It's another Paul Winchell clip. Here's the first six minutes of an episode of one of his many TV programs. In fact, I think it's the same episode that yesterday's clip came from. In any case, it includes a jazzy little musical number with Knucklehead. Click and enjoy.
Most of the presidential hopefuls are including in their campaign swings, a visit to the Google headquarters in Northern California. I've linked to videos of some of these appearances and will try to get around to linking to all of them because I find them generally more honest and candid than what you see when the same folks are on CNN, Fox News or MSNBC. Here's an article about them.
I feel a little better about the probable length of my long-range Jack Kirby bio now that I've received R.C. Harvey's new book on the life of Milton Caniff. A full-scale biography of the great comic strip writer-artist was long overdue (so is my Kirby book) and I can't imagine anyone doing a better, more thorough job than Bob Harvey did on Caniff. It runs 800 pages and even the official title is long. For the record, it's Meanwhile…: A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon.
Is it too long? Maybe the title is but the book sure isn't. Caniff's incredible career demanded that kind of detail, and I found myself wishing Harvey had written more, not less, about some aspects of the man's life. Of particular interest is how Bob nails down the life of a working strip artist — the relentless schedule, the dealings with editors and syndicates, etc. One forgets that Caniff's achievement was not merely in producing serialized graphic novels of great excellence for so many decades. Just sitting at the board and doing that would have been impressive enough but Milton Caniff also had to be a spokesperson for his strips and profession, and deal with so many aspects of the business. The portrait of the gentleman himself — as smart and determined as any of his heroes — is fascinating and, from what I can tell, quite accurate.
Do I have quibbles? Little ones, not enough to tarnish this enthusiastic recommendation. The main one is probably that next time I see Bob, which I hope will be at the looming Comic-Con International, I want to discuss his view of Al Capp's troubles and scandals in the sixties and seventies. But that's minor and the important thing is that he seems to get Milton Caniff exactly right. Click here and order a copy.
Boy, they didn't make this much fuss when I had my colonoscopy.
Some of you may recall it. I also transferred power to Dick Cheney while I was under the anesthetic.
Every year, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce selects an average of twenty famous show biz people (or groups) to have their names embedded in the Walk of Fame. As you stroll up and down Hollywood Boulevard and many of the intersecting avenues in that area, you can see the various past selections. And if you go to Hollywood on the day they're unveiling a new star, you can often see the recipient in person, down on his knees with Johnny Grant, the honorary mayor of the area.
The selection process makes it seem like a little less of an honor. You have to be nominated for it…and in most cases, people are nominated by their agents or publicists or producers. People have been known to nominate themselves. One star per year is awarded posthumously but if you're alive, you have to agree to be there for the unveiling ceremony before they'll consider your nomination…and it also helps if you can bring along a few other well-known folks to lend their glamour to the event. (A number of stars who oughta have their names in the concrete — like David Letterman — don't because they've never indicated a willingness to show up for any ceremony or have made it clear that they wouldn't.)
You also have to pay for it. Or if you don't, somebody has to pay for it. In most cases, the fee (currently $25,000) is paid for by someone doing business with the celebrity. For example, you're starring in a new movie that's coming out next August. The studio publicists decide that it wouldn't hurt the film if you were to receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame next August. So they coordinate with your fan club (or set one up if you don't have one) and they throw the clout of the studio behind your nomination and promise the presence of other celebs. The 25 Grand comes out of the film's promotional budget.
But you know what? Even if you're aware of all the machinations involved, it's still an honor. They've just announced the names that tourists will be walking on soon…the stars that will be installed and unveiled over the next twelve months…
In the category of Motion Pictures, they'll be honoring Angela Bassett, Cate Blanchett, Stan Lee, The Munchkins, Tim Robbins and The Westmores of Hollywood.
Under the classification of Television, we have Bill Geist, Kate Linder, Howie Mandel, Sherwood Schwartz, Vince McMahon, Susan St. James, and a posthumous recognition of Brian Keith.
In the Recording Artist group, stars will go to Christina Aguilera, Brooks and Dunn, Ricky Martin, Red Hot Chili Peppers and, posthumously, George Harrison. (You'd think George Harrison would already have one but he doesn't, probably because he wouldn't agree to be there. Neither do Paul or Ringo, probably for the same reason. There's a star for John Lennon but I'm guessing that was awarded after he died. There's a five year waiting period for posthumous stars so this was probably the first opportunity to give one to Harrison.)
Lastly, in the category of Live Theater/Live Performance, there's one star being awarded and it goes to Stephen Schwartz. It's kind of interesting that —
Wait a minute! Scroll up a second and see if I just typed what I think I typed. Stan Lee? Stan Lee's getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? All right! Congrats, Stan! They haven't announced dates for any of these unveilings yet but I'm going to try to make it to Stan's event. The only other one of these I ever attended was the one for June Foray.
And I may try to make it to the ceremony when they honor The Munchkins. Meinhardt Raabe is scheduled to attend. He's the gent who played the Coroner of Munchkin City, and I imagine they'll have other surviving Munchkins in attendance, such as Jerry Maren. It is kind of a Yellow Brick Road up there on Hollywood Boulevard these days. That is, if you ignore the derelicts and drug dealers. Wonder if they're going to make all those Munchkins get down on their knees for the unveiling. They're already pretty close to the ground.
I have a mess of negatives and slides I want to turn into JPG files. Flying back from Pittsburgh recently, I was flipping through the SkyMall catalog and I saw this thing advertised. It's a Digital Picture Converter from Hammacher Schlemmer. I thought I'd ask if anyone reading this has ever tried one of these…or anything else they thought worked well. I don't need editing software. I just need to turn slides and negatives into digital images. Any recommendations?
Here's the world's best ventriloquist, Paul Winchell, selling new Blue Cheer detergent with the help of his mahogany friend, Jerry Mahoney.
There's always been something so comforting for me about watching Paul Winchell. He was my first favorite TV star and I suppose that's reason enough to be fond of the guy. But what he did, he did so well. The actual man, who I got to know (and even direct) late in his life always made me a little nervous, partly because he was…well, let's just say "troubled." But also, he was Paul Winchell, my childhood fave. You don't want anything to spoil that.
I wouldn't expect anyone else to get the warm fuzzies watching a detergent commercial. But like I said, there's always been something so comforting to me about watching the man work. He was just so good…
I've updated the list of panels I'm doing at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. A few names have been added and a few have been deleted. Here's where you want to be next week and when.
I promised to start recommending books about comics, did it once and then forgot about it. Sorry. Today, I'm going to suggest that if you're at all interested in the history of comics, you pick up a copy of Brush Strokes With Greatness: The Life and Art of Joe Sinnott, a book all about the man some call the best inker in the comic book industry.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'll mention that Joe is an old and dear friend, and that I wrote the Afterword in this book. (Some guy named Stan Lee wrote the foreword.)
For those of you who don't follow comics: Most comic art is created by someone sketching the thing out in pencil and then someone going in with a brush and/or pen and inscribing the precise lines in ink. Often, one person does both stages but sometimes, the work is divided. Some artists prefer to do one or the other…or are good or fast at one and not the other. In many cases, publishers have encouraged the assembly line procedure so that the better artists can produce more pages. There was a time when most inkers were guys who weren't qualified to do the pencil art and their limitations caused them to bring down the quality of the pages they finished.
That was more common in what we might call the pre-Sinnott era. Joe was and is a very fine artist, and he showed everyone what an inker could be. When he inked a bad artist, the work came out better and when he inked a good one, it also came out better. He's also one of the three or four nicest people I've met in comics…and I think some of you know how many people I've met in comics. So that's not faint praise. This book, compiled and written expertly by Tim Lasiuta, tells the story of Joe's life and showcases his artwork, plus it's filled with testimonials from those who've worked with him and/or admired his skills. How can you not order a copy?
Hey, I don't think I posted a link to order this. One of our "recommendations" that a lot of you took and thanked us for was back when we suggested you catch an old Billy Wilder film called, depending on which print of it you were seeing, either Ace in the Hole or The Big Carnival. For a long time, it was hard to catch and when it turned up on Turner Classic Movies, a lot of you got to see it for the first time. And liked it, if my e-mail is to be believed. It really is a timely story, given the trends of the news media.
It just came out on a Criterion DVD. I don't have my copy yet but I've never known the Criterion folks not to serve a movie well…so here's a link to get one. I just ordered mine. And here's an article by Jack Shafer about the film's history and regrettable relevance.
I never met Shirley Slesinger Lasswell but I followed her legal battle with Disney closely. I'm not entirely sure who was right in this matter but I admire the courage and tenacity to take on The Mouse and his battery of attorneys. I also have a certain fondness for her late hubby, Fred Lasswell, who gave us the Snuffy Smith comic strip for several centuries. "Uncle Fred" was that rarest of creatures — a cartoonist who was as colorful and unreal as the characters he drew. So I figure his wife had to be a great lady. You can read all about Shirley here.
Around 1972, Albert Brooks made a short film called "The Famous School for Comedians" for — I'm doing this from memory so I may be wrong — a PBS program called The Great American Dream Machine. It was based on an article of the same name that he'd done for Esquire, all about a supposed place of higher learning for folks who wanted to become comics. Reportedly, Brooks was amazed at how many people read the article or saw the film and then asked in all seriousness, how they could go about enrolling. I suppose if you didn't realize it was a joke you didn't have much of a future in the fast-paced world of Professional Comedy.
As far as I know, the film is currently unavailable. But around 1974, Milton Berle hosted a couple of pilots for a proposed talk show in which he'd sit around with various comedians, new and old, discussing the art and science of making audiences laugh. The series never went anywhere but one of the pilots featured Albert Brooks as a guest…and it really was quite amazing. Brooks topped Uncle Miltie at every turn and you could tell that though Berle tried to be a good sport about it, he was not pleased with the way the interview went. (The two pilots were released many years ago as a VHS tape and Laserdisc called Milton Berle's Mad World of Comedy. I don't think there's ever been a DVD release…and I'll warn you if you want to hunt it down, apart from the Brooks/Berle dust-up, it was a pretty tedious show.)
Anyway, they ran two minutes of Brooks's "Famous School for Comedians" film on that show — sweetened with phony laughter, which kind of adds an extra layer to the whole joke. Someone put that two minutes up on YouTube and now I'll shut up and let you watch it…
Just got off the phone with Joe Simon, the great comic book creator who'll turn 94 years of age in a few months. He said something so wonderful that I'm putting it up here to share with you and so I don't forget it.
We were talking about how he's going to be 94 and I told him that's nothing; that the legendary caricaturist Al Hirschfeld was still running around and drawing and creating when he was 99. The conversation then went exactly like this…
JOE: Al Hirschfeld was one of my heroes. I got very mad at him when he died.
ME: You were mad at him for dying? So did you admire his art or his age or…?
JOE: I admired the fact that even in his nineties, he sued his agent.
Isn't that lovely? Also, I spoke yesterday with Joe Sinnott, who's a much younger man. He's 81. Some of you may recall that Joe had some severe medical problems and was hospitalized. Well, he's home and he sounds like he always did, which is a lot more energetic than me. Later today if I get a moment, I'll post a plug/review of a new book about this Joe but don't wait for that. Go ahead and order a copy.
The weather forecast for Comic-Con International looks like one of those "let's move to San Diego" periods: Mostly sunny with highs around 73, lows around 67. Like Lewis Black says, the easiest job in the world is being the weathercaster in San Diego. You just say, "The weather's going to be nice. Back to you."
Your best source of tips on how to navigate the monster that is the con is Tom Spurgeon's invaluable resource. It makes my measly list of suggestions seem measly.
I have to make a few changes in the list of who's going to be on some of the panels I'm moderating but I haven't updated the list yet. Most of it is correct…
