Here's the way I always heard the story…

One day in the seventies, Paul Newman was having dinner with a friend of his, Ron Buck.  Buck was a writer, artist and entrepreneur who had, among other ventures, built the 9000 Sunset building, as well as a trendy West Hollywood discotheque known as The Factory.  He had worked without credit on several of Newman's films, and he and the actor would later share credit for the screenplay of the 1984 Harry and Son.  Buck was also great at cooking hamburgers on his backyard barbecue.

He had recently inherited an old house in which his mother had lived…on Highland Avenue in Hollywood, a few blocks south of Sunset.  The other dwellings on the block were now housing real estate offices and Buck was trying to decide if he should sell the property or lease it to some business or what.  Somehow, the suggestion arose that he open a gourmet burger restaurant there…a place where folks in the movie business who could afford better than Hamburger Hamlet could get one of Buck's specialties, served with a glass of expensive wine.

The story then gets a bit murkier.  Some say Newman put up the money and Buck put up the expertise and management.  Since Buck was pretty wealthy, this may not be true, or it may be partially true.  Some say Newman just agreed to be a frequent customer and to allow Buck to exploit that fact in publicity.  Either way, the house was remodeled into a restaurant, mostly by enclosing the backyard.  There was a wonderful, gnarled old tree in the middle of the yard and, rather than remove it, the renovators bricked in the ground around it and allowed the tree to remain, reaching up through an opening in the newly-installed roof.

The place was named Hamptons (no apostrophe) because it was to reflect the fun and leisure of vacationing in the Long Island community known as The Hamptons.  Various burgers were named for various friends and soon, it became a very "in" spot for folks who worked at nearby studios, such as Sunset-Gower or Paramount.  The place didn't do much of a dinner business but, at lunchtime, it provided a welcome alternative to the fast food emporiums and taco stands of the neighborhood.  At some point, it became so lucrative that Buck opened a branch on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake.  Some say that after Newman had recouped his initial investment thrice over, he withdrew whatever financial interest he had And gave full ownership to Buck.  That is, if he even had any financial interest in it.

As you can see the story of Hamptons and Paul Newman's involvement is a bit fuzzy.  I vouch for none of the above, but for the fact that the two outlets of Hamptons became very popular.  Once upon a time, it was impossible to get a table at lunch without a long wait.  People loved the eighty varieties of burgers, including Stan's Fantasy (with sour cream and black caviar), The Nelly Burger (creamed horseradish and bacon) and The Foggy Bottom Burger (peanut butter and sour plum jam).  People also loved the little buffet that accompanied each burger, allowing you to further dress your sandwich and pile the plate with salads and side dishes.  The menu did not include french fries — odd for a burger joint — but if the German Potato Salad available in the buffet wasn't to your liking, you could order a platter of Potatoes Hamptons, which was basically hash-browns with sour cream.

I have dozens of memories of Hamptons, commencing when I worked at various studios up in Hollywood and we'd eat there once a week.  It was a great place to spot celebrities and/or talk about that new screenplay.  One friend of mine said it was the best place in Hollywood to meet out-of-work actresses who were waiting tables.

One time, I was lunching with the star of a TV special I was producing and we had a little trouble with a fellow at an adjoining table.  He was a bit drunk and he kept banging his chair into our table and acting like it was our fault.  Finally, my dining companion told him to knock it off, and the drunk stood up like he was ready to start brawling.  My friend stood up to face him and the inebriated gent suddenly realized he was staring at famed dirty wrestler, Roddy "Rowdy" Piper.  He immediately paid his check and left, and Roddy and I returned to our burgers.

This was in the mid-eighties.  As that decade ended, so did the popularity of a lot of restaurants in Hollywood.  An amazing percentage of them folded and Hamptons, while it managed to stay open, was rarely crowded.  It also wasn't very good.  I believe — again, this is fourth-hand info, maybe more — Buck passed away, as did the fellow he had managing the two eateries for him.  Whoever was running it tried a lot of different things, including the introduction of french fries, but it didn't help.  Around 1990, I had a meal there that was so lousy, I scratched Hamptons from my list of places to go.  I was not alone in this decision.

Then, just a few years later, the two outlets of Hamptons were put up for sale, and were quickly purchased.  One group of investors bought the one in Toluca Lake, completely renovated it and  since they didn't get custody of the name, reredubbed it "Mo's."  The original Hamptons on Highland became Hamptons Hollywood Cafe and the group that purchased it also did a lot of remodeling, bringing in a new chef and adding new items to the menu.  For some reason, they installed a "car phone" in the parking lot…a phone booth made out of an old Nash Metropolitan.  And they rounded up a number of investors, one of whom was me.

I never expected to make any money off my investment and, indeed, I didn't.  The whole point of it was to be able to say to friends, "Hey, let's have lunch at my restaurant."  Taken on that basis, it was a lot of fun.  The folks who actually operated the place had a lot of good ideas, some of which were quite amusing.  Since Hamptons had catered largely to an industry (show biz) crowd, they instituted an unusual pricing policy.  Members of the Screen Actors Guild, Writers Guild and Directors Guild paid 10% less, while agents had to pay 10% more.  The latter was meant as a joke but, amazingly, there were actually diners who said, "I'm an agent.  Do I really have to pay 10% more?"  A few of those who asked were told yes, and they did.

The quality of the new Hamptons varied a lot.  Sometimes, it was a great place to eat; sometimes, not.  I didn't have much to do with it except to (a) rewrite the menu to make it sillier, (b) make occasional suggestions and (c) add one menu item: The Groo Burger, based on the way my partner Sergio Aragonés likes his served…Grilled onions on top, then Mozzarella and Cheddar melted over the onions.  I also had the supreme honor of having the barbecued chicken sandwich named for me and so consumed many.

But business was never too good and, in the last year, it declined to an intolerable level.  The place was sold and, for several months, "closed for remodeling."  Last week, they tore down the house where Ron Buck's mother had once lived, and even uprooted and removed that grand, majestic tree.  As of yesterday, when I went by and took the above photo, all that remained of Hamptons was the Nash Metropolitan and half of one of the signs.  I'm not sure what the new owners plan to do with the land, though rumor has it they've decided on condominiums instead of another restaurant.

I already miss Hamptons, even though I stopped going in there about a year ago.  It's not my investment I miss.  I figure, I had enough fun and discounted chicken sandwiches to almost call it even on that count.  I just always found it to be a friendly place to lunch with real good burgers and a great crowd.  What more could you want?

In the above photo, the big guy on the right is Gene Moss, who for most of his career was a top comedy writer, often in tandem with a gent named Jim Thurman.  The little guy on the left is Shrimpenstein, the title character of a short-lived but well-remembered kids' show on Channel 9 in Los Angeles.  Shrimpenstein ran every Monday through Friday at 5:00 in the afternoon.  It was done live and a casual viewer might sometimes have gotten the notion that the managers of KHJ had gone out in the alley, found two drunks, bought them a few extra pints and sent them out to do a TV program, ostensibly for toddlers.

The station was going through a period where it was acting like its parents weren't home.  During this time, it also tried an afternoon dance party show called Groovy, which was broadcast live from Santa Monica Beach.  Fathers all across Los Angeles were racing to get home in time to watch the 15-year-old girls in bikinis flash the camera.  Some left work early so they could also catch Moss and Thurman's televised Happy Hour.

Shrimpenstein went on the air in January of '67.  At the time, almost every local TV station was trying to work a Soupy Sales knock-off, some of them amazingly close.  Channel 9 also offered up — briefly — a morning man named Bill Holly whose show was a precise clone of Soupy's: Pies in the face, guys at the door, dog puppet-gloves reaching into camera range, etc.  Same show but not as funny.  Shrimpenstein incorporated most of the same elements: One guy on camera, another working puppets just off-stage.  The difference was that this show was set in a kind of Transylvania castle with Moss playing Dr. Von Schtick, who was supposed to sound like Boris Karloff but who sounded more like Bobby "Boris" Pickett on the record, "Monster Mash."  Actually, late in the run (sometimes, late in any given episode), Moss would tire of the accent and announce, "I'm sick of this stupid voice" and just drop it.

His partner Jim Thurman was the unseen guy, playing various roles.  They had two "White Fang"-type hairy gloves.  One was Klaus, who was some kind of rude creature who, like Soupy's canines, reached into the scene from next to the camera.  The other came out of a box like "The Thing" on The Addams Family.  He was called Wilfred the Weiner Wolf because he was originally the spokeswolf for a brand of frankfurters that bought much of the commercial time on the program.  Then one day, Wilfred — who muttered everything under his breath so he sounded like an obscene phone caller — started explaining that their sponsor used only the finest ingredients, including live kitty cats.  Dr. Von Schtick gasped (this was apparently not in any script) and asked Wilfred, "You don't mean this fine product actually grinds up cats?"  Wilfred answered, "Yeah…they take people's kitty cats and throw them in the vats."  Following that broadcast, the hot dog company was no longer involved with Shrimpenstein and Wilfred was occasionally grumbling about having lost his weiner.

That was how it often went on Shrimpenstein.  It became one of those shows you were afraid to not watch for fear you'd miss Dr. Von Schtick exposing himself on the air or Wilfred saying the "f" word.  None of that occurred but there was forever a sense of danger.

One time, they were off the air because there had been a fire at the Channel 9 transmitter that had blacked out the entire station for much of one day.  The following afternoon, Dr. Von Schtick explained that he had been the cause of the blackout because one of his experiments had gone wrong.  There was a huge toggle-switch on the set — they called it "The Bull Switch" — which he would often throw to start a cartoon or something.  He walked over and, to demonstrate what he'd supposedly done the day before, threw the switch…and the station went to black again, this time intentionally but only for about thirty seconds.  That thirty seconds, however, was enough to panic the station managers who thought the transmitter had blown up once more.  One of them reportedly was on the phone screaming and firing technicians when he finally realized that it wasn't another disaster; just Moss and Thurman screwing around again.  (Around this time, the station also gave up on a micro-budgeted late night talk show hosted by Moss and Thurman, with Stan Worth as their bandleader.  For no visible reason, Gene and Jim were dressed as basketball referees and, going in and out of commercials, they would toss free throws through a hoop on the set or make their guests try.)

At times, Shrimpenstein was almost an average kids' show, as per the Soupy formula.  Soupy had his puppets, Pookie and Hippie, who would mime to records.  Shrimpenstein had The Tijuana Bats, who would dance to records that were played at double-speed, a la The Chipmunks.

Early on, they tried running the Marvel Super-Hero cartoons that had just been produced by the Grantray-Lawrence studio on the lowest of budgets.  Dr. Von Schtick would introduce each as, "Another Marvel mediocrity" or "Another one of those cartoons where nothing ever moves."  One time, he even suggested that kids switch over to Channel 11 and watch Roger Ramjet…a good cartoon.  Moss and Thurman had been the head writers, and had provided occasional voices for Roger Ramjet.  KHJ must have loved that.

And, of course, two or three times a week, Moss would get hit with a pie.  On the very last show, he dragged Thurman on-camera and pelted him with about ten of them.

Their last telecast came abruptly.  As I recall, they didn't say it was their last show, though they seem to have known.  The following Monday, Dr. Von Schtick and Wilfred and the Tijuana Bats were gone, and one of the station's newsmen was awkwardly working Shrimpenstein.  (Moss and Thurman hadn't had much more success with the dummy, which was built by famed puppet-maker Wah Chang.  First, Moss had tried supplying its voice but he was no ventriloquist.  Then, Thurman did the voice from off-camera while Moss clumsily moved the mouth, never remotely in sync.  Then, for a time, they just ignored their title character whenever possible.  I seem to remember one show where Dr. Von Schtick announced that Shrimpenstein would not be appearing that afternoon because "no one remembers where we left the stupid puppet.")  The show only lasted another week or two after their departure.

Soon after, there was a much-publicized rally in Griffith Park.  Billed as a campaign to get Shrimpenstein (the Moss-Thurman version) back on the air, it reportedly turned into Gene and Jim just doing all the material Channel 9 wouldn't let them do, angering some parents who'd brought their kids.  It was the last time I know of either performing anywhere.  For a time, they wrote for different TV shows, including a stint with Bob Hope, and operated a small company that produced humorous commercials.  At some point, they split and Moss worked for various shows and advertising agencies, while Thurman became a key writer for The Electric Company and, later, Sesame Street.

Thurman continues to work at such projects but Moss passed away last week, following a short bout with pancreatic cancer.  I never had the pleasure of meeting either gent in person (I spoke to Thurman a few times on the phone) but as a devout Shrimpenstein watcher, I feel like I've lost one of my childhood buddies.

(P.S. Thanks to Scott Shaw!, who shares my fond memories of the show, for pointing out an egregious error I made when I first posted this.  It has, of course, been fixed.)