Monthly Archives: August 2007

Stan Lee's doing an online chat on Wednesday. It's on Talk to America, which is — and I quote: "The Voice of America's premier global webchat." You can submit questions in advance via this page and maybe win a comic autographed by Stan the Man. Thanks to Joel O'Brien for letting me know about this.

Stuart Taylor Jr on an issue that ought to matter to more people than it does. It's the astounding number of people who get convicted in our courts, tossed in prison — sometimes for long stretches, sometimes even on Death Row — and are later proven innocent. Since a lot of these people look like they could have done it — i.e., they're poor and/or minorities and/or have records of proven crimes — much of the public isn't much bothered. It's like, "What's the big deal we threw the wrong Hispanic guy in the slammer?" A few years ago at a party, a guy I sorta knew caused jaws to drop when the topic drifted around to someone who'd just been freed from prison after 10+ years served for a crime he didn't commit. The partygoer said, and he didn't seem to be kidding, "They shouldn't have let him go. All those guys are guilty of something."

The thing I think some people really don't get is that if someone is wrongly convicted, the guy who really did it gets away scot free. That's really the Perfect Crime: You did it but you didn't get caught…and since someone else did, no one's looking for you. In fact, if evidence did come out that you'd dunnit, the authorities would probably try to not reopen the case because that would be embarrassed, if not sued.

There are many things we could argue about with regard to our judicial system. I just don't know why so little attention is paid to what seems to me like the single most inarguable point, which is that if you're going to convict people of crimes, you ought to convict the people who actually committed the crimes.

Snakes on a plane. For real.

For a second there when I read this story, I thought it was just Karl Rove going home to Texas.

Newsarama is reporting that comic book artist Mike Wieringo has died from a heart attack at the age of 44.

This is one of those moments when this weblog's reputation works against it. I didn't know Mike Wieringo at all and have nothing to say about him other than that I'd always heard he and his work were well-liked. But if I don't post something, I'm going to get deluged with e-mails — they're already starting — telling me about it or asking me if it's true or even asking if the reason I haven't posted something is because I have something against Mike Wieringo. Obviously, none of these is the case. He was just one of those many folks whose path never crossed mine.

I'm sure the condolences of all go out to the friends and family of this much-respected artist. And a tiny, separate note of sympathy is due to all of us who are over the age of 44 and feeling just a bit older because of the news.

Okay, let's watch a little Johnny Carson. Here are three clips in a row. The first is Richard Nixon chatting with Carson in one of those conversations where, obviously, lines have been written in advance, and the host is cuing those lines, to make a politician seem wittier than he really is. I was told that at some point during the Vietnam War, Johnny had a change of mind or heart and he decided to not do that any longer. He would not have politicians on because, he said, he felt people like that should be quizzed by newspeople and not by comedians, and that it was doing the public a disservice to contribute to the establishment of a false image. This new policy was not set in concrete and he occasionally strayed from it…but for the most part, Carson stopped having guests who were angling to be on ballots.

Then comes a clip from the famous night that George Gobel had to follow Bob Hope and Dean Martin. And then we have a rooster taking a dump on Johnny's desk. Conan O'Brien has recently had on a duck named Quackers who does the same cute trick, proving that late night television has only evolved so far in all these years.

This is a LikeTV embed, which means that the clip may roll on and show you other things after the material I'm spotlighting. Watch the other stuff at your own peril. (It varies every time you load the page so I can't predict what it will be.)

Something else I should have mentioned in my piece on Merv Griffin. All the obits are saying that Merv was a good interviewer…and he generally was. But comedians often didn't like chatting with him on his show because of something I once heard Milton Berle call "The Frank Gorshin Rule." It flowed from a time when Frank Gorshin was on and Merv asked him, "Are you working on any new impressions?" Gorshin made the mistake of saying, "Well, I've been working on Charles Bronson."

The reason this was a mistake is because Mr. Gorshin had not yet perfected his Charles Bronson impression to the point where he was ready to do it in front of America. He didn't even have lines to go with the impression. Nevertheless, Merv pounced on the chance to debut Frank Gorshin's Charles Bronson impression and badgered the poor mimic into doing it. It wasn't very good and Gorshin was humiliated.

Merv did this kind of thing often. One time, he had Morey Amsterdam on…and as you may recall, Mr. Amsterdam sometimes played a few lines of music (and only a few) on a cello during his act. I'm not sure if he was ever much of a cello player but by the time of this particular appearance with Merv, Morey was way out of practice and genuinely unable to play more than a few bars of nothing. Merv, however, challenged him. He said something like, "Morey, you always promised me that some day, you'd play a real cello solo on my show here. Well, tonight's the night." And despite Amsterdam's insistence that he was rusty, Merv had just such an instrument brought out and The Human Joke Machine was forced to perform with it. It was one of the most embarrassing moments I've ever seen on a talk show because Morey couldn't play the thing and he couldn't even find a way to be funny about not being able to play it. Merv finally realized what he'd done and tried to alibi for Morey by saying the cello they'd supplied was woefully out of tune. But from the way Morey Amsterdam was sweating, that obviously was not the problem.

Anyway, The Frank Gorshin Rule, as it was explained to me is that you never say you can do anything around Merv Griffin unless you're prepared for him to make you do it on the air. If you said, "Next time I'm on your show, Merv, I'll juggle for you," you were going to juggle immediately whether you liked it or not. Berle told me about this and added that it came in handy. If there was something he wanted to be asked to do on the show — sing a certain song, tell a certain anecdote, whatever — all he had to do was tell Merv he wasn't prepared to do it. Suddenly, it was a Command Performance.

A few weeks after he told me this, Berle was on with Merv and I made a point of watching. Just as that segment was ending and Merv was about to introduce the next guest, Berle said, "I'm going to practice and some day when I come on here, I'll do a card trick." Griffin immediately brightened up and said, "Well, I bet the audience would love to see one right now." Uncle Miltie protested he wasn't prepared but at Merv's urging, the audience applauded and demanded a card trick. And lo and behold, Berle just happened to have a deck with him…

Joe Conason makes the point that while George W. Bush has acknowledged the need for America to reach out to the world's Muslim population, a lot of those seeking his job think that the way to get there is through Muslim-bashing.

I may just repost this every month or so. The world of original comic art collecting needs a big, neon CAVEAT EMPTOR sign flashing in the faces of all buyers. There's an awful lot of stuff on the market — and in online auctions, especially — that is either innocently misidentified or deviously forged. Right now over at America's Marketplace (eBay to you), someone is selling a page from the Hulk story in Tales to Astonish #73 (the panel above is from that story) and they say it was penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Bob Powell.

No, it wasn't. The printed credits on that issue say that Jack did layouts, not pencils. Layouts are substantially less, as evidenced by the fact that Jack received 25% of the rate he'd get if he just drew the page in pencil. Then the published credits say "Art by Bob Powell," suggesting he penciled and inked…and even that's not right because the art was actually roughed out by Kirby, penciled by Powell and inked by Mike Esposito.

This one's an easy, blameless misidentification. Others aren't so innocent. There are a couple of artists whose work is habitually faked…and usually not even that well. Be especially wary of unpublished sketches, especially if they aren't signed to anyone. Charles Schulz never had much of a reason to sit down and do a great finished drawing of Snoopy in a classic pose unless it was a gift to somebody and thus signed to that person. He usually also managed to spell his own last name right.

So be skeptical and remember that just because someone sells original art doesn't mean they have the slightest ability to discern who actually did it. Some have good eyes for this kind of thing but some don't. And the ones in the "don't" category often have very strong motives to believe that a given piece of art is real and that it's by the guy whose work goes for the high price.

Jonathan Alter explains why the recent Congressional revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is a destruction of the Fourth Amendment to that thing we used to call the U.S. Constitution. Everyone involved with this new legislation oughta be ashamed of themselves but especially the Democrats who knew exactly what it was and voted for it anyway.

I've never heard a bad story about Merv Griffin. I mean, I'm sure they're out there. You don't do that many shows and make that much money without having someone decide you screwed them over about something. It's just that Merv projected such a jolly, friendly image that I think the folks with the negative tales never got a lot of traction out of them. Or maybe everyone was just too busy spreading the stories of Merv and an array of "poolboys."

Merv was a humble guy on all fronts but two. He disparaged his own careers as a band singer and as an actor. He took pride in his years as an interviewer and talk show host, and he bragged nicely about his business acumen as a producer and entrepreneur. The Griffin talk shows are largely forgotten but in their day, they were phenomenal successes.

Well, two of them were. His first one — a daytime affair for NBC — was a quick failure. When the network signed Johnny Carson to take over The Tonight Show, they simultaneously signed Griffin for daytime to have him in the "on deck" position in case Carson failed. Instead, Merv failed…but that deal gave his production company some commitments to produce daytime game shows and led to Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Those are two of the most profitable TV shows ever produced so Merv probably didn't have lasting regrets over doing that daytime talk show…especially since it led to his later, nighttime ones.

From the afternoon program, he went to a syndicated show for Group W. Local stations slotted it wherever they thought it would be most effective but most had it on in the evenings as an alternative to the network prime-time line-ups. It was a good show with good guests and it was quite successful. Merv might never had left it had CBS not come to him waving megabucks. In '69, that network decided to try a late night show to compete with Mr. Carson and they went after Merv. As the story is told, Griffin was quite happy with his Group W show so he told CBS, "I'll only do it if you pay me double whatever Johnny's making." CBS, to Merv's surprise, agreed.

Unfortunately, it wasn't just a matter of competing with Carson. There was also Joey Bishop on ABC and when they lost Griffin, Group W replaced his show with a David Frost program. Four competing talk shows carved the audience too thin and Merv did not get a large-enough slice. This obit by Bob Thomas says he went back to Group W but I think that's wrong. I think it was Metromedia. Whoever syndicated it, the new/old Merv Griffin Show was even more successful than any before it. It was like every time Merv was cancelled, he made more money. And then he made more money and more money and more money.

I only had a few brief encounters with the man. One of my more surreal evenings in the theater occurred when I went to see Dick Shawn's one man show in the early eighties. The play itself was bizarre (and brilliant) enough but my date and I were seated next to Merv and his date, Eva Gabor. During the first act, Eva sat next to me and obviously didn't understand one word of Shawn's odd stream of onstage consciousness. After intermission, they switched seats…and I sat next to a man who laughed harder than I've ever seen a human being laugh. And during the few moments when he wasn't convulsed, he was whispering to me and everyone around him, "Isn't this marvelous?" He sounded just like Rick Moranis doing Merv Griffin, except more unctuous.

After the play, Shawn did an extended chat with the audience that included introducing many celebrities in the audience. He pointed out Merv, who stood to great applause. Shawn asked him who he'd brought as his date and Merv got a huge laugh by gesturing absent-mindedly to me. I stood up, started to embrace him…and then acted hurt when he corrected himself and introduced Eva. On the way out, people were telling my lady friend, "He's better off with you" and I kept saying, "Yeah, but do you know how much money Merv has?"

I also saw Merv in action a few times when I was backstage at his talk show, accompanying some friend who was doing stand-up on the show. Merv had on almost every successful stand-up of that era and he often had them before Johnny. But there was something about the reps of the two shows that caused comedians to rarely mention their appearances with Merv. Even when they'd done his show before they did Carson, they'd refer to The Tonight Show as their television debuts.

The last time I saw Merv in person was when he tried to serve me soup. It was in Griff's, a buffet restaurant he operated in the Beverly Hilton, a hotel he owned. The diners were amazed (but the staff was not) to see Merv going around, suggesting everyone try the Pumpkin Soup that was, he said, his personal recipe. My lady friend — a different lady friend from the one who'd stolen me away from him at the play — told him it was delicious but that I couldn't have any due to a food allergy. Merv started calling for the servers to find some other kind of soup to bring me. I didn't particularly want soup — the buffet was so bountiful you didn't need soup — but that was Merv's first instinct: A customer wasn't getting everything possible and something had to be done. I managed to convince him it was quite okay that I didn't have soup…and I didn't mention that he'd once thrown me over for Eva Gabor.

In 1954, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made their one-and-only real TV appearance, quite against their will. They were "surprised" (Laurel later said, "horrified") on the series, This Is Your Life. Each week, some unsuspecting celebrity would be pounced upon by host Ralph Edwards and dragged into his stage for a little surprise party/biography done on live television. The subject's family and friends would be in on the plot and would help arrange it…and the celeb would have to go along with it. Sid Caesar and his crew once famously parodied all this in what I think is either the funniest sketch ever done on television or darn close to it. In fact, before I go any further, let me embed that sketch. This window should play it and then move on to other things but you can stop it after the part you want to see…

Now then. The night This Is Your Life did Laurel and Hardy, the "surprise" was done at a hotel behind the El Capitan Theater, which is where the TV show was done. Then Edwards went to a commercial, during which Stan and Ollie were expected to walk from the hotel to the stage of the El Capitan. When the show resumed after the commercial, they hadn't arrived and Edwards was forced to nervously ad-lib and fill time until they showed.

Laurel was not happy about making his TV debut in this manner. He was a meticulous rehearser who didn't like appearing unprepared before all of America. He also resented something else. At the time, he and Hardy were very much available to make movies and no one was offering them any opportunities. Yet here he was, being tricked into making an appearance for either no money or scale pay. He was gracious during the half-hour telecast but you could tell he wasn't overjoyed. This plus the delay in their arrival led to the assumption by some that the delay was because Stan and Ollie were refusing to participate and had to be talked into going through with it. This is apparently not so. It was merely a long walk to the stage and the This Is Your Life people had misfigured the time.

Anyway, as you might imagine, our video link today is to a video of that show. It's not the greatest picture quality but you probably won't watch the whole thing, anyway…

Orson Bean is a wonderful actor and wit and game show host and I've really enjoyed his past books, especially an autobiography he penned called Too Much Is Not Enough. Good stuff.

Recently, he wrote a novel called Mikey with a spiritual theme to it. He has not been able to find a publisher for it because, he says, it's been deemed "too profane for a Christian publishing house and too Christian for a traditional house." That means it's about God and redemption but people in it cuss a lot and have a lot of sex.

Since no one's racing to publish it, Bean's agent suggested putting it up on the Internet. I haven't had the time yet to read Mikey and might not for a while. But it's Orson Bean and I figure that even if I don't like it, you might. So you can click here to read it — you'll need to have Adobe Something on your computer — and I'm not so much recommending it as telling you that it's there. Stan Sakai told me but I don't think he read it, either.

I keep seeing this TV commercial for a bladder control medicine called Enablex and it's been driving me nuts, trying to figure out who that is doing the voiceover.

Finally got it. It's Andrea Martin.

Before 9/11, I had a low opinion of Rudy Giuliani. After 9/11, I had a much higher opinion of Rudy Giuliani. Since then, it's dipped back below the pre-9/11 level…and he sure hasn't helped matters by wrapping himself in that awful day and trying to get so much Teflon out of it. Worse, he seems to have a candidacy that has nothing else going for it but his 9/11 credentials…which is why it's so sad to see this article by Wayne Barrett. It basically says that even the esteem for 9/11 is undeserved and that his actions relating to the attack reflect a lot of bad judgment and self-interest. If someone sees a good rebuttal to this, please let me know…but I fear it will be come to seen as accurate history.

The best part of the piece is a great caricature of Giuliani by an artist named John Kascht. I was unfamiliar with his work but I found his website and discovered he's always that good.

I haven't been to Philadelphia in many years but I have to get back there soon. Why? No, it's not to have a cheesesteak, although I will. It's because I yearn to visit the Stoogeum, the first — and I'm betting, for a time, the only ever — museum devoted to the life and times of The Three Stooges. This article will tell you all about the place and make you yearn to visit.