AFTRA (the TV performers' union) has recently and happily announced a settlement of nearly a million dollars, negotiated on behalf of performers who appeared on The Dean Martin Show and whose performances have been put out on DVD. This is a very nice and just thing for the performers and I suspect it will serve as a nice precedent for future legal actions. A lot of DVDs have been issued by companies that haven't bothered to properly compensate performers, writers, directors or others who are contractually entitled to some cash, and the guilds have been slow to raise the proper stink.
And here's something that interests me in a strange, "small world" kind of way: AFTRA announced the settlement on this page over on their website. Among those who'll be sharing in the bucks — and are interviewed about it there — are two former dancers from The Dean Martin Show, Lynne Latham and Larri Thomas. Lynne was one of the Ding-a-Ling Sisters on Dino's show and later, she was a frequent dancer on shows I used to write for Sid and Marty Krofft. Very talented, charming lady.
I never met Larri Thomas but I know she was a Goldwyn Girl…one of the dancers in the 1955 movie of Guys and Dolls, in fact. Later, she was a favorite of the great choreographer Hermes Pan, who used her in the acclaimed Fred Astaire TV specials. And a friend tells me — and I swear this is a coincidence; I was going to write about this before I was aware of the possible connection — she's the woman who played Miss Clinger in the Allan Sherman clip I linked to this morning.