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.