Bill Oppenheim writes:

I'm pretty sure Roger Carmel was fired from The Mothers-in-Law and died years later. It was a drug overdose?

Well, since this weblog seems to be in full Death Mode, I might as well answer this. Roger C. Carmel was one of the most prolific character actors of his day. He was on just about everything, often many times, but most folks remember him from his two appearances as the hedonist of space, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, on the original Star Trek. Fans of The Dick Van Dyke Show remember him as Doug Wesley, the accountant who wouldn't give Buddy and Sally a raise because Alan Brady had invested too much money in Martin and Lewis coloring books. (And no, he never appeared in the Gold Key comic.) Anyway, Carmel was a co-star of a situation comedy called The Mothers-In-Law which was on NBC for two seasons beginning in 1967. The main stars, seen in the photo above, were Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard.

It was a pretty good TV show…the last series produced by Desi Arnaz. At the end of its first season, Carmel had a salary dispute with Señor Arnaz and took a hike — or at least, that was the official story. The rumor was that he was using drugs and causing delays in production. Desi gave him two weeks to clean up his act, he didn't and was terminated. I can't swear that's true but either way, he was replaced in the role by Richard Deacon.

Carmel died some time later…in 1986. One of his last jobs was doing the voice of a sinister crocodile on a cartoon special I wrote. He was a delightful man and I remember him telling us with childlike amazement that he was being paid a very nice fee to appear the following weekend at a Star Trek convention. The amazement was because he'd done hundreds of roles on different TV shows and in movies that were long forgotten…but those few days he'd worked on Star Trek two decades earlier were still earning him considerable fame and fortune. He'd been on Batman, I Spy, Hogan's Heroes, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Munsters, Hawaii Five-O, and all those Universal westerns and detective shows, and no one (but for clowns like me) ever asked him about any of them. Star Trek, which at the time hadn't meant any more to him than any other job, was providing him with a tidy income.

There are only a few TV shows that still have that kind of commerce. There's no real money in having been on Bonanza or Mannix or That Girl, but every single actor who's alive and ever appeared on The Andy Griffith Show has been offered tons of money to go down South and sign autographs. There are annual Dark Shadows conventions and a series of Get Smart reunions are now being promoted. You wonder why certain shows and not others.

The Internet Movie Database lists the cause of death for Roger C. Carmel as suicide but as I recall, it was ruled an accidental drug overdose. Some friends found him at home in bed surrounded by cocaine paraphernalia. If you go to that link to look at his list of credits, by the way, I think the TV roles listed there represent about a tenth of all he did. A good actor.

The fine comic illustrator Paul Chadwick writes to say…

Ritter picked one good script, though. The guy never had better chemistry than with Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade. Funny stuff. It was great seeing such a sunny TV personality do dark Southern Gothic. It would be interesting to hear your insider view on what a sitcom might do when the star dies. Shut down immediately? Write it in? Plastic surgery plot? Carry on with an unacknowledged replacement, like Bewitched?

It hasn't been a good week for Billy Bob, who was quoted as a good friend of Warren Zevon's in those obits, and I believe I saw somewhere that he was close to Johnny Cash.

As for what the series should do…well, I have to admit that I've never seen 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter, so I don't know how it might fit to do a storyline where the character died. You can do that easily with a supporting character, like they did when Jack Soo passed away during the run of Barney Miller, or Nick Colasanto died while still a regular on Cheers.

The three big precedents here would probably be Chico and the Man, News Radio, and The Royal Family. In the latter, Redd Foxx died from a heart attack on the set, which was kind of a festival of irony. Not only was it one of Redd's signature bits to feign a coronary but the series had originally been entitled Chest Pains. At the time, The Royal Family had just debuted to good ratings, and I believe there was a feeling that they couldn't give up on a potential hit without trying to keep it alive. The death was written into the storyline and some new cast members were added but it didn't work. Then again, the show might not have held up with Redd.

In the case of News Radio, when Phil Hartman was murdered, his character was written out and replaced by a new, not dissimilar character. The show lasted another season but I think there's a consensus that that's about how much longer it would have lasted even with Phil. Of course, it's easier to replace a guy who works at the office than a character who's the head of a family.

Regarding Chico: At the time Freddie Prinze killed himself, I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, which was produced by the same company so I observed some of the concerns. There was an immediate determination that the show had to continue…

• NBC wanted that because at the time, they had only two successful situation comedies on the whole network — Chico and the Man, and Sanford and Son. There was no other strong sitcom waiting in the wings and so there was the fear that the network's whole Friday night schedule, including Sanford, would collapse. (Later, when Mr. Foxx walked off Sanford and Son, they went to ridiculous lengths to try to do the show without him…episodes with Son but no Sanford, followed by a series called The Sanford Arms which had neither. And later, Foxx tried a show called just Sanford (no Son) and that didn't work, either.)
• Jimmie Komack's production company wanted desperately to keep it going. Apart from Kotter, every one of their other shows (like Mr. T and Tina) and pilots had either flopped or was about to. So the order came down to keep Chico and the Man alive at all costs.
• And the folks who did Chico wanted to keep their jobs. There was a sense of Why should we be penalized because of what Freddie did? I don't think that's a terrible motive.

There was brief talk of just casting another actor as Chico. One thing which I think scuttled that was that at Freddie's funeral, a woman ran up to a grieving Jack Albertson (Prinze's co-star) and handed him what Albertson thought was a photo of Freddie. Albertson said, "No autographs now," and the woman said, "No, this is a picture of my son. He looks just like Freddie Prinze. Give him the job!" That struck everyone as so grotesque that they decided to look for another way to bring in a kid who could be called Chico (to keep the title and theme song intact) and they wound up bringing in a younger actor who The Man kept calling "Chico." Those episodes are largely forgotten today but the change kept the show alive for more than a year, sans Prinze, and I would guess it was considered a successful recovery by NBC and the producers.

I assume they won't try just having another actor come in and take over the role on Ritter's series. It sorta worked on Bewitched, replacing Dick York with Dick Sargent but York hadn't died so the replacement wasn't a reminder of a real death. Same thing when Richard Deacon replaced Roger C. Carmel on The Mothers-in-Law or several other examples. Bewitched was also such an unrealistic show, filled with special effects and unreal characters, that going from York to Sargent may not have been all that jarring for most viewers. (No one seems to have noticed when, mid-run, they changed the actress who played Gladys Kravitz but again, that was a supporting role.)

With a more realistic show and an actor as important to the series as I assume Ritter is to his, they probably won't just recast. Eight Simple Rules seems to be important to ABC's Tuesday night lineup so they'll probably try and keep it going with a storyline change and a new character or two…but they may not. Someplace in some filing cabinet at ABC, there are detailed breakdowns of the show's ratings that yield a view, perhaps an accurate one, of how strong its audience is. There may even be testing to determine how many viewers are tuning in to watch John Ritter and if they don't have such numbers, they may have a fast survey done. Assuming the show looks like it still has legs and that it might doom Tuesday to lose it, they'll regroup. Standard Operating Procedure would probably be to try and bring in some strong, experienced star (possibly a woman) to play a relative or other guardian who assumes the parental function and explain that Ritter's character is away or deceased. After a decent interval has passed, we'll hear what they're going to do.

If you read the Esquire article to which I linked earlier, you might want to also read this piece by the photographer who took the photo that was under discussion.

I don't expect anyone to be able to answer this (or even to care about it) but yesterday, the Trio satellite TV channel reran an episode of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In that had as its special guests, Debbie Reynolds, Peter Sellers and Johnny Carson. But it didn't say that in any of the TV listings, including the one on the Trio website. This listing read:

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In – Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, guests Debbie Reynolds, Coslough Johnson and Johnny Carson.

Coslough Johnson is the brother of series regular Arte Johnson, and he was one of the writers on Laugh-In. He wasn't billed on this episode as a guest and I didn't notice him appearing on-camera in it. So why is his name in the current TV listing instead of Peter Sellers? I can only guess that Coslough did a bit part in the episode. Perhaps I missed it (he looks a lot like Arte) or perhaps it's been cut from the current syndication prints…or it could even have been chopped out of the show before it originally aired. Such cuts are not uncommon. Then, the theory would go, when the syndication list was made up, someone went back to the files to get the names of the guest stars, and there was an old contract in there for Coslough, or his name was on a call sheet. Then (still theorizing), that person thought that was the name of some famous performer, better known than Peter Sellers.

This kind of thing happens more often than you'd think. And it wreaks havoc for historians of this stuff.

Here's an L.A. Times article on why their polling results differ so from the Field Poll. As they note, when you factor in the margin of error, their poll says that the recall is supported by between 47% and 53% of California's likely voters whereas the Field Poll says it's between 50.5% and 59.5%. Thus, the two polls are not really in conflict, at least on that question.

Mark Fiore has a wonderful animated Flash political cartoon about 9/11.

Here's a link to an obituary for Jay Morton, who was a writer for Max Fleischer's cartoon studio, and who is said to have coined the opening of the Superman cartoons where they said, "Faster than a speeding bullet…more powerful than a locomotive, etc."

I don't know if that's true but Mr. Morton had another achievement in the world of comic books. Those of you who read my history of the Fox and Crow comics (reprinted in my new book, Wertham Was Right) saw the name of Jay Morton in the following context. I was writing about how cartoonist James F. Davis moved down to Florida to work for the studio. There, he began moonlighting for a company called Editorial Art Service that was run by two men named Sangor and Hughes and which produced comic book material for various publishers…

A writer at Fleischer's named Jay Morton had a connection with Sangor and Hughes. He wrote stories for them and enlisted others at the animation studio to write and/or draw for E.A.S., the work appearing mainly in Standard books like Coo-Coo Comics. Most would moonlight, doing their work evenings and weekends, but a lot of it was done during working hours in the Fleischer studio. Davis became one of many who would hide his comic book pages when a supervisor came by, and hurriedly return to animating Popeye cartoons.

Then in 1941, Paramount Pictures, which released the Fleischers' output, did the same thing to them that Columbia had done to Charlie Mintz. Max and Dave were severed from their own studio and Paramount took control of it, eventually renaming it Famous Studios and moving it back to Manhattan…James F. Davis moved back to New York, but Jay Morton did not, electing to remain in Florida where he became, it is said, enormously wealthy in the real estate trade.

Back in Manhattan, Davis found a scarcity of animation work. But he reasoned that, with the dissolution of the Fleischer/Famous studio in Florida, and Morton's exit from the field, the Editorial Art Service might be getting desperate for material. He approached Richard Hughes and found this to be true. An arrangement was formed whereby Davis would act as go-between, receiving a commission whenever he could enlist animation talent to write and draw for E.A.S.

Davis soon moved out here to work for the animation studios of Hollywood, where he ran the same kind of moonlighting "shop" that Morton had run while at Fleischer's. It was very successful and filled hundreds of comic books with wonderful cartooning. And the idea should be added to Jay Morton's list of accomplishments.

Yeah, I worked with John Ritter…once. But once was enough to see that he was a very nice guy who oozed professionalism. It was a silly, unimportant project for ABC for low money, and he was doing it as a favor to someone. Still, he was on time and prepared, and even though the producer had told him he'd be done in two hours, he didn't complain one bit when the taping ran twice that. That was my strongest impression about him and it stuck with me when I watched him on TV. Three's Company was a silly, unrealistic show but it worked, and I think the main reason it worked was that no matter what he was called on to do, Ritter was a pro, doing it about as well as a person could. He got every laugh in the script and then some, and when it was someone else's turn to get the laugh, he supported them with his reactions. Thereafter, he seemed to have an unerring knack for picking the wrong script. For a time, Penn and Teller once had a "bad movie" film society in New York that would convene every Saturday night in Times Square and go en masse to see the worst thing playing for several blocks around. It was always decided by majority rule except if "The John Ritter Rule" applied, meaning that if anything was playing with Ritter in it, no vote was necessary. The movies may have been bad but I doubt John was ever bad in any of them. Still, his career suffered for a time and it's good to remember that it didn't end there; that he had made a successful comeback with 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.

The one afternoon I spent with him, he got to talking about some of the guest roles that had preceded his stardom on Three's Company. For a time, he was on everything. Most folks remember him as the minister who married Ted and Georgette on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but he was pleased I recalled a Bob Newhart Show in which he played a waiter in an ice cream parlor, and a M*A*S*H in which he was a soldier who went crazy. He told me that whenever he did a few days on some series, he would envy the actors who were on the show every week and wish they'd make him a regular. On Three's Company, which he was then doing, he knew that every actor they hired for one episode was thinking the same thing, and he told me he sometimes made a point of telling them, "I felt that way when I was in your position. And someday, you'll have a series and you'll be telling the same thing to your day players." I thought that was pretty classy. In fact, he struck me as a pretty classy guy. Still, as I followed his career thereafter, I often thought of the old line about Sammy Davis, Junior: "You wish someone would tell him that you're allowed to turn things down."

Disney unveils DVDs that self-destruct in 48 hours. So how long before someone comes out with the technology to copy them onto regular DVDs?

The Los Angeles Times poll on the California recall says that the removal of Gray Davis is favored by 50% (boot him) to 47% (keep him). Since the margin of error on this poll is plus or minus three points, it's a statistical tie. On the second half of the poll, they have Bustamante at 30%, Schwarzenegger at 25% and McClintock at 18%. Here's the whole thing.

Meanwhile, the Stanford University/Knowledge Networks Survey has the recall winning 62% to 38%, Schwarzenegger at 40%, Bustamante at 28% and McClintock at 8%. This poll (here are the details) has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 points.

Meanwhile, another poll (the one local station KABC is using) has Davis being dumped by 62% and kept by 37%, Schwarzenegger at 39%, Bustamante at 29% and McClintock at 16%. This one is plus or minus 3.7% and here's the full thing.

And the Field Poll has the recall passing 55% to 40%, Bustamante at 30%, Schwarzengger at 25% and McClintock at 13%. Margin of error: 4.5 points. Here's that one.

So which one is right? No one knows, but if you cruise the political discussion boards, the answer's simple: The one that says that what you want to have happen is likely to happen.

Only two things interest me about these totals. One is that their wide variance ought to remind us how approximate polls are. If two people do the same math problem and come up with two different answers, the logical reaction is that at least one of them is wrong. But we often believe polls in spite of that.

Secondly: The Field Poll says that if McClintock drops out, almost all his votes will go to Arnold. If McClintock is really 32 points behind him (as per the second of the above surveys), then he might as well. If he's seven points behind him, he probably won't. So one of these polls, suspect as its accuracy may be, could influence the election. That's above and beyond the fact that polls have a certain self-fulfilling tendency, energizing this or that group to turn out, donate or stay home.

My pal Buzz Dixon just sent me a link to the online version of the cover story in the current Esquire. It's called "The Falling Man," it's by Tom Junod, and it's about the attempts to identify a certain victim at the World Trade Center who was caught in one haunting photograph. The article is also about what that photograph symbolizes and about our own complex feelings for the people who died that day and in that way.

Here is a link to the article but I want to warn you: It's a long piece and after you read it, you'll probably be in a very odd mood…not necessarily good or bad but odd. As I am at this moment. Part of me wants to move past the horror of what was done to so many people that day. And part of me doesn't. The "move on" part will inevitably win because it has to, because grief is such a non-constructive human condition and to triumph over it is constructive.

But every so often, you can't help but pause and remember. And shiver.

Here's David Corn on how little has been done in the cause of "homeland security."

What I find interesting about this issue is that, apart from a few broadside assurances from folks like Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft, I don't see any rebuttal to this point of view. It's one of those topics where if you confront a Bush supporter with it, they kind of change the subject, cough, attack the messenger and wave the flag for victory in Iraq.

Seriously, I'd love to be convinced this is an erroneous viewpoint. If anyone out there comes across an article not clearly by an administration flack that says we're doing enough to secure chemical plants, nuclear facilities, airports, etc., please send me the link so I can post it.

This article in The Philadelphia Daily News asks some simple but largely-ignored questions about what occurred in this country on 9/11/01 and in its aftermath. I think a few of these questions probably have easy, non-controversial answers and to think that they don't is to descend into the crazier conspiracy theories. But I think some of them are good questions, deserving of better responses than we've gotten from the current administration or from the media. And I think we'd all be better off if all of them were answered in full, even the screwier ones. (Thanks to Jim Keegan for the pointer.)

Here is a website devoted to the nearly 3000 people who perished on 9/11/01. If nothing else, you might want to just scroll through the list of names to remember just how many human beings that is.

The cover of just about every monster magazine ever published except for Famous Monsters of Filmland can be viewed here.

Many of the covers for Famous Monsters of Filmland can be found here.

The covers for Life Magazine can be viewed here.

The covers for a great many issues of TV Guide are over here.

The covers for Time Magazine can be viewed here.