Monthly Archives: December 2002

• All These Problems by Paul Krugman, The New York Times
• Ashcroft Vs. Civil Liberties by Nat Hentoff, Washington Times
• G.O.P.: Civil Liability Reform a Priority by Anne Q. Hoy, Newsday

Twelve of you have now sent me links (like this one) to obituaries for William "Tex" Henson, an animator who worked for Disney and on the Bullwinkle show. I didn't post anything about him because, frankly, I've barely heard of Mr. Henson, and wasn't even sure why his passing was getting so much coverage. More important figures in animation history have left us with nary a mention in the press. I hope this signals a new trend.

I am told that the remodel of the Cinerama Dome theater up on Sunset has been finished for some time, and that the place is open and running movies. I guess I was fooled by all the construction work that still seems to be in progress on the adjoining shopping center.

Marvel Comics is bringing out a new mini-series of their old western comic, The Rawhide Kid…only in this version, the Kid is depicted as a gay gunslinger.  This revelation seems to come out of left field, and surely comes as a surprise to anyone who read (or even wrote) the character's earlier exploits.  In fact, it sounds like someone knew there was zero interest in the property and figured they'd have to come up with something really outrageous in order to get any attention for a revival.  This is not to say it's impossible that the writer has come up with an interesting, worthwhile "take" on the premise; only that it's being marketed as a gimmick, the point of which is to generate publicity like this story.

Some longtime Marvel fans appear to be outraged, not at the notion of a gay cowboy but at the fact that they didn't just create a new character, instead of hijacking the heritage of The Rawhide Kid.  Frankly, I don't care much.  I have long since resigned myself to the notion that, in search of sales and/or some way to "modernize" that which seems out-of-date, comic book companies will do just about anything to a character I liked when I was a kid — kill him, cut off a limb, have him go crazy, whatever.  Making a hero gay is probably one of the gentler things they've done in search of a hook.  And besides, very few of us cared about the Rawhide Kid when his comic was being published, anyway.

In any case, someone seems to have the history wrong.  The above-linked news story says that, "The new series pairs the original artist, John Severin, now 86, with Ron Zimmerman, a writer for The Howard Stern Show."  Actually, the first issue of The Rawhide Kid was drawn by Bob Brown, with a cover by Joe Maneely.  Severin did a handful of covers later on but in no way could he be considered the strip's "original artist."  Also, every bit of biographical material I've seen on John Severin says he was born in 1921, which would make him 81 now, not 86.  Either way, I think it's great that Marvel is bucking the tide of rampant ageism in the industry and employing an 80+ year old artist on a high-profile project.

Various channels (including Cartoon Network and StarZ) are running Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas this week and next.  It, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are my four favorite bits of holiday animation and the only four that really developed into perennials.  For many of us, the holidays are not complete without a viewing of one or more of these, and I have to note: Magoo was produced in '62, Rudolph in '64, Charlie Brown in '65 and Grinch in '66…and that was it.  The Golden Age of Animated Television Christmas Specials was over.  Many have been done since but not one has had anywhere near the staying power or affection of those four.

I have no idea why this is, so I'll just mention this link to an article about the Grinch, complete with quotes from the lovely June Foray, who did the voice of Cindy Lou Who.  Her role was uncredited and less than a dozen words in duration…but even if I hadn't seen the special repeatedly since '63, I'd still remember her letter-perfect performance.

My piece on old movie houses seems to have touched some nerves, with many of you e-mailing me your own memories of theaters from your pasts. Two folks also informed me that I prematurely closed the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, which is still up and operating.

What fooled me is that its closing was announced a few years ago (here's a 1999 news story, complete with photo) but protests were mounted, and the place is still hanging in there, albeit barely. Over at its website, one can read a bevy of recent news articles about the battle to keep its doors open.

Here's a silly trivia item. In 1961, not long after George Reeves died, DC Comics decided to try to sell a Superboy series and produced a pilot with Johnny Rockwell in the title role. It was a pretty awful pilot and it never went anywhere. You can view it online at this site if you have QuickTime installed and a half-hour to waste.

So what does this have to do with the Aero Theater? Well, the pilot is about a doorman who works at…the Aero Theater. It was shot outside the place back in '61. The last time I drove by the Aero, it hadn't changed much.

Jack Paar was a nervous, superstitious gent and when he was working at NBC, he usually declined to ride the elevators at Rockefeller Center. Instead, he would reach his office each morning by an intricate series of stairwells and shortcuts. His route took him through the usually-deserted Studio 6B where later that evening, he would do The Tonight Show.

One day, Paar arrived at the studio much earlier than usual and, when he walked into 6B, he found himself walking onto a live (live!) broadcast of the game show, Play Your Hunch.

The studio audience went berserk and Paar, finding himself unexpectedly on live TV, attempted to flee. But the show's host, Merv Griffin, ran over and got a vise-grip on the bewildered star's arm to keep him there so he could conduct a brief, funny interview. Paar swore he had no idea that his studio was being used by another program each morning. "So this is what you do in the daytime," Paar quipped to Griffin, who had occasionally sung on The Tonight Show.

Later, Paar admitted he was impressed with how Griffin had "milked" the accident for its maximum entertainment value by keeping him there. He gave Merv a shot guest-hosting The Tonight Show and when that went well, it led to Griffin becoming a candidate to succeed Paar. When Johnny Carson got the job instead, NBC signed Griffin to do an afternoon talk show which debuted the same day. It was their way of keeping Merv "on deck" in case Johnny bombed — which, of course, didn't happen. Griffin went on to host his own long-running talk show in syndication and also became a producer of hit game shows.

Around the peak of his success, Griffin was asked to reflect. He said, "If Jack Paar hadn't been afraid of elevators, I'd be hosting shows like Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy! instead of owning them."

We've been talking about NBC's plans to air Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol this year in prime-time, and even managed to get the network to correct errors in a press release saying they'd be airing it.  So just when in December is it airing?  This article in today's Miami Herald discusses Holiday specials and of Magoo, it has this to say…

NBC has purchased the broadcast rights and guaranteed Classic Media, the show's owner, that it will appear on a Friday this December.  But as this story went to press, NBC was still mum about which Friday or the time slot.

Perhaps it's a secret because it isn't going to happen.  NBC has released its prime-time schedule through the end of the month and the near-sighted guy is nowhere to be seen on it.  Next Friday, they have Providence, NBC Dateline and Law & Order: Criminal Intent filling the evening.  The Friday after — the last before Xmas — they have a two-hour Providence, followed by Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.  And the following Friday (December 27, two days after Christmas Day) is a two-hour NBC Dateline, followed by another Law & Order: Something.  Quincy Magoo is not to be found on the other December nights, either.  So if he's getting on, they're really keeping it a secret.

As we mentioned here, we thought airing the 1962 special was a great idea.  It's still a great idea.  But it looks like if you want to watch it, you'll have to do so via VHS or DVD.  That's fine for those of us who winced to think what would probably get cut, but I don't imagine they're in a holiday mood over at Classic Media.

United Airlines is reportedly filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection any day now.  I am not surprised, and you know why?  Because United Airlines once lost my luggage, and when an airline loses my luggage — even though they always eventually find it — they're in big trouble.  Remember PSA?  Western?  TWA?  Two different airlines named National?  All gone or acquired, within a few years of losing my luggage.  Here is a column I just posted about how United sealed their fate a few years ago by losing my luggage.

That's a photo of the Pacific Cinerama Dome up on Sunset Boulevard, as it looked in '63 when it was housing its debut attraction, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  The place is currently undergoing extensive remodeling and will soon reopen as part of some sort of shopping mall.  God knows L.A. could use more malls.  There are parts of this town where you can go an entire block without encountering a Victoria's Secret, a Gap, a Foot Locker and/or a Mrs. Fields' Cookies shop.

But at least the Cinerama Dome will exist.  As I think back to movie theaters I patronized in the sixties and seventies, I recall a lot of buildings that are no longer there…or if they are, they're no longer movie houses.  Out on Sepulveda, just north of LAX, there are two that have long since been converted to office buildings.  I can't drive out to the airport without noticing the Loyola and the Paradise.  The Paradise is a special memory.  One of the first movies I ever saw in a theater — Jerry Lewis's Don't Give Up the Ship — I saw there.  And I was also there for one of its closing attractions, which was the animated Disney version of Robin Hood.

A lot of other such palaces are gone — like the Picwood, which once sat near the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Westwood.  It and the adjoining bowling alley were there for fifty-some-odd years but my personal history spanned Hey There, It's Yogi Bear (1964) and Fame (1980).  There's a block-long shopping mall there now, with a Tony Roma's rib joint at the approximate location of the Picwood.

About a mile northwest, at the corner of Olympic and Bundy, there's a huge Cadillac dealership, erected on land which once comprised the Olympic Drive-In.  There, around age seven, I saw (with my parents) a double-feature of the old Fleischer Brothers' animated Gulliver's Travels, paired with the then-recent cowboy comedy, Once Upon A Horse.  The latter was an unsuccessful attempt to sell the new comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin as the new Martin and Lewis.  In fact, it was so unsuccessful that — eleven years later, when they made their next feature, The Maltese Bippy — they publicized it as their first movie.  The Maltese Bippy, by the way, had its world premiere at the Picwood.

Many other movie theaters of my youth are gone, and a few others — like the Fairfax — have been carved up into multiplex cinemas.  I am not suggesting they should have been preserved just because they were a part of my childhood.  I just think it's interesting what these old buildings mean to us.  I have a great memory but I'll bet that even if I didn't, I could still remember that I first saw 101 Dalmatians at the Meralta in Culver City, first saw Doctor No at the Aero in Santa Monica, and first saw Robin and the Seven Hoods at the Fox Wilshire in Beverly Hills.  The theaters are no longer there but the memories never get replaced by California Pizza Kitchens.

Noel Neill was the second actress to portray Lois Lane on the original Superman TV show and — no offense to her predecessor, Phyllis Coates — Ms. Neill will forever occupy a warm spot in many of our hearts.  I never met Noel Neill but I aim to say howdy to her in person on the weekend of January 18-19.  She's been announced as among the guests (along with Soupy Sales, Don Knotts, Rip Taylor, Judy Strangis, Rod McKuen and many others) at the Hollywood Collectors Show out in Studio City.  Go here for details on how you can be there and say hello to the first Lois Lane most of us knew.

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.

At the Mad World screening — and I promise I'll stop talking about it in a day or so — I met a couple of e-mail acquaintances, including Daniel Frank, a clever guy who publishes this weblog.  Writing of the movie over there, he remarks…

One minor negative note is that (and I don't know if this is a function of the big screen or of seeing the movie) the stunt doubles in some scenes were glaringly obvious (as in an actor's face would turn to the camera and was obviously not his face).

He's right.  In fact, I think I could pick the guy who doubled Dick Shawn out of a police lineup.  But then, I always wonder how big a deal that is.  Does anyone ever not know when they're seeing the stuntman instead of the star?  Even when I first saw the film at age 11, I knew that Spencer Tracy hadn't really swung across the street and crashed into a building.  Matter of fact, I might have enjoyed the film less if I'd believed it was him.  One of the things that impairs the last few Laurel and Hardy movies for me is that it's not as funny to see an old man fall down as it is to see someone in reasonably good health.  (Actually, I've always been one of those folks who watches slapstick comedies and rarely laughs at the slapstick…but you know what I mean.)

I suspect the stunt doubling in Mad World is like a lot of magic tricks: It only really fools you the first time.  It isn't the big screen since the movie was made to be shown on an even bigger screen than the one Daniel and the rest of us saw it on the other night.  It's that the more you see a film like that, the more you notice the wires, the continuity errors and, yes, the stunt people.

One time when I can recall an obvious stuntman switch really spoiling a movie for me was the last James Bond film with Roger Moore in the lead.  Someone had decided that, to make things exciting on the screen, 007 had to perform incredible athletic feats — and though the substitutions were expertly done, they struck me as too jarring.  Mr. Moore was close to sixty and even as a young man, he never seemed particularly physical.  My grandmother was more likely to be swinging on the cables of a suspension bridge.

I found that distancing.  I'm just as conscious of the stuntwork in Mad World but I don't find it distancing.  Go figure.  Maybe it's that the latter film hooks me with strong performances, or maybe it's just that it's intentionally sillier, or maybe I just plain like it better and am more forgiving.  All movies involve a suspension of disbelief but some disbelief is easier to suspend than some other disbelief.

My friend of many years, writer Marv Wolfman, has personally refurbished his website — yes, it's www.marvwolfman.com — and you might like to drop by.  Marv has been responsible for some fine comic books, including Tomb of Dracula, The New Teen Titans, and Blade, and he once helped Len Wein crate up Tony Isabella and attempt to ship him to the Middle East.  That alone deserves your respect.

Someone set up a website devoted exclusively to Shemp Howard.  This is a very noble deed and it calls to mind the one time I was foolish enough to attend a Three Stooges Film Festival.  (I like the Stooges' shorts but eight in a row?  By about the fifth, I was ready to poke my own eyes out.)  All the films featured Curly and halfway through — during the intermission — I casually wondered aloud if perhaps the second batch would include one or two featuring Shemp, who preceded and later replaced his brother Curly in the act.  "Might we be getting a little Shemp?" I innocently inquired.  This is what you call your basic Wrong Thing To Say.

All around me, Stooge buffs gasped and expressed shock that anyone with an I.Q. greater than, say, Larry's would want to sit through — yechh! — a Stooge short with Shemp in it.  Boo, hiss.  It all sounded a lot like the way others talk about Three Stooges shorts in general, and I never quite knew why.  Samuel "Shemp" Howard was the most accomplished comedian of the troupe and even if Curly's infantile mutterings struck some as more amusing, didn't the Shemp films have at least a lot of the same appeal?  Apparently, for die-hard Stooge lovers, no.  I can understand preferring one over the other but not the outright hostility.  It was almost as if Shemp was somehow to blame for his brother having a stroke and having to retire.

Anyway, it's nice that someone likes Shemp enough to put up a site in his honor.  I don't think it'll ever lead to true respectability — we're talking Stooges here — but it's nice to see a little bit of justice in the world.  Can due esteem for Joe Besser be that far off?