bad actor playing "Sarge" in one of those Marine Corps movies about making life hell for the new recruit. And the less I cared about it — and I really didn't — the nastier he got.
I had a friend named Dave who was a year ahead of me at Emerson and one day, we got to talking about Mr. Mitchell. "Has he put you in charge of the tool inventory yet?" Dave asked. I told him he hadn't. "Well, he will," Dave explained. "And when he does, here's what he'll probably do to you…"
Sure enough, a week later, I was put in charge of the tool inventory. It was getting near the end of class and I think he thought this was his last chance to make me suffer for the sins of my mother.
When you were in charge of tool inventory, you had to check the cabinet at the end of clean-up and make sure it held the right number of hammers and screwdrivers and levels and scratch awls and such. Then you had to report to Mr. Mitchell that every tool was in its proper place. If it wasn't, everyone in the class was in trouble but you especially were. No one could be dismissed to go to their next class if even one tool was missing.
The guy in my position was in charge of finding it…and responsible if it was not located. And like I said, no one could leave even if it meant they'd all be marked tardy or A.W.O.L. for their next class or miss their bus home. Legend had it that Mr. Mitchell had once made an entire class sit there during their lunch hour because of a missing chisel.
As an alternative, he also had a piece of paper that the person in my appointed position could sign. On it, I would admit I was responsible for the lost tool and I would promise to pay the full cost of replacing it. Another legend had it that a couple of students over the years had had to cough up the cost of a hammer or two.
But Dave had warned me of how this game was played. The day I was placed in charge of tool inventory, I never took my eye off the cabinet. I wasn't watching my fellow students so much as I was watching Mr. Mitchell. And sure enough, at a moment when he thought no one would notice, Mr. Mitchell slithered over to the cabinet, took a screwdriver and one of those long metal files with a wooden handle, then put them in his bottom desk drawer. Dave had told me he'd do something like that.
Clean-up that day proceeded apace. When we'd all put our stuff away, all the other students took their seats in the classroom area to await my inspection, my report to Mr. Mitchell and then their dismissal. I marched up to him and in front of the class proclaimed, "All of the tools are present or accounted for, sir." The other students, assuming they were about to be released, gathered up their books and got ready to stand and go.
Hammer.
"Not so fast," Mr. Mitchell told everyone. He marched over to the tool cabinet, peeked in and then returned to his desk where I was waiting. "Evner," he said. "There's a screwdriver and a file missing and you're responsible for them. No one's leaving — do you hear me? No one! — until you either find them or pay for them!"
I opened my notebook and showed him a page on which I'd written, "Mr. Mitchell's lower desk drawer: 1 screwdriver, 1 file." Then I added, "They've been accounted for, sir. You have them."
He yanked open the drawer, pulled them out and turned to the class, accusingly: "Who put these in there?"
I said, "You did, sir. At 11:44."
Mr. Mitchell glared at me. Then he glared at the students, all of whom wanted to laugh and cheer but knew enough not to do that until they were at least a hundred yards from that building. Then he chuckled like he was pleased I'd outfoxed him (he wasn't) and said, "Class dismissed."
I tried to follow them out but he motioned for me to stay. When everyone else had gone, he said to me, "You know, learning to make things and work with tools can be a very valuable skill. Now, get out of here." I got out of there.
And y'know, he was right. In the half-century since I took his class, I have occasionally had to do things I learned how to do in his class. I can't say that for Chemistry or the Anthropology courses I took later at U.C.L.A. or even for Mr. Delak's Metal Shop class at Emerson. But I do occasionally have to do something with a hammer or a saw and I know better how to use them because of Mr. Mitchell. That doesn't make up for the hard time he gave me, quite unnecessarily. It's just something worth noting.
He never apologized to me or admitted he was wrong and I never did either of those things to him. He did give me a "D" in Wood Shop, the only one I ever got in any class. When my mother saw it on my report card, she said, "Son, I'm very proud of you…but why couldn't you have gotten that horrible man to give you an "F"?
I am a fill-in-for-someone-else guest today on Stu's Show, that fabulous web-based program you can watch online or on its own Roku channel, or listen to online or subscribe to or buy ($) as a download or however you like getting your Stu's Shows. Tune in and you just might enjoy a lively (and loooonng) discussion between Stu Shostak, his resident TV critic/expert Wesley Hyatt and me. Among the topics will be the new Fall season TV season, the future of Jeopardy!, what I'll be doing at Comic-Con next week, the January 6 Hearings, Late Night TV, a bunch o' TV shows I worked on, the late Larry Storch, the late Robert Morse, Wesley's disgust about the new Magnum P.I. and many more issues of the day.
You can watch or listen at the Stu's Show website and over there, you can also find out how to watch it on your Roku-equipped TV and other places. The fun starts at 4 PM Pacific Time (7 PM back east) and it will run for quite some time after.
Friday, July 22 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a crowdfunded comics anthology through zoop.gg initiated and edited by Scott Dunbier to help relief efforts in Ukraine. Dozens of creators have stepped up to help. Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Johnson, and Arthur Adams have supplied covers. More than a dozen all-new stories will be included: Astro City by Busiek and Anderson, Groo by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, American Flagg by Howard Chaykin, Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson, Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, Grendel by Matt Wagner, Star Slammers by Walter Simonson, and Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai make up a portion of this book, But there are more, too many to list—so come to the panel (which will have several of the creators listed here) and find out about this very important book and what you can do to help this charitable endeavor.
Friday, July 22 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
Some would tell you that Walt Kelly's Pogo was the cleverest, most wonderful newspaper strip of all time. It was certainly up there with them. It's now being reprinted in full for the first time in a series of lovely hardcover volumes from Fantagraphics Books and Volume 8 (of 12) is on the presses now. Hear all about Kelly's work from Pogo authority Maggie Thompson, Walt Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, cartoonist (and creator of Bone) Jeff Smith, Fantagraphics editor Eric Reynolds and his co-editor and your moderator Mark Evanier.
Saturday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
Some say it's the fastest, funniest event at Comic-Con every year. It's the annual Quick Draw! game as three of the fastest, funniest cartoonists rise to challenges hurled at the by the audience and your host, Mark Evanier. Competing this year, we have Scott Shaw! (Sonic the Hedgehog, The Simpsons), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), and Mike Kazaleh (Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). As usual, wagering is strictly forbidden.
Saturday, July 23 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Every year (with two recent exceptions), animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. This time out, the dais consists of Alicyn Packard (The Tom & Jerry Show, The Mr. Men Show), Phil LaMarr (Justice League, Samurai Jack), Gregg Berger (The Garfield Show, The Transformers), Shelby Young (Star Wars, Baby Shark's Big Show), Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania, My Babysitter Story), and Townsend Coleman (The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Saturday, July 23 — 4:o0 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 23ABC
SPOTLIGHT ON PHIL LaMARR
Actor Phil LaMarr, known for Mad TV, Pulp Fiction, and his extensive voice acting career, with roles animated series including Justice League, Futurama, Samurai Jack, Static Shock, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be ruthlessly interrogated by Mark Evanier about his journey from an '80s comic book fanboy to the voice of iconic characters in the DC, Marvel, and many other fandom universes.
Sunday, July 24 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It wouldn't be a Comic-Con without a panel tributing the man they still call "The King of the Comics," the man who created or co-created most of the Marvel superheroes and plenty of other comic book superstars elsewhere. Sit and talk about Jack Kirby with comic book superstar Frank Miller, comic book editor Steve Saffel, Rand Hoppe (acting executive director of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center), and Jack's grandson, Jeremy Kirby. And presiding over it all will be Jack's biographer and one-time assistant, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Once more, animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. Showing off their skills will be Jim Meskimen (Thundercats, We Baby Bears), Rosemary Watson (Let's Be Real), Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk, Family Guy), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse, Thundercats), and Zeno Robinson (My Hero Academia, The Owl House). There will be a reading of a classic fairy tale that will never be the same after these people get through with it.
Sunday, July 24 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What is seen on the front of a book, comic or otherwise, is becoming of increasing importance, and some of the most amazing artistry is being seen these days on covers. This panel features five people who have been responsible for popular and even iconic covers in recent years: Comic-Con Special Guests Kevin Maguire, Lorena Alvarez, Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and Bill Morrison. See how they approach their work. Hear what they use to create the magic. And learn how it all comes to be…with your moderator, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES This is Mark Evanier's annual panel on how to break into the world of voice-over and how to avoid those who would charge you large amounts without helping you much, if at all. Joining Mark will be two of the workingest actors in the field, Alicyn Packard and Gregg Berger, along with agent Sam Frishman, who's with one of the top agencies in the field, Cunningham, Escott, Slevin and Doherty. Here's a chance to learn the basics of the business…and it's absolutely free!
Every bit of the above is subject to change for reasons that may defy comprehension and as usual, I will be exercising my constitutional right (until the current Supreme Court strips me of it) to not sit behind a table in the exhibit hall very much.
If you're interested in any of the books I've worked on for the fine people at Abrams Books, I will be signing those at their booth (1216, I think) for an hour on Friday commencing at 2:30 PM. But if you see me and want to say hello, please do. I am usually not as busy as I appear except before and after Quick Draw! when I'm a maniac. At other times, I am approachable and easy to find. I'll be the guy running around the hall wearing a KN95 mask.
Sorry. I wasn't able to post this before it became Tuesday.
Last week, I linked you to Jonathan Pie's unhinged (but awfully funny) rant about the exit of Boris Johnson. A lot of you wrote to ask me to link to a similar diatribe he delivered upon the unseating of the U.S. version of Johnson so here it is. In case you don't know, "Autocue" is the Brit term for "TelePrompter"…
I have to ask this, and I need an answer…if you can, please!
When you had an opportunity, as a Voice Director to hire people that you admired previously in other works that you had nothing to do with, did you have to force yourself to refrain from bombarding them with "fan" questions? I mean…Howard Morris? You could've annoyed the hell out of him just asking questions about his career! If I'm not mistaken, at the time you started doing voice directing you were a "seasoned" (a dopey description, but you get what I mean) professional writer, but new at being a Voice Director and maybe meeting — for the first time — artists you admired? Or maybe that was never a thing with you…you just saw them as people who are simply talented and then moved on to the work…?
I'm going to expand your question a little to answer it. I've spent a lot of my life meeting and often working with people whose work I'd admired when I was younger. It's not just as a director of cartoon voices. It was meeting Jack Kirby and Groucho Marx and George Burns and Sid Caesar and Stan Freberg and Steve Ditko and Charles Schulz and June Foray and Jay Ward and Carl Barks and Jerry Siegel and Joe Barbera and Daws Butler and legions of others in comic books, comic strips, animation and other creative fields.
Darn near 100% of these people (if not every last one of them) were pleased that I knew who they were and what they'd done. Now, it is possible to make a fool of yourself with some such folks by slobbering and pestering and asking stupid questions…and I know I did that at times and probably did it many times when I didn't know it. But there is a way to talk with such people, especially when — as in the case of Howard Morris — the meeting would or could lead to a job they welcomed.
(I told the story of meeting Howie in this message. That was the second time I met him. The first was on the set of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show that he was directing and I probably made a fool of myself then. But I had a good excuse then: I was eleven years old.)
As an adult, you need to respect their personal space and not "crowd" them, physically or emotionally or at an inappropriate time. Remember that they are human beings and they weren't put there, wherever they are, for your personal amusement and gratification. Remember that they often get asked the same questions over and over and over.
And if they're a performer and you fancy yourself a performer, they're probably not all that interested in you performing for them or trying to equate what you do to what they do.
Chuck McCann once told me that when people met Stan Laurel, around 99% of them started by asking him how he and Oliver Hardy met. Maybe it would have been refreshing for someone to save that question for later (if ever) and ask about something else. If they have one towering credit in their life, maybe they'd be pleased to be asked about something else for a change. When I met Robert Morse, I did not start off our very-short-term relationship by talking just about How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. I asked him about other shows and movies he'd been in. I sensed that he liked that I didn't think he'd only done one thing in his lifetime.
Basically, it's like the way you'd approach someone who wasn't famous but just someone you wanted to get to know: Don't come on too strong. And I've also found that most famous people don't like being told how awesome and legendary you think they are. If you give them a compliment, don't make it a clichéd one and make sure it's at human scale. I personally think the word "legend" has been so devalued by constant application that it's hollow and meaningless. It's like a standing ovation on a talk show. They give them to everyone.
Bottom line: Just don't be a jerk. That's all it takes. And if you can't manage that, try not to be too big a jerk.
Yesterday, we discussed a clip from The Lucy Show in 1965 where Lucy was involved with a show not unlike Shindig! or Hullabaloo. As I mentioned, that episode of Ms. Ball's series guest-starred my favorite male singer, Mel Tormé as a struggling songwriter named Mel Tinker. Two years later, Mel was Mel Tinker for two more episodes of The Lucy Show that were pretty obviously an attempt to spin his character off into a new series called Main Street, U.S.A. Our clip today is a musical number written by Mel for one of those episodes.
A number of actors appeared in both episodes as characters who would have been in the series and you'll see a few of them in this clip — mainly John Bubbles, who was famous for his dancing, and Burt Mustin as Uncle Joe, and you may get a fast glimpse of Paul Winchell in old man make-up as Doc Putnam. The idea for the potential series seemed to be to catch the small town flavor of The Andy Griffith Show, which was coming to an end and being reborn as a series called Mayberry, RFD with some of the same players. By that time, they'd pretty much dropped the character of Otis the Town Drunk so Hal Smith, who played him, was available to be part of the cast of Main Street, U.S.A. also.
In the storyline, the town is threatened by a proposed freeway and Gale Gordon, who played Lucy's boss, had a financial interest in seeing the project go forth…but as you'll see, the song convinced him to join Lucy and the others in keeping Main Street, U.S.A. from going away. (In case you can't spot them, Winchell is to the right of the petition and Hal Smith is on the podium, eventually playing a tuba.)
That clip from The Lucy Show is bringing me a lot of e-mail. Shelly Goldstein, April Wong and Elle Sanborn are all wondering if the middle lady in the group with the beehive wigs could be Lucy's daughter, Lucie Arnaz. Lucie (not to be confused with Lucy) turned up in a lot of her mother's shows before becoming a regular cast member of her next sitcom.
I honestly can't tell. Lucie Arnaz is on Facebook under the name Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill. How about if one of you — and only one; let's not nag the lady — posts a link to ask her?
I think one of the barefoot guys is the dancer who did the finished carpentry on my front door. When I moved into my current house in 1980, I had a lot of work done to it and my contractor brought in a guy he said was the best "finish carpenter" in the business. As I understand it, that denotes someone who does lovely detailed work as opposed to someone who just cuts up pieces of wood and then nails them together.
The fellow did a superb job and when we got to talking, I learned he was a professional dancer who did carpentry when he was between jobs on television. In the sixties, he was on every variety show in town, especially those that taped at Television City in Hollywood. I'm pretty sure I spotted him once on a rerun of The Red Skelton Show. I'd tell you his name if I remembered it.
I also wanted to quote this message I received from Carl Cafarelli, who blogs, mostly about rock music, here…
The "Wing Ding" clip you shared from The Lucy Show is a hoot. But, before even getting into its cheesy disconnect from what (as you said) "those kids today" wanted, I was immediately struck by how white it was. Shindig! is one of my all-time favorite TV series, and although I was initially drawn to it (after the fact) by its embrace of the British Invasion, the show always mixed in black performers, a Sam Cooke, Isley Brothers, or Martha and the Vandellas alongside its Kinks and Yardbirds. The Blossoms (with Darlene Love) were series regulars, and Billy Preston eventually joined the show's house band. Wing Ding was wall-to-wall Caucasian.
That said, the producers' disdain — or at least a lack of affinity — for rockin' pop of 1965 is as clear as you say. Visually, Wing Ding appears more directly modeled after Hullabaloo, a show I also love but suspect was created and produced with considerably less authenticity and sincerity than the creators of Shindig! brought to their show. Hullabaloo is closer to a variety show like Hollywood Palace taken over by its various teen sensations. Reb Foster does a good job channeling Shindig! host (and fellow DJ) Jimmy O'Neill, but I see way more Hullabaloo than Shindig! in Wing Ding.
There are so many examples of mainstream Hollywood just not understanding rock 'n' roll in the '50s and '60s. Even on Batman, a show with a sort of rock 'n' roll attitude, it was evident producer William Dozier considered himself smugly above the crass sounds of rock, just as he considered himself above the crass idea of superhero comic books. On the Batman episode where Catwoman literally stole the voices of British pop stars Chad and Jeremy, the TV host played by Steve Allen wonders if that's such a bad thing. Holy schisms! (In contrast, Chad and Jeremy's earlier appearance as the Redcoats on The Dick Van Dyke Show struck a more proper and appreciative chord.)
I'm sure some fans can't reconcile the contrast. Me? I'm delighted to know that I've lived in a time when both Jack Benny and Jimi Hendrix were contemporary parts of my pop culture. I'm going to need to track down this episode of The Lucy Show to watch in its entirety. And then maybe cleanse the palate with The Monkees. Or Shindig! Thanks for sharing the clip.
Thanks for writing, Carl. It's kinda fun to look at old TV shows and see how long it took some people to realize that rock 'n' roll was not a passing fad that would soon blow over like Brylcreem hair gel or hula hoops. And even the ones who accepted it sometimes seemed to not understand it. This was especially true of folks in the music business who specialized in one style, didn't particularly appreciate any others and certainly didn't embrace something that seemed to belong only to "kids."
One of the best "markers" of this kind of thing would be this 1958 spot on the What's My Line? game show where the contestants were Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote many of Elvis Presley's hits and others that topped the charts. The producers of the show assumed (correctly) no one on the panel would recognize their names and I think Vincent Price was planted with the question about whether their work inflicted pain. Someone thought that would be funny.
You see this in a lot of fields, certainly in comic books: People who want the world to stay the way it was at some point when they were very happy with it. Throughout the sixties, I saw all these folks on TV who were plainly distressed that the best-selling records in the country were by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones instead of The Four Lads. A lot of them never imagined that "those kids today" would carry their love of certain music into their adult years.
This is a good thing to remember if/when you find yourself alienated from what "those kids today" (meaning 2022) are listening to and watching. Much of it will not endure but some of it will.
This post may only help one or two of you but that's one or two more than most of mine do. It's for anyone who thinks they're going to get to Comic-Con in San Diego on Friday, July 22 by heading down from the north on the 5 Freeway…
Beware. That's Opening Day at Del Mar Race Track, which has been known to back traffic up to around Medford, Oregon. It also means a large number of people who ride the Pacific Surfliner train down from points north, disembark at the Solana Beach Station and take the free shuttle to the track. Similar problems can occur on the way home as well. This doesn't seem to cause a snarl every year but when it does, it does. Don't get trapped like I did a few years there.
