Monthly Archives: January 2007

Here we have a soundie from 1942…and for those of you who don't know: Soundies were the music videos of that era. They were seen in a special kind of jukebox that was equipped to run movies instead of records.

The offering is "Who's Yehudi?" as recorded by Kay Kyser and his Orchestra, with Lane Truesdale as the vocalist. The song was written by two gents named Bill Seckler and Matt Dennis, who were inspired (if that's the word) by one of the many catch-phrases of comedian Jerry Colonna. Mr. Colonna, who was then a regular on Bob Hope's radio broadcasts, liked to make sport of the name of Yehudi Menuhin, a prominent violinist and conductor. For a time, no matter what sketch or bit Colonna found himself in, he'd find a way to ask the question, "Who's Yehudi?" and audiences would howl and I don't quite understand why it was funny, either. Maybe it was the way he said it. In any case, it inspired the following tune…

HumorousMaximus is a website that features daily cartoons. Yesterday, they began running old episodes of Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, starting almost at the beginning. The first Canyon strip was a Sunday page which ran on January 13, 1947. Yesterday, the website posted the first daily strip, which appeared the Monday after.

As I understand it, they'll post a new daily strip each day until they reach the end of the run. The strip lasted from 1/13/47 until 6/4/88, which works out to 15,118 strips. There were 2,159 Sunday pages and this website isn't running them…so that leaves 12,959 daily strips. At seven per week, that means 1,851 weeks or around 35 and a half years. What does this work out to? June of 2042? I'm too tired to do the rest of the math. It's quite a while.

You can read each day's Steve Canyon strip here. If you don't know why people loved this feature, give it a few weeks. You'll see.

James Wolcott obtained a copy of the infamous O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It. And he reviews it as much for his pleasure as for our own.

Okay, I've sent you towards enough bad movies lately. Let me make it up to you by recommending a great one. Wednesday evening, Turner Classic Movies is running Billy Wilder's rarely-seen masterpiece, The Big Carnival. When Wilder made it, it was called Ace in the Hole but the studio didn't like that title. They apparently didn't like the movie, either, and it was released under a couple of other names, as well.

You're going to have to get yourself in the right frame of mind for this one because it brings on-screen cynicism to a new peak. Almost everyone in the film is slime, especially Kirk Douglas in the lead. He plays a rotten-to-the-core reporter who doesn't believe in letting minor things like truth or other folks' lives get in the way of a hot, career-advancing story. His tactics got him booted out of mainstream journalism and exiled to a small-time newspaper in New Mexico. While there, he happens upon a mining accident and decides to hype it into the news story of the year. Given what's happened with cable news the last few years, with the exploitation of O.J. and Jon Benet and Condit and all the rest, it's amazing no one thought to remake or even rerun Wilder's prescient movie.

But no. It's been hard to find. There have been a few home video releases, not necessarily legal. If it's run on TV in the last decade or so, I managed to miss it. The tape I have is from a broadcast so long ago that it's full of commercials for defunct products.

The one time I met Wilder, I asked him about the film but he didn't want to discuss it. It was a painful memory, a failed project, a movie for which he'd received undeserved grief. He'd talk at length about The Apartment but not about The Big Carnival (or, as he called it, Ace in the Hole). He didn't even want to hear me tell him that it would someday be hailed as a classic. The only real thing he did say was that the studio wanted him to put a happy ending on it, which proved they didn't understand it one bit. It's one of those films where the only conceivable happy ending is that you walk out when it's over and think, "Thank God that didn't happen to me." And then you go home and take a couple of showers to try and wash off the general smarminess.

This article by Bruce Bennett will give you more background on the film and the real-life tragedy that inspired it. But if you've never seen the film, maybe you'd be wise to wait and read nothing more about it before you do. And for God's sake, don't watch it when you're in a good mood you don't want to spoil.

Political blogger Ezra Klein makes an important point about the current flurry of polls adjudging Hillary's chances versus Barack's versus Joe's, et al. At this point in the '04 race, Joe Lieberman was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, followed by Gephardt and Edwards. And a commenter notes that in February of '91, the eventual nominee (Bill Clinton) was in eleventh place.

The current polling may be equally meaningless…which is kind of an exciting prospect. I think the person currently in eleventh place for the Democratic presidential nomination is me.

I live a few miles from a portion of Los Angeles known as Culver City. Although it's presently going through a heavy influx of new businesses and structural upgrades, there are still a lot of old buildings in Culver City, which makes it a delight for us Laurel and Hardy buffs. The Hal Roach Studio was located there and though it's long gone, you can still spot a lot of the street locations where Stan and Ollie filmed. Several are strikingly identifiable from their old films even 70-80 years later.

Piet Schreuders is a designer and pop culture historian. Not long ago, he did extensive research of the area, as you'll see in this clip. You'll also see a little of what he did with it, which was to create a computer model of the main streets of Culver City, regressed to the era when Laurel and Hardy filmed there. This runs a little less than five minutes and some of it is in Dutch but you'll get the idea. Thanks to Don Brockway for sharing this with us.

More on the booking of Rich Little for that Correspondents' dinner. He disavows remarks in the earlier article to which I linked, and the guy who booked him says that he was turned down by David Letterman, Jay Leno, Martin Short and Billy Crystal. Some interesting comments in there from Lewis Black, as well. Here's the article.

Ross Downing writes to ask…

I enjoy reading your blog as often as I can. As a high school film and television teacher, it is nice to get an inside perspective on some of the industry goings-on and the people within the business. I learn as much, often, as my students do.

One question I have been pondering for the last few months…what are your thoughts on Bob Barker, his career, his retirement, and the future of The Price is Right? (I have noticed that you have referenced Barker only a handful of times in your entries the last few years, and none of those times have you been overly flattering toward him.) Just curious.

Well, my thoughts on Bob Barker are that he deserves a mass quantity of kudos for sheer endurance but I haven't been able to enjoy the show in years. At some point, the focus changed from Bob playing pricing games with the audience to Bob encouraging the audience to slobber over him. I never liked the guy or Truth or Consequences back when he hosted that program because both exuded a condescending approach towards the contestants. I liked him when he started on The Price is Right because that manner was not in evidence. And then at some point, it crept back in and I stopped watching. The program also lost a lot of its nice family "feel" because of announcers dying and models being replaced.

CBS is still trying to pick a replacement. This coming Thursday, they're taping a couple of "audition" shows which will not be broadcast, testing out three potential hosts — Doug Davidson, Todd Newton and John O'Hurley. I'm not sure why they're auditioning Davidson, who hosted a 1994 syndicated version of The Price is Right that didn't make it — presumably, they know how he'd handle the job — but they are. Mr. O'Hurley has just been announced for the role of King Arthur in the Las Vegas company of Spamalot that opens March 31. Presumably, he has an out clause in his contract there in case he gets Price and can't juggle both gigs.

I have no idea who they'll get but I suspect the show won't last in its present daytime slot. I think it's long since run its course and that a lot of viewers who've been watching from force of habit will take the departure of Barker as an appropriate point to hop off. However, it's been such a money-maker that CBS will do everything possible to keep it afloat and if they give up, its owners will keep throwing it at us in new venues and new formats much the way Hollywood Squares and Family Feud never seem to go away. It also wouldn't surprise me if someone is working on a way to retool The Price is Right as a prime-time entry with the look and feel (and payoffs) of Deal or No Deal.

Hey, did I ever post my one Bob Barker anecdote here? It occurred at a car wash on Highland, just south of Sunset in Hollywood. One day in the mid-eighties, I was getting my auto debugged there and found myself standing next to Mr. Barker, who was waiting for the guys with the blue rags to finishing swabbing down his car. His was a big Lincoln Continental, as I recall. Anyway, I motioned towards the men drying our vehicles and told him, "They don't like it when you tip them in Plinko chips."

I thought that was a pretty funny line but Barker looked at me like I'd just made Number One on his shoes. The incident didn't sour me on him and his show but it was indicative of the attitude that did. I'll bet we could have had a nice chat if I'd just told him he was the greatest thing to happen to television since the invention of the remote control.

The reviewer for The New York Times doesn't think much of Tony Danza playing Max Bialystock in the Broadway version of The Producers. But I note from the grosses posted over on Playbill that business seems to be up so that may not matter. (Thanks to Bruce Reznick for the N.Y. Times link.)

I can't embed this one but if you'd like to see a four minute video summary of the first four months of a panda's life, click right about here. My Uncle Aaron took 8mm movies of my first few months that are virtually indistinguishable except, of course, that I was cuter.

Rich Little tells The New Yorker about his upcoming gig entertaining at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

The gent who made the selection says that the White House didn't complain about last year's Colbert extravaganza. Yeah, but they didn't have to complain. Everyone knew the prez was uncomfy and if you're in charge of that dinner, your number one priority is to make certain the President of the United States is present and doesn't find something more pressing to do that evening. The event derives all of its importance and purpose because the Chief Exec puts in an appearance. Picking someone like Rich Little is cowardly, yes. But I don't think the person making the decision really has a lot of freedom to say, "I want Michael Moore and if Bush doesn't like it, too bad. He doesn't have to show up."

Another point: If you decide to re-watch Colbert's speech, as I did the other day, see if you don't agree with this observation. The audience wasn't that bothered by the shots at Bush. To the extent the mood in the hall turned icy, it was because of Colbert's shots at the Press Corps. Some of them probably complained.

I also don't believe that, as Little claims in the article, Bill Maher wouldn't have him on because, "He didn't want to take the chance that I would be funnier." I mean, I believe Rich Little said that but Maher routinely books Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Ben Affleck and other people you wouldn't let anywhere near your show if you were worried that someone else might be funnier. The reason Maher hasn't booked Rich Little is probably the same reason that the White House Correspondents Assocation did. Oddly enough, Bill might just invite him on because of that boolking.

Thanks to Craig Robin for calling the article to my attention.

On the other hand, I just read an item about how the California presidential primary may get moved way up, maybe becoming the second or third in the land. That might bode well for Hillary Clinton grabbing the Democratic nomination. With the right kind of campaign — and Bill stumping for her — she might do well enough in this state to make her unstoppable. I'm assuming a victory in a California primary would have a lot more impact on the whole contest than winning New Hampshire or some other state with four electoral votes. If it was big enough, might it not give the victor a near-lock as the nominee? Something to consider.

Hillary Clinton is entering the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. This comes as good news to a band of folks out there who've made an awful lot of money demonizing her, preying on the view of a small band of citizens who think she's Satan in a pants suit. There's one activist group that's very bad with facts, very good at getting past my Spam trappers. At least twice a month, I get an e-mail that says, in effect, "Everything you value in the world will cease to exist if this woman is not destroyed. Send us lots of cash and we'll stop her." Those people must be turning cartwheels right now and starting the mass mailings.

This is just a gut feeling on my part but I don't think their efforts will be necessary. I don't think she'll get that near the nomination. She's not a very dynamic speaker and I suspect a lot of folks who otherwise might be inclined to vote for her would prefer someone who didn't come with so much baggage. It's kind of the way a lot of the loyalest Republicans now view George W. Bush.

Of course, I also don't think Obama, Biden, Kucinich and the rest of the announced or presumed contenders have that much more appeal than Ms. Clinton. The shallowness of the Talent Pool is evident when the Democrat who looks the most like presidential material is Al Gore. And some of that will just be a matter of voters wanting to turn back the clock, wipe out the previous eight years and vote for the guy they now think they really wanted in the first place. Gore was right on the Iraq War and it's now becoming near-fact (sadly) that he's right about Global Warming. In politics, if you're right about two important things, you're way ahead of the average. Like, by about two things.

This is a real short one…

As we all know, there is nothing in the world cuter than a baby panda. Nothing. Except maybe a baby panda sneezing…

An obituary for Joe Gill in his hometown newspaper. Apparently, I now run "an obituary Web site featuring famous names in the comics industry." Sometimes, it sure feels that way.