As it happens, the WKRP in Cincinnati episode about the turkeys is scheduled to air this coming Sunday morning, September 28 at 12:30 AM on TV Land. To some, that will be late Saturday night. Consult your local listing to make sure and set the TiVo. And thanks to Brent Seguine, Steve Billnitzer and others who alerted me.
The Latest
With its usual flair for accuracy, The New York Post is referring to Peter Paul, who never had anything to do with Spider-Man in any capacity, as "The Spidey Swindler." Paul, by the way, has entered a plea of Not Guilty.
Two Raccoons Using My Swimming Pool
Another Damned Obit…
Gordon Jump, who died the other day at age 71, was the kind of actor I really like: A guy who worked constantly. He is best remembered for playing the befuddled boss at radio station WKRP in Cincinnati and for succeeding Jesse White as the lonely Maytag repairman. But take a gander at this list of credits over at the Internet Movie Database. The guy was on everything…and that list isn't even close to complete. For example, it omits two pilot-specials he appeared on in 1976-1977 that attempted to turn the Archie comic books into an odd cross of a variety show and a situation comedy. Audrey Landers played Betty, Hillary Thompson played Veronica, Derrell Maury played Jughead and there's a bizarre story about who played the title role of Archie Andrews. (I'll tell it here tomorrow unless I forget.) I was working for the company that produced the shows and while I wasn't assigned to the project, I was the only person on the premises who knew the comics and for some reason, that made the producers think my opinion was worth something. They kept calling me in and asking, "Does this guy look like Moose? Would this actor make a good Dilton Doily?" (I just recalled who played Moose's girl friend, Midge. It was Sue Blu, who has since become one of the top voice directors in the cartoon business.)
One afternoon, they called me in to watch a very nervous actor read some lines as either Archie's father or Mr. Weatherbee. I forget which one it was. I immediately recognized Gordon Jump from an episode of Harry O I'd seen the night before and told him he'd been very good in it. He said, "Well, I'll see what I can do to lower your opinion of me" and everyone in the room laughed. He then proceeded to read the scene with the lady casting director playing Archie…and you could see that all the producers and execs in the room immediately said to themselves, "This is the guy." After he left, they all verbalized their agreement and that was it…except that when the casting concluded a few days later, they still had one role unfilled. Someone suggested that since Jump was so good in the part for which he'd auditioned, he could probably handle this other one. So he was switched from playing Mr. Andrews to Mr. Weatherbee or vice-versa. Whatever it was, no one apparently told Gordon. He showed up for the first day of rehearsal with the wrong part all memorized.
This did not throw him one bit because he was every inch the professional. In fact, the screw-up seemed right in keeping with the kinds of characters he usually played. He took a copy of the script, went off into a corner by himself for fifteen minutes, and came back in the correct role. In his last few years when he taught an acting workshop, he often told that story. Someone who took the course told me that. She also told me it was the best "how to audition" class she ever encountered. Given how often Gordon Jump auditioned and got the job, that's not surprising.
One other thing I should mention: Gordon Jump spoke what was, to me, one of the all-time funniest lines in the history of TV situation comedies. It was…
If you don't know the episode, you can read about it here or, better still, watch for that installment of WKRP. If you do know the episode, you're laughing right this minute.
Recommended Reading
Over on Slate, Timothy Noah says a lot of the same things I said an item or two ago about Hillary Clinton.
Recommended Reading
Sydney H. Schanberg discusses what George W. Bush has done for education. This is another one of those areas where Bush's supporters don't even attempt to mount a defense. They just change the subject to Saddam Hussein.
What's the Plan?
I have no idea what kind of president General Wesley Clark might make, or even what kind of candidate he'll be. He sounds good at a distance but then most of them do until we get to know them.
Since he entered the race, the thing that interests me the most is that he has the backing of Bill and Hillary Clinton. That doesn't make me like him more or less, but it seems to have an awful lot of pundits turning backflips to reconcile it with their past theories.
Hillary is very important to both Conservatives and Liberals, these days. She's important to Conservatives because she energizes their base. If you want to get right-wingers to donate money and turn out for a cause, you invoke the name of Hillary. She's important to Liberals because…well, because she makes right-wingers mad, and her ongoing career proves that all that nonsense about Whitewater, Filegate and Travelgate didn't live up to its hype.
I happen to think that Hillary Clinton will never be president; that she will get no closer to that office than Ted Kennedy did, which was never that close. But partisan activists on both sides have good reason to keep the notion of Hillary for President alive, so her support for Clark must be explained somehow. This has led to a wide array of theories…
- The plan is to position Hillary as Clark's vice-presidential running mate so they can win in 2004.
- The plan is to position Hillary as Clark's vice-presidential running mate so that the ticket will lose in 2004, making her the presumptive nominee in 2008.
- The plan is to let Clark split the Democratic party. Then Hillary will accept a draft to run for president in 2004 with Clark receiving the veep slot as his reward.
- The plan is that Hillary knows she won't run until 2008 so she'll support someone who is certain to lose this time so she won't have a Democratic incumbent next time.
- The plan is that Hillary won't run this time and maybe not next but she and Bill think that if Clark wins, they can run the country through him. And if he loses, he'll become well enough known to be her vice-presidential running mate in '08.
And there have been others…darn near every conceivable theory except that maybe she has no plans to run this time and thinks Clark would be the best candidate. I don't know if that's it but I'm amused that every possible scenario is out there except that one. But I guess that doesn't serve anyone's interests…not even the Clintons'.
Donations Welcomed
A Funny Man
In the late sixties, the hottest comedy writing team in Hollywood was Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan, two former MAD Magazine writers who had moved on to work for shows like Get Smart and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. They had split up by the time I got into their line of work but I got to know both men individually and found them to be two of the wittiest men in a business full of witty people.
Here, on the website for Cleveland Magazine, we find a reprint of a 1976 article on Hanrahan. It fingers him as the man responsible for making his home town into the butt of so many jokes. I'm not sure he deserves credit/blame for that but the rest of the piece has some good info about the backstage mood of TV shows back then.
Smilin' Stan
Here's an interesting piece on Stan Lee. A few of the facts are slightly askew but the enthusiasm of the article is interesting. It well captures the way a lot of kids felt about Stan and Marvel back in the sixties.
More on Yorty
Daniel Kravetz sends in the following info…
In your interesting piece on Sam Yorty, you are uncertain about how he first came to be elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1961. Yorty was a Democrat, running one year after the dramatic Kennedy presidential victory and one year before Pat Brown defeated Richard Nixon for the governorship. He was challenging incumbent mayor Norris Poulson, who was criticized by many progressives for giving too sweet a land deal to Walter O'Malley for bringing the Dodgers to L.A. Even more upsetting to voters was Poulson's program for separating paper trash from metal and glass trash before collection, which Yorty described as demeaning to housewives in many TV appearances, most notably on George Putnam's news show.
Yeah, I remember that now. For a brief time, we had separate collections: You had to sort your trash and put out separate trash cans, and some people howled. I recall a big press conference when the newly-elected Mayor Yorty got it changed. People cheered as he poured tin cans into the same trash can as wastepaper. Odd how there's been no similar outcry today when we sort our trash and put out material to be recycled in a separate container. Thanks, Daniel.
Jews in Comics
Claims that Jews control "the media" always seemed absurd to me but at one time, we had a pretty good grasp on the comic book industry. This article by writer Arie Kaplan is the first of three parts on "How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry." I have a few quibbles with it but will withhold carping until all three chapters have appeared.
Sam Yorty
I mentioned Sam Yorty on my weblog and found myself engaged in e-mail discussions with others who recall the flamboyant (and largely inept) mayor of the City of Los Angeles. Yorty was mayor from 1961 to 1973 and darn near proved that L.A. could function just fine without anyone in that office. He spent most of his time in power either (a) travelling, ostensibly to promote trade with our fair city or (b) running for higher offices, among them the presidency.
The last of these was the more amazing since there was never any evidence that anyone anywhere wanted him to win any of these positions, except maybe for Angelenos who wished to be rid of the guy. Republican leaders didn't like him because even though the office of mayor is constitutionally non-partisan, Yorty had let it be known that he was a Democrat. Democratic leaders didn't like him because on every single issue that came along, you could count on him siding with the Republicans. His insistence that he was destined for bigger and better things almost seemed delusional. In fact, in '68 L.A. Times political cartoonist Paul Conrad began drawing Yorty in a Napoleon suit, being taken away to an insane asylum. This occurred when Yorty began claiming that he would soon be offered an important post in the cabinet of the newly-elected President Nixon. When he wasn't, Yorty hit Conrad and the Times with a lawsuit that, of course, went nowhere and made its plaintiff look even stupider.
How Sam Yorty got elected in the first place, I cannot say but I recall how he got re-elected in '69. In the primary that year, he came in second with 26 percent of the vote, trailing Councilman Tom Bradley who had 42. That looked like the end of Yorty but long before people talked about "playing the race card," he had one up his sleeve. Bradley was black, so the credo of the Yorty campaign became that if Tom Bradley got into office, he would take his marching orders directly from the Afro-American militants known as the Black Panthers. Yorty aides combed through photos of Bradley, found every one in which the Councilman's fist was clenched (including pictures of him jogging) and published them with captions that claimed Bradley was giving a covert "Black Power" signal to his true masters.
It was an enormously dirty, racist campaign. At one point, it was alleged that Yorty's backers had recruited and paid young black males to ride around key precincts in Cadillac convertibles with Bradley campaign signs on them. They were to play the radio at deafening levels and yell at old white ladies, "You'll be cleaning my house when Mayor Tom takes over!" I'm not sure they actually went that far, but they sure came close. It was an especially ludicrous line of attack if you recall how non-militant Tom Bradley turned out to be when he did finally did get into office and how groups like the Panthers all but disappeared. Yorty's racial fear campaign actually worked in '69 and he squeaked by. The next time around, the same line of attack got nowhere and Bradley easily won what turned out to be the first of five terms.
One of my favorite incidents in a lifetime of election-watching occurred during that election. Yorty, in a rare instance of doing something besides travelling and campaigning, had rammed through the City Council a number of proposals that enriched Occidental Petroleum. One was a controversial land swap deal where the city got some worthless acres and Occidental got some land which turned out to be quite rich in oil. During the campaign, Bradley charged that Yorty had a personal financial interest in Occidental and Yorty responded that Bradley was a lying fool and categorically denied any such interest. As it does more and more these days, the press stayed out of an election issue and didn't start looking into Bradley's charge until after Election Day when, of course, it meant so much less.
Turned out, Yorty himself might not have had a financial interest in Occidental but his wife did. The moment I loved came in one of Yorty's last press conferences when he was asked about this. He said something like, "I never denied that I had any financial interest in Occidental and anyone who says I did is a damn liar." One of the local news channels ran that footage, then ran a clip of Yorty saying, "Neither I nor anyone in my family has ever owned one share of Occidental Petroleum and anyone who says I have is a damn liar." I wish the media would do more of that kind of thing, and do it when it matters. (Later, I believe Yorty actually tried claiming that his wife had purchased more than a million dollars worth of petroleum stock without telling him…)
Sam Yorty died in 1998 without ever again holding public office. I have to say that I smell some of his tactics in the attempts to portray Cruz Bustamante as some sort of Chicano militant. Mr. Bustamante has not impressed me as anything more than the least offensive of a lot of bad choices I find on my ballot, but I think the attempts to tie him to extreme racial groups seem very strained. The same applies to any possible connection Mr. Schwarzenegger may have or have had to former Nazis. Come on. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for either of those men without resorting to that kind of nonsense.
Missing Masterworks
The L.A. Police Department has a section on their website for the Art Theft Detail. This is the division in charge of recovering lost paintings and drawings, and their jurisdiction extends to various collectibles. On their section of the L.A.P.D. site, they post pictures of items that have been stolen, ranging from Salvador Dali paintings to Peanuts cels. (Also on display and presumed stolen is an oil portrait of former L.A. mayor Sam Yorty…and you can only wonder what a thief would want with that. Maybe he's going to threaten the city: "Give me ten thousand dollars in cash or I return it!") Anyway, it seems like a good idea to me but I have to wonder about one thing: Over in the "collectibles" section, they have pictures of the covers of Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 which have been reported stolen.
In fact, I myself stole the pictures above of Action #1 and Detective Comics #27 from their site and this brings us to a couple of questions. Are those photos of the actual copies of those three stolen books? Did someone think we might be able to identify the stolen Action Comics #1 from the picture and distinguish it from any other copy of Action Comics #1 we might come across? How does someone prove that a given copy of Action Comics #1 is their copy of Action Comics #1? Did whoever put that photo up think, "Maybe someone will see this picture and remember it when they see a picture of Action Comics #1 for sale? Putting up the pic of the Dali picture makes sense since that's a one-of-a-kind item. What do they think the pictures of the comic books will accomplish?
Riding Hoodwinked
Paul Dini says that the image I posted of Tex Avery's Riding Hood character was from Red Hot Riding Hood. Says Paul…
The tell-tale signs: Red appears shorter and cartoonier in that film, with a shaded nose and three fingers and a thumb in most shots, whereas she gained some stature and a fourth finger in the later shorts. And while her appearance in Little Rural Riding Hood is all reuse (except for the photo of her seen at the beginning of the cartoon) her dance footage is from Swingshift Cinderella, not Red Hot Riding Hood.
And since I mentioned Tex Avery, I should have mentioned Preston Blair, who brought Ms. Riding Hood to life when he executed some of the most memorable animation ever done.