Monthly Archives: September 2003

Jim Korkis has a nice two-part biography of the great animator, Ub Iwerks, over at Jim Hill Media. Here's that link.

Every so often, I hear about a theatrical production in another city that sounds so intriguing, I momentarily mull if there's a way to jump on a plane and go see it. The only time I ever acted on it was when Jerry Lewis debuted on Broadway in Damn Yankees. My friend Paul Dini and I decided to spring for the cost, I ordered opening night tickets for the show…and then, just before I called the travel agent, a comic convention in New York that coincided with that date called and invited to fly me back to be a guest. I said, "I'll do it, and I'll bet I could get Paul Dini to come back, too." The convention organizer said, "Really? That would be great." So Paul and I got someone else to pay for our air fares and, just to make it really weird, the convention put us up at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. Damn Yankees was playing in the Marquis Theatre located inside the Marriott Marquis.

I don't expect that to happen again. I don't even expect to go see this. But I must admit that I'm intrigued at the prospect of Patty Duke starring as Momma Rose in a production of Gypsy. She may not be able to sing like Ethel Merman but she knows a thing or two about the ruthless exploitation of child stars.

I'm not sure how many cities are getting it but tomorrow night (Sunday) is the annual Chabad L'Chaim to Life Telethon. It's on in Los Angeles (starting at 5:00 PM on KCAL, Channel 9) and I think in New York (presumably at 8 PM due to the time difference) and I don't know where else. It's seven hours of dancing Jews, celebrities (including many you've heard of), pleas for money, and generally wonderful Yiddish-style music. It is at times entertaining in a campy manner and at times, genuinely entertaining.

For years, it was hosted by comedian Jan Murray who was wonderful at it. As Jan got older, one aspect of the show got more entertaining. You see, every time they go to the tote board for a new total, they play a peppy Jewish folk tune and a group of young men come out and dance a rousing hora in celebration. It was tough enough for Mr. Murray to host for seven hours but every fifteen minutes or so, he had to join in this dance and as the show wore on, he'd get more and more winded, and I think some people just watched to see if Jan Murray was going to drop dead on camera. Some may even have donated just to hasten the next tote.

The last year or two he did the show, Murray begged off dancing and they brought in Jon Voight to be his "dance-in" (as in, "stand-in") which deprived us of that fun, but there were other joys. One year, Bob Hope was on and did a great job of mentioning the name of the charity about ninety times without once pronouncing it correctly.

"Chabad" is pronounced, like "Chanukah," with the "c" almost but not quite silent. You pronounce such words as if they begin with the "H," but you insert a little inhaled gasp before that letter. That's if you're trying to be correct. If you're Bob Hope, who was about as unJewish as a guy who did one-line jokes could be, you pronounce it with the "ch" sound of "charlie" or "cha-cha." Then to really get it wrong, you put the emphasis on the wrong syllable and…well, it was one of the funnier things Mr. Hope did in his last decade.

I don't know who's hosting this year. After Jan Murray retired, they tried Fyvush Finkel, who did a credible job, and radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who was awful. The publicity for tomorrow night's affair lists celebs including Jeffrey Tambor, Martin Sheen, Regis Philbin, Serena Williams, Magic Johnson, Howie Mandel, Darryl Sabara, and the cast of Friends, but doesn't say who's hosting.

Still, it'll be worth watching just to see the energetic Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, who runs the West Coast Chabad-Lubavitch. There's a page about an earlier Chabad Telethon at this website, including a page where you can see some video excerpts from past broadcasts.

One other thing will be missing besides Jan Murray. My friend, actor-writer Stanley Ralph Ross passed away in 1999. Stanley used to work on the telethon every year, often as its announcer and always answering phones. Stanley was very tall and though a very sweet man, he had a deep, gravelly voice that often got him jobs on cartoon shows as dastardly villains.

Every so often, someone on the phone banks would get a call from some Jew-hater uttering anti-Semitic garbage. If Stanley was around, they'd pass the call over to him and he'd signal the Stage Manager to tell the director to cut to a shot of him if possible. Then he'd tell the caller, "You see that 6'6" Jew on your screen? That's me. Come on down to the station, meet me in the parking lot and say that to my face, you cowardly bastard!"

According to Stanley, he'd hear them gulp and hang up. The telethon after he told me this, I watched and, sure enough, at one point in the middle of a number, they cut suddenly to Stanley and though I couldn't hear him, I could read his lips as he challenged the guy and called him a cowardly Nazi bastard. Then Stanley started laughing and I knew the guy had hung up. I immediately called up, got routed to Stanley and donated a hundred bucks. Best thing I saw on television that year.

I've known William Stout for thirty years and I'm still amazed at his talent and versatility. Talk about a guy who can draw anything. Think I'm kidding? Think I'm just praising a guy 'cause he's a friend of mine? Then take a look at his website and tell me that isn't one amazing artist.

Early next Friday morning (in other words, late Thursday night), Game Show Network is airing an interesting episode of To Tell the Truth from 1967. One of the contestants is Hunter S. Thompson.

Paul Krugman — who really is becoming the columnist most conservatives fear, judging by some of the silly attacks on him — gives a long but readable overview of what he sees as America's current and looming financial crisis. Here's a key paragraph…

A result of the tax-cut crusade is that there is now a fundamental mismatch between the benefits Americans expect to receive from the government and the revenues government collect. This mismatch is already having profound effects at the state and local levels: teachers and policemen are being laid off and children are being denied health insurance. The federal government can mask its problems for a while, by running huge budget deficits, but it, too, will eventually have to decide whether to cut services or raise taxes. And we are not talking about minor policy adjustments. If taxes stay as low as they are now, government as we know it cannot be maintained. In particular, Social Security will have to become far less generous; Medicare will no longer be able to guarantee comprehensive medical care to older Americans; Medicaid will no longer provide basic medical care to the poor.

What makes me think he's probably (unfortunately) correct is that while his detractors will fault certain perhaps-arguable calculations, they kind of skip over or ignore this kind of pronouncement. They don't rebut him by arguing either that cutbacks in the safety net will not happen or even that they're a good thing. Anyway, read the whole piece and decide for yourself.

Peter Sanderson concludes his long but on-target review of this year's Comic-Con International here.

My book, Mad Art, gets a nice review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. You can read that review here and then you can order a copy from Amazon by clicking here. (Sorry that I have to resort to such shameless huckstering but I haven't been able to get Fox News to sue me yet…)

Over in his weblog, my pal Daniel Frank notes…

Mark Evanier discusses the factors that will determine whether John Ritter's show will continue. Evanier left out how the Burns and Allen TV show went through four Harry Mortons, the next-door neighbor. The most famous transition was between Fred Clark and Larry Keating, Mortons number three and four respectively. George Burns interrupts a scene with Clark. He introduces Keating to the audience and explains that he will now be playing the role of Harry Morton. Clark and Keating shake hands; Clark leaves and Keating continues with the scene.

Actually, I think I may have led the discussion awry by dragging in times when one actor went elsewhere and another simply took his place. There's something about a performer dying that puts such changes into another category. It seems to mandate that the character be eliminated and not merely recast. And then it would seem awkward and perhaps disrespectful to merely drop all reference to the departed character, so they usually declare him deceased or say he's moved away.

Either way, it reminds viewers that the real actor, for whom they perhaps had some affection or at least familiarity, is dead. So they have to mourn a second time, and a little genuine grief (or at least, discomfort) invades the otherwise-safe fictional environment. In the realm of comic books, people have even gotten upset when a favorite fictional character has been "killed." It's like, "Why did we need that sadness in our lives?"

I remember that on the original Hollywood Squares game show, they had this situation: When panelist Wally Cox died, there were many episodes taped with him that had yet to air. It would have been ludicrous to not broadcast those shows. Not only would it have been a silly waste of resources but it would have been, in effect, destroying Cox's final work. But game shows — then, more than now — maintain the generally-unspoken fiction that they're live or almost live.

There was the feeling, perhaps correct, that audiences would get confused watching and go, "Hey, I thought Wally Cox had died. What's going on here?" so the producers superimposed the words, "pre-recorded" on the screen whenever Cox was in a solo shot. This clarified things for the more befuddled viewers but reminded all that they were watching a dead person. A lot of people wrote in and said, "You shouldn't air this. Have you no respect for the deceased?" The outpouring was so emotional that later, when Cliff (Charley Weaver) Arquette passed away, the Squares people handled it differently…and still got a lot of that kind of mail.

One presumes the complainers weren't objecting to the broadcast of a television program containing a person who'd passed on. No one writes in and says it's wrong to show I Love Lucy since Lucy, Desi, Bill and Viv have all joined the choir invisibule. But in the context of something current, it unnerved some people. A lot of them said, in effect, "Hey, we watch that kind of TV show to forget about death. If we want that, we'll watch the news."

When a show kills off a major character like McLean Stevenson's on M*A*S*H or John Amos's on Good Times, such sentiments are voiced. Even though no one actually died, there's always mail that says, "I'm still getting over my father's death. Why did you have to put me through another round of mourning?" It's not the cast change that bothers people. It's the issue of death. They get enough of it in real life, they say. Why have it when it isn't necessary?

I don't think that's a terrible question. Sometimes, as in M*A*S*H, killing a major character may be a sound creative decision. M*A*S*H, after all, was about war and it would have been hokey if no one died or if only day players died. I think on Good Times, Amos quit and for a time, the character was simply away, working on an Alaskan pipeline or something. Finally though, the producers felt that making it a show about a family with a deceased father was a better idea than what they had and they explained the absence that way.

Both of these were elective deaths and the actors involved had not died so there was no loss of real human life attached. Fictional characters were dead, not McLean and John. Still, a lot of viewers felt they'd been put through unnecessary emotion. If and when they announce on John Ritter's show that his character died in a car crash or whatever, some of America is going to sit there and really cry for John Ritter…again.

In my earlier discussion of what they'll do, I left out a couple of questions which one hopes the show's writers are given the chance to ask: Will the show work as a show about a family where the father has just died unexpectedly? Would it work better as a show where the father has just been transferred to Greenland so we never see him again? Assuming ABC isn't ready to give up on the series, there's already economic pressure on the show runners to decide they can keep it flying without that character.

They'll probably decide it's a worthy challenge and try, but it won't be the same as saying, "Hey, folks! Here's a new Harry Morton." (Actually, I sometimes wish we had George Burns on every TV show to break the fourth wall, tell us what's going on, and do things like introduce the new actor. But I guess it would just upset people by reminding them that George Burns was dead.)

As you may know, I have raccoons in my backyard. And possums. And stray cats. And hummingbirds. And the amazing thing is that I'm in the middle of an urban area with no nearby parks or hillsides. Still, creatures great and small show up back there to feast on the cat food I put out. Usually, we leave it near the patio door but last night, we put it out by the pool and I got the above snapshot of seven (count 'em — seven) raccoons. The larger one at left is the parent…the mother, I presume. When I'm around, she never takes her eyes off me. The kids don't care much who's around; they're too busy jockeying for position around the food dish, shoving one another aside and occasionally getting into angry squabbles.

This brood has been coming around for a couple of weeks and I've taken many photos of them, but this was the first time I got all seven of them in one shot. If you would like to help me shoulder the burden of feeding these guys, we have links here that will allow you to donate money to this site either via PayPal or by buying something from Amazon. All donations for the next few weeks will be directed not to silly eBay purchases but to Mark's Feed the Raccoons Fund. And believe me: No matter how much you folks give, the way them 'coons eat, it won't be enough.

My pal Aaron Barnhart has some sound thoughts on Conan O'Brien's tenth anniversary.

Bill Oppenheim writes:

I'm pretty sure Roger Carmel was fired from The Mothers-in-Law and died years later. It was a drug overdose?

Well, since this weblog seems to be in full Death Mode, I might as well answer this. Roger C. Carmel was one of the most prolific character actors of his day. He was on just about everything, often many times, but most folks remember him from his two appearances as the hedonist of space, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, on the original Star Trek. Fans of The Dick Van Dyke Show remember him as Doug Wesley, the accountant who wouldn't give Buddy and Sally a raise because Alan Brady had invested too much money in Martin and Lewis coloring books. (And no, he never appeared in the Gold Key comic.) Anyway, Carmel was a co-star of a situation comedy called The Mothers-In-Law which was on NBC for two seasons beginning in 1967. The main stars, seen in the photo above, were Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard.

It was a pretty good TV show…the last series produced by Desi Arnaz. At the end of its first season, Carmel had a salary dispute with Señor Arnaz and took a hike — or at least, that was the official story. The rumor was that he was using drugs and causing delays in production. Desi gave him two weeks to clean up his act, he didn't and was terminated. I can't swear that's true but either way, he was replaced in the role by Richard Deacon.

Carmel died some time later…in 1986. One of his last jobs was doing the voice of a sinister crocodile on a cartoon special I wrote. He was a delightful man and I remember him telling us with childlike amazement that he was being paid a very nice fee to appear the following weekend at a Star Trek convention. The amazement was because he'd done hundreds of roles on different TV shows and in movies that were long forgotten…but those few days he'd worked on Star Trek two decades earlier were still earning him considerable fame and fortune. He'd been on Batman, I Spy, Hogan's Heroes, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Munsters, Hawaii Five-O, and all those Universal westerns and detective shows, and no one (but for clowns like me) ever asked him about any of them. Star Trek, which at the time hadn't meant any more to him than any other job, was providing him with a tidy income.

There are only a few TV shows that still have that kind of commerce. There's no real money in having been on Bonanza or Mannix or That Girl, but every single actor who's alive and ever appeared on The Andy Griffith Show has been offered tons of money to go down South and sign autographs. There are annual Dark Shadows conventions and a series of Get Smart reunions are now being promoted. You wonder why certain shows and not others.

The Internet Movie Database lists the cause of death for Roger C. Carmel as suicide but as I recall, it was ruled an accidental drug overdose. Some friends found him at home in bed surrounded by cocaine paraphernalia. If you go to that link to look at his list of credits, by the way, I think the TV roles listed there represent about a tenth of all he did. A good actor.

The fine comic illustrator Paul Chadwick writes to say…

Ritter picked one good script, though. The guy never had better chemistry than with Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade. Funny stuff. It was great seeing such a sunny TV personality do dark Southern Gothic. It would be interesting to hear your insider view on what a sitcom might do when the star dies. Shut down immediately? Write it in? Plastic surgery plot? Carry on with an unacknowledged replacement, like Bewitched?

It hasn't been a good week for Billy Bob, who was quoted as a good friend of Warren Zevon's in those obits, and I believe I saw somewhere that he was close to Johnny Cash.

As for what the series should do…well, I have to admit that I've never seen 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter, so I don't know how it might fit to do a storyline where the character died. You can do that easily with a supporting character, like they did when Jack Soo passed away during the run of Barney Miller, or Nick Colasanto died while still a regular on Cheers.

The three big precedents here would probably be Chico and the Man, News Radio, and The Royal Family. In the latter, Redd Foxx died from a heart attack on the set, which was kind of a festival of irony. Not only was it one of Redd's signature bits to feign a coronary but the series had originally been entitled Chest Pains. At the time, The Royal Family had just debuted to good ratings, and I believe there was a feeling that they couldn't give up on a potential hit without trying to keep it alive. The death was written into the storyline and some new cast members were added but it didn't work. Then again, the show might not have held up with Redd.

In the case of News Radio, when Phil Hartman was murdered, his character was written out and replaced by a new, not dissimilar character. The show lasted another season but I think there's a consensus that that's about how much longer it would have lasted even with Phil. Of course, it's easier to replace a guy who works at the office than a character who's the head of a family.

Regarding Chico: At the time Freddie Prinze killed himself, I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, which was produced by the same company so I observed some of the concerns. There was an immediate determination that the show had to continue…

• NBC wanted that because at the time, they had only two successful situation comedies on the whole network — Chico and the Man, and Sanford and Son. There was no other strong sitcom waiting in the wings and so there was the fear that the network's whole Friday night schedule, including Sanford, would collapse. (Later, when Mr. Foxx walked off Sanford and Son, they went to ridiculous lengths to try to do the show without him…episodes with Son but no Sanford, followed by a series called The Sanford Arms which had neither. And later, Foxx tried a show called just Sanford (no Son) and that didn't work, either.)
• Jimmie Komack's production company wanted desperately to keep it going. Apart from Kotter, every one of their other shows (like Mr. T and Tina) and pilots had either flopped or was about to. So the order came down to keep Chico and the Man alive at all costs.
• And the folks who did Chico wanted to keep their jobs. There was a sense of Why should we be penalized because of what Freddie did? I don't think that's a terrible motive.

There was brief talk of just casting another actor as Chico. One thing which I think scuttled that was that at Freddie's funeral, a woman ran up to a grieving Jack Albertson (Prinze's co-star) and handed him what Albertson thought was a photo of Freddie. Albertson said, "No autographs now," and the woman said, "No, this is a picture of my son. He looks just like Freddie Prinze. Give him the job!" That struck everyone as so grotesque that they decided to look for another way to bring in a kid who could be called Chico (to keep the title and theme song intact) and they wound up bringing in a younger actor who The Man kept calling "Chico." Those episodes are largely forgotten today but the change kept the show alive for more than a year, sans Prinze, and I would guess it was considered a successful recovery by NBC and the producers.

I assume they won't try just having another actor come in and take over the role on Ritter's series. It sorta worked on Bewitched, replacing Dick York with Dick Sargent but York hadn't died so the replacement wasn't a reminder of a real death. Same thing when Richard Deacon replaced Roger C. Carmel on The Mothers-in-Law or several other examples. Bewitched was also such an unrealistic show, filled with special effects and unreal characters, that going from York to Sargent may not have been all that jarring for most viewers. (No one seems to have noticed when, mid-run, they changed the actress who played Gladys Kravitz but again, that was a supporting role.)

With a more realistic show and an actor as important to the series as I assume Ritter is to his, they probably won't just recast. Eight Simple Rules seems to be important to ABC's Tuesday night lineup so they'll probably try and keep it going with a storyline change and a new character or two…but they may not. Someplace in some filing cabinet at ABC, there are detailed breakdowns of the show's ratings that yield a view, perhaps an accurate one, of how strong its audience is. There may even be testing to determine how many viewers are tuning in to watch John Ritter and if they don't have such numbers, they may have a fast survey done. Assuming the show looks like it still has legs and that it might doom Tuesday to lose it, they'll regroup. Standard Operating Procedure would probably be to try and bring in some strong, experienced star (possibly a woman) to play a relative or other guardian who assumes the parental function and explain that Ritter's character is away or deceased. After a decent interval has passed, we'll hear what they're going to do.

If you read the Esquire article to which I linked earlier, you might want to also read this piece by the photographer who took the photo that was under discussion.

I don't expect anyone to be able to answer this (or even to care about it) but yesterday, the Trio satellite TV channel reran an episode of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In that had as its special guests, Debbie Reynolds, Peter Sellers and Johnny Carson. But it didn't say that in any of the TV listings, including the one on the Trio website. This listing read:

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In – Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, guests Debbie Reynolds, Coslough Johnson and Johnny Carson.

Coslough Johnson is the brother of series regular Arte Johnson, and he was one of the writers on Laugh-In. He wasn't billed on this episode as a guest and I didn't notice him appearing on-camera in it. So why is his name in the current TV listing instead of Peter Sellers? I can only guess that Coslough did a bit part in the episode. Perhaps I missed it (he looks a lot like Arte) or perhaps it's been cut from the current syndication prints…or it could even have been chopped out of the show before it originally aired. Such cuts are not uncommon. Then, the theory would go, when the syndication list was made up, someone went back to the files to get the names of the guest stars, and there was an old contract in there for Coslough, or his name was on a call sheet. Then (still theorizing), that person thought that was the name of some famous performer, better known than Peter Sellers.

This kind of thing happens more often than you'd think. And it wreaks havoc for historians of this stuff.