The passing of the great Al Hirschfeld seems to have raised the value of his work. I guess it's because of the attention his passing brought to his artistry. It couldn't be because the death of a man who was 99 and a half years old caught the art world unaware…could it?

As eight e-mails in the last hour have informed me, the famous actress who filled in for her daughter on a soap opera was Joan Crawford, holding down the role that Christina Crawford had on Secret Storm. Here's a page with all the details, including the fact that Ms. Crawford was drinking heavily during the taping. Apparently, the incident was dramatized in the movie, Mommie Dearest, but I guess I never made it that far.

My buddy Rick Scheckman provides the following info. And trust me…he's always right about this kind of stuff:

The below recounting of the switchover of Harry Morton's that was on the web page today is slightly incorrect. The episode in question "The Iron Deer" was the first episode of the second filmed season of Burns And Allen. The way it happened was thus:

Blanche Morton is mad at Harry and is standing in her kitchen holding an iron skillet to hit Harry over the head. She calls him into the kitchen. George off-stage calls out hold it. Blanche freezes in place and George walks on-screen and explains that Fred Clark has left the show to go to NY and from now on Harry Morton will be played by Larry Keating who he brings on and introduces in front of the frozen in place Blanche. He asks Larry if he has ever met his TV wife and calls Bea into the foreground to meet Larry Keating. They exchange pleasantries. Then George says it is time to go on with the scene. He and Keating walk off and the scene resumes and the new Harry Morton walks in and gets hit with the skillet.

Fred Clark had left on bad terms with George and was not in the transition episode.

When Bill Goodwin was replaced by Harry Von Zell in the live days, he was introduced by Goodwin as the new announcer. And when Hal March was replaced by John Brown, George did a similar scene to the Keating change in welcoming John Brown explaining that March had left for NY with his partner Bob Sweeney to do a television show. Brown was shortly replaced with Fred Clark because his name turned up in Red Channels.

That sounds right. And into all this talk about how to replace departed cast members, I should mention that soap operas have this problem occasionally…and had it rather often back when they were done live. They would sometimes just have another actor come in and start playing Diana's husband or whatever the role was, and there were a few times when they'd have a voiceover announce the change. I seem to remember that there was some soap where a key role was played by the daughter of some famous actress. The daughter was off the show for a time and her mother came in and filled her part for a few weeks. At the beginning of the broadcast, a voiceover made the announcement that So-and-So, who played such-and-such a character was off for a while, and that her mother was playing her character until she returned. I don't recall the actresses or the soap but I'm pretty sure it happened that way.

By the way: Yes, this is the same Rick Scheckman who works for Late Show with David Letterman, where his duties include film coordination, appearing occasionally in sketches, and impregnating the host's girl friend. He's a good friend and a decent human being, as evidenced by the fact that he was the first person to donate money to our Feed the Raccoons fund. (Yeah, I know I'm really pushing it. But you should see how much seven raccoons can eat…)

Jim Korkis has a nice two-part biography of the great animator, Ub Iwerks, over at Jim Hill Media. Here's that link.

Every so often, I hear about a theatrical production in another city that sounds so intriguing, I momentarily mull if there's a way to jump on a plane and go see it. The only time I ever acted on it was when Jerry Lewis debuted on Broadway in Damn Yankees. My friend Paul Dini and I decided to spring for the cost, I ordered opening night tickets for the show…and then, just before I called the travel agent, a comic convention in New York that coincided with that date called and invited to fly me back to be a guest. I said, "I'll do it, and I'll bet I could get Paul Dini to come back, too." The convention organizer said, "Really? That would be great." So Paul and I got someone else to pay for our air fares and, just to make it really weird, the convention put us up at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. Damn Yankees was playing in the Marquis Theatre located inside the Marriott Marquis.

I don't expect that to happen again. I don't even expect to go see this. But I must admit that I'm intrigued at the prospect of Patty Duke starring as Momma Rose in a production of Gypsy. She may not be able to sing like Ethel Merman but she knows a thing or two about the ruthless exploitation of child stars.

I'm not sure how many cities are getting it but tomorrow night (Sunday) is the annual Chabad L'Chaim to Life Telethon. It's on in Los Angeles (starting at 5:00 PM on KCAL, Channel 9) and I think in New York (presumably at 8 PM due to the time difference) and I don't know where else. It's seven hours of dancing Jews, celebrities (including many you've heard of), pleas for money, and generally wonderful Yiddish-style music. It is at times entertaining in a campy manner and at times, genuinely entertaining.

For years, it was hosted by comedian Jan Murray who was wonderful at it. As Jan got older, one aspect of the show got more entertaining. You see, every time they go to the tote board for a new total, they play a peppy Jewish folk tune and a group of young men come out and dance a rousing hora in celebration. It was tough enough for Mr. Murray to host for seven hours but every fifteen minutes or so, he had to join in this dance and as the show wore on, he'd get more and more winded, and I think some people just watched to see if Jan Murray was going to drop dead on camera. Some may even have donated just to hasten the next tote.

The last year or two he did the show, Murray begged off dancing and they brought in Jon Voight to be his "dance-in" (as in, "stand-in") which deprived us of that fun, but there were other joys. One year, Bob Hope was on and did a great job of mentioning the name of the charity about ninety times without once pronouncing it correctly.

"Chabad" is pronounced, like "Chanukah," with the "c" almost but not quite silent. You pronounce such words as if they begin with the "H," but you insert a little inhaled gasp before that letter. That's if you're trying to be correct. If you're Bob Hope, who was about as unJewish as a guy who did one-line jokes could be, you pronounce it with the "ch" sound of "charlie" or "cha-cha." Then to really get it wrong, you put the emphasis on the wrong syllable and…well, it was one of the funnier things Mr. Hope did in his last decade.

I don't know who's hosting this year. After Jan Murray retired, they tried Fyvush Finkel, who did a credible job, and radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who was awful. The publicity for tomorrow night's affair lists celebs including Jeffrey Tambor, Martin Sheen, Regis Philbin, Serena Williams, Magic Johnson, Howie Mandel, Darryl Sabara, and the cast of Friends, but doesn't say who's hosting.

Still, it'll be worth watching just to see the energetic Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, who runs the West Coast Chabad-Lubavitch. There's a page about an earlier Chabad Telethon at this website, including a page where you can see some video excerpts from past broadcasts.

One other thing will be missing besides Jan Murray. My friend, actor-writer Stanley Ralph Ross passed away in 1999. Stanley used to work on the telethon every year, often as its announcer and always answering phones. Stanley was very tall and though a very sweet man, he had a deep, gravelly voice that often got him jobs on cartoon shows as dastardly villains.

Every so often, someone on the phone banks would get a call from some Jew-hater uttering anti-Semitic garbage. If Stanley was around, they'd pass the call over to him and he'd signal the Stage Manager to tell the director to cut to a shot of him if possible. Then he'd tell the caller, "You see that 6'6" Jew on your screen? That's me. Come on down to the station, meet me in the parking lot and say that to my face, you cowardly bastard!"

According to Stanley, he'd hear them gulp and hang up. The telethon after he told me this, I watched and, sure enough, at one point in the middle of a number, they cut suddenly to Stanley and though I couldn't hear him, I could read his lips as he challenged the guy and called him a cowardly Nazi bastard. Then Stanley started laughing and I knew the guy had hung up. I immediately called up, got routed to Stanley and donated a hundred bucks. Best thing I saw on television that year.

I've known William Stout for thirty years and I'm still amazed at his talent and versatility. Talk about a guy who can draw anything. Think I'm kidding? Think I'm just praising a guy 'cause he's a friend of mine? Then take a look at his website and tell me that isn't one amazing artist.

Early next Friday morning (in other words, late Thursday night), Game Show Network is airing an interesting episode of To Tell the Truth from 1967. One of the contestants is Hunter S. Thompson.

Paul Krugman — who really is becoming the columnist most conservatives fear, judging by some of the silly attacks on him — gives a long but readable overview of what he sees as America's current and looming financial crisis. Here's a key paragraph…

A result of the tax-cut crusade is that there is now a fundamental mismatch between the benefits Americans expect to receive from the government and the revenues government collect. This mismatch is already having profound effects at the state and local levels: teachers and policemen are being laid off and children are being denied health insurance. The federal government can mask its problems for a while, by running huge budget deficits, but it, too, will eventually have to decide whether to cut services or raise taxes. And we are not talking about minor policy adjustments. If taxes stay as low as they are now, government as we know it cannot be maintained. In particular, Social Security will have to become far less generous; Medicare will no longer be able to guarantee comprehensive medical care to older Americans; Medicaid will no longer provide basic medical care to the poor.

What makes me think he's probably (unfortunately) correct is that while his detractors will fault certain perhaps-arguable calculations, they kind of skip over or ignore this kind of pronouncement. They don't rebut him by arguing either that cutbacks in the safety net will not happen or even that they're a good thing. Anyway, read the whole piece and decide for yourself.

Peter Sanderson concludes his long but on-target review of this year's Comic-Con International here.

My book, Mad Art, gets a nice review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. You can read that review here and then you can order a copy from Amazon by clicking here. (Sorry that I have to resort to such shameless huckstering but I haven't been able to get Fox News to sue me yet…)

Over in his weblog, my pal Daniel Frank notes…

Mark Evanier discusses the factors that will determine whether John Ritter's show will continue. Evanier left out how the Burns and Allen TV show went through four Harry Mortons, the next-door neighbor. The most famous transition was between Fred Clark and Larry Keating, Mortons number three and four respectively. George Burns interrupts a scene with Clark. He introduces Keating to the audience and explains that he will now be playing the role of Harry Morton. Clark and Keating shake hands; Clark leaves and Keating continues with the scene.

Actually, I think I may have led the discussion awry by dragging in times when one actor went elsewhere and another simply took his place. There's something about a performer dying that puts such changes into another category. It seems to mandate that the character be eliminated and not merely recast. And then it would seem awkward and perhaps disrespectful to merely drop all reference to the departed character, so they usually declare him deceased or say he's moved away.

Either way, it reminds viewers that the real actor, for whom they perhaps had some affection or at least familiarity, is dead. So they have to mourn a second time, and a little genuine grief (or at least, discomfort) invades the otherwise-safe fictional environment. In the realm of comic books, people have even gotten upset when a favorite fictional character has been "killed." It's like, "Why did we need that sadness in our lives?"

I remember that on the original Hollywood Squares game show, they had this situation: When panelist Wally Cox died, there were many episodes taped with him that had yet to air. It would have been ludicrous to not broadcast those shows. Not only would it have been a silly waste of resources but it would have been, in effect, destroying Cox's final work. But game shows — then, more than now — maintain the generally-unspoken fiction that they're live or almost live.

There was the feeling, perhaps correct, that audiences would get confused watching and go, "Hey, I thought Wally Cox had died. What's going on here?" so the producers superimposed the words, "pre-recorded" on the screen whenever Cox was in a solo shot. This clarified things for the more befuddled viewers but reminded all that they were watching a dead person. A lot of people wrote in and said, "You shouldn't air this. Have you no respect for the deceased?" The outpouring was so emotional that later, when Cliff (Charley Weaver) Arquette passed away, the Squares people handled it differently…and still got a lot of that kind of mail.

One presumes the complainers weren't objecting to the broadcast of a television program containing a person who'd passed on. No one writes in and says it's wrong to show I Love Lucy since Lucy, Desi, Bill and Viv have all joined the choir invisibule. But in the context of something current, it unnerved some people. A lot of them said, in effect, "Hey, we watch that kind of TV show to forget about death. If we want that, we'll watch the news."

When a show kills off a major character like McLean Stevenson's on M*A*S*H or John Amos's on Good Times, such sentiments are voiced. Even though no one actually died, there's always mail that says, "I'm still getting over my father's death. Why did you have to put me through another round of mourning?" It's not the cast change that bothers people. It's the issue of death. They get enough of it in real life, they say. Why have it when it isn't necessary?

I don't think that's a terrible question. Sometimes, as in M*A*S*H, killing a major character may be a sound creative decision. M*A*S*H, after all, was about war and it would have been hokey if no one died or if only day players died. I think on Good Times, Amos quit and for a time, the character was simply away, working on an Alaskan pipeline or something. Finally though, the producers felt that making it a show about a family with a deceased father was a better idea than what they had and they explained the absence that way.

Both of these were elective deaths and the actors involved had not died so there was no loss of real human life attached. Fictional characters were dead, not McLean and John. Still, a lot of viewers felt they'd been put through unnecessary emotion. If and when they announce on John Ritter's show that his character died in a car crash or whatever, some of America is going to sit there and really cry for John Ritter…again.

In my earlier discussion of what they'll do, I left out a couple of questions which one hopes the show's writers are given the chance to ask: Will the show work as a show about a family where the father has just died unexpectedly? Would it work better as a show where the father has just been transferred to Greenland so we never see him again? Assuming ABC isn't ready to give up on the series, there's already economic pressure on the show runners to decide they can keep it flying without that character.

They'll probably decide it's a worthy challenge and try, but it won't be the same as saying, "Hey, folks! Here's a new Harry Morton." (Actually, I sometimes wish we had George Burns on every TV show to break the fourth wall, tell us what's going on, and do things like introduce the new actor. But I guess it would just upset people by reminding them that George Burns was dead.)

As you may know, I have raccoons in my backyard. And possums. And stray cats. And hummingbirds. And the amazing thing is that I'm in the middle of an urban area with no nearby parks or hillsides. Still, creatures great and small show up back there to feast on the cat food I put out. Usually, we leave it near the patio door but last night, we put it out by the pool and I got the above snapshot of seven (count 'em — seven) raccoons. The larger one at left is the parent…the mother, I presume. When I'm around, she never takes her eyes off me. The kids don't care much who's around; they're too busy jockeying for position around the food dish, shoving one another aside and occasionally getting into angry squabbles.

This brood has been coming around for a couple of weeks and I've taken many photos of them, but this was the first time I got all seven of them in one shot. If you would like to help me shoulder the burden of feeding these guys, we have links here that will allow you to donate money to this site either via PayPal or by buying something from Amazon. All donations for the next few weeks will be directed not to silly eBay purchases but to Mark's Feed the Raccoons Fund. And believe me: No matter how much you folks give, the way them 'coons eat, it won't be enough.

My pal Aaron Barnhart has some sound thoughts on Conan O'Brien's tenth anniversary.