The Disney folks have lost another round in the big Winnie the Pooh battle. Here are the details. This thing will not end without some major changes in the Walt Disney Company.

As sick as I am of writing about the recently-deceased, I have to write about Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo. I don't know if the formal obits will make it clear but Mr. Keeshan, with whom so many of us grew up, was an extraordinary individual. He had a capacity to talk to (not "down to") children and to host a very difficult live TV show…and this was a man who, when he first got into television, was by his own admission largely devoid of talent. As is well-known, his first role was as Clarabelle the Clown on the original Howdy Doody show. Less well-known is that he started there as a kind of go-fer/errand boy for the show's star, "Buffalo" Bob Smith. Among his duties was to herd the kids in and out of the show's Peanut Gallery and to get them to shut the hell up during the live broadcast.

In this capacity, he occasionally got on camera and when some NBC exec suggested it looked wrong to have a guy in a sport coat on the show, Keeshan was sent off to work up a clown costume. He started at the public library where he learned what he could about clowns, then he rummaged through the wardrobe and make-up departments and soon, Clarabelle was born.

Clarabelle did not speak, partly because clowns were traditionally mute but mainly because Keeshan couldn't. By his own admission, he was too untrained and untalented to utter an on-camera word. By trial and error though, he managed to develop a pantomimed personality for his clown that the kids loved. It was mean, petulant and often quite nasty but it was Clarabelle. The only one who didn't love him was "Buffalo" Bob, who lived for the musical segments of his show and who was frustrated that the clown couldn't play an instrument. They tried giving Keeshan lessons but he had a tin ear and no sense of rhythm: He couldn't even play a triangle on the beat. At one point, Smith fired Keeshan and put a trained musician in the Clarabelle make-up…but the trained musician failed to capture the popular Clarabelle personality and they had to hire Keeshan back. That happened at least once, maybe twice.

After many years of Smith getting very wealthy off Howdy Doody, several cast members, led by Keeshan, made a stand and demanded better pay. They were fired and it looked like Bob Keeshan's TV career was over. But after failing in some non-television jobs, he made an amazing comeback with two different local shows on which he actually spoke. He had to, since he was the entire cast and mime wouldn't have worked. Eventually, it all led to Captain Kangaroo, which he did on CBS for thirty years. For much of that time, the show was live and it had to be done twice each morning, back to back. Keeshan and his small stock company (often, just Lumpy "Mr. Green Jeans" Brannum plus one puppeteer) would do an entire hour telecast live and then, after he said good-bye, they'd have sixty seconds to reset everything and do the entire show again for a different time zone. Somehow, it worked.

I actually watched the first telecast of Captain Kangaroo in October of '55. I was three and a half years old but I still remember it. A few years back when I worked with Mr. Keeshan, I of course told him this. He was very polite about it but I had the feeling that lots of people around my age told him that and he tended to not believe it.

The project was a show called CBS Storybreak, which we taped over at Television City on Stage 33, the home of The Price is Right. Keeshan had retired Cap'n Kangaroo by then and he hosted our show as Bob Keeshan. The network wanted him because of his enormous credibility in the area of children's programming and the fact that his hosting would help endorse a show they wished to have viewed as enriching. Mr. Keeshan, having learned well from "Buffalo" Bob, charged CBS what they felt was an exorbitant fee…but they paid it. One of the Business Affairs guys grumbled that the last few years Captain Kangaroo was on the network, as they kept cutting back his show and moving it to worse and worse time slots, he held the network up for vast amounts of cash. He kept threatening (they claimed) to go public and tell America that CBS didn't care about programming for children, and they essentially paid him off to let them phase out his show without a huge protest.

I don't know to what extent that's true but if it's completely true, it only adds to my respect for the man. Holding CBS up for money is an admirable skill, and I wish I was as good at it as he apparently was. Beyond that, I found him to be a genuinely kind, soft-spoken man who was everything you'd want Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan to be. He answered all my silly questions about his various TV endeavors, but he also kept asking everyone on the show about our backgrounds, particularly what kinds of training and education had led us to our present stations in life. He talked at length with the make-up lady about her family problems and joked with her about how, all the years he did Captain Kangaroo, he "grew into" the part and required less and less make-up. Eventually, he said, he reached the stage where they had to try and make him look younger than he really was. "That was a frightening moment," he said.

He said that despite turning into the kindly old man he played, he never got recognized in public by the visual. People, he said, only recognized him from his voice. It was a wonderful voice…warm and instantly friendly, and so much a part of so many lives for so many years. It's amazing to think that for so long, that man couldn't even use that voice in front of a camera. And it's sad to think of all the kids who won't grow up hearing it.

Okay, it's set up. If you'd like to convey a Get Well message or a message of respect to Julius Schwartz, send it to schwartz@newsfromme.com. I will print 'em out and send them to the man himself. Tell your friends! Tell your neighbors! I just bought a whole case of paper from Office Depot and will gladly use up most of it for this worthy cause. (NOTE: If you sent a message to that address in the wee small hours of this morning, it might have bounced back to you. Send it again. It works now.)

The great comic book editor Julius Schwartz is back in the hospital again. He was in for pneumonia, then he went home, then he fell in his home and…well, let's just say he's not in great shape but he's still with us. Julie is 88 (here's Don Markstein's bio of him) and had been living alone since his wife Jean passed away some time ago. Apparently, his days of living alone are over and he's going to be moving in with family or some sort of senior residence.

People often write me and ask me to "pass along" their wishes so I've decided to expedite the process. Julie is not on the Internet so I'm going to set up a special e-mail address for messages to Julius Schwartz. Every few days between now and the Super Bowl, I'm going to print all the messages you send to that address and FedEx them to wherever Julie is recuperating. I'll delete any messages that are rude or uncommonly long (say, if someone tries to upload articles they've written) but otherwise, I'll just print it out and ship it to Schwartz. Spread the word that this would be a good time and way to tell one of the great men of our field what his work has meant to you. I'll post the address here tomorrow.

We don't hear nearly enough from Merrill Markoe, one of the smartest, funniest women I've ever encountered. Here she is discussing George W. Bush's proposals to improve the lot of marriage in this country.

Yesterday was a bad day for people who worked with Stan Freberg. Not only did we lose Ann Miller, who starred in his most famous commercial, but death also claimed Stan's long-time friend and musical arranger, The Great Billy May. That's what everyone called him. In fact, when Stan introduced me to him, he said, "Mark, I'd like you to meet The Great Billy May." And later at the party where that occurred, I heard other people saying to him, "I always wanted to meet The Great Billy May." There was not an ounce of sarcasm in that title…only honesty and love.

Billy was one of the great bandleaders and arrangers of American popular music. To please both Freberg and Sinatra, you had to be. He arranged most of Stan's records, including both volumes (thirty-some-odd years apart) of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America. It represented only a small part of his credits, some of which are recounted in this obit. Many of his albums are still in print, and probably always will be. Listen to any of 'em and you'll know why they called him what they called him.

So far, none of the obits I've seen for Ann Miller have mentioned what was to me her most impressive credit. She was a wonderful star of musical comedy on stage and screen, but she also starred in what was, at the time of its filming, the most expensive TV commercial ever made. In 1970, Stan Freberg wrote, produced and directed a spot for Great American Soups that proved more memorable than the product. Ann played a housewife who broke into a Busby Berkeley style production number when her husband (played by Dave Willock) asked her what was for dinner. One of the costliest parts of the spot came when a giant Great American Soup can came up from below the floor and Ms. Miller tap-danced on top of it.

To accomplish this, they had to cut a hole in the floor of a soundstage at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio and install an elevator…but to Stan, no expense was too great, especially when someone else was paying for it. The sponsor may not have been too happy but Ann later credited the commercial with revitalizing her career in the seventies. She remained a star 'til the end, playing on Broadway and in regional productions. Many of the latter were productions of the musical, Follies, where she often sang Stephen Sondheim's defiant "I'm Still Here," a song which could have been sub-titled "The Ann Miller Story." Sad to say, she's not still here…but what a life that woman had.

Michael Kinsley on the current definition of "compassionate conservatism."

One of my right-wing friends has an interesting take on all this proposed spending, deficits and enlargement of government. He thinks it's all a smokescreen; that Bush is saying what Bush has to say to get re-elected and to have long enough coat-tails to keep Democrats from recapturing either the House or the Senate. Then, once he's got his four more years, Bush and Congress will simply kill all the expensive programs and enact everything on the Conserative Wish List. In other words, "Let's vote for Bush because in our hearts, we know he won't do what he's currently promising." It's an interesting argument…one we'll probably hear from his most fervent supporters as a reason to vote for him, and from his more fervent detractors as a reason not to.

Andrew Leal, who is the Webmaster for Toonjunkies.com sends the following to continue our discussion of New York cartoon voice actors. And isn't this a lot more important than discussing who's going to be the Democratic nominee for president?

Very much intrigued by the present discussions on your site regarding New York voice actors on records and in cartoons. Since Frank Milano has come up, I've sometimes wondered which sources are correct regarding Mr. Lizard myself, especially since most of the other times that I've heard Mr. Milano, they haven't been dialogue roles. From the 30's through the 50's, Frank Milano appears to have worked semi-frequently in radio as an animal imitator, and much less frequently in speaking dialect roles (usually Greek or Italian). He played Flush the Dog in an early New York broadcast of The Barretts of Wimpole Street on Lux Radio Theater and according to radio historian John Dunning and others, was the resident animal specialist on the kids western Bobby Benson and the B-Bar Riders, as various cattle, panthers, dogs, and Bobby's horse Amigo. Also played cats in episodes of Suspense and CBS Radio Workshop. In television, UCLA's film and TV archive identifies him as providing "special vocal effects" on the Wally Cox sitcom Mr. Peepers along with Donald Bain, another (and judging from most radio memoirs, far more active and better known) radio animal imitator. All sources seem to agree on his having worked on the early puppet show Rootie Kazootie as well, puppeteering and voicing Little Nipper and the villainous Poison Zoomack.

It strikes me as just possible that Mr. Milano may have performed a similar capacity on the Total TV production(s), since I do seem to recall an occasional animal sound being needed, but not certain. I don't know if anyone could or has contacted Allen Swift or Jackson Beck (who appear to be the only survivors from the Total TV troupe) to see if either might be able to shed some light on this.

As for Gilbert Mack, he was part of the New York dubbing group that handled so many 60's Japanese imports. Fred Patten has identified him as the voice of Bob Brilliant in Gigantor, and most sources identify him as Pauley Cracker in Kimba the White Lion (last time I saw the latter series, it was in Spanish, so I can't judge for myself). Some sources suggest that he was also amongst the several actors to impersonate FDR on March of Time (a roster which also the late Art Carney and Bill Johnstone, one of the post Welles portrayors of The Shadow). Not certain about this myself, since those particular texts were rife with errors, but fairly likely that he might have played it once or twice, in as much as most New York actors worked the show at some point and often a supporting cast member would have to "understudy" if FDR or another world leader happened to figure in a sudden news bulletin before air time, and the regular performers were unavailable for the broadcast, or whatnot.

I haven't gotten around to contacting Allen Swift or Jackson Beck, but I probably should. (At least one other regular cast member from the Total Television troupe is still with us. George S. Irving is still performing. Here's a link to an interview from a couple years back.)

I seriously doubt Total Television hired Frank Milano just to make a few animal sounds. One of the things you learn in researching cartoon voice work is that studios are always…well, I was going to say "cheap" but it's not always cheap to hire as few actors as you can get away with. Until the late sixties when a change in union rules altered the pay structure, you did a cartoon with a tiny stock company. Most of the non-primetime Hanna-Barbera cartoons were performed by two guys — Daws Butler and Don Messick, Daws Butler and Doug Young, etc. There were a few that were just Daws Butler. They minimized female roles (or had men do them) because that would have meant spending a whopping $25-$50 to hire a third person. H-B never hired anyone to make an occasional animal sound. They'd have one of the actors doing a regular character also do it, like Mel Blanc doing the barks for Dino along with playing Barney Rubble.

I'm going to research this a little more and get back to you all. Milano may have been one of the Narrators on the King Leonardo show. But thanks for the info, Andrew. Nice to know so many folks besides me care about these things.

Here's the Associated Press obit on George Woodbridge. And I forgot to mention that George had been invited as a Guest of Honor at the last two Comic-Con Internationals and had to cancel both times due to health problems. So obviously he had not been well for some time.

By the by: My favorite comics news site, ¡Journalista!, this morning mentioned my report on George's passing but said, "I haven't been able to find anyone else to confirm the news or provide further information." I'm guessing Dirk Deppey, who is usually a very good reporter, missed that I also linked to the New York Times obit several hours before he posted. But that can happen to anyone, and I was pleased by his caution, feeling he needed another source besides me (even me with a Sergio quote) before he took the report as firm. So no, to answer an e-mail this morn, I was not insulted that my word alone was not good enough for him. I really think Internet reporting needs more to be more prudent about passing along info like this. Just because one source said it doesn't mean it's true.

Here's a link to the New York Times obit for George Woodbridge.

One of the feral cats in my backyard waits while a feral possum dines on the food I put out, mainly for the cats. We still happily accept donations of money to feed the raccoons, possums, pussycats, hummingbirds and other critters. Click here to donate via PayPal and rest assured you're feeding them, not me. You can't afford to feed me.

My chum Earl Kress — and I know enough not to doubt him about this kind of thing — says both I and most reference books are wrong. Frank Milano, he says, was not the voice of Mr. Wizard the Lizard on the "Tooter Turtle" cartoons seen on the 1960 King Leonardo cartoon show. Earl is certain that voice was supplied by Sandy Becker, the famed New York kid show host. I think Allen Swift played Tooter, so I don't know what voice on that series might have been done by Mr. Milano, if he even did a regular character at all. But his name appeared in the credits.

Interesting Note: The company that produced King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, as the show was originally called, was Total Television. Total later produced a number of other shows including Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (1963), Underdog (1964), The Beagles (1966) and Go-Go Gophers (1968) that featured new cartoons wrapped around reruns from their previous shows. As a result, Frank Milano, who passed away in '62, was credited as a voice actor (and presumably paid decent residuals) on shows produced years after his death. Nice work if you can get it…

Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) is one of the smartest, cleverest gents on this planet. Ken Plume (of IGN Filmforce) is a terrific interviewer. Here's the latter interviewing the former.

David McLallen went to see The Producers and here's what he sent me…

Saw the current touring cast in Denver last night and I must say I was surprised & impressed. Not so much by Lewis Stadlen, although he was really good. I expected that. He is, after all, an old Broadway hand. But "Max" had the show stolen right out from under him…by Leo. Alan Ruck, who for so many years played the slimy, smarmy Stuart on Spin City, can sing! His voice, his acting, made him a perfect Leo Bloom! I was pleasantly stunned!

Ths show, of course, was precisely what one would expect — hilarious, side-splitting, laugh-out loud funny. But hey, it's Mel Brooks, the man who turned farting into an art form in Blazing Saddles. Charley Izabella King was a really good Ulla, (the tour's former Ulla moved to the Broadway company) although there were a few times when her "Swedish" accent got so thick that she was hard to understand. Lee Roy Reams as Roger, and especially Josh Prince as Carmen Ghia were fantastic. I know Reams is no kid, but he more than kept up with a very demanding role. (His bio on imdb indicates that he's actually 61!)

I came away with a stomach ache from laughing so hard, and the very appreciative audience awarded the show an instant standing "o" the moment that Ruck & Stadlen appeared in the curtain call. What a great show!

It is, and I wish I could see it with Lewis J. Stadlen, who is one of my favorite Broadway performers. If you ever get to see the DVD of the recent production of The Man Who Came to Dinner with Nathan Lane, watch for Stadlen. He doesn't show up until the third act but when he does, he proceeds to walk off with the entire play and most of the scenery.

And I wonder how many folks know that Stadlen is the son of Allen Swift, the great cartoon voice actor I mentioned in the previous posting. Swift was a New York kids' show host and also the voice of many a character on Howdy Doody. Anyway, thanks, David! Wish I could have been there.