Monthly Archives: April 2010

Friday morning at 11:30, Mel Brooks will receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It'll be right outside the Egyptian Theater and the guest speakers will include Carl Reiner, Robert Osborne and Mr. Brooks, himself. Yeah, I'm amazed too to learn that Mel didn't have one before this…and apparently, this one is only being installed as some sort of promotion with the TCM (as in, "Turner Classic Movies") Film Festival, where Brooks will appear this Friday afternoon at a screening of The Producers.

Of course, it would make more sense to put Mel's star outside the Chinese Theater a few blocks away since that's where they're running The Producers (the festival is using both theaters) and it would really make sense to show Blazing Saddles there instead, since its climax takes place at the Chinese Theater. But I guess the sidewalk outside the Chinese is too full and someone must realize that The Producers is a better movie than Blazing Saddles.

Anyway, it's nice that they're giving Mel a star. It would have been even nicer if they'd given it to him before he was 84 years old. Part of the ceremony involves the honoree having to get down on his or her knees to pose for pix unveiling the star…and they may even make Carl (who's 88) get down there with him. It would also have been nice for Mel to get his when Anne was still around to see it.

Back in this post, I led you to a great dance number from the 1985 TV special, Night of 100 Stars. Craig Shemin has some vital backstory to go with it…

I wanted to offer some info about the clip you posted a few days ago — the big dance number from Night of 100 Stars. Unfortunately, the You Tube excerpt doesn't have the intro to the number which sets it up — the thing is really more than a tribute to shoes. The number is a tribute to Conrad Cantzen, an actor who died in 1945. It was thought that Conrad was down on his luck, but when he died he bequeathed an estate of more than $200,000 (that would be more than 2.3 million bucks today) to the Actors Fund of America.

Here's where the shoes come in. Conrad specified that the money be used to establish a fund for the express purpose of purchasing shoes for actors. This fund continues to operate today, administered by the Actors Fund. Apparently, Conrad thought that actors should not look "down at the heels" while pounding the pavement auditioning.

In the first part of the production number, Dick Van Dyke tells the story of Conrad (and plays him in a few brief video cutaways) and does a song and dance with some young actors holding shoeboxes. The introductory piece ends with Dick opening a shoebox (which was filled with white tissue paper) and tilting it towards camera. The camera zooms into the shoebox and dissolves to the dance number you posted. So, in context, I think all of the dancers with the red shoes represent all of the actors who received shoes from Conrad's money over the years, and the red shoes represents the shoes Conrad has given. When Dick appears, he is again playing Conrad when he gives a pair of shoes to Alphonso Ribeiro. In case you can't make out what everyone is saying at the end, it's a reprise of the song from the introductory section:

Starting from the bottom up, that's the route to choose.
No one ever feels lowdown at the heels
Shoo away bad news and shoo away the blues
By spending Conrad's Cash on a brand new pair of shoes.

Oh, and about Christopher Walken — upon a close forensic examination of the video, I believe he is indeed wearing red shoes, but they are mostly covered by a pair of white spats.

Sorry it took so long, but Conrad's tale is such a nice story of an enduring act of generosity that I wanted to share it with you and your readers.

A nice story, indeed. Thanks, Craig.

In this post not long ago, we said…

So…no matter who Barack Obama nominates to the Supreme Court, we're going to hear that the nominee is a Dangerous Soviet Socialist Nazi Radical…and I'm thinking he oughta nominate a Dangerous Soviet Socialist Nazi Radical. I mean, they're going to say that anyway so why not? And maybe one or two of them will figure out what a Socialist really is. The new definition seems to be any Democrat who wins an election.

Today, I see the following over on Talking Points Memo…

President Obama thinks Republicans will engage in a full battle over his Supreme Court nominee regardless of the person's ideological leanings, and in some ways "that realization is liberating for the president" to choose whomever he pleases, an administration official told TPMDC.

You get the feeling Republicans are painting themselves into a corner with this "No, no, no" stuff? That was pretty much what David Frum was saying; that they could have made a deal that would have made the Health Care Bill less onerous to them…but they decided to go for broke and wound up broke. And maybe they're about to make the same mistake with the next Supreme Court nominee.

Hey, remember that great Jack Davis TV Guide ad we talked about here? I was hoping someone would come up with a better, more complete copy of it and someone has. Trevor Kimball over at tvseriesfinale.com did a much better scan and he also came up with some black-and-white images that Davis created as part of the same campaign. Interestingly, a few of the black-and-white drawings were retouched by Mort Drucker, sans credit — the two likenesses of Sammy Davis, the one of Danny Thomas, the image of Frank Sinatra and a couple others.

A lot of folks are outraged or amused or dared by the new KFC Double Down Sandwich — the one with fried chicken patties in lieu of bread. As I pointed out here, it isn't any unhealthier than most of what's offered on the KFC menu. And as Nate Silver explains, it isn't much more lethal than a lot of sandwiches offered in fast food joints these days.

I've been working 'round the clock the last few days but it is, as they say, a Good Tired. Still, I had to take time out last night to get fancied-up and go up to the Magic Castle to see my pal Shelly Goldstein warble tunes to a packed house…and I mean packed. My one complaint about the evening was that the place was too full. She's too popular…but I guess that's to be expected. She sang wonderful tunes from the sixties. She sang some of her own delightful song parodies (like this one) and everyone just had a groovy time. I will be plugging upcoming Shelly Goldstein appearances here. If you have a lick o' sense in that brain of yours, you'll listen to me about this one.

Just heard from Tim Hollis who read this item and has this to offer…

Your friend Andrew Leal is correct that our ol' buddy Dal McKennon was Uncle Scrooge in the Donald Duck and His Friends album (I believe it was released in 1960). Greg and I have commented on the fact that Dal chose to give Scrooge a Scottish accent with no apparent precedent (obviously Scrooge did not speak in dialect in the comics). Then, when Bill Thompson did Scrooge in the 1967 educational cartoon, he continued using the Scottish accent; we have no proof that anyone at Disney played the record for him so he could see how Scrooge's one and only audio appearance sounded, but he picked up that accent somehow. Of course, Alan Young says that his Scottish accent was a genuine remnant of his own upbringing, and he had probably heard the Thompson voice if not the McKennon one. The fact is, though, that in that one LP, Dal McKennon inadvertently established how Scrooge would sound from that point onward.

(As an aside, that 1960 LP also featured the sped-up voices of Dick Beals and Robie Lester as Chip 'n' Dale respectively, but that's another story from Mouse Tracks.)

Okay, this settles it for me. And just to remind everyone: Mouse Tracks by Tim and his partner Greg Ehrbar, is the definitive (an adjective I use sparingly) history of Disney records. You can order a copy here.

Busy with deadlines but can't stay away. For the Fall 1965 TV season, NBC commissioned the great Jack Davis to do a big mob scene drawing depicting all their prime time shows, plus they snuck in Johnny Carson and Huntley & Brinkley. The panorama was printed in segments as five separate pages in the TV Guide of that month…and I don't know if it ever appeared anywhere else.

Someone has scanned all five parts and attempted to piece the entire thing together and you can see or download it from this link. I'd love to know if it was ever reproduced in one piece and, of course, where one could get a decent copy of it. Failing that, I wonder if anyone else would like to invest in a copy of that TV Guide — they seem to go for $30-$75 on eBay — and cut it up to do a better scan.

Now, back to work…

ADDENDUM: Three people have written me to note that the person who pieced this thing together omitted the Sunday page with Bonanza and other shows. Let's see if we can get this thing put back the way it was supposed to be.

Time out from the soup kitchen to link you to a piece by Penn Jillette about the demise of the Hummer. I agree with all or most of it. The part where I might not agree is where he makes it sound like the brand was done in by government regulation. Seems to me it was done in by the cost of gas and the fact that most folks, like Penn, think someone who drives a Hummer is being kind of a jerk.

Behold: Our traditional graphic to denote that Mark is swamped with deadlines. Posting here may be sparse for the next few days and response time to e-mails may be much worse than usual. I shall return to you at full strength soon. Right now, I need to focus on the following problem: I'm recording a batch of cartoon scripts on Monday and Tuesday and half of 'em ain't been written yet. I go now to write them…