Monthly Archives: September 2005

Want to see the trailer for the forthcoming movie version of The Producers, which is based on the Broadway musical of The Producers, which was based on the original movie version of The Producers? Well, you know what I mean. You can view the trailer online at this site.

The industry buzz seems to be that it's a very faithful replica of the stage version…perhaps too faithful. An agent I know remarked, "Now that it's a movie again, it'll really be compared to the Zero Mostel-Gene Wilder version. That may not be a good thing."

Here, through the courtesy of a reader of this site, is another photo from the revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. The gent at far left is Carl Ballantine, better known to the world as "The Amazing Ballantine" and performer of what is easily the funniest magic act ever to grace a stage. Carl played Marcus Lycus the Procurer in this production and he's still around, still being very humorous. I used him to voice a recurring character on the Garfield and Friends show and —

Hey, you're not running anywhere. I might as well tell the story. When we were doing the show, I had this idea about introducing a con-artist character who'd pop up from time to time as a foil for Jon and Garfield, and I cast Jesse White to do the voice. You all remember Jesse White. That would have been brilliant casting if I'd done it a few years earlier but sadly, the day he came in to record the character's first appearance was not long before Jesse passed away. He was in poor health and he really didn't sound much like Jesse White. We went ahead with the episode but I decided on the spot that the character was not my recurring con-man.

During a break, I wandered out to the lobby and I was thinking who would be a good person to play a sharp, Bilko-type operator. Sitting there, reading a magazine and waiting to record a radio spot for someone in the next studio, was Carl Ballantine. I said aloud to no one, "Perfect," went over and introduced myself…and a few weeks later, Carl recorded the first of several Garfield cartoons as Al Swindler, master charlatan. I still see Carl from time to time. I take him to lunch or run into him at the Magic Castle and he's always hilarious. Lovely man.

Okay, back to the photo: To the right of Carl is Larry Blyden, who played Hysterium (the Jack Gilford role) in the show. Blyden was a long-time Broadway star, TV actor and even a game show host. When this production of Forum went to Broadway, he was the main instigator and organizer. He prodded the producers and dug up backers and made it all happen. For it, he also won a Tony Award. In fact, on the Tony Award broadcast that year, Silvers was more excited about Blyden's Tony than about his own and he started raving on about it and Larry and he plumb forgot he was on live television and went way over in his acceptance speech. This is why the "thank yous" from winners are now rigidly timed…because of the night they couldn't shut Phil Silvers up.

Next over, we see Lew Parker kneeling. Parker was an old-time radio comedian who became an old-time Vegas comedian who became the father of Marlo Thomas on That Girl. I think the New York production of this Forum was the last thing he ever did, as he was in failing health. He missed opening night on Broadway…something most actors wouldn't do if it meant performing in an oxygen tent. Soon after, he was replaced by actor Mort Marshall, who animation buffs may know as a voice actor on New York-based TV cartoons of the sixties. (He played the zookeeper on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, for instance.) Parker died a few months after leaving the cast.

Lastly, of course, we have Phil Silvers. I guess I don't have to work very hard to convince most people that he was terrific in the role. He was terrific in just about everything he did. As I mentioned, I was privileged to dine with him once at Nate 'n Al's delicatessen in Beverly Hills. I wrote up some moments from that brunch/lunch and posted them here and here. One of these days, when I find the rest of the transcript, I'll post some more of our conversation.

Pat O'Neill wrote to say, "It's probably worth mentioning that [Phil] Silvers did finally wind up in A Funny Thing…, if only in the film version." He wound up in the stage version, too. In 1971, a few years after the dreadful movie adaptation in which he played Marcus Lycus, Silvers starred as Pseudolus in a Los Angeles revival that I often cite as the best evening I ever spent in a theater.

It was a great production. Co-author Burt Shevelove directed, and Stephen Sondheim wrote two new songs — one for Nancy Walker who played Domina. Also in the cast were Lew Parker (who you probably remember as Marlo Thomas's father on That Girl), Larry Blyden, Carl Ballantine and others of that expertise. One of the courtesans was Ann Jillian. Another was a magnificent Broadway dancer named Charlene Ryan who is now married to some guy who draws for MAD Magazine. (In the above photo, Charlene's the one on the far left. Ann Jillian is not in the photo, which is from the later New York engagement.)

I was not present for opening night when many things went wrong. Forum begins with Pseudolus announcing, "Playgoers, I bid you welcome! The theater is a temple and we are here to worship the gods of comedy and tragedy." Silvers entered, the audience burst into wild, unexpected applause and his mind went blank. He stood there fumbling for the line until finally, months later, he somehow came out with, "The theater is a church?"

In the rear of the Ahmanson Theater that night were co-authors Shevelove and Gelbart. One of them turned to the other and said, "If a nice Jewish boy like Phil Silvers can't remember the word 'temple,' we're in for a long evening." Later, there were other blunders: Missed entrances, absent props, etc. The reviews suggested it might be a decent show if you saw it in a high school auditorium.

I saw it the second night…from second row center. My family was far from wealthy but we had some friends who were there, and they often gave us tickets they'd paid for and didn't want to use. (I saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — also with Phil Silvers and also wildly influential on me — from other seats they chose not to occupy.) Everything went right and in later years, when non-theatergoing friends of mine wondered what the appeal was, I wished I could have dragged them down to that show and especially those seats. I never laughed so much in my life. The women were gorgeous, the songs were great, the women were gorgeous. Yes, I know I mentioned that twice.

The show was so good that they couldn't let it close after that limited engagement. Larry Blyden, who played Hysterium, found investors and the production headed for Broadway, stopping off for a month or so in Chicago on the way.

Opening in New York gave Silvers several moments of personal triumph and tragedy. It was his "comeback" triumph after several years of emotional problems and severe depressions that had curtailed his performing and even sent him for a time to a sanitarium. In fact, one of the main reasons the show got done in L.A. was that several of his friends and agents thought work would be the perfect therapy for their pal. On Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, Silvers got rave reviews and a Tony award he later called one of the high points of his career. It looked like the show was settled in for a long, profitable run…and then Phil had a stroke, not big enough to kill him but enough to take him out of Forum.

The producers scrambled to find a replacement star but the one they got — Tom Poston — didn't draw ticket buyers the way Silvers had, and the production closed after 156 performances total. When I had lunch with Silvers a few years later, he kept making the point over and over again that the stroke, which caused the investors to lose all they'd put into the show, was not his fault. I doubt anyone had ever said it was but he was very defensive on the point. The production had been very important to him, and I think the reason he agreed at all to meet with me was because I'd seen it and loved it and he wanted to hear someone tell him that.

When I get a chance one of these days, I'll write a piece here about why I think the movie version of Forum was such a disaster. (One in a long list: When you start by throwing out most of a Sondheim score, someone doesn't know what they're doing.) But since Pat gave me a reason to mention the Phil Silvers stage revival, I thought I'd grab the opportunity. I doubt more than one or two of you saw it, and of course you can never see it. But I hope you've seen or will someday see a show that stays with you as long as that production has stayed with me.

A little more than a month ago (in this posting), we said that there would soon be an announcement that Get Smart will get the full, entire-series-on-DVD treatment. Sure enough, it has now been confirmed that they're coming out in 2006.

In the Sad News Department: We mentioned back here that Cartoonist PROfiles, the magazine that has covered the world of comic strips for more than 35 years, might be nearing its end. This was due to the failing health of its editor, Jud Hurd, and now Editor and Publisher is reporting that Mr. Hurd died September 14. The cause of death is given as pneumonia, his age is given as 92, and the article says there will be no more issues of his magazine. I never met Hurd but as a subscriber since his first issue, I feel a great sense of loss.

In 1959, CBS cancelled The Phil Silvers Show, which was the hit sitcom otherwise known as both You'll Never Get Rich and Sgt. Bilko. The series was still enormously popular but it was also very expensive to produce. (Some episodes had a speaking cast of twenty.) A genius at the network decided it was cost-efficient to stop the series and sell the reruns to NBC, which stripped them in a late afternoon weekday time slot and cleaned up.

This put Mr. Silvers at liberty and he decided to return to Broadway, which was big news as he was then a very big star. Producers threw scripts and proposals his way, and he briefly toyed with starring in a new musical that had just been written by Burt Shevelove, Larry Gelbart and some newcomer named Stephen Sondheim called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Then he changed his mind and opted for a new musical by Garson Kanin, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Jule Styne entitled Do Re Mi. Directed by Kanin, it opened at the St. James Theater the day after Christmas of 1960. Also in the cast were Nancy Walker, Nancy Dussault, David Burns and Al Lewis, who is better known to us now as "Grandpa" Al Lewis of The Munsters. The show went on hiatus for a month the following summer but still ran 400 performances. One song from it — "Make Someone Happy" — became a hit apart from the show, especially the record of it recorded by Perry Como.

I never saw that production but based on what I saw Monday night — I'll tell you what it was in a moment — I think I can draw a few conclusions, the main one being that Do Re Mi isn't a very good show. The plot is pretty hokey. A small-time operator named Hubie Cram (the Silvers role) comes up with a get-rich scheme. Once upon a time, he worked as a kind of messenger boy for "The Mob," back when it was trafficking in slot machines. The idea is that with jukeboxes catching on big, he'll get his old employers out of retirement, they'll go legitimate and sell jukes the way they once sold slots, only without lawbreaking. Despite the urging of his wife (Nancy Walker), Hubie does this and things go right for a time and then go wrong — first, when his star recording artist falls in love with the head of a rival jukebox company and then when his associates revert to their old strongarm tactics. It all wraps up with the senate conducting hearings and Hubie doing a big, musical mea culpa.

That this thing lasted 400 performances is obviously because Phil Silvers was willing to do 400 performances. He and Nancy Walker could probably have stood on a stage, belched for two hours and still sold tickets. It's rather telling that the show had very little life after that. It was not, like most other hit Broadway musicals, produced hundreds of times in theaters all over the country. Everyone knew there wasn't much point in doing it if you didn't have someone the caliber of Mr. Silvers to carry the proceedings, and people that good are not easy to find. The only known attempt to revive the show came in 1999 when the City Center "Encores" series did five performances with an all-star cast headed by Nathan Lane.

Yet another revival was what I saw last evening and it was so well done that it pointed up the weaknesses in the material. The Musical Theater Guild of Southern California revives old musicals for two or three performances and does a very fine job of them, even without a budget or much rehearsal. Hubie was played by Michael Kostroff, who recently concluded a national tour of The Producers, and boy, was he good. So was Eydie Alyson as his wife. So was the entire company, which included a gentleman named S. Marc Jordan who was in the original production with Mr. Silvers and who played the same roles last night. At the end, I turned to my companion and said, "Is it my imagination or was this a very good production of a pretty weak play?" If you have a theater group and you're looking for a musical to stage that everyone isn't sick of, don't bother with Do Re Mi; not unless you can corral someone as good as Phil Silvers or Nathan Lane or Michael Kostroff to play the lead. Even then, audience members will sit there, laugh and applaud and say, "Boy, I wish I could see this cast in a better show."

I caught about half of the Emmy Awards last night and couldn't get too interested. Maybe if I'd seen most of the nominated shows, it would have been different. But it was a lot of the same old, same old…with stars singing (badly and intentionally so) a lot of vintage TV theme songs and no end to the self-congratulation. David Letterman came out and did a tribute to Johnny Carson that I'm sure was sincere but it looked like…well, it was like someone was holding his family hostage and they'd sent him out to deliver the speech under duress. For some reason, the director kept cutting to an audience shot of Conan O'Brien who looked like his family was also being held at gunpoint.

The best thing I saw was a brief segment by Jon Stewart. Here's a link to an online video of what he did. (The video is on the site of crooksandliars.com, which is a good place to look for current events video clips.)

Here's an interesting commentary from an investment website on the current health of Marvel Comics. The quick version of it is that the part of comic book publishing which involves making money publishing comic books is not doing so well, a fact obscured by merchandising and movie income. This has always been one of the shaky things about the industry to me. I hear that revenues are up, that some company had a great year, etc., but the optimistic announcements usually have a way of skirting the issue of whether the publishing of comic books is, in itself, profitable. If not, then we're left with the musical question: How sound is a business where the signature product is a loss leader? And there's another question, which is to what extent does this situation impact content?

I think in some ways, both DC and Marvel are currently in a situation not unlike what harmed DC around 1969-1971. DC went through a period where, in a very short period of time, they introduced and quickly cancelled a stunning number of new comics: Bat Lash, Anthro, Bomba, Secret Six, Angel and the Ape, The Creeper, The Hawk and the Dove, et al. Some of those books were quite good and some of them, I honestly believe, could have been hits if they'd been allowed to stick around long enough to find an audience. The result was that your average comic fan took the attitude regarding DC, "Don't bother to start buying anything…it won't be around long." Marvel, with its greater stability on the newsstands, took an easy lead. Today, both companies do a lot of events and stunts and they all seem to be about to kill off major characters, plus creative teams don't stick around long so many books are in a state of constant reinvention. With all that, I think they've lost a certain consistency without which you can't have much long-term reader loyalty.

That, I think, is one of the problems. There are others.

I have a few quibbles with the article I'm linking to but here's the biggie. Its author writes…

The comic book industry has long thrived on exploiting creators' ideas for maximum profit. Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the teens who created Superman back in 1938, infamously sold the Man of Steel to DC for $135, and they eventually died in near-poverty. Any work done for DC or Marvel is work for hire — the company owns all rights to it, lock, stock, and barrel.

Okay, first off, the man's name was Joe Shuster. I continue to be amazed at how often people who write about comics cannot manage to spell both "Siegel" and "Shuster" correctly in the same sentence. Secondly, Jerry and Joe might have died in near-poverty but thanks to a modest (very modest) pension from DC Comics, that was not the case. In fact, Jerry was living in a very nice condo in Marina Del Rey when he passed away and while it was not the mansion he deserved, it was far, far better than "near-poverty."

Lastly, not everything done for DC or Marvel is "work for hire." Even leaving aside the many books published by each which were proclaimed as "creator-owned," both have a lot of past cases where the "work for hire" designation was, at the very least, arguable. I'm not sure DC has ever even tried to claim that with regard to the efforts of Siegel and Shuster. Or as too many journalists write it, Siegel and Schuster.

I just made a wrong turn on the Internet and found myself on this page of the website for the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts in Santa Rosa, California. George Carlin is performing there in October and the above paragraph appears on the page ballyhooing his appearance. I know at least three people who read this site who will think it's hilarious that someone thinks George Carlin got his start as a cast member on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. And if George sees it, he may even think of an eighth dirty word.

Since I never resigned or got kicked out, I guess I'm still technically a member of the Archie Club, an organization I joined for a dime (I think) back around 1961. Even then, I thought it was kind of a scam. You got a pin and a certificate and a few other items and hey, how about that membership card? Is it possible they could have spent less on them? One color on cheap paper with the printed signature of a fictional character. Yeah, there's a press credential that will get you into all the important places. It especially annoyed me that the card said I was "entitled" to be a reporter for their magazines…like they were bestowing on me the honor of sending them stuff to fill up those text pages that nobody read. This, I did not do, though I was tempted to submit an item about crummy comic book fan clubs…or maybe one about how I'd decided that at age nine, I was outgrowing the reading of Archie comic books. Somehow, I don't think they'd have printed either.

Anyway, of all the "clubs" one could join as a comic book reader, the Archie one was just about rock bottom. Over the next week or two, I'll try to discuss some of the better ones.

This is from Joseph Abbot. The beginning part of his message, which I'll not quote, is a long discourse about how much he enjoys this website. As I read it, I could almost hear the "however…" coming, and it did. So I'll start quoting there…

However, I don't understand your comment that no one is accusing Bush of having caused the hurricane. Have you not read the many articles that blame the fury and intensity of Katrina on Global Warming and hold Bush responsible for Global Warming? I don't know what you think about Global Warming, and would be interested in reading your views. However, there's a simple logic at work in these articles. Bush caused Global Warming. Global Warming caused Katrina. Therefore, Bush caused Katrina. How do you reconcile this with your claim that no one is charging Bush with causing Hurricane Katrina?

I reconcile it by pointing out that "Bush caused Global Warming" is also a boneheaded statement that no one with any credibility is making. And I'll bet that if you look closer at the articles you think are saying that, you'll find that they're claiming that Global Warming is a huge problem that existed long before George W. Bush took office and that he is among many parties who is guilty of not paying enough (or even any) attention to the problem. I don't think that's the same thing as saying "Bush caused the hurricane," especially since everyone knows — and it goes without saying — that hurricanes existed before anyone had heard of Bush or even of Global Warming. Moreover, in the articles I've seen, the closest I've seen anyone come to saying "Global Warming caused Katrina" was the assertion that there's a possibility that Global Warming just might have made a bad hurricane worse. Again, not the same thing as saying someone or something caused the hurricane.

As for what I think about Global Warming: I've mulled it over for a long time and read up on both views and you know what I think? I think I don't know enough to know how real the threat of Global Warming might be. What's more, I think I could read a lot more and still not know, just as no amount of the kind of study available to me is going to make me qualified to perform a heart transplant. At some point, about some things, you have to trust in experts — and I don't mean the political types who have been tossing this topic around in the public discourse for years. I mean, like meteorologists and scientists and people who can take it out of the realm of Talk Radio debates.

I receive a lot of messages that demand I declare Global Warming as either a proven menace or a definite myth and I don't think either is my view. I think my view is more like: "I don't know…but I think the threat is too important to be dismissed without a helluva lot of proof." And I don't think there's been a helluva lot of proof because there hasn't been a helluva lot of study. So for whatever it may be worth, I'm in favor of doing those studies, joining international conferences and accords and, in general, proceeding as if it could actually be a legitimate threat. If it turns out it isn't, that would be the best possible news…and finding that out certainly wouldn't be the dumbest thing this country had ever spent its money on.

In any case, my point was that there are legitimate complaints being raised about the response and preparedness that we expected from FEMA and the executive branch. I would like to see those investigated and answered. Rebutting the charge that George W. Bush is some evil force of nature that can cause hurricanes to spring up in the Atlantic Ocean is a red herring. Especially since we all know the Atlantic is where Cheney controls the weather.

Here's a link to this weekend's New York Times column by Frank Rich. It's pretty brutal with its assessment of George W. Bush's new disaster relief stylings but like a majority of Americans, I think those efforts deserve a lot of condemnation. In fact, one might suspect that very little of what is being done for the victims would be done if not for the massive outcry that the Bush administration had dropped the ball on dealing with the disaster.

For some reason, I keep getting e-mails from some pro-Bush group that act like the charge against the administration is that George W. Bush somehow caused the hurricane. That's so boneheaded stupid that I have to believe they know that no one's charging that. It's an old and pretty lame debate trick: Instead of responding to what the other side said, when you can't, rebut something they didn't say, which you can. Maybe you can confuse enough people into confusing the two.

Starting tomorrow, the Times erects its subscription wall for some areas and starts charging to read its op-ed columnists like Frank Rich. I have a hunch this will fail and that the columns will be readily available for free on other websites. But we shall see, we shall see.

Just in case she stops celebrating her birthday today and figures out some way to finally use that computer of hers to get on the Internet, let's all send good thoughts out to The First Lady of Cartoon Voicing and my favorite actress, June Foray. There may be someone else who's as nice and talented in this business but I sure haven't found such a person.

And yet another relic of Older Las Vegas is soon to crap out on us. The Westward Ho, which was built around 1975, will close on November 17. Soon after, it will be torn down and the new owners of the property will build a big condominium complex on the land, smack dab on a prime segment of The Strip. So you can kinda guess what each of those apartments will go for: More money than anyone ever won at the Westward Ho, that's for certain.

I have no particular affection for the place. It was probably a dump almost from the day it opened, and I don't think I ever played there or ate there. I certainly never stayed there. My most vivid memory of it is the time I walked past late one afternoon and a guy out front was touting the show inside, trying to get people to come in and pay to see a fellow who did a "Wayne Newton Tribute" show. Loosely translated, that means they had a guy who looked and sounded a little like Wayne Newton and he'd plagiarize Wayne's act under the pretense of honoring him.

Anyway, the Westward Ho was situated right next door to the Stardust where, later that very same evening, one could go to the showroom and see…Wayne Newton. So I had to ask the guy out front, and I'm sure I wasn't the first: "Why should I go see your Wayne Newton impersonator when I can walk across that parking lot and see the real Wayne Newton?"

And the man didn't flinch. Had his reply all ready. He said, "Because our Wayne Newton is $14.95 and includes a buffet." And I thought: You know, that's a really good answer.

At least it was in the old Vegas, where the idea was that everything's a bargain: Food is cheap, hotel rooms are cheap, shows are cheap, etc. And then all the money you save on those things, you lose gambling. That was the premise, and it was a good one because all you had to do to come out way ahead was not gamble. As they tear places like this one down, it isn't that we're losing good businesses. It's that we're losing the bargain aspect of Las Vegas. Rooms at the Westward Ho from now until they close it down are around $40 a night, and that puts you smack dab at the center of the Strip, not far from the new Wynn Las Vegas where rooms start at around $239 and go up and up and up some more from there. Okay, so it's a much, much nicer room and it might be worth the price…but not everyone can afford it. So the idea for those people is to stay at a place like the Westward Ho, eat at its $6.95 buffet, and then walk across the street and experience a little of the Wynn, sightseeing and maybe playing a slot machine or two. Just so they could feel like they belonged there.

That's the part of Vegas we're slowly losing. It's not altogether gone. There are still cheap places to stay, cheap places to eat. They're just getting farther from the action and harder to find. And before you know it, most of them will be luxury condos or mega-resorts.

Rumor has it that later today, George W. Bush is going to announce some staggering dollar figure that our government will spend on the clean-up and restoration of New Orleans and thereabouts. I think that will generally be a good thing, though I'd be happier if part of the plan involved an explanation of just where the money is going to come from. My guess is it will not come from withholding or even postponing any tax cuts for the richest Americans. I'll also hazard a suspicion that an amazing percentage of that money will wind up doing less for the victims of Hurricane Katrina than it will for companies headed by people who have close ties to the Bush administration.

They'll do especially fine with reconstruction projects down there since Bush suspended the Minimum Wage Law for such endeavors. Well, I guess it makes sense. It's not like there are workers in Louisiana or Mississippi who need money or health insurance…

I had nothing to do with it but my occasional employer Jim Davis has set up a new educational website for kids. It's called Professor Garfield and while I didn't have time to browse the whole site, what I saw seems quite well done and, yes, even educational. Some nice music, some excellent Flash animation, some clever games and presentations. The budding cartoonist in your family will enjoy the Artbot section where Jim and three other artists give drawing lessons. There's also a trivia game and I'm ashamed to admit that I got beaten. (I'm not up on my SpongeBob lore.) Recommend it to someone young.