Monthly Archives: January 2011

Dick Cavett has filed two columns in which he tells of the one time in his life he decided to get rip-roaringly drunk. Here's Part One and here's Part Two.

Some folks I've met don't believe this but I've never had a drink in my life, not even a full sip of beer or wine. Once at a party, I was handed what was supposed to be a lemonade and I wound up doing a spit-take of the first and only mouthful. Turned out, it was gin plus something. That and a couple of Nyquils many years ago are as close as I've ever gotten to consuming an alcoholic beverage. I think in an odd way, it's connected to the fact that I suffer from an awful lot of food allergies. As a kid, I developed a dire fear of eating or drinking anything I'd never had before or which seemed even slightly questionable. I have friends who love trying new foods, even to the extent of popping things into their mouths without knowing what they're eating. That to me is Russian Roulette with several bullets in the chamber.

The fear is most often felt as a little "uh-oh" sense not unlike Spider-Man's "something's wrong" tingle. I'm offered something to eat and a little voice inside me goes, "Uh-oh." A few times in my life when I haven't listened to it, I've paid dearly…so I listen to it. It warns me (usually) when some hors d'oeuvre might secretly contain almonds and it also tells me to decline spirits. So do stories like Cavett's where folks lament — or sometimes even boast about — the hell they endured due to too much imbibing. So do a number of situations I've witnessed where people I knew quite literally destroyed their lives and/or careers by excessive or ill-timed drinking.

Once in the eighties, I was invited to and attended a meeting of a Hollywood-oriented chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't think any of the performers there would object if I mentioned their names here but I won't anyway. They were all folks who'd had some success — starred in a TV series or done some big movies or had some hit records, etc. — but that was sadly behind them now. All had gotten into that most vicious of circles: Their careers (and sometimes, personal relationships) were getting worse so they drank. And since they drank, their careers (and sometimes, personal relationships) had gotten worse. Everyone at that meeting then had the problem more or less under control, which was not say it was cured, nor would it ever be.

As I sat there listening to a lot of sad but sometimes funny tales, I thought to myself: I have plenty of problems but one I'll never have to deal with is addiction to drink — or for the same reason, tobacco or any narcotic stronger than blogging. I've long since filed all those activities in the category of "I don't care if other folks do it as long as they don't impact my life because of it…but I ain't gonna do it." It's like skydiving. You want to do it? Fine. Just don't expect me to join you and don't land on me.

One other thing about Not Drinking. In the seventies and eighties — though not so much since — I sometimes found myself at parties where everyone was getting high except, of course, moi. I worked for a time on one TV show where some tapings (I'm not sure why some and not others) were followed by office parties with free-flowing liquor and a sampling of medicinal substances not found at a Walgreens. Usually sooner than later, it always reached a point where I didn't want to be around my friends and co-workers in that condition and I got the hell outta there.

But before it got that bad, I heard some interesting stories…things that might not have been uttered had it not been for drink. And there I am, perfectly sober and armed with a terrific memory. There was one producer who was very lucky that I never wanted to get into the business of blackmail. Based on what I heard, I could have had his house. There was one cute receptionist who had caught my eye in the sense of, "Hmm, I might want to ask her out." That was before I heard her, seriously under the influence, ramble on about certain matters that caused me to revise that to, "Hmm, I think I want to stay the hell away from that woman."

One time, the producers' Head of Business Affairs got seriously plastered and began rabbitting on about the great deals he'd just closed to sell our show into foreign syndication. He even quoted specific dollar figures…and there was I, standing there with my little Canada Dry Ginger Ale and a clear head, taking it all in. The next day, I passed those mental notes on to my agent and when it came time to negotiate a renewal of my contract…well, let's jusy say the data came in handy. My agent was negotiating with that same Head of Business Affairs…who didn't recall telling anyone about the foreign sales and couldn't figure out how we knew about them. Still, he had to admit it was true and to adjust his offer to me upwards.

I have absolutely no condemnation of anyone who drinks. Like I said, do it if you like. Just don't land on me or anyone I care about. I just thought it was worth pointing out that there can be advantages to not drinking. You never have a desperate need to quit, you never have a hangover…and you'd be amazed what you can learn sometimes.

The cartoon business recently lost two talented gents who died way too young…

One was Boyd Kirkland, who was an animation director, producer and storyboard artist. He was probably best known for X-Men: Evolution and the Batman animated series and the quality of those shows (and therefore, the skills of Boyd) are obvious to all.

The other was John Dorman, who was a designer, art director and storyboard artist for just about every studio in Hollywood at one time or another. I knew him when he supervised art design at Ruby-Spears and he was very, very good at what he did there.

Though I worked briefly with both men, I don't feel qualified to write the kind of obits they deserve. So I'll just say they were good, creative professionals whose work will be rerun forever. I liked them both and was very sorry to get the two sad phone calls.

My comrade Gordon Bressack writes…

Okay, though you didn't ask, here is my Charlie Callas story…

As a teenager I worked summers and weekends in The Catskills. There probably isn't a resort in The Borscht Belt I didn't work at, either waiting on tables or being a tummler (running Simon Says games, which is a blood sport in the mountains). The summer of 1967, I was working at The Echo Hotel in Ellenville, New York, which is the easternmost location in the resort area. Various acts would start their tours at The Echo and work their way westward doing a gig at each of the over a dozen resorts between Ellenville and Monticello. The performers were usually very gregarious and would hang out with the staff. Stars like Hines, Hines and Dad, Red Buttons, London Lee and others were very affable and would stay up late with us kids and crack jokes (some would even take a puff or two off a joint.) Mostly pretty nice people.

Then there was Charlie Callas. Charlie would bark at us, shoo us away, curse for no reason and be generally unlikeable. He was so abusive that we decided to teach him a lesson. After he had done his act at The Echo and we all knew what his punchlines were, we followed him from gig to gig and shouted out his punchlines before he could say them. After a few hotels, he got the point. The next time he returned to The Echo he was as nice and friendly as could be.

I had very brief encounters with Mr. Callas — nothing worth writing about — but he struck me as somewhat mercurial. A lot of comedians who are just out of the Big Time are like that. One moment they're on stage and everyone is howling and confirming they're funny; the next, they're going weeks without a good job and reading in the trades how someone like Gary Coleman has a hit series. A person can get very angry with a business where there seems to be that disconnect between acceptance and reward. From the anecdotes that abound, it would seem like David Frye had that kind of frustration but more so. Callas, at least, was able to parlay success on stage to some decent TV and movie roles.

Among his many other accomplisments by the way, Gordon Bressack is the author and director of a play called Missing Dick, which is described as "…a totally hilarious gender-bending sex farce for the 21st Century. It's playing for six performances only, Friday and Saturday nights starting February 4 at the Hollywood Fight Club Theater in, you guessed it, Hollywood. The theater's website doesn't list it yet but I'll bet if you call the number on that site, they'll give you more info and sell you tickets. I don't know if I'll be able to make it but Gordon doesn't disappoint so it oughta be worth attending.

The fine announcer and comedy historian Christopher Bay writes to tell me where that Allan Sherman clip is from. Sez he, it's from 1966…from the syndicated variety series, Something Special, which he says he watched on Channel Nine here in Los Angeles. Now that he mentions it, I vaguely recall watching it on that show on Channel Nine here in Los Angeles, too. Thanks, Christopher.

And while we're at it, everyone who reads this site except Christopher Bay wrote to tell me the origin of that Mel Brooks clip from the other day. It's from the British chat show hosted by Gloria Hunniford.

Someone who calls him or herself Brighton Roc writes…

I've been reading your blog for years now and this is only the second time I've written but once I saw the recent "Name Withheld" column, I just had to. I understand the problem. I'm an unprofessional. I write. Sometimes. It is always easiest to write when I have a purpose, when I know it is going somewhere. But who's going to read it? I have no contracts. I have no publications. I have no readers eager to pour over my latest scribblings. So what can I do to force myself over this hump of uninspiration?

Easy. Blog it.

That is the beauty of the internet for me. I may never "make it," and knowing how much drive I posses I doubt that status will ever change. But if I post my work online, the world can see it. Punctuation and spelling errors included. The potential (however slim) is there. The quality doesn't really matter. The internet is hotbed of quantity, not quality. Much like Norman Rockwell's teacher's saying, "Everyone has a thousand bad drawings in them. The sooner you get rid of them, the better," (or words to that effect) the more you write, the better you will get. And if you blog it, people might just see your improvement. The possibility is there.

Anyway, that is my writing inspiration. It's not much better than no audience and you still have to force yourself but it helps me finish the things I know few people will ever read. 'Cause many people might.

Yeah, it is easier to write when you have some idea of where it might appear and who might pay you for it but it doesn't come easily when you're starting out. Those who buy writing tend to not want to engage you until you've shown what you can do. If you take the position that you won't show what you can do until they're ready to hire you, you create a bad chicken/egg conundrum for yourself.

Writing for the Internet is a good idea. So is looking around for small venues where you might at least be able to get published — local papers, newsletters, magazines that pay little or nothing. Don't let yourself get exploited by folks who can pay (or can pay better) but if no one's buying your writing yet, you might need to set your sights a bit lower just to get the machine working. In some cases, depending on what you want to write and what resources you have, self-publishing may work…though blogging is probably easier, requires less investment and ultimately pays about the same.

But I'd disagree with you that the quality of work on the 'net doesn't matter. It's easy to find bad writing on the Internet. If you just offer one more blog full of it, you won't cut yourself away from the herd. You will if you have something to say and the means to say it. And if you don't have something worth saying, how you say it won't matter.

Here's one from Name Withheld. I don't think that's her (it's a lady) real name…

I appreciate all the advice you post to writers but most of it seems to be for those who are already in the field of professional writing. Some of us are writers only in our minds and dreams. I work in a store and I consider myself a writer who just hasn't been able to exercise that portion of her abilities yet. I've started writing a number of things but I find myself unable to finish material because I know it will just sit there on my computer or on my desk and not go nowhere. I'm sure that if someone gave me the opportunity to sell something and see it published, I could rise to the challenge. The problem is that I don't know how to get that challenge. Do you have any advice for me and don't tell me to just finish scripts and see where they go. I can't finish if I don't know they have a chance of going somewhere.

Well then, you're fooling yourself to think you're a writer. A writer finishes things…even things that never get sold. Every professional writer has things they've written that never sold or reached the public. In fact, we all have things we've written that upon reflection, we're very glad didn't reach the public. That script you're writing now may turn out to be one that will never sell but you'll never know that until you try, which means you have to finish it. As the saying goes, there are no great uncompleted novels.

I understand the obstacle presented by the knowledge that once you finish the thing, it may sit on your desk forever. I have a not-dissimilar problem from time to time when I'm hired to write a TV or movie script that I know or even suspect will never get in front of a camera. Even though I'm guaranteed my pay, it's tough to get over that I'm writing something no audience will ever see. In some ways, that's even tougher than when I was starting out and writing things with no prospect for a sale or even a reading. Back then, I accepted that as a stage every writer just has to go through…like a baseball player going through training and batting practice. There are few professions in the world — or at least, few in the creative area — where you don't start out in the wilderness.

So the answer to your question is: Yes, I have advice for you. Finish the danged scripts or forget about being a writer anywhere beyond your hopes and dreams.

A few of you are reporting that when you click on one of my embedded video links, you get a different video than the one you expect. This is probably because the YouTube folks are experimenting with a new formula that uses the "iframe" tag rather than the "embed" tag. I assume this is a bug they'll have out soon…but you might try refreshing your browser and seeing if that doesn't clear up the dilemma.

I really miss Howie Morris. To most of you, he was a brilliant comic actor and director. To me, he was that plus he was like my crazy uncle. He died in May of '05 and the cliché applies: There hasn't been a day since when I haven't thought about him.

Howie was best known for acting — working in support of Sid Caesar, voicing hundreds of cartoons, playing the raucous Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show and many, many other appearances. He also had a good career as a director. He directed tons of commercials and sitcoms that came off quite well…and four feature films wherein he had less success, both personally and professionally. Two of them, he sometimes wished he'd declined or disowned and he had long, probably honest stories about what had gone wrong on them — some of it, his fault; some not. On Sunday evening, Turner Classic Movies is running a little Howard Morris Film Festival, airing back-to-back the two of which he was kinda proud.

At 8 PM, it's With Six You Get Eggroll, a 1968 comedy starring Brian Keith and Doris Day. Howie always believed the TV series The Brady Bunch was inspired by this film about a widow and a widower who wed, bringing large quantities of existing offspring into the marriage. The performances, especially Mr. Keith's, carry what is at least now pretty predictable material and the supporting cast is especially good. It includes George Carlin in an early role that he'd later say convinced him he had little future as an actor and should focus on standup comedy.

Then at 10 PM (these are Eastern times I'm giving you here), you can view or TiVo — and you should — the 1967 Who's Minding the Mint? This was the first feature Howie directed and easily the best. It sure has a terrific cast, especially Jim Hutton as the lead and Jack Gilford as a deaf safecracker. Howie said that they were having trouble casting the latter and someone at the studio proposed that he play the part himself. He would have been wonderful in it but he felt he could not handle that large a role plus the directing…so he was looking for someone else one day when he and some execs went to lunch in the cafeteria on the studio lot. Across the room, Morris spotted Gilford carrying a tray and yelled out, "Jack! He's a deaf safecracker!" Just that. Instantly, Gilford (who heard him fine) went into character and yelled back, "What? I can't hear you," and the way he said it was so funny that he was cast on the spot.

The film also features Milton Berle in front of a camera like he always wanted to be, plus Walter Brennan, Victor Buono, Dorothy Provine, Bob Denver, Joey Bishop and others, including voiceovers by Paul Frees. (The poster above, which I know you can't see well, was by MAD magazine artist Jack Rickard.) Howie said the hardest part of directing the film was to suppress a constant urge to kill Joey Bishop…and I gather Mr. Bishop had similar fantasies about strangling his director. That wee bit of disharmony doesn't show and the movie though lightweight and silly in plot, moves along at a brisk, amusing clip. It was produced by a lovely man named Norman Maurer who went from being a top comic book writer and artist to working in Hollywood, producing movies and managing The Three Stooges. And it was written by R.S. Allen and Harvey Bullock, a first-rate team who also wrote a lot of the best episodes of The Flintstones and The Andy Griffith Show, both of which sometimes featured Howie's acting.

Howie was proud of it but always very careful to not "oversell" it to people so I won't…but I liked it even before I got to know Howie. You might enjoy it. I know you would have enjoyed him.

Just got this press release and I thought it might help someone out there…

After a one-semester hiatus, Dennis O'Neil, prize-winning comics writer and editor, will offer a 10 week course in writing comic books and graphic novels at New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies, beginning on February 23. The dominant subject matter of the class will be the techniques and special requirements of writing for the odd amalgam of image and word that is comics, but Dennis will take occasional side trips into such things as the history of the medium, its relationship to mythology, and the why people tell stories. He will also discuss the movie adaptations of comics and, if the class is willing, how comics are edited. Classes will start at 6:45 in the evening and end about two and a half hours later. For more information, see the university's home page.

Can't think of anybody better to teach a class like this. (And yes, I know the listing on the website identifies Denny as a "noted Marvel Comics writer and editor." Well, he was. He was just a noted DC Comics writer and editor for a much longer time.)

They're tearing down the Friars Club in Beverly Hills. The main dining room, seen above, is rubble by now…an inglorious end to what was once a glorious institution. I never joined but I went there often enough for meals that I felt a certain unofficial sense of belonging.

This Friars Club should not be confused with the original which is on E. 55th Street in New York. That one is still operational, though it has suffered a generational loss as so many members of yore have passed away and gone unreplaced by younger members of the show biz community. I suppose that's the main thing that destroyed the West Coast branch, though there were other factors.

The Beverly Hills branch was founded in 1947 at the instigation of either George Jessel or Milton Berle. Both took credit for the idea that there should be a version of the Friars out there and it was an immediate success. Everyone who was anyone in TV or movies was a member in the fifties and the parties and roasts at its original Rodeo Drive location were legendary. In the early sixties, they relocated to a windowless structure on Santa Monica Boulevard a few blocks east of the offices of Western Printing and Lithography, which readers of this blog know better as Gold Key Comics. At first, the new locale was a huge hit but as the sixties wore on, the Friars Club ceased to be the place to be. It grew old-fashioned and stuffy, and many of the Big Name Star members found better places to hang out. Since belonging to the same club as Frank Sinatra and Jack Benny was the main appeal of membership, the ranks began to thin ever so slightly.

The thinning grew thick when the scandal broke. The card rooms on the third floor of the club building were a not-well-kept secret of Hollywood. Everyone had heard that famous people played poker and gin up there for serious money and that some lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. That wasn't the scandal. The scandal was that there were peep holes in the ceiling and that men on the roof would radio their accomplices at the card table what certain players had in their hands. In other words, Major League Cheating. There were men who'd been cleaned out of millions that way. Most of the cheaters eventually became members of a club with bars on the windows but the image of the Friars never quite recovered.

I started going there in the late seventies, I think. I knew a lot of people who were members and we'd sometimes have business lunches there. I remember on one of my first visits, a TV crew came in and began setting up to interview some of the waiters for some sort of news segment or something. (The room, by the way, had the best waiters — funny, efficient, polite and always well-tipped.) As soon as it became apparent that a TV interview was to occur, a figure at a table on the far side of the room jumped up and sprinted over to explain to the reporter that it was essential that he be included in the segment. It was Milton Berle and I don't think he even knew what the interview was for, what it was about, where it was going to air, anything. It's just that there was this camera there and his appearance before it was mandatory. The reporter shrugged and Uncle Miltie was interviewed along with the waiters.

In the late eighties, there was a big membership drive…I guess to try and replenish a membership roster that was aging (and dying) at a brisk clip. I was pestered the way you get pestered by a too-aggressive realtor to buy a house you don't want. I liked dining there but the food was just as good if not better at other places that didn't hit you up for hefty dues. Your odds of dining near Big Name Stars were better in those other places, too. The last time I ate there, the most famous person on the premises was Dick Van Patten…and I think the runner-up may have been me. Or more likely, the valet parking guy.

In 2004, the club was privatized. That is, an outside investor bought it and announced his intention to turn it into a going concern. Whatever it was he was going to do didn't sit well with the original Friars in New York. They sued to wrest the name away from the investor and succeeded. He renamed it Club 9900 (since it was at 9900 Santa Monica Boulevard) but no one wanted to belong to that and the place closed down in 2008. And soon there'll be no building there until the owners decide what will replace it. Presumably, it'll be soon since that's a pretty expensive piece of real estate to lie fallow for long. Sad to see it go, not because it was a great place to eat or socialize but because it was a lingering remnant of an era you don't see much of anymore.