Monthly Archives: January 2005

Frank Rich rips Armstrong Williams into teensy-weensy bits over the latter's ethical transgressions as a news commentator.

If you are desperate for a hotel room for the Comic-Con in San Diego…or if you just are going somewhere and crave the best possible deal…here's a tip. Travelaxe is a free service that has sure helped me find cheap lodgings. It's a piece of software that you download to your computer. You tell it where you want to go and when, and it scans the websites of travel agents and finds you an array of rates. There are times when I've found a better price at a given hotel that way than I could have gotten by booking through the hotel's own website. Anyway, it's always worth a try.

Around 60% of the folks who attend shows in the Broadway area of New York are from out of state. This article in the New York Times reveals that and some other interesting facts about the theater-going audience.

Hotel reservations for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego were snatched up at a staggering rate yesterday. Heidi MacDonald is covering the story here and later here on her fine comics news weblog.

Friday the Thirteenth is a day ahead of schedule. That's right: It's fallen on a Thursday this year. You can read all about this amazing phenomenon over at The Official Pogo Possum Website where, today only, they're celebrating a whole year of just being The Official Pogo Possum Website. Which is a fine thing to celebrate!

Here's a comparison of the Dan Rather scandal with the one about those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction.

As many of you race to secure rooms for the Comic-Con International in July, let us remember that there's another great California comic convention in February, and it's even operated by the same folks. This year's WonderCon occurs in San Francisco the weekend of 2/18 to 2/20 and as you can see at the convention website, I am among the guests.

I'll be taking it relatively easy and only moderating seven panels at WonderCon. One will be a tribute to the late, great Will Eisner. Another will be our festive "Quick Draw!" game, and there will be a Sergio/Mark panel and a Golden/Silver Age panel. The latter will feature Russ Heath, Creig Flessel and Arnold Drake.

One of the things that's getting me to San Francisco this year, apart from the fact that WonderCon is always a great convention, is that Arnold will be present. Long before I met him, he was one of my favorite writers. (Not that this is likely but if DC Comics ever launches a reprint series, where the idea is to present great stories regardless of the "commercial appeal" of the characters or creators, they could do no better than to tap the five Showcase issues of Tommy Tomorrow published in 1962-1963. They appeared, as did too many comics of those days, without writer credits so it was years before I knew they'd been written by the co-creator and/or writer of the Doom Patrol, Deadman, Stanley and His Monster and so many of my favorite DC Comics of the sixties. Later, I met Arnold and found him to be among the most articulate, interesting comic book creators I've ever known.

Arnold will sit for a one-on-one interview by me, and will also be on a panel on Kids' Comics I'm hosting with, we're hoping, Gail Simone, Amanda Conner, Scott Shaw! and Bill Morrison. There will also be a panel on the fine art of drawing comic book covers with, tentatively, Neal Adams, Alex Ross, William Stout, John Cassaday and Adam Hughes. I'll post a full schedule as we get closer to that weekend.

A P.S. on my earlier item about how Mary Poppins was the only Disney movie for which Daws Butler recorded a voice. This is probably true, though I should have mentioned he was up for one other job there.

For about about a half century, comedy legend Stan Freberg told folks that when Mr. Disney was casting voices for his version of Alice in Wonderland, he'd been personally cast by Walt to play the Jabberwocky, but the role was cut. This was doubted by some. While a lot of unrealized or abandoned Disney movie sequences still exist, at least in rough sketches, there was then no evidence of any "Jabberwocky" scene in the movie.

Well, of course, it turned out Stan was right. Years later, historians unearthed some papers that listed Walt's casting ideas: Freberg with Daws Butler and The Rhythmaires, which was a singing group headed by Jud Conlon. The paperwork is reproduced among the extras on the current Alice in Wonderland DVD.

The Rhythmaires are heard in the final movie, and Freberg is allegedly heard in a few tiny parts…but it does not appear Daws ever recorded anything for the film. At least, he never mentioned it to any of us. He did do some voices in the 1966 TV version of Alice in Wonderland that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, subtitled "What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?" That's the one that had Sammy Davis Jr. as the Cheshire Cat, Zsa Zsa Gabor as the Queen of Hearts, and Bill "Jose Jiminez" Dana as the White Knight. It also had pretty good songs by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse (same guys who wrote the score for Bye Bye Birdie and other hits) and I'm surprised it's never been released on home video. Here's a web page about it.

Getting back to the Disney Alice: It's interesting that Disney would have thought of casting the Freberg-Butler duo at the time, which would have been around 1949. (The movie was released in '51) Both men were doing cartoon voices but had yet to really establish their reputations, either individually or collectively. Stan didn't even make his first comedy record until '51. They were first teamed on the Time for Beany puppet show, which went on the air in February of '49…so that must have been what caused Walt to think of them, not only as worthy performers but as a duo. Shows you, I guess, that Walt really did have a knack for spotting talent.

There's a new book out about Daws entitled Daws Butler, Characters Actor, and I hear it's good. But I haven't received my copy yet.

Online hotel reservations for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego opened this morning. If you're even contemplating attendance of this fine convention, get over to the site and book a room immediately. Tomorrow may be too late.

And if you don't do this, don't whine to me in June that you're paying $400 a night to share a cot at a Motel 6 with three guys in Klingon suits, none of whom have bathed since DeForest Kelly died.

The search for Saddam Hussein's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction has been quietly abandoned, the Washington Post reports. [Registration maybe necessary] Here are a couple of excerpts from the article, and I want to discuss the third paragraph I'm quoting…

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

[…snip…]

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

[…snip…]

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

Okay, question: Is Bush disappointed for any other reason than that it means he and his men were spectacularly wrong about a key reason (some would say "main reason") we are now immersed in a war that is costing us a lot more American lives and dollars than anyone anticipated? I mean, isn't it good news in a way that it showed it isn't always necessary to go to war to disarm a tyrant? Sanctions and inspections, which were previously mocked as wimpy, ineffective tactics obviously worked a lot better than some had thought. Isn't that preferable to the conclusion that they couldn't possibly stop someone like ol' Saddam from getting nukes and passing around biological timebombs?

Isn't "he never had them" better news for us than "he had them but he smuggled them out to those al Qaeda affiliates"?

Floyd Norman, who was working at Disney's when the film was made, comes through with a nice little article about Mary Poppins.

Have I mentioned that the new DVD is quite wonderful, with all sorts of extras and behind-the-scenes footage? In fact, they could have omitted the movie and this new disc would be worth buying, just for the bonus features.

(Yeah, I did mention it, a week or two ago. But it's worth mentioning again.)

One bit of Mary Poppins trivia that is not included: As we animation buffs all know, Pinocchio was the only Disney movie for which Mel Blanc recorded a voice. (The story is that he did a whole voice track for Gideon before the decision was made to make the character mute, so all that remains of Mel's performance are a couple of hiccups. There are historians who think Mel can also be heard in a couple of miscellaneous lines from other characters.)

Well, Mary Poppins, in case anyone ever asks you, is the only Disney feature for which the great Daws Butler recorded voices. He's only recognizable briefly as one of the penguins and as one of the turtles, though Richard Sherman — co-composer of all those great songs — is pretty sure Daws was also one of the buskers in the "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius" number. (Also heard among the voices of animated characters are J. Pat O'Malley, Dallas McKennon, Thurl Ravenscroft and Jimmy MacDonald.)

I really like the 1968 movie, Oliver, but I always thought there was something a little creepy about the singing voice of Mark Lester in the title role. Some time ago in an interview, Mr. Lester admitted that he'd been dubbed, though he didn't say by whom. And maybe now we know why he didn't say: It was a girl.

By the way, the current DVD release of Oliver is a good transfer. For years, we had Beta and VHS versions that were made off a poor quality negative that was poorly color-corrected, awkwardly cropped in places…and which actually had one reel of the film (about ten minutes) printed mirror-image, reversing left and right. The Laserdisc release finally got it right and the DVD continues that tradition.

You know who that is? Of course. That's veteran character actor Charles Lane, who made a very nice living in motion pictures and TV shows, usually playing a mean old man. One generation knew him as Homer Bedloe, the mean old man who was always trying to shut down the Hooterville Cannonball on Petticoat Junction, but every generation has known him as some mean old man. A graduate of the Pasadena Playhouse, Lane began his film career around the time talkies came in, usually playing a hotel desk clerk. Before long, he was working almost every week and before he retired, he'd racked up a total of at least (at least!) 250 film appearances. That's all the historians have found, and I'll bet that's not even a complete list.

It's not just the number of films that's impressive. It's how important so many of them were. The list includes roles in It's a Wonderful Life, 42nd Street, The Twentieth Century, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Big Store, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Music Man, State of the Union and our fave, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Mr. Lane is, you may be amazed and delighted to know, still with us. Later this month, he will mark his 100th birthday and some friends of his are gathering congratulatory letters and cards from his many fans.  You can send an e-mail to [E-MAIL ADDRESS EXPIRED] there and they will print it out and add it to the pile to be presented to Mr. Lane…or if you want to send a paper-type letter or card, send an e-mail there and ask for the postal address. (His birthday is January 26.)

I know this site is read by a lot of folks in the news media, particularly in the entertainment divisions. Wouldn't it be kind of a nice idea to pay some special attention to this event? Mr. Lane is one of a kind, and it's not just a birthday but an entire career that merits celebration.

Where's Gallagher? [Warning: Link to website that asks you for your age and zip code.]

Here's an article that answers the musical question: Whatever happened to Shecky Greene?