Monthly Archives: May 2002

Trio, the Canadian TV channel that is mainly available via satellite dish, is running a Broadway salute this month with things like the recent PBS taping of Fosse and the concert version of Sweeney Todd.  The most interesting, TiVo-worthy program is Broadway Legends, hosted by Matthew Broderick and featuring short interviews with the likes of S. Sondheim, N. Lane, N. Simon, J. Robards and many others.  But the thing to really keep an eye out for is that, between shows, they sometimes run a little 4-minute featurette — an expanded version of the "Come Back to Broadway" commercial that was done last year to try and counteract the dip in theatre-going that followed 9/11.  It's every star then playing in New York, congregated in Times Square, singing a rousing rendition of "New York, New York," and it's just a delight to watch.

We hear a lot about how actors are paid (or overpaid) enormous salaries.  Here, as a beacon of light, are some interesting stats from a report just released by the Screen Actors Guild…

23% of SAG members did not work during 1996-2000 and that 36% have worked less than five days in those five years.  At the Hollywood branch, 26,331 of 63,745 members (41.3%) worked at least 30 days in 1996-2000, while another 2,217 (3.5%) had qualified for 10 years of pension and health benefits and another 2,011 (3.2%) had worked 10 or more days in 2000.  Stats for all 117,135 SAG members showed 38.7% had worked 30 days, while another 3.4% qualified for 10 years of P&H and another 2.9% had worked 10 days in 2000.

Now, these numbers are a bit misleading because the Screen Actors Guild roster includes a number of people who consider themselves primarily writers or directors or something else.  They may not have worked under the SAG contract during a given period because they were tidily-employed in another capacity…or were acting on the stage or even on a TV show covered by AFTRA  Still, we have here some sobering figures to anyone who thinks acting is an easy way to Big Bucks.  Not if you don't work for five years, it isn't.

Here's something that's been floating around on the Internet for years.  It's an excerpt from an old B.B.C. documentary…thirty seconds of Harpo Marx discussing a silly moment from his career.  If you've heard it before, fine.  If not…well, how often does one get to hear the voice of Harpo Marx?  This is the man who, at his farewell live performance, walked up to the microphone and proclaimed to the audience, "Now, as I was about to say in 1918…"  Actually, the usually-silent Mr. Marx spoke in a few documentary-type shorts and appeared in a number of stage performances of The Man Who Came to Dinner.  (Co-authors George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart took turns playing Sheridan Whiteside, while Harpo played…well, the character based on Harpo.)

It has also been rumored that he spoke during a long-lost appearance on the daytime TV show, Art Linkletter's House Party.  Linkletter has reportedly told inquiring Marx fans that he doesn't recall this but won't say for sure it did not happen.  So maybe it did, maybe it didn't and maybe (my hunch:) it was some other, similar show.

Anyway, for now, the way to hear Harpo is to click below…

Let's go to the mail.  I'm not sure who sent me this…

Read your comments [over at TVBarn] about Jay and Dave both being in a rut and I agree completely. Enough already with how stupid people in the street are when you stick them in front of a camera. But the thing I miss are the new stand-up comics. Johnny introduced dozens (including Jay and Dave) and launched careers. Who have Jay and Dave introduced?

Not many…but here, I'll defend the guys. First off, Carson got his rep as a presenter of new stand-ups before 1980 when he cut the show from 90 to 60 minutes. The trim meant room for 1 or 2 fewer guests per night and therefore, less room for new comics. Secondly, when Johnny was showcasing stand-up comedians, he had one of the very few franchises in all of television that did that. His bookers were notorious for scouting the clubs, spotting promising comedians and telling them, "Keep working at it. If you continue to improve, we may book you with Johnny in a year or so." Both Letterman and Leno were told that at the Comedy Store, once upon a time. Today, a promising stand-up at the Store is pounced upon by many. By the time he or she could be "ready" for The Tonight Show, they've already done a half-hour Comedy Central Presents, spots on B.E.T., perhaps a Showtime special, etc. Comics today don't need the late night venues as they once did. They have too many other avenues.

Johnny's last few years, not many comedians got their Big Break on his program and, with the ones who did like Stephen Wright, there was a slight reversal of the process. Instead of waiting obediently for The Tonight Show to pronounce a comedian ready, the comedian would already have an agent and probably a manager who would negotiate with The Tonight Show: "Okay, he'll hold off doing any other shows until he does Johnny's if you guarantee him a proper showcase." A fellow named Jim McCawley — a nice but intense gent who worked for Carson — was the scout and negotiator in such situations. I knew him casually and watched him, over the years, lose a bit of his kingmaking status. Around '78, he'd walk into the Comedy Store and comedians would lick his loafers clean. If he said — and he did — "I think you may be ready for Johnny in six months…that is, if you don't do any other shows in the meantime," the comic swore to fend off Merv Griffin's bookers with a meat-ax.

But things changed. Once, all the comics wanted to debut with Johnny because all the recent success stories in comedy involved making your debut there. Before long though, you had guys like Andy Kaufman, Dennis Miller, Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison and others who were doing quite well without a Carson christening. Around 1987, I saw McCawley in action at the Improv and, while he still wielded great power, the balance of it was not quite so lopsided. He had to convince comics (and their reps) that it was still their best option to allow The Tonight Show to introduce them to America. Some decided otherwise while others opted for Johnny simply because he was Johnny.

Lastly — and this may be Dave's and Jay's fault to some extent — I don't think their shows are as conducive to new stand-ups as Johnny's was, even in his hour-long days. Carson had a certain stature as Elder Statesman of comedy and, when he said, "Here's a bright new comic," the studio audience paid attention and tried to help out the newbie. When Dave or Jay book a stand-up…first of all, the spot is rushed. Secondly, the folks out front seem to think, "Huh? We have to listen to someone other than Dave [or Jay] for four minutes?" A comic I know who did Letterman once said that his spot got about a third the laughs it should have because the studio audience was so full of Dave fans who were all watching Dave, not him, while he was performing. His next time on, instead of working "in one," he sat in the guest's chair and did his material, chatting with Letterman. That worked better, he felt, because Dave was involved and the audience wasn't resenting him from taking the spotlight off their boy.

I'd like to see the late night shows bring us more great new comedians. But I'm afraid all the worthy ones now have sitcom development deals, long before Dave or Jay can get to them.

This site was down for much of last night due to a one-two punch.  My cable modem's company had an outage that disconnected most of their Los Angeles customers from the Internet for about ten hours.  At the same time, the separate company that hosts this website was switching over to new servers.  So I couldn't get on-line to update this site and even if I had been able to, it wasn't there.

Everything seems to be operational at the moment but, for an hour or so there last night, I was really baffled, trying to figure out if the problem was that the cable modem wasn't working or if it was because my hosting company was malfunctioning.  First, I thought it was one, then the other…then the first cause, again, back and forth.  It took a while to figure out that both were malfunctioning at the same time.  Ah, the wonders of the Computer Age…

I love photos of Zero Mostel.  Has there ever been an actor with a more expressive face?  Caricature artists love that puss.  Mort Drucker and Al Hirschfeld — probably the two greatest practitioners of the art ever — both told me that Mostel was a particular favorite to draw.  (I purchased the original art to a story in MAD Magazine called "Antenna on the Roof" in which Mr. Drucker elegantly captured the likeness of the gent.  Looks like he had a lot of fun drawing it.)

This photo is from the movie version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a less-than-wonderful interpretation of the great play by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart.  Mr. Gelbart once described it as, "The most painful experience…like being run over by a truck that then backed-up so it could run you over again."  That it is at all viewable is largely because Mostel was always worth watching…quite an achievement in a film where three other great clowns — Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford and Buster Keaton — aren't worth watching.  Keaton did a lot of dreadful low-budget "comedies" (I'm using the world loosely) in the sixties and got more laughs in any one of them than he does in this high-budget one.

Among the things that went wrong with this one…

• The film is way overproduced.  On stage, it was the only major musical ever to have only one set…and not a very fancy one, at that.  In the movie, they tried to show us Ancient Rome in all its cluttered glory.
• Any time you're discarding Stephen Sondheim songs, something is wrong.  Very wrong.
• Phil Silvers was cast as Marcus Lycus, a comparatively small part.  They then proceeded to try and build up that role, which meant tossing out several important plot complications to make room for needless plot complications.
• The director, Richard Lester, had become famous for a strange kind of cinematography and editing rhythm in which you are always conscious of the camera, and no attempt is made at seamless continuity.  This style, which was so much fun in a few earlier movies like A Hard Day's Night, was already wearing out its welcome by the time Forum was filmed, and it was especially at odds with the material.  In too many scenes, it is the film editor (or Lester) controlling the timing, not the comedians.
• Lester (and the producer, Melvin Frank) also wanted to "open up" the film and include a big chariot race and elements of spectacle.  That meant further corruptions of the plot to find reasons for such scenes…which, of course, were unnecessary distractions.

And there are about 11 dozen other things wrong with it, which brings us to this question.  TV is on a kick of remaking musicals.  Matthew Broderick and Kristin Chenoweth are appearing in a new version of The Music Man, which not one human being on this planet thought was poorly done the first time it was put on film.  When will they start redoing some of the ones that could actually be improved in a new version?  Forum would be a great place to start.

By the way: Turner Classic Movies is running the film with Zero next Sunday.  If you watch, watch only for him.

John Mayo has posted a good report on last year's Comic-Con International, full of terrific photos and facts.  You can read it by clicking here.

One of the things I've been up to, lately: Later this year — November, I think — Watson-Guptill Books will issue the handsome volume you see above — Mad Art, billed as "A visual celebration of the art of MAD Magazine and the idiots who create it."  I've interviewed darn near everyone who's alive who ever drew a substantial number of pics for America's foremost humor publication, plus a fair amount of writers, editors, production folks and a few widows.  The thing is full of insights, biographical info, examples of MAD artistry, previously-unpublished sketches and preliminary art…stuff like that.  There's a press release up at the publisher's website — you can get to it by clicking here — and that's about all I have to say about it right now.  Oh, wait…how about that terrific cover by Richard Williams?  Neat, huh?

This may be my year for books.  In addition to four or five Groo paperbacks and the collection of my POV columns (ad down below), I'm currently dickering for a book about the state of the comedy business, expanded from a couple of pieces I wrote last year for Comics Buyer's Guide.

And yes — to mass-answer a question that arrives almost daily via e-mail — I am still producing (that is to say, we are still doing) Volume III of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America.  And I'm doing other things, mostly for TV, but I think I've just reached the Internet Bandwidth Limit for self-promotion.  One more plug and the entire World Wide Web crashes…

Here's the cover of the forthcoming DVD of 1776 — an odd choice of featured photo.  The movie is low on romance and the only star who's likely to be familiar to today's buyers in William Daniels, who has the largest role…but I don't see him at all on the cover.  On the other hand, it's nice to see that group shot at the bottom since it's from the "Cool, Conservative Men" number, which was cut from earlier releases and is restored for this one.  So not only are they including it, they're featuring it.  This is a pretty good film and what I find interesting about it is that halfway through — or, in the stage version at around intermission — you actually find yourself thinking, "They'll never succeed.  They'll never get that country established!"

It's the story of how the Declaration of Independence came to be and how the original 13 colonies asserted their right to exit the grand British Empire.  We all know that happened but the dramatics of 1776 are such that they encourage you to forget, just for the moment, that the United States of America did get founded.  I also like that the whole thing ends, not on a note of flag-waving faux-patriotism but with the recognition that pain, suffering and sacrifice still lay ahead for the Founding Fathers and their countrymen.  Some of the songs may not be all that we'd like them to be but, in the main, 1776 is a glorious thing to behold.

My pal Peter David is a fine writer and a fine gentleman.  He now has the beginnings of a fine website up at www.peterdavid.net, including an almost daily weblog.  Well worth your clicking time.

There's a new, nicely-designed Vegas Guide up at www.vegashotspots.com.  I usually don't like sites that have audio tracks but this one goes nicely with the ambiance.

Your Tax Dollars At Work: In its January, 1958 issue, MAD Magazine featured a Monopoly-style game, the object of which was to avoid Selective Service.  If you completed the game (which, of course, was not a playable game but just a batch of jokes), the "finish line" — seen at left — invited you to send to the head of the FBI, Mr. Hoover hisself, for your membership card in some spurious Draft Dodgers Society.  Amazingly, like they had nothing better to do, the Federal Bureau of Investigation dispatched agents to the Mad offices to, basically, intimidate them into not doing anything like that again.  Thereafter, they kept close tabs on the content of the magazine…which I guess is more important than tracking down murderers and racketeers.  At least, it's safer.  First time I heard this, I thought it was a joke or some gross exaggeration of reality…but it turned out to have been true.  You can verify it via documents obtained by www.thesmokinggun.com, a well-known website that traffics in embarrassing paperwork.

You can actually read the FBI file on-line by clicking here and you may want to browse that site a bit while you're over there.  It's full of fun stuff including this peek at the contracts that various performers have (or had) for concert appearances, itemizing the perks they demand.  Frank Sinatra, for instance, had to have in his dressing room, two egg salad sandwiches, two chicken salad sandwiches, two sliced turkey sandwiches, three cans of Campbell's Chicken Rice soup, 12 rolls of cherry LifeSavers, etc.  Make sure you read the one for David Copperfield.

Just read and enjoyed Bill Zehme's piece on Johnny Carson in the new Esquire.  An abbreviated version can be read online by clicking right here…but don't expect the full article to tell you much more.  The news about Carson is that there is no news about Carson and there's not likely to be any.  He is content in his retirement and there's darn near nothing that could lure him back into the public arena.  To his credit, Zehme manages to turn that lack of anything to report into a full-fledged, entertaining profile…though perhaps what is most entertaining is merely that we're spending time again with Johnny.  (I just realized that I started reading the piece around 11:35, the moment I used to settle down to watch Mr. Carson's monologue.  Very appropriate.)

A lot of us still miss Johnny and I have to agree with the part of Tom Shales's recent piece in which he said that, "If you add up Letterman plus Leno plus Conan O'Brien, you still don't have a Johnny Carson."

At the same time, I think there's a danger of over-canonizing the one-time Prince of Late Night.  I don't recall Johnny, while he was on the air, ever being as lionized and respected as he is now that he's become a part of history.  I don't recall a single TV critic, Shales included, being mesmerized by anything other than Johnny's sheer endurance.  Only when it became clear that it was about to end did we see the essays about how important he had become to us.  We, the viewers, knew it but not many said it aloud.  When Johnny was present-tense, it was fashionable to knock him for his double-entendres; for the monologue jokes that crashed and burned; for a steady parade of airhead starlets in the guest chair; for not booking guests as erudite as Jack Paar's stable of regulars; for shunning controversy and serious topics.  The typical magazine piece about Carson was not about him being a legend.  It was about him being cold and aloof, taking too many nights off and holding poor NBC up for occasional raises.  From my own observations, I always thought those nits were overwrought and exaggerated…and, from the way they've evaporated, I guess they must have been.  When people today write or speak of Carson, that kind of talk would verge on sacrilege.

Pendulums, however, have that annoying tendency to swing too far in the opposite direction.  There must be some kids out there buying the vintage Carson videos now being sold over at www.johnnycarson.com and via infomercial, watching them and wondering what all the fuss is about.  Some of that would be because Johnny's appeal had a lot to do with how right on top of the latest news and topics he always was, and how shrewd he was about dropping a subject and moving on.  There also has to be a little disappointment in seeing him today because his effect on us was cumulative.  It wasn't that he was great on any given night but that he set a certain standard and never dipped below that standard for three decades.

And one other thing: The video releases seem to emphasize the great stand-ups Johnny had on — fun, but that doesn't show us how good he was — and the sketches, which were not what we loved him for.  We loved him for plain ol' hosting, sitting behind the desk, chatting.  Some of the moments that would truly demonstrate his skill would be those with the least-stellar guests.  No one could "save" a dying spot better than Carson or make a civilian look better.

As I said, I enjoyed the Zehme article, and I suspect Johnny will, as well, for it makes his retirement out to be the wise move that it probably was.  (He might be less enchanted by one photo, which seems to have been taken by a photographer eager to show us how large Johnny's bald spot has gotten.)  The piece won't tell you much more than that Carson is serene in his absence from us and pretty well committed to keeping things that way.  Still, it's a few new minutes with Johnny.  How often do we get that, these days?

Last time I posted a photo of Julie Newmar in her costume from Li'l Abner, I got a lot of "tips" so here's another one. Actually, I have an even better reason than that for the pic (which, by the way, you can see in a larger size by clicking on it). I wanted to mention that the CD of the Broadway cast album of that show will be released on May 29. It was already out once a few years ago but hastily discontinued and that CD has been sold on eBay and bootlegged often since. This new version is better in that it's 21 minutes longer than that one, owing to the rediscovery of some extra tracks. Also, some of the new one is in stereo. It's a rather glorious musical in any form and if you want to pre-order the CD from Amazon, you can click here and this site will get a small cut of everything you order during your visit to their site. And if that, in turn, leads to more income for this site, I'll post more pictures of Ms. Newmar in that outfit…a win/win situation for us all.

Had a lovely time last evening at the Gardenia, a club in Hollywood that showcases terrific singers.  The terrific singer we went to see was Shelly Goldstein — successful comedy writer by day, chanteuse extraordinaire by night.  I plugged her appearance here a week or two ago and I was right.  She's very good.  She's also there again next Wednesday.  Hint, hint.

I feed a menagerie on my back porch.  It includes several cats, possums and raccoons who amble by on a nightly basis to stuff their furry faces.  For a time, I paid scant attention to what I put in the bowls.  One brand, I figured, is just like another and I always mocked the blurbs where they tout "better taste."  A lot of pet food advertising, I believe, is based on the premise that we purchase it as if we're going to be the ones dining on it.  We look at the label for Alpo Sliced Beef in Gravy and we say, "Mmm…sliced beef in gravy.  That sounds yummy."  As if what sounds good to our palates has anything to do with what our animals will like.  So, in that spirit, I purchased whatever was on sale.

For a while, that's been Friskies Chef's Blend and it seemed to be acceptable to all, disappearing like chopped liver at a Bar Mitzvah reception.  I had no reason to change until one evening, I was out of food and in my friendly neighborhood Sav-On Pharmacy.  They didn't have any Chef's Blend so I bought the cheapest thing on their shelves, which was the store brand of Albertson's, a supermarket chain owned by the same corporation.  I took it home and filled the dish…and they wouldn't eat the stuff.

The cats wouldn't eat it.  The raccoons wouldn't eat it.  Even the possums, which supposedly will eat just about anything, wouldn't eat Albertson's "Original Formula" cat food.  There was a bit of nibbling around the edges but, for the most part, the vittles went untouched.

At first, I thought, well, maybe no animals came by but, the next day, after a trip to the market, I put a dish of Friskies out next to the Albertsons food.  The following morning, the Albertson's food was all there — every morsel of it — but the other bowl had been licked clean.

So what was I to do with the whole bag of the Albertson's food?  I didn't want to waste it so, the next evening, I tried filling both dishes with a mixture of the two brands.  I thought this was very resourceful but later, when I walked through the kitchen, I noticed a raccoon out there, carefully picking the Friskies food out…and with much the same precision I use to take the peas I can't eat out of Campbell's Vegetable Soup.  As he did this, he glared at me with a look that seemed to say, "You're making this very difficult, you know."

I finally wound up putting the Albertson's food out during the day, when starlings and crows sometimes swoop down on the cat dishes.  I'm not sure if the birds actually eat it or if they just "bathe" in the bowls and scatter the food all over so the gardener will sweep it up and throw it out.  Either way, I finally got rid of the food the animals won't eat and I now serve only Friskies Chef's Blend out there.  Earlier this evening, I noticed a raccoon nosing around the dishes, which were empty.  I went out to fill them, scaring him away.  Then, once I came back in and closed the door, I waited to see if he'd come back.  He did.  He snuck up, sniffed the Friskies, tasted a few bites.  Then he looked at me with an expression that could only have meant, "I'm glad to see you've learned something."