In the window below, I've embedded a video of an episode of The Red Skelton Show from sixty (60) years ago but I've set it to start playing in the middle of the episode when Red introduces his musical guests, Simon and Garfunkel.  This has to be one of their first TV appearances, perhaps the first ever on a primetime network show.

You will rarely see video of performers who so clearly are rooted in different generations.  And you can see Paul and Art thinking, "Do we really have to do this to become famous?"

The window will show you the rest of that show from that point on.  You can quit after the Simon and Garfunkel number or you can keep watching and see a jazzy dance number from Red's house dancers and then a Silent Spot pantomime sketch with Red.

Or you can even move the little slider all the way to the left and watch the entire episode.  You'll see Red do his monologue, then there's a sketch which has him running around the studio audience.  That's Studio 33 at CBS Television City where, among hundreds of other programs, The Price is Right taped for many years.  So did Carol Burnett.

That's followed by a sketch with Red and his guest Mickey Rooney.  And in all the sketches, you'll see Henry Corden, a busy actor you might know best as the second voice of Fred Flintstone.  Take your pick.

All the Souplantations in California went away in 2016 and some of us really miss 'em. They were wonderful soup 'n' salad restaurants. Since then, a few copycat places have opened, though far from anywhere my limited travels would ever take me. Also, the company that acquired the operation after it filed for bankruptcy has opened a few under the restaurant's alternate name, Sweet Tomatoes…but in Arizona and Florida.  Again, out of my reach.

Now, it turns out, they've about to announce a reopening in California. Will it be somewhere I can easily visit? That remains to be seen.

A couple of my correspondents were a bit confused about what I was saying about how the Boop! The Musical national tour has to simplify its sets to be able to go from town to town. This will be of interest to them. Below this paragraph is a clip of the bows from the Broadway performance right after the Tony nominations were announced. The gent who comes out at the end to make mention of them is Jerry Mitchell…

And now below here, we have the bows from the first performance of the touring company in Rochester. Notice the simplified, probably-more-portable BOOP! sign. Also notice the absence of the stairway and the clever way they distract your eye while sneaking Aliya Grace (who plays Betty) onto the stage so she can be revealed in her full presence instead of walking onto the stage to take her place. They did something similar in the above video to get Jasmine Amy Rogers (Boop on Broadway) behind the stairs. I assume the whole touring show has scaled the sets back…

To go back to the start of this long, wandering essay, click right here.

I'm 74 and comic books have been an important part of my life for about 70 years. My parents bought them for me because…well, I think if I'd asked for a Goodyear blimp and a live hippopotamus, my father would have at least tried to purchase them for me. He was that kind of father. Fortunately for him, I preferred comic books — and this was back when they cost a dime apiece.

Comics were not all I read. I loved books from the library and I was always reading — and soon writing — a little above the level that was normal for kids of whatever age I was at the time.

I vaguely remember friends of my parents and a relative or two questioning whether it was good parenting to let your kids read comic books. My folks' response was that Mark was ahead of his classmates in reading skills so something was working there. They weren't going to change what they were doing. If they had, I might have wound up in some other profession than the one I've been in since 1969.

My interest in comics was less in the characters and what they were doing than in how a comic book was made. I'm a fan of Superman and Batman but I think I'm more a fan of the men — for a long time, they were all men — who wrote and drew the Superman and Batman comics I avidly collected. And the Marvels and the Gold Keys and…well, just about everything.

I was and I remain particularly fascinated by the ones who formed the Talent Pool that created comic books for the first three or four decades of that industry. They all grew up either during the Great Depression or in the following years when the nation was still reeling from that dark period. And like all adults when I was a kid, they also had their lives influenced irrevocably by World War II. That was true of those who served but also those who didn't.

During the many conversations I had with Jack Kirby, he answered all my questions. A lot of 'em were about the comic book industry that he entered in its earliest days and impacted so much. His answers usually had a way though of getting around to the battles he fought in the war and the battles he fought, before and after his time in the service, to escape poverty. That's why I was so happy recently to see this at a street corner where, as a kid, he used to sell newspapers and apples…

Now, let's talk about another comic book artist of roughly the same era — a man named Mike Sekowsky…

Six years Jack's junior, Mike Sekowsky went through the same challenges to make a living though he did not serve in the military. I asked him once if he had and he said, "No, I had it worse. I was working for Stan Lee." During his career, he worked just about everywhere and drew every kind of comic book one could draw…with one notable exception.

He drew like Kirby for Timely (Marvel) comics. He drew like Dan Barry for DC Comics. He drew like Alex Toth for Standard Comics. He drew like the other Dell Comics artists for Dell Comics, even doing funny animal funnies. Wherever there was paying work, he drew the way the guy who did the hiring wanted his comics to look. But I'm not sure that, among the hundreds upon hundreds of comic books he drew, he ever drew any like Mike Sekowsky.

The comic book business did that to a lot of guys. They never had much time to pursue and develop their own natural inclinations and styles. That all-important paycheck depended on giving some editor what he wanted in the style he wanted. Charles Schulz first made a living by lettering the work of others. Imagine if that had kept him so busy that he never had time to draw children with large heads and a beagle fighting World War I from the safety of his doghouse roof.

I have one of those theories that no one can ever prove right or wrong that a lot of the men who were in the comic book industry before I was (1970), were like Charles Schulz lettering for a living. Or imagine if Charles Addams had spent his life inking super-hero comics…or if the need to buy the necessities of life had steered Sergio Aragonés into forsaking his delightful style of (mostly) pantomime cartooning and learning to draw realistic-looking war comics.

Or, thinking of MAD artists drawing war comics, what if Mort Drucker had kept doing those for his entire career and never ventured into humor and celebrity caricatures?

There comes a moment in most lives when you need an answer to this question: "What do you want to do when you grow up?"  Not everyone comes upon an easy, natural response.  When I attended my 25-year high school reunion — which for some reason was held 28 years after we all graduated — everyone was asking everyone else what they were doing for a living.  I was amazed how many guys I knew when we were teenagers now said things like "I'm trying to get my shit together and find something to do that I like."

I was more or less set in my goal when I was still in elementary school. These fellows (ages 45-47) still didn't have an answer to that very significant question a few decades later. They had jobs and some of them made very good livings in those jobs. But were they the right jobs?

Reading comics all those years, I of course had favorite artists. One of them was Mike Sekowsky. Not everyone liked his work. It wasn't slick. When he drew Superman in the Justice League of America comic book, it didn't look like Curt Swan's beautiful, balletic version. (Then again, Sekowsky's Superman looked more to me like a guy who could smash his way through a brick wall.)

I liked the stories Sekowsky drew. I think that when he was at his best — which he often was not — he "told the story" better than most guys who could draw anatomically-perfect and poised heroes. And once I got to know him, he was the guy who caused me to see a marked difference between someone who had natural, latent drawing ability and someone who learned how to fake it. Which was kind of what I was doing any time I was called upon to draw something.

The making of Fiddler on the Roof…

Our man in Rochester, Dick Halsey, attended the first performance of Boop! The Musical Saturday evening and he filed this report…

Boop! opened their U.S. tour last night in Rochester, NY. Before the start of the show, the director welcomed the audience and then said that this was only the 2nd time they have run the whole show.

It opened as a black and white Betty Boop cartoon. They played with B&W vs. color throughout the show especially in one musical number.

The first musical number, "A Little Versatility," got the audience hooked. The first act ends with the strong song, "Where I Wanna Be" and by that time you are sure that Aliya Grace, as Betty, now owns the show.

None of the cast from the Broadway run returns. The primary cast have been in some other shows but much of the cast are newcomers. It didn't show. I didn't see anything that could be considered even a small mistake. I especially liked Grampy.

There are references to some of the old Betty Boop cartoons that makes it fun if you have seen them. There was also a brief mention that Betty was originally a dog in her first cartoon. Maybe this show will lead to some new Betty Boop cartoons.

I only attend about one musical show per year. I'm glad that it was Boop! as it was well acted and a lot of fun.

Well, that's all great to hear. The director is a gent named Jerry Mitchell who has become something of a superstar in the Broadway community for directing and choreographing. An actress I met at a party of theater people a few years ago said to me, "My dream before I got to Broadway was to be in a Bob Fosse show but by the time I got there, he was gone so now I want to work for Jerry Mitchell." I don't recall her name so I can only hope she has or will.

Notice that since this is a bus-and-truck production going from city to city, some of the production values have been simplified. On Broadway, the bows at the end had the cast coming down a big stairway but apparently there wasn't room for it on the truck.

Twice in my life, my writing services have been sought by producers who thought they were going to make new Betty Boop cartoons and they wanted me to show-run and voice direct. And both times, deals fell through — as deals so often do in this business, especially when they tell you, "It's 99% set!" When I hear that, I know it ain't gonna happen. If it ever does, I'd love to be involved because she's a great character.

Thank you for your report, Dick.  Boop! The Musical opens in Schenectady a week from tomorrow for six performances.  If any Schenectadians — I guess that's the name for residents of Schenectady — is reading this, attends one and would like to submit a review, I'll post it here.

For the first time since July 1, I'm taking a day or two off from blogging to attend to matters that need my attention. When I do this, I post an image of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup — an ancient Internet tradition that dates back to the year 1507 and the books produced by the celebrated printer Johann Grüninger, most notably the woodcuts by which he attempted to facilitate the identification of pious readers with the holy figures.

In them, he depicted a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup and if it's good enough for Grüninger, it's good enough for me. If you look real hard, you may be able to find something on the Internet to read. I shall return soon.

It's very hot lately here in Los Angeles. Actually, it's very hot in a lot of places and I know this because around half the people I know — and I know a lot of people — feel the need to call or write me and tell me how hot is it and how miserable they are. A lot of them act like they believe I can do something about it.

Actually, I can…a little. I told you all where to buy an inexpensive, portable fan that you can place anywhere and recharge like any battery-powered USB device. They seem to be out of the green ones with the light on them but they have the blue ones in stock.

I also have found that the heat is more endurable if you don't keep talking about it and complaining about it. At least, I can. Do what you can with fans, adjusting windows, showering, drinking lots of water…all the usual things. But talking endlessly about the temperature will not make it go down one degree, Celsius or Fahrenheit. For your own good, give it a try.

This is kind of a gang "thank you" to about a dozen of you who catch typos on this site and write to tell me. Often, I wake up in the morning and find five or six e-mails from folks who've spotted someplace where my typing fingers went clumsy on me and I correct what needs correction. Once in a while, I make a new mistake while correcting an old one…and you catch that, too.

I'd thank you all by name but a few of you sign with handles or initials so I don't know your names. I just want you to know I appreciate what you do.

And no, I don't know what I'm doing up at this hour either.

I used to love buffets, not because of the volume but because when you have as many food allergies as I do, it's wonderful to be able to examine food before you commit to eating it. I can't tell you how many times I've ordered something in a restaurant and when it comes, it has some component that wasn't divulged on the menu and wasn't mentioned when I asked the server "What's in it?" And before me, I have something I dare not put in my mouth.

A buffet lets me see that the fried shrimp has coconut on it or the dumplings come slathered in guacamole so I can make another selection. It's just a safer way to eat. But since I had my Gastric Bypass, it's not a cost-effective way to eat. On a couple visits to Vegas since then, I paid $25.00 to dine at a buffet and consumed about eight bucks worth of food. They're not priced for folks like me with micro-stomachs.

The only buffet you'll find me at now is the breakfast buffet at the hotel I stay in during Comic-Con. It's the only convenient place to eat before I begin my always-busy days of presiding over panels…and besides, someone else is usually paying. I don't recall what it costs and I see there's no price stated on the hotel's website. I have a hunch that's so they can adjust the price based on what they know of the kind of folks attending whatever convention is in town. I think this year it was about $40 plus tip. If i'd ordered everything on my plate at a Denny's, it probably would have been around ten dollars.

One year, well before the convention was held where it's now held, the hotel had an awful breakfast buffet, It cost what was then a fairly high price and I had trouble getting enough to eat. This was pre-Bypass but I still didn't want much.

It was the kind of buffet where they gave you a menu and you have the server bring you as much as you want of whatever you want — though this one had a limit on bacon, sausage and what they called breakfast steaks and what anyone else would call the kind of patty you get in the cheapest McDonald's burger. The first thing they brought me though was an unasked-for Bloody Mary.

I don't drink and I told the server I didn't order it. He said, in the kind of tone that suggested he was real used to saying this, "It's a required item." He then pointed to teensy-tiny type on the menu that said adults had to pay six dollars, above and beyond the stated price for the buffet, for a Bloody Mary.

It also said diners under 18 would be served tomato juice for the same price. I asked if I could have the tomato juice and he said I could but it would be an extra charge on top of what I was paying for the buffet and the non-returnable Bloody Mary I wasn't going to drink. I passed on that and ordered some scrambled eggs…

…and when they came, they were covered in what they called "Spanish Sauce." I told a different server I didn't ask for and didn't want Spanish Sauce. He shrugged and said — again probably for the eight-zillionth time — "That's how our chef makes scrambled eggs." Again, eggs without the sauce would be an additional charge.

I said, "I thought this was all-you-can-eat." He replied, "It is but I can't bring you more eggs until you've eaten those."

At some point, the manager tagged in for the server and we had a debate about whether "all you can eat" implies some obligation on their part to serve me something I can actually eat. It took a bit of arguing but he finally gave in and I got eggs with no Spanish Sauce, toast with nothing forbidding on it and the maximum allotment of bacon, which I believe was four see-through strips. The following year, I stayed at a different hotel where you could see and select what you wanted to eat from its buffet.

So now, for reasons stated, I rarely go to buffets. If I had a normal sized tummy, I might be tempted to sometime visit the Shady Maple Smorgasbord in East Earl, Pennsylvania. That's about 60 miles from Philadelphia but a great many people make the drive to experience what Wikipedia calls "the largest smorgasbord in the United States, featuring 200 feet of authentic Pennsylvania Dutch cooking."

It's surprisingly cheap and the subject of a vast number of YouTube videos of which the following is but one. A writer I know once decided he had to get away from his home for a few weeks to finish a novel for which his publisher was waiting. He took himself and his laptop to a hotel not far from the Shady Maple and happily dined there twice a day for a few weeks. He timed his AM visit so they still had all the breakfast food available but were starting to bring out the lunch items.

Working in that hotel still sounds like a good idea. He was isolated in an area with nothing to do but sleep, eat and write, and he said the food was outstanding. He, like me, had some food allergies so he liked seeing the chow before he decided what to ingest. Which is the way every buffet ought to be. They needn't be as huge as the Shady Maple…

The finale of the musical Annie as performed in Korea! And doesn't the man in the wheelchair look just like F.D.R.?

It is with mixed feelings that I've decided to track a little of what happens with the National Tour of Boop! The Musical. The feelings are mixed because it's a non-Equity tour and you'd like to see the producers able to draw from the talent pool that doesn't work non-Equity and you'd like to see the performers on that stage have the protections and the remuneration of an Equity tour.

But let's see how this goes.

The National Tour starts tomorrow night at the West Herr Theater in Rochester, New York. Dick Halsey, a follower of this site, has tickets to be in the sixth row and he's going to let us know what he thinks of it. He also let me know that there's this promotional magazine online with info on the show and some video clips.

Boop! will be in Rochester until October 10 and then it's on to Schenectady and from there, the rest of America. It's still set to hit Los Angeles next June so I have plenty of time to decide if I want to patronize it. I probably do.

Before he passed away last year, Tom Lehrer released all his witty songs into the public domain and told the world, "Help yourself!" That has resulted in a lot of folks putting together revues of his work. There's a group in New York doing "A Tom Lehrer Cabaret" every so often at local clubs and there are others around the country. One assumes Mr. Lehrer would be pleased.

Years ago though, when I assume he got money for it, there was a show called Tomfoolery which played here and there with various casts. It was in that "four or five performers" category of musicals like Forever Plaid, The Marvelous Wonderettes, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, Forbidden Broadway and many others. Here from 1981 is the South African cast of Tomfoolery.  I wonder how Lehrer felt about his songs being performed in South Africa.

On the Dana Gould Hour podcast, I told the story of how I discovered, long after we'd begun dating, that my girl friend was related to one of my favorite performers, Spike Jones. Here's Spike and his orchestra in the movie, Thank Your Lucky Stars.

When I worked at Hanna-Barbera in the late seventies, I enjoyed talking with a film editor there named Earl Bennett, who had once been a featured musician in Spike's band under the name "Sir Frederick Gas." One thing he talked about was how, when they did a scene like this in a movie, the audio was all pre-recorded and they had to mime playing to it. This was not an easy thing for some musicians to do but it worked because Spike had such precise timing, Watch…

I dunno how many readers of this blog will be interested in this but I figure there must be at least one…

Between 1934 and 1959, The Three Stooges made 190 short comedies for Columbia Pictures. Those were years when short comedies slowly went out of fashion in movie theaters. Laurel and Hardy, for example, stopped making them and switched over to features only in 1935 and the last short Our Gang comedy was in 1944. The Stooges kept at it by not increasing what was spent to make them. That meant they had to make them faster and cheaper each year.

One way the producers accomplished this was to reuse footage from earlier Stooges films. A lot of their shorts were simply a matter of taking an earlier film, shooting some new scenes to edit into it and giving it a new title. When I visited Larry Fine in his last years of life, I asked him a lot about this practice. He said it was made possible because "Columbia never threw anything away." They still had the old sets and the old costumes. Once in a while, they could even bring back a supporting actor from an old short to be in scenes for the new version.

In 1947, Curly Howard was replaced by his brother Shemp in the act. That made it difficult to pull footage from earlier films but it was sometimes done. Eventually, they made films with Shemp that pulled footage from earlier shorts with Shemp. For instance, Flagpole Jitters (1956) contains footage from Hokus Pokus (1949). Larry said that some of these shorts built around older films were, in effect, made in one day. That's all the time it took to film the new scenes.

If you have the slightest interest in comparing an original film with its later partial remake, I'll make it easy for you. Here's Malice in the Palace, which Larry, Moe and Shemp made in 1949…

Then in 1956, they remade it as Rumpus in the Harem.,,but there was a bit of a problem. Shemp Howard died in late 1955. When he died, the Stooges had four more films to make on their current contract. This was one of them and you'll see plenty of Shemp in the old footage. In the new footage, an actor named Joe Palma — now better known as "Fake Shemp" — stood in for him, hiding his face as much as possible.

I must admit that as a kid watching these films on TV, I didn't notice the substitutions. I recognized the reuse of old footage but didn't notice that Shemp wasn't Shemp in some scenes…

After they made the four films with Joe Palma impersonating Shemp, Columbia assessed the marketplace and decided there were still some dimes to be made with Stooge shorts. They signed Joe Besser to be the third third Stooge and made sixteen more films. Some of them reused footage from earlier shorts and if you look closely, you can get quick glimpses of Curly or Shemp in a few long shots.

The last Stooges short released — not the last one made — was Sappy Bullfighters (1959), a remake of What's the Matador? (1942). If you sit up real close to the set or monitor and turn up the volume, you can see and hear a teensy bit of Curly in it.