Yes, I saw that Pink Lady and Jeff, a show I worked on long ago and far away, made TV Guide's list of the 50 Worst TV Shows of All Time.  It clocked in at #35 and I think I'm annoyed that it wasn't either higher or lower.  I never quite understand these lists.  It always seems like some of the listings are "bad" in a good way, others are "bad" in a bad or incompetent way and still others are "bad" in an offensive way.  I also wonder if some of the folks who voted in this one, whoever they are, even saw all the shows — like Turn-On or You're In the Picture — or if they're just going by reputations.  (I saw both of those one-night wonders, by the way.  Turn-On was by no means a bad show.  It was yanked after one airing because some of the more conservative ABC affiliates didn't like its politics, though ABC found it easier to say viewers disliked it.  You're In the Picture wasn't much worse than the average game show of its day but it earned its "fame" because the host, Jackie Gleason, went out the following week and spent the entire half hour apologizing for the first episode.)

By the way: The show I worked on was never actually called Pink Lady and Jeff.  That's what everyone on the show and at the network wanted to call it, and it slipped into some NBC promos and publicity that way.  But the company that owned the Pink Lady act was quite insistent that the name of the show be Pink Lady and no Jeff.  At one point, they were threatening to sue anyone who called it Pink Lady and Jeff, or even to withhold their stars' services.  The second threat caused a lot of us to say, "Oh, please, please," but they never made good on it.  (The two girls who comprised Pink Lady, Mie and Kei, couldn't have cared less.  They just wanted to get the six episodes over with and go back to Japan.)

The title was argued about for weeks before the show debuted.  More effort went into it than into the show.  Finally, someone high up at NBC — it may have been Fred Silverman — went to the lawyers for the Pink Lady company and said, "We must have Jeff Altman's name in the title of the show."  The lawyers came back and said, okay, fine.  They would consent to it only if the title were phrased so as to make clear that Pink Lady was/were the star(s) of the show, more so than Jeff.  They suggested the title be — and it actually was, for a couple of days there — Pink Lady Starring Mie and Kei With Jeff Altman.  Everyone finally gave in and the title became Pink Lady, with the "and Jeff" used unofficially and with occasional threats of legal action.  I still think that if we could have gotten rid of the Pink Lady part and gone with just Jeff, it would have been a darn good show.

E-mail buddy Cory Strode writes:

I was a huge [Dennis] Miller fan, and love most of what he does, but this year the show just hasn't been as good as in year's past. He's lost that sharp edge and was really harping on older topics…it's time to let O.J., Bill Clinton and the like go.  Sadly, the last two times I saw him perform here in Minneapolis (a year apart) he did pretty much the same stand-up…you have talked in columns past about how comedians have a "solid 45" of old material they know works and use it if they feel the act not doing as well as they would like.  Sadly, Miller did his solid 45 with very few variations, which is bad for a comedian who is best known for his quick wit and topical humor.

I pretty much agree with the above.  Dennis Miller has no greater admirer than Yours Truly.  He genuinely brought a fresh, witty approach to stand-up at a time when too many guys were up there asking, "What's the deal with these people who work at 7-Eleven stores?"  I've had people tell me Dennis Miller jokes without identifying the source and I said, "That sounds like something Dennis Miller would come up with."  How many other comics of his generation have a distinctive style not just of delivery but of writing?

But I agree, that style does not lend itself to much repetition.  I could (and did) hear Sam Kinison do the bit about world hunger a dozen times and always enjoy it…but when Miller repeats something, it just sounds like old material.  I saw him live only once.  It was at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas with Rita Rudner as his opening act.  This is maybe seven years ago.  She was very funny but when Mr. Miller took stage, the show was darn near over.  He didn't do one line that I hadn't heard from him before and, even if I hadn't known the jokes, most of them were about "current events" that had long since been retired as topics from most other comics' acts.  Worse, he did the whole set with an attitude that suggested he had the limo double-parked and couldn't wait to get his check and get the hell outta there.  I felt like yelling back to the stage, "Hey, Cha-Cha!  We didn't fork over half a C-note apiece for the ducats to see some clown whose energy level makes Perry Como look like Roberto Benigni on crack."

Still, you know what?  I like him so much, I was willing to write that one off as a bad night.

I'll even forgive him his last month or three of Dennis Miller Live, which have not been up to standard, making one suspect he knew the end was nigh.  There was a lot of crankiness there without a punch line attached.  Except when he's really, really liked his guest, he's been acting like the limo is triple-parked and blocking oncoming traffic…

And I still like the guy.  I'll miss that show and would love to see it land somewhere else because, when he was enjoying it, so was I…and I think it was the perfect vehicle for him.  Even if that show doesn't survive in some format, I'm sure he'll turn up in something else and be terrific in it.  At least, until he loses interest…

According to a press release I just received, NBC has purchased the right to rerun the 1962 Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol later this year.  Also according to that press release, June Foray is in the voice cast of that holiday special, which is not true.  But, assuming the rest of it's accurate, this is an interesting move.  The animated adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol was always, I felt, one of the two most entertaining cartoon specials ever produced for TV, the other being A Charlie Brown Christmas.  The Magoo affair succeeds despite rather dreadful animation…poor even by the standards of limited television animation.  Matter of fact, the special's previous owner was at one point considering whether it might have more marketability if they went back and, using the exact same audio track, did all new design and animation.  He (the late Henry Saperstein) never did…but when he told me he was contemplating the cost-benefit ratio, I said, "You're not going to touch the script, voices or songs, I trust" and he said, "Oh, God, no.  You couldn't improve on any of that."

He was right.  Jim Backus, Jack Cassidy, Paul Frees and the others are terrific, even if none of them was June Foray.  And the score by Jule Styne (whose name is misspelled in that press release) and Bob Merrill is first-rate…one of the few times an animated TV special has thought to go out and engage top Broadway composers.

Someone at Classic Media (new proprietors of the nearsighted Quincy Magoo) pulled off a deft move in arranging this.  The special has been out on tape and rerun on low-profile cable channels for years, and you wouldn't think it would go back to network.  I'm guessing someone at NBC was a big fan on it as a kid, plus Classic Media was probably willing to give it to them cheap to get Magoo back in the public eye.  Even if they let NBC run it for nothing, it would be a wise deal for them and, of course, for NBC.

I don't think a lot of people realize how prime-time network animated specials have virtually gone the way of the passenger pigeon.  Disney does a few for ABC but they're mostly a matter of that company producing something they can market in many venues, one of which is ABC prime-time.  And there are a few more Peanuts specials in the pipeline, which ABC is doing because they think it's sound marketing to marry one of their Winnie the Pooh specials with a Charlie Brown show to fill an hour slot.  But there are very few specials of any kind being produced these days for ABC, NBC and CBS, and even fewer of the animated variety.

Few people seem to have noticed this.  Every few months, I'm approached by someone who has a property — a comic strip or a character from some other venue — they hope to adapt for animation.  They often speak of the weekly series they see as inevitable and then toss off, "And we might be willing to warm up by doing four animated specials a year for one of the major networks."  I'm not sure the major networks, collectively, are producing four new animated specials a year of all the available and proven properties put together…and even at the peak of such production, you had to have a helluva track record to get more than one a year.  Managing one for a new character would be an incredible achievement…though that could change.  The few that are airing have done pretty well and if Magoo continues the trend, that could bode well for more production.

One hopes we'll see Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol via a good, newly color-corrected print and that, assuming it's in an hour slot, the edits to allow more commercial time will be done more judiciously than has usually been the case.  The best Merrill-Styne song (the ballad, the name of which I do not know) usually hits the floor first, often followed by Magoo's opening "Broadway" song.  A friend of mine swears he once saw it with the one of the three ghosts eliminated, though I find that unlikely.

In any event, I think it's a terrific show.  It's also a pretty terrific adaptation of Mr. Dickens' story…in many ways, more faithful than some of the more serious, live-action attempts.

In the category of "Movies I Kinda Liked Even If Nobody Else Seems To," we have the 1974 remake of The Front Page, directed by Billy Wilder and starring the two guys in the picture above.  No, it's not as wonderful as the 1931 version with Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien, and it especially isn't as wonderful as the 1940 version, which was entitled His Girl Friday, which put Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the leads.  A lot of critics hated the '74 incarnation and legend has it that when Carol Burnett — who plays the heart-of-gold hooker — found herself on an airplane with The Front Page as the in-flight movie, she got up, commandeered the P.A. system and apologized to all aboard for contributing to such a stinker.  (She's actually the worst thing in it, and I say that as someone who usually loves Carol Burnett.  But she's miscast and her role is burdened with awkward expository dialogue and an over-the-top window-jumping scene.)

Still, no film with Lemmon and Matthau is without interest and there are quite a few terrific character actors aboard to support them, including Vincent Gardenia, Martin Balsam, Charles Durning, David Wayne and Herb Edelman.  Even when those guys are drowning, it's fun to watch them swim.  Austin Pendleton pretty much steals all his scenes in the role of a nervous leftist sentenced to swing…and gee, Susan Sarandon sure is pretty.

Anyway, I watched the DVD the other night and found myself enjoying the proceedings despite the overacting, a few curious anachronisms and a resolution that depends too much on a coincidence.  Maybe it's that's wonderful command that Lemmon and Matthau seem to possess.  Everything they say, everything they do seems convincing.  They did a few later films that not even their chemistry could salvage but this, I decided, was not one of them.  Wilder said that he felt he'd been "done in" (his term) by such obvious casting.  Jack and Walter were so perfect for the parts, he said, that he never stopped to think whether the movie itself was a good idea. It probably wasn't in terms of serving the underlying material…but I don't care.  I just love watching those guys.