Did you read that piece I wrote earlier about the settlement in the contract for actors who provide voices for video games? Well, Don Porges has some more thoughts on the matter over on his blog.

We've had a lot of items here lately about our dear friend, the late Howard Morris. So I thought I'd mention that one of his big movie roles — Boys' Night Out, co-starring Tony Randall, James Garner, Howard Duff and Kim Novak — airs this coming Thursday morning on Turner Classic Movies. It's not a great film but Howie is fun to watch in it. And if you do tune in, see if you can spot composer-actor Frank DeVol ("Happy" Kyne on the old Fernwood Tonight show) in a funny, unbilled cameo under a lot of make-up.

People have been debating whether Mark "Deep Throat" Felt was a good guy or a bad guy, and these debates often seem to be conducted on the assumption that he had to have been one or the other.

I don't think many public figures — especially in government — can be fit wholly into one of those two classifications, and I see no reason to expect that Mr. Felt can be so tidily rated. His motives in leaking to Bob Woodward were probably some mixture of wanting to protect the FBI from abuse by the Nixon administration and wanting to advance his personal agenda. In the grand scheme of things, I suspect he was less important to the toppling of a president than he was to the career advancement of Woodward and Bernstein. I don't think what he did was dishonorable or illegal — that's the spin of those who cast their lot with Richard M. Nixon — and to the extent he did it to expose corruption, I guess he's a hero.

But only for that one series of actions. He wasn't a hero for what he did soon after. This article tells all about that.

Michael Kinsley thinks the Downing Street Memo is not quite the "smoking gun" that many are making it out to be. I dunno. [Los Angeles Times, might make you register.]

I should have posted this the other day but a potential strike has been averted by actors who provide voices for video games. The rough terms can be read in several articles online like this one. As you'll see, the unions backed down on their demand for residual payments, which is not good. On the other hand, they got a nice increase in up-front fees, and the residuals battle can be fought again another day.

I did want to comment on this paragraph from the article to which I just linked…

Game producers had balked at providing residuals, arguing that people don't buy games because of the actors who appear in them. "That would set a precedent for hundreds of other people who created a game to say, 'What about us?"' industry attorney Howard Fabrick recently told the Los Angeles Times.

Both sentences are a little light on logic. Obviously, the actors are a factor in the sales of a game. If not, the employers would just grab a delivery boy, give him fifty dollars and stick him in front of a microphone. That they pay to get accomplished actors is proof that it does make a difference.

And, yeah, if actors got residuals, then everyone would want residuals. But voice actors have been receiving residuals in conventional animation for many decades, and the producers haven't had a lot of trouble in denying them to everyone else. And directors, writers and actors get residuals on live-action films and TV shows and somehow, this hasn't led to the cameraguys and caterers getting residuals.

One other point: If you Google for some of the other articles on the settlement, you'll see a number which refer to residuals as "profit-sharing." No, residuals are not profit-sharing. Profits are amounts that are calculated based on subtracting what something cost to make from what it grosses. Residuals are fixed fees for re-use that have nothing to do with what a project cost to produce or how much money it took in. This may seem like a trivial distinction but it isn't when you work on a show that's popular enough to be rerun hundreds of times but the studio is still claiming it's not in profit. (Has Paramount stopped claiming that Star Trek lost money?)

Frank Rich discusses the Deep Throat self-outing and the attendant media coverage. Among other observations, he reminds us that the famous D.T. quote, "Follow the money," was a creation of screenwriter William Goldman for the movie of All the President's Men.

In the last ninety minutes, 14 people have written me to say something like Jeremy Bonner wrote in this message…

I can't believe it! I've been hearing that song ("Pop March") in my head for years. A local radio station used it all the time and I never knew its name and I never knew who did it and every so often, I'd think of it and it would drive me bozo. Thank you for resurrecting a mystery and solving it, even though I'll probably be humming it to myself for the rest of the year.

And six of you have sent me this link to a bio of what appears to be the same Johnny Pearson.

We all have certain silly tunes that linger in our memory but defy identification. You heard the song somewhere and it stayed with you…but you have no idea what it's called or who recorded it. If you did, you could maybe procure an actual copy and play it a few times and satisfy some trivial part of your brain and get it out of there forever. But you don't know what the heck it's called and when you try to hum it for your friends or (even more embarrassing) a clerk at a music shop, they don't know what the heck it is, either…and not just because you can't hum.

And then one day if you're fortunate, the mystery is solved. Here is one such story.

Years and years ago — we're talking late sixties/early seventies here — I heard this silly, catchy instrumental that went in my ear and stayed there for decades. I don't know where I first heard it but there's a brief snippet of it in the movie, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and when I was once introduced to its maker, Russ Meyer, I immediately asked him about it. Mr. Meyer made it clear that he had no idea what song I was talking about, and that even if I could narrow it down for him, it still wouldn't do any good because he didn't know where any of the songs in his movies had come from and why the hell was I asking him about that instead of about the bustlines of his leading ladies, like everyone else did? I sighed and asked him about the only thing he then seemed interested in discussing.

I continued to hear The Song popping up on cheap videos and radio commercials, and I got the idea that it was from some music library. One can purchase for a modest fee, recordings of royalty-free (or low-royalty) music that can be used freely to score movies or commercials or whatever. The places I heard the song were the kind of venues that would use cheap music libraries…but even assuming I was right about his, there was still no way to identify it.

Then, a year or two ago, I was doing a flurry of radio interviews to promote a book I wrote called Mad Art. In case you're never done one of these, the way it works is that you're home on your own phone, available at the appropriate time. If the interview is at 9:00, someone phones you at 8:55 — usually the show's producer but sometimes it's the on-air host, calling during a commercial break. They greet you, check the pronunciation of your name, and then you're patched into the broadcast. You hear a minute or so of the radio show over the phone and then suddenly, the host is introducing you and asking you the first question and it's up to you to be witty and charming and to mention the book as many times as possible. The spot is always over sooner than you expect and then they thank you and hang up.

So one night, I agree to be on a late night radio show in some other city. I think the show started at 3 AM their time, which was Midnight my time. At 11:55, the producer called and I provided the usual pronunciation guide…and then she said, "We'll be to you in about three minutes. You'll hear us playing a short song to lead into the spot." I said fine and waited…and when the short song began, I couldn't believe it: They were playing me on with The Song! The very song I'd been trying to identify since 1971!

I resisted the temptation to answer the host's first question by saying, "Never mind my stupid book. What's the name of that song you just played and who recorded it and where can I get a copy?" But I didn't. I waited until the spot was over and asked the producer who replied, "I don't know. I'll check and call you back!" Thirty minutes later when she hadn't called back, I called her only to have her say, "I'm sorry…no one here knows. It's on a reel of stuff we use all the time but it's not labelled." I asked her if she could at least make a CD of it for me. She said she would but never did. So close and yet so far.

A few months later, I was telling the story to a friend in the radio business. He said, "You think it's early seventies library music? I have a lot of that stuff. I'll send you some CDs." The next day, he did. He sent me thirty CDs, each with 20-30 music cuts on it.

I got lucky. It was the fifth or sixth song on the first CD I checked. I played it about twenty-seven times and after that, I never had to think about it again.

Okay, so you probably want to know: What was this song and where can I hear it? It's called "Pop March" and it was recorded by Johnny Pearson, about whom I know nothing other than that he recorded a lot of songs of this kind. Not long ago, it was released on a CD called Music For TV Dinners: The Sixties. If you click on that name, you'll be transported to an Amazon page that sells the CD but that's not why I'm providing the link. The page has audio samplers of the tunes on the CD, and you can click on the appropriate one and hear about a minute of "Pop March," which is Track #16. That oughta be enough to (a) cause some of you to go, "Oh, that song!" and/or (b) cause it to run through your head for the next 35 years. If nothing else, you can marvel at how a tune can so perfectly capture the sound of its era. It'll make you want to go watch Laugh-In, protest the Vietnam War and take your Pet Rock for a walk. (And if anyone reading this has any info on the song or Johnny Pearson, please share.)

Tom Lehrer wrote and recorded a number of very brilliant comedy songs but he has made his primary living as a professor of mathematics. Sometimes, he combines his two careers. Here's a link to a 13 minute homemade video of Mr. Lehrer singing a number of song parodies that relate to his academic side. You may not get all the references but how often do you get to see and hear Tom Lehrer at all, let alone performing material you've never heard before?

I'm a little weary of Michael Jackson jokes but if anyone can keep it funny, it's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

Coming up this week on GSN's reruns of What's My Line?: Tomorrow morning is an episode from 3/10/57 with Mystery Guest Charles Boyer. Monday morning, they have Norman Vincent Peale and Judy Holliday, with Robert Preston on the panel.

Tuesday morning, the Mystery Guest is Mamie Van Doren and one of the non-celeb guests is a 27 year old District Attorney named Thomas Eagleton. Fifteen years later, Eagleton would be the Senator from Missouri who ran for vice-president with George McGovern. He was forced to drop off the ticket when some of his health problems were revealed.

Rounding out the week: Wednesday morn, the Mystery Guest is Hedy Lamarr. Thursday, it's Fernando Lamas. And Friday, we get Helen Hayes.

Also, tomorrow morning GSN will run a tribute to Anne Bancroft consisting of one episode of Password and three of What's My Line? Details are right here.

I am occasionally amused/fascinated by the spectacle of news people having to fill time with nothing to say. They don't say a lot when they do have something to say but it's even worse when, for example, a high-speed chase is entering its second hour and all the known information could be summarized in about five minutes. Drawing it out and pretending to have new angles and perspectives is something of an art — one many of us dabbled in back in school when we had to write a 1000 word essay on some topic where we knew one measly fact.

The last few days, I've been peeking in on Court TV's "Verdict Watch" and, boy, those people are good at talking for hours and saying nothing. The situation around the Michael Jackson case has changed little since the case went to the jury a week ago. You could list every significant development in under two minutes: The jury sent out a note, contents unknown. Michael dropped by a hospital again. His lawyer said that he has not authorized anyone to speak for the family despite the (until yesterday) constant presence on the news of Jesse Jackson and/or some woman named Ramona Bain as spokespersons. And that's about it. I just watched ten minutes of speculation on whether a long deliberation bodes well or ill for the defense. Each "analyst" says it can mean anything…and then itemized all the different things it could mean.

As I write this, the "Jury Clock" is at 27 hours, 24 minutes and change…and Gloria Allred has joined the throng of Talking Heads who don't know anything but won't let that stop them. An awful lot of sentences begin with, "If Michael Jackson is convicted…"

This morning, the Court TV analysts were trying to suggest that Friday is often "Verdict Day" in a trial and that while nothing had been announced, there was something in the air. Now, passing 1:00 PM, they seem to be talking more about how this jury is so diligent that they could take a lot longer.

A little while ago, one gent explained that they'd tried and failed to get a glimpse of how the jurors were dressed this morning, operating on the premise that a well-dressed jury is one that expects it might be giving interviews later in the day. But of course, no one saw the jurors when they arrived for today's deliberations. I think it would have been great if they'd all marched in this morning dressed as various barnyard animals. It wouldn't have meant anything to the case but it would have given the trial analysts plenty to talk about. ("I once covered a case where they were all dressed in cow costumes and that jury voted to acquit…")

I finally have enough info to post about John Albano, the veteran comic book writer and cartoonist who passed away last Monday in an Orlando hospital near his home in Altamonte Springs, Florida. His sister-in-law says the cause of death was a heart attack followed by a stroke. He was 82 years old.

Albano had a long, varied career that included stints as an editor for The National Enquirer (for seven years) and magazine cartoons for an array of clients, including Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post. Comic book fans know him best for his time at DC in the seventies where he wrote for Joe Orlando's ghost comics (House of Mystery, etc.), Plop!, Supergirl, Jimmy Olsen, Swing with Scooter,, the revival of Leave It to Binky, and many others. He won the A.C.B.A. (Academy of Comic Book Arts) award for Best Humor Writer in 1972.

His most famous work probably was when he co-created — with artist Tony DeZuniga — the long-running western character, Jonah Hex, who originally appeared in All-Star Western in 1972. Albano wrote the first eleven tales of the scarred gunfighter when a dispute arose over the film rights to his co-creation. A lawsuit was settled with Albano receiving money but his relationship with DC Comics was effectlvely destroyed, and others wrote Jonah Hex for years after.

Albano also worked for the short-lived Atlas comic line of the seventies (Phoenix, Planet of Vampires, etc.) and for Gold Key comics on Underdog, Heckle & Jeckle and other comics produced out of the firm's New York office. He wrote for National Lampoon, authored some children's books and did a lot of work for Archie Comics beginning around 1984. He was writing for Archie as recently as a year ago, and had recently been devoting himself to the script for an off-Broadway play.

My thanks to his friend Michael Browning for gathering information and the photo. I don't think I ever crossed paths with John but if I had, I would have told him how much I enjoyed his work.

Proving that eventually, every TV show that has ever existed will be out as a DVD set, you can now order Season 1 of the 1968 series, The Doris Day Show. I am not suggesting you do this, as I do not recall it as being a great show, but I will provide an Amazon link if you want to see for yourself.

More interesting than the show is its history, especially of that first season. In the sixties, Ms. Day was married to an agent named Marty Melcher, who proved the old Show Biz adage that one should not manage one's spouse's career. It works once in a while but it usually doesn't, and the Melcher-Day saga is as fine an example as you'll find of the "doesn't" variety. For a time, the damage Melcher did to his wife's stardom consisted of signing her up to do movies that she didn't want to do. She'd read a script like the one for the 1967 Caprice and say, "Well, thank God I don't have to do garbage like that," and Melcher would tell her, "Uh, I already signed you up for it. You have to do it." And do it she did…under duress.

Doris was one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world but she was seeing very little of that loot. Melcher was then in partnership with an investment manager named Jerome Rosenthal, and every cent she made went into some new oil drilling scheme, or a hotel or some other venture "guaranteed" to yield mega-bucks. Onlookers would later wonder why the Melchers didn't just live comfortably, as they could have, off what she made: Why plunge it all into risky investments? The answer, it was suggested, had something to do with Marty's ego and his determination not to let it be said that he just lived off his wife. The investments were to yield money that he could claim as his income, even though they were being funded by her money.

The trouble was that, unbeknownst to Doris, those investments were wiping out her money, not increasing it. It would never be clear to what extent this was because the ventures were uniformly unsuccessful or if Rosenthal was just pocketing the bucks…but Melcher found himself in the position of a losing gambler who was desperately throwing more cash on the table, trying to get even. In his panic for funds, he turned to television.

CBS was, at the time, worried that Lucille Ball would soon retire and they saw Doris Day as the star of a sitcom that could be cultivated to take over Lucy's exalted place on their schedule. Even if Lucy stuck around, Doris had proven she could draw an audience. They pursued her for a weekly series and despite Melcher's urging, she said no. She was a movie star, she argued, and couldn't handle the rapid pace of TV filming. Melcher argued back that her kind of movie (i.e., clean) was on its way out and the CBS deal was a lifeline. When she continued to say no, Melcher just ignored her wishes. Without telling her, he committed her to a sitcom and took a huge advance from the network. That money went directly into the Rosenthal investment program, never to be seen again.

Then Melcher got sick…very sick. He died in April of '68 and one day not long after, Doris ventured into his office to tidy up. There, she came across several completed scripts for a TV series called, chillingly, The Doris Day Show. CBS, she soon discovered, expected her to begin filming the show the following month. Further investigation yielded the horrifying revelation that her investments were not worth the millions of dollars Melcher had claimed. They were practically worthless and she was very close to bankruptcy. Somehow — despite depression over her husband's death and the subsequent disclosures, plus the fact that she hated the format of the series to which he'd committed her — she got through the filming of Season One of a TV series she didn't want to do. Those are the episodes that comprise this first DVD set.

The show lasted five seasons and went through four distinct formats and a wide selection of co-stars. Friends said it was amazing that she got through it at all. To further complicate her life during this period, her son Terry Melcher was mixed up with Charles Manson, plus there was a grueling lawsuit against Jerome Rosenthal. (Day eventually won a $22.8 million malpractice suit against him but settled for $6 million.) After the series was over with, she pretty much retired. A producer I know spent something like ten years offering her scripts and huge sums of money but she declined every one of them.

Like I said, I'm not recommending the show. Despite a good cast and the enduring charm of its star, it was a bland little comedy that is largely forgotten…so I guess, just for the sake of history, it's good that it's coming out now on DVD. At the very least, it gives me the chance to tell this story, which I find much more colorful than the show itself.

The Animal Planet network is rerunning a couple of shows that may be of interest to cartoon fans. Animal Icons has an episode tonight (and it reruns Saturday morning) called "Animated Animals" that includes interviews with June Foray, Billy West and other great voice folks. There's also an episode about Garfield, which I haven't seen, which runs tomorrow and again on Saturday afternoon, and one on Star Wars creatures and one on Japanese movie monsters. Thanks to George Karlias for reminding me about this stuff.