Yesterday morning, my friend Carolyn and I walked a few blocks from my house to watch some of the L.A. Marathon. Our vantage point was around mile 17 of the 26 mile competition, so the runners we cheered on were getting weary but were, for the most part, still pretty strong. They seemed appreciative of the huge crowds that turned out to line the streets, and even more appreciative of the volunteers handing out oranges and bottles of water.

It was a colorful, if sweaty crowd. There were a couple of folks in clown make-up and one wearing one of those full-face masks that Mexican wrestlers favor. There was one runner pushing a stroller containing an infant jogger-of-tomorrow. My unscientific survey of those who passed us showed a pretty hefty percentage of New Balance shoes, my footwear of choice. I did not spot animation expert Amid Amidi who, I see from his weblog, was somewhere among the 24,000 starters…but he may have passed us while I was studying running shoes. (Amid, you and all those who ran have my respect. I could barely make it down to watch you.)

The whole mood was very festive. There was a rock band playing near where we were, and they were good even if every third song was "Roll Over, Beethoven." Some spectators were dancing right in front of the bandstand and every so often, a runner would detour out of the lane to join them in a few steps. A lot of onlookers held up signs that read, "Go, [name of some runner]." On the way down, I spotted a lady who was walking away from the site with one that said, "Go, Donny!" Donny, apparently, had already passed so her work was done. A couple on their way to the route stopped her and apparently said, "Hey, we're going down to cheer on someone named Donny. Could we have your sign?" And she gladly handed it over. I don't know why but I liked that. I liked the whole brief trip to watch the runners. Especially because I wasn't one.

As far as I know, it went utterly unmentioned in the press that Erin Fleming, one-time companion of the great Groucho, took her own life on April 15 or 17 (accounts vary) of 2003. At least, I only recently learned of it.

There was a time when this controversial lady was all over the newspapers, especially during a nasty battle over various portions of his wealth which he had either given her or to which she had helped herself. Fleming was an ever-aspiring actress who arrived in Groucho's life after a long string of "secretaries" had fled in horror at the way they felt they were treated.

The referral came from a writer-producer named Jerry Davis, a very nice man whom she pestered for acting jobs (or just any job) when he was producing the Odd Couple TV show. Erin was creating problems for Jerry, suggesting they could become closer friends in a way that Jerry, who was happily wed, did not appreciate. When his pal Groucho asked if Jerry could recommend an assistant, Davis — to his later regret — connected him with Erin.

Unlike the many before her, Erin did not quickly flee Groucho's employ. She went from running errands to running his life, convincing him that she should manage his affairs and business matters. She also arranged to get him more into the public eye, dragging him to parties and hosting half of Hollywood in Groucho's Trousdale mansion. Among those who witnessed this period of Groucho's life, there is still controversy: Most admit that she did him some good, promoting his stardom and making large portions of his life happy and active. But her motives were often questioned by those who felt she was less interested in aiding Groucho than in promoting some sort of career for herself.

Meeting Woody Allen (via Groucho) got her a bit part in his film, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, and when Groucho did a guest shot on Bill Cosby's variety show in 1973, a condition of his appearance was that Erin would be billed as a guest star. The consensus seems to be that she ultimately did more harm than good and in my own, admittedly brief encounters with her, that's the impression I got. At the same time, I suspect Groucho, in his more lucid moments, did not feel that way…and his vote certainly counted for something. Her worst deeds may have been that she did everything in her power to alienate him from his children, and at some point became convinced that for all the years she invested in his life, she was "owed" everything she could get out of him.

The legal wars started even before Groucho died when his son Arthur finally stepped in and got a court order to separate her from Groucho's business affairs. The battle turned even uglier after Groucho passed away, as various courts heard testimony of Erin abusing Groucho and his servants and squandering his money. She lost big in court, vowed to appeal, then seems to have descended further into some sort of true dementia. A few Marx Brothers fans received letters from her in which she announced, with no basis in fact, that she had been legally adopted by Bob Guccione, the publisher of Penthouse magazine.

In the letters, she implied that she would use her new Daddy's money and connections to punish all who had wronged her and taken away her rightful share of Groucho. Then she more or less disappeared, though there were reports that she was homeless and others that she was routinely arrested on firearms charges. In January of 2003, she reportedly moved into a senior retirement home in Hollywood and it was there, three months later, that she shot herself.

Dick Cavett, writing about her relationship with Groucho, once commented that in a larger sense than the trial, the jury would be out forever; that she brought so many good moments to the comedian's last years that it was wrong to focus on the negatives. Maybe…but there sure were too many of them.

Jim Amash, who inks for Archie Comics and conducts splendid interviews for Alter Ego magazine, has written a short but sweet piece on the late Rudy LaPick. It's over here on the Archie website.

I think I also forgot to mention that the current issue of Alter Ego is devoted in large part to the late, great Mike Sekowsky, a wonderful artist who received too much of his acclaim after he left us. The issue contains an interview with Mike's widow, some history on his career, and a round table discussion about him between myself, Dave Stevens, Scott Shaw! and Floyd Norman. If you are interested in Mike, you must pick up this issue. And if you're interested in comics, you're already a subscriber.

Shelly Goldstein (chanteuse extraordinaire) just e-mailed to tell me that The Front just came out on DVD, and that it would be a dandy thing for me to put up this Amazon link so you can purchase it online. This is not why I brought up the movie but it's a fine idea. And while I'm at it, I'll tell a story I heard once about Zero Mostel and blacklisting. This was during the period when Mostel could not get hired for television or movies. One night, he's having a drink in some bar with an actor friend and the actor says, "I'm so miserable. I don't understand why I'm not working." Mostel replies, "Hey, I'm not working, either." And the actor friend answers him, "I know why you're not working. You're blacklisted. Why the hell am I not working?" That exchange is not in the movie but it should have been.

For no better reason than that it was on a movie channel I receive, I found myself re-watching The Front, the 1976 movie about blacklisting written by Walter Bernstein and directed by Martin Ritt. Both gents actually were blacklisted, as were several cast members including Zero Mostel and Herschel Bernardi. When first I saw the film, I suspected that its makers had originally intended that the lead role by filled by another blacklisted actor, Jack Gilford — it was not long after Gilford had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Save the Tiger — but that for billing reasons, they wound up with Woody Allen. Later, I read an interview with Ritt or Bernstein (I forget which) and the person said something that suggested Allen had been their first and only choice…but I'm only half-convinced.

Allen was fine in the film, of course, but I later heard a top studio executive cite this among films he felt were harmed, not helped, by the presence of a star whose very name defined the film wrongly. In this case, the theory was that people came expecting a Woody Allen film, while others saw the names of Allen and Mostel and expected a zany comedy. Whatever, he said, good movies sometimes flop because the advertising doesn't draw in the kind of people likely to enjoy the film and/or it causes audience to walk in the door expecting the wrong thing.

I thought The Front was a good movie which presented a good, non-hysterical view of that period in entertainment history when actors and writers were being ostracized either for their political beliefs or because someone had claimed they'd done something left-wing which they might or might not have actually done. I once discussed that era with Al and Helen Levitt, who were among the many blacklisted screenwriters, and they both made the point that even if you bought the premise that it was okay to pressure producers to not hire certain folks because of political activities, you should have objected to how inaccurate the process was. Without a trial or any avenue of appeal, people were "convicted" based on rumors, innuendos and things like someone who "thought" he'd seen them at a certain rally. There were cases of Joe Smith getting blacklisted because someone had confused him with John Smith. When radio personality John Henry Faulk brought his successful lawsuit against the company that compiled lists of those to not be hired, one of the key components in his victory was convincing the jury that the blacklisters routinely made whopping errors and never corrected them.

Obviously, the Levitts did not agree that someone could or should be fired because of their politics but they made the point that it was like someone who believed in the death penalty so strongly that they didn't care if the wrong people were being executed. They said this to me some time before DNA testing began proving that a shocking percentage of murder convictions are erroneous. I think of them every time I see some death penalty proponent who views executing the innocent as a minor, acceptable flaw in the system.

Al and Helen wrote for years through fronts or under the names of "Tom and Helen August." Though we hear stories of Walt Disney being a rabid anti-Communist, he routinely employed them and knew full well who he was hiring. The Writers Guild later "corrected" credits on The Monkey's Uncle and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones to put the Levitts' real names in place of their pen names. The couple, both of whom have passed on, felt they should have received credit on several others, including Old Yeller — and they still may, albeit posthumously. Anyway, they both liked The Front and felt it was an accurate portrayal, confirming what I had sensed. They especially liked the end credits which list not only the names of those who worked on the film but the date when some of them were blacklisted, thereby driving home the point that this really happened.

One blacklisted actor who wasn't in The Front was John Randolph, a veteran of stage and film who died February 24 at the age of 88. Randolph was blacklisted in 1955 and like many in that situation, fled to the stage. He got no work in TV or movies until 1966 when John Frankenheimer cast him in the film, Seconds. Thereafter, he turned up on screens rather steadily, though not in The Front. For some reason though, people think he was in that movie.

There have been two exhaustive biographies of Zero Mostel — Zero Mostel: A Biography by Jared Brown (out of print) and Zero Dances by Arthur Sainer. Both mention John Randolph being in The Front and both are wrong. Quite a few articles that were written about the film at the time of its release and since have listed Randolph among its cast members and they're all wrong. Maybe he filmed some scenes for it but he's not in the finished picture. Oddly enough, the same year he wasn't in this movie that he keeps being credited for, Randolph got into a public dispute with the producers of All the President's Men for not giving him credit on a movie he was in…or at least, his voice was. He provided the sound of Attorney General John Mitchell in the phone conversation with Dustin Hoffman and was quite distressed to find his name unlisted in the closing crawl. There's some sort of odd irony in there: A blacklisted actor being "named" in the wrong time and place.

Nicholas D. Kristof discusses C.E.O. salaries, especially with regard to Michael Eisner's compensation.

Waiting for a lunch date this afternoon, I couldn't help but overhear a spirited discussion about the Martha Stewart verdict. Some of those participating thought she was guilty and some thought she was innocent, and it struck me that none of these folks had arrived at their views by studying the merits of the case. The "Not Guilty" crowd merely felt that the world of stock trading is full of sleazy dealings and that if Ken Lay can escape indictment for something a zillion times worse, there's something selective about the prosecution of Ms. Stewart. The "Guilty" voters, meanwhile, seemed to just dislike her, period. And of course, if you don't like someone then they must be guilty of all accusations.

I'm always amazed at the depth of loathing some people have for folks they've never met and who've never done them or anyone any harm. Years ago at a party, I heard someone tick off a list of famous individuals who deserved to rot in Hades and the last two named were Timothy McVeigh and Kathie Lee Gifford…to which several around muttered, "Yeah! Kathie Lee!" I'm no particular fan of Ms. Gifford but…well, call me crazy but I think blowing up a building and killing 168 people might be a wee bit worse than being annoying on a talk show. I always got the feeling some people who abhorred Kathie Lee — and I feel this way again with Martha — disliked her because she reminded them of someone they didn't get along with in high school.

If I try to view today's verdict in some sort of positive light…well, I guess it's good to know that rich people can sometimes get convicted in our court system. Still, I'd feel a little better about this if I believed she'd actually broken a law and that it's a law that is applied equally to all.

And I guess I should point out that I don't know that she didn't break a genuine law. I don't know…and neither do a lot of people who are elated at the verdict. They only know how they feel about Martha Stewart, and maybe how they feel about someone "big" getting nailed to the wall.

Here's an article that asks the musical question, "Can Dennis Miller make audiences laugh from his new political vantage point?" Based on his current ratings, which are low even for CNBC, the answer is no.

Lotsa folks, including the head of the Firefighters Union, are up in arms about the Bush campaign using an image or two of 9/11 in a campaign commercial. This strikes me as outrage for the sake of outrage. I mean, it may be tacky but most of what we see in campaign commercials is tacky. If this is all part of a general Democratic policy of attacking everything Bush does, I think it's going to backfire on them.

In the meantime, we're seeing political writers wasting valuable space debating on the merits of Bill Clinton or John McCain or other fantasy picks as Kerry's veep. Not gonna happen. We're also not going to see Hillary on the ticket, which seems to be upsetting certain right-wing fund raisers who see her as the gift that keeps on giving.

For those of you who heard about the Neil Gaiman-Todd McFarlane lawsuit and didn't get what it was all about, here's a good overview in the Chicago Tribune.

William Saletan makes a good point about George W. Bush and suggests what strikes me as a sound criticism to voice of him and his administration. There's an unfortunate tendency to try and cast everything a politician does as a lie: If he takes one position and ten years later changes his mind, someone says he lied about his position. If he believes something that turns out not to be true, someone calls him a liar. To my mind, "liar" implies a conscious effort to deceive and that usually is not the case.

But Saletan argues, and I think he's right, that the Bush administration takes a position and encourages everyone around them to alter the evidence to support it. The whole matter of Stem Cell Research is one of many where almost the entire scientific community is telling Bush he was wrong about his science and he won't admit it. Here's a piece over on Tapped that summarizes this one. The election won't turn on issues like this one but it might matter in this sense: One of the things a lot of people seem to admire about Bush is that they believe he has strong, firm resolve. It might cost him a lot of votes if that resolve is viewed as a stubborn refusal to deal with reality.

John Kerry doesn't even have a running mate yet and already I'm sick of this election. When I hear pollsters say, "If the election were held today," I immediately think, "Oh, if only we could arrange that." I think I'd almost rather see my guy lose now than win in November. Just to get this thing over with.

The caricatures are firmly in place: Bush is a spoiled frat boy who has had everything in life handed to him without real effort. He is so out of touch with reality that he can pander shamelessly to the right wing on some issues without realizing what those actions do to human lives, and throw around cash shamelessly to court the political middle without caring about massive deficits…plus, he dragged us into war in Iraq based on, at best, faulty data and in so doing has enriched Halliburton and increased hatred of Americans and therefore the probability of more terrorist attacks. In the meantime, John Kerry is a one-time war criminal who betrayed his uniform. He has no leadership experience, misses Senate votes, veers way to the left of American mainstream, carouses with Jane Fonda, marries into money, and flip-flops outrageously on every issue. Oh, yeah — and he looks kinda French, which is a terrific reason to vote against anyone.

All right, already. I got it. You don't have to spend the next eight months repeating these characterizations to me and adding in new ones. By August, these guys (or rather, their surrogates) will be charging their opponents with serial murder, pedophilia, and taking orders directly from Osama.

Think I'm exaggerating? The other day, a Republican Congressman actually said, ""I promise you this, if George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election, it's that simple." I'm less amazed that someone in Congress would say something like that, than that they would be saying it in March. How is that guy going to be framing the debate if it's October and Kerry has a genuine lead? Some of the anti-Bush rhetoric is verging into that territory and you know it will only get worse.

I have this strange idea of leadership: I think it's about standing up for principle, even if it means defending your opponents on some matter. No one does that. You rarely see anyone slap a member of their own party for such excesses because deep down, they're either afraid to tick off their pals or they figure they'll somehow benefit from the vitriol. I never believed most Republican leaders thought Bill Clinton had Vince Foster murdered or that he was involved in drug-trafficking…but I thought they felt the anti-Clinton mob was valuable and didn't want to do anything to discourage its activism. And now we have prominent Democrats enjoying the rise of the hate-Bush movement and what it can do for them. It's not that they necessarily think every accusation against G.W.B. has merit…but they think that in the coming election, the more reasons to despise Bush that are out there, the better.

There's a famous anecdote from the Nixon era in which Pat Buchanan supposedly counselled that it would be a good thing to foment arguments that would divide the country because, he wrote, "If the nation splits in two, we'll have the bigger piece." I was already disgusted with Republicans for playing that game. I'm becoming disgusted with Democrats who seem to be welcoming an election that's only about demonizing the other guy. They figure, I guess, that there's just more to throw at Bush, and he'll wind up the muddier of the two. Ultimately, I think the voters that matter — the swing votes, the ones that could go either way — won't care about anything either guy did in the previous century. But between now and election day, we're going to hear enough about their past deeds and misdeeds to make you upchuck. I'm already well into that queasy sensation you get after a meal at Denny's…

…and it isn't one of our shameless attempts to guilt-trip you into donating cash to help support this website. A friend is involved in this fun enterprise…

BeInAMovie.com is a service that assembles crowd scenes for movies. They're currently gathering masses in San Francisco for the film Bee Season with Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche (March 17 and 18 in San Francisco) and in Los Angeles for Clubhouse, a new CBS dramatic series produced by Aaron Spelling and Paramount Studios, and starring Christopher Lloyd, Dean Cain and Mare Winningham. If you are in either place, this is your chance to get in front of the camera.

Gene Lyons discusses the intersection of theology and politics in the Bush administration.

If you're a Disney fan, I'm about to cost you a nice piece of change. That studio has had many brilliant artists on the payroll but none more astounding than Peter Ellenshaw, master matte painter. Many beautiful visions in Disney live-action films have emanated from his easel and there's now a gorgeous book that reproduces many of them, accompanied by all the biographical and historical data you could crave. It's called Ellenshaw Under Glass – Going to the Matte for Disney and it's available in several editions. If you can afford it, spring for the Deluxe Edition. It comes in a slipcase with a hologram of Ellenshaw sitting on a cloud, floating over Mary Poppins' London…and then the book itself has glass (or maybe plexiglass) covers with Ellenshaw himself turned into a matte painting. Everyone who's seen the copy I have on my table has taken one look at it and said, "I must own one of these." You can own one of these by visiting this website and ordering online.