Yet another member of the cast of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has passed away. Madlyn Rhue had a tiny but memorable role as Spencer Tracy's secretary and was later a regular on one of my favorite "trashy" TV shows, Bracken's World. Her career and life were hampered by Multiple Sclerosis but she kept on working as long as she could. A brave lady.
Every so often, I get an e-mail asking me which members of the cast of that legendary film are still with us. Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk, Dorothy Provine and Edie Adams are all around. So are Arnold Stang and Marvin Kaplan. I am awaiting my annual Christmas card from Arnold.) So are Stan Freberg, Carl Reiner, Don Knotts, Barrie Chase, Charles Lane, Nick Georgiade, several stunt people and Jerry Lewis. That's a small percentage of the cast but it's more than most folks seem to expect when they ask that question.
Still doing manual updates here but I wanted to mention that and I also wanted to post a TV listing. Some time ago, I told this story about something silly that occurred back when I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter. Even though the anecdote doesn't have much to do with the episode (and even though it wasn't one of the better episodes done while I was there), several folks asked me to let them know when it was on again. Well, TV Land is running it this coming Sunday evening. It's called "Hark, the Sweatkings" and it airs at 9:30 PM on my TV. Check, as they say, your local listing. In fact, look over the whole schedule. TV Land is running a marathon of Christmas episodes this weekend, including episodes of shows not normally on their schedule.
By the way: If you catch the Kotter episode, the uncredited guy playing Santa Claus in the closing tag was one of the writers, a lovely man named Neil Rosen. Neil worked on a number of TV shows but his first love was the theater. The minute he made some real money in television, he and his friend Pat Paulsen bought and restored the Cherry County Playhouse in Traverse City, Michigan. This was (and still is) one of those theaters that imports TV stars to intermingle with local actors and if you look over their list of past productions, you'll see some fascinating bits of stunt casting. (Bob Keeshan in The Wizard of Oz? Jamie Farr in My Fair Lady? Don Knotts in Harvey and Last of the Red Hot Lovers? Buddy Ebsen in The Last Meeting of the Nights of White Magnolia?) Neil died way too young but he'd be proud to know the theater is still up and running and featuring John Davidson in Chicago.
Also: I didn't see it but several folks have told me that The Simpsons did a brilliant parody this year on Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. I've set the old TiVo to record that episode when it runs again on Monday the 22nd.