An earlier item brought a few e-mails from folks who were surprised to hear that Charles Lane is alive. He's 97 years old but, happily, he's reportedly still with us. If you're a fan of incredible careers, click here to jump over to the Internet Movie Database and peruse the exhaustive list of motion pictures and a partial (quite incomplete) list of TV programs this man appeared in. It includes It's A Wonderful Life, 42nd Street, You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Music Man, films with the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, Abbott and Costello… well, as you can see, it just goes on and on. He only had one or two lines in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but then that's more than some people.
More Shemp on the web. Two of Shemp Howard's granddaughters have a site devoted to Grandpa over at www.shempcompany.com. I'm grateful to Randal May for the referral because, after all, you can never get too much Shemp.
An alley in Muncie, Indiana has been named in honor of David Letterman. But the dedication ceremony was marred by a protest by fans of Garfield the Cat. This actually happened. Here's a link to a press account.