Monthly Archives: February 2011

Hey, remember when I used to plug a local theatrical version of the TV game show, What's My Line? Well, the folks who brought us that are now bringing us this: The Fix-Up Show, a weekly game-like dating program that everyone tells me is just as much fun. I haven't been able to get over there to see one yet but don't wait for me. If you're in the L.A. area, read this and pick a date…to go.

Roger Ebert predicts who'll win the Oscars. This is a different list from his guesses as to who'll win the Oscars. His guesses are part of a contest to outguess Ebert's guess list. If you do, you win some share of a $100,000 pot. So there's a prize for outguessing his guesses but not for outpredicting his predictions. Frankly, I think they should just give the loot to anyone who can explain why his guesses are different from his predictions. It may all be some sort of devious scheme whereby the $100,000 will either go to Roger Ebert for outpredicting Roger Ebert or it'll go to Roger Ebert for outguessing Roger Ebert. I guess.

When comedian Charlie Callas passed recently, obits argued whether he was 83 or 86. That's not a big deal but a slightly bigger one was made about something else.

Some articles said that Charlie's frequent appearances with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show came to an abrupt end in 1982 due to an incident that went something like this: Callas was on one night and he wasn't doing so well. Desperate for laughs, he started flailing about and getting frantic…and in the process, he gave Mr. Carson an unplanned shove on the air. Johnny, it was said, was so angry about it that he never had Callas back. This was even reported in the New York Times.

A couple of folks wrote to ask me about it and I was a bit baffled. I'd vaguely heard that story somewhere but not from any source that would cause me to believe it…and had it been true, I think I would have. Well, the Times has now decided it didn't happen and has run the following correction…

An earlier version misstated Mr. Callas's age. He was 83, not 86. It also misstated the title of a Mel Brooks movie. It is "History of the World — Part I" not Part II. It also incorrectly described his appearance on "The Tonight Show" on Sept. 21, 1982. While Mr. Callas was never on the show again, he did not have an on-air falling out with the host, Johnny Carson. He did not shove Mr. Carson, nor did Mr. Carson say that Mr. Callas would not be invited back.

I have the feeling that the 1982 date is a bit too early for the disappearance of Mr. Callas from Johnny's guest roster but that may be correct. It's true that Charlie went from being a frequent occupant of the chair on Johnny's right to not being asked back and that may have been for a simpler reason. Johnny would often decide that some guest had worn out his or her welcome and he'd tell his producers not to book that person anymore. If I sat here a while, I could probably think of dozens like Charles Grodin, Phyllis Newman, Jaye P. Morgan, Tony Randall, Orson Bean, Charles Nelson Reilly and others who were on with Johnny every few weeks for an extended period. At least two of those were even under exclusive deals — they would make X number of appearances with Carson over Y months, in exchange for not appearing on any other talk shows.

Then one day, Johnny would just decide the person had been overexposed or had run out of funny stories or something. There were some, I suspect, who overdid it with plugging their upcoming appearances. That was something Carson only tolerated up to a point. (Excessive self-promotion was said to be a big reason Joan Rivers fell out of favor as Johnny's guest host and would probably have lost that position had she not decamped for Fox when she did.) Anyway, there may have been no reason that Callas stopped appearing with Carson other than that Johnny thought audiences were tired of him…or maybe there was one.

In 1984, Jerry Lewis did one week of a talk show opposite Carson. It was an on-air tryout/pilot for a regular series which did not become a regular series. In fact, even though Jerry had on some pretty impressive guests including Francis Albert Sinatra, the show was widely mocked and derided, mainly for unmitigated fawning and ego. Remember The Sammy Maudlin Show, an SCTV burlesque of the old Sammy Davis Jr talk show? Well, Jerry's test shows were worse in the same way. It was all these celebrities sitting around and talking about the greatness of each other…and it wasn't just that they were all wonderful performers. It went way beyond that. They were all God's gift to humanity — people who had made the world such a better place with their singing and dancing and sitcoms.

Some folks in the field of entertainment can get like that at times. I remember one time when my pals Marv Wolfman and Len Wein and I were in Vegas and we went to see Don Rickles at the Sahara. We were quite surprised and disappointed with his act, which did not include insults or even much attempt at comedy. It was Don, singing and dancing and doing impressions…and in between, he'd talk about Frank Sinatra in terms that made Jesus Christ seem like an unimportant pisher. He even started scolding the audience because while we all presumably knew that Ol' Blue-Eyes was the greatest entertainer who ever lived, that wasn't nearly enough. We "who aren't in show business" couldn't possibly appreciate how sainthood should be conferred on this glorious human being who was so much more than a mere mortal. My friends and I were muttering to each other, "Did Frank Sinatra cure cancer and we missed it?" I was going to yell out, "What about Frank's mob ties?" but I thought it would be nice to not be beaten to death behind a casino.

That one-week Jerry Lewis Show was like that, and much of the fawning came from Jerry's announcer-sidekick, one Charles Callas. The desk spot at each show commenced with Charlie telling Jerry and the audience how brilliantly funny the monologue was, and then Jerry would talk about how brilliantly funny Charlie Callas always was. I usually agreed with that last part but I don't recall seeing Charlie actually be funny on that show. Still, we were told a lot that he was funny other places. Then Jerry would say how great his first guest was. Then the first guest would come out and tell Jerry how those were all great compliments, especially coming from someone as great as Jerry Lewis. Then Jerry would reiterate how great the guest was and just when he was running out of ways to express that, Charlie would jump in and talk about how great the guest was and Jerry would of course agree. Then the guest would just have to take the time and tell everyone how great Charlie Callas was and…

Well, you just wanted to reach into your set and slap all those people. Especially because they were all wearing tuxedos.

Among the many secrets of Johnny Carson's success was that he usually managed to rein in that kind of thing. Guests were told not to engage in too much of it and if they tried, he was usally adept at making a joke out of it or otherwise deflecting the genuflecting. He knew America wasn't eager to see a lot of overpaid and famous celebrities giving one another on-air tongue baths and he stopped booking people who veered in that direction.

And you know who another one of them was? Jerry Lewis. Johnny also was not wild about people who tried to do talk shows opposite his.

I have no hard info that Charlie lost Johnny as a champion because of his stint as Jerry's Ed McMahon but I don't think it helped Callas to have been part of that show…or the Mutual Adoration Society that Jerry's telethon became. I have heard from a pretty good source that Johnny told his own Ed McMahon that he found the telethon tacky and while Ed was free to participate, Johnny didn't want it mentioned a lot on The Tonight Show. And of course, he stopped appearing on Jerry's annual telecast nor did he have Jerry on much if at all to promote it.

Ultimately, Callas stopped appearing with Johnny because Johnny decided, rightly or wrongly, that Charlie wouldn't be good for the show. But it apparently wasn't due to a shove, at least not of the physical variety.

There are folks out there who consider 1939 the best year ever for movies. I never really made a study of this but it's at least a contender.

That was year Jean Renoir made The Rules of the Game. It was the year John Ford directed Young Mr. Lincoln. It was the year George Cukor gave us The Women. It was the year of Gunga Din, Destry Rides Again, The Four Feathers, Drums Along the Mohawk, Babes in Arms, The Man in the Iron Mask, Beau Geste, Union Pacific, Son of Frankenstein and Only Angels Have Wings, as well as other memorable flicks. And I'm stealing a trick from William Goldman when I ask you to guess which one of these classics won the Oscar that year for Best Picture and then I tell you…

Answer: None of them. None of these were even nominated.

Then as now, they nominated ten pictures in that category and the ten that were nominated are on Turner Classic Movies this Saturday, one right after the other, stretching on into the wee small hours of Sunday morn. Here's the lineup, all times Eastern…

• 8:15 AM — Dark Victory
• 10:00 AM — Of Mice and Men
• NOON — Ninotchka
• 2:00 PM — Wuthering Heights
• 4:00 PM — Stagecoach
• 5:45 PM — Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
• 8:00 PM — The Wizard of Oz
• 10:00 PM — Gone With the Wind
• 2:00 AM — Goodbye, Mr. Chips
• 4:00 AM — Love Affair

Ten great movies in a row. I'm not sure which one I would have voted for…maybe Of Mice and Men, maybe Mr. Smith. The Academy went for Gone With the Wind and who can fault them on that call? You can see or TiVo 'em all on TCM starting early Saturday morn.

A number of silent movies, long thought to be lost, have been found in — of all places — the Soviet Union. Read all about it and note that the Soviets were more diligent about preserving American motion pictures than was America.

As I've mentioned here before, I've long been a big fan of an ever-diminishing chain of "fast food" eateries called Koo Koo Roo. I put those quotes in there because Koo Koo Roo offers pretty healthy cuisine — and pretty tasty, as well. But the brand is failing. There were once more than twenty, mostly around the Southern California area…and I once counted and determined I'd dined at more than half, including a couple in pretty outta-the-way locations. I had a kind of radar sense for them. Driving through unfamiliar territory, Carolyn and I will sometimes decide to stop and get something to eat. A little voice (not from my GPS) used to tell me when to pull off the freeway at the perfect spot to find a Koo Koo Roo.

Now, it's easy to find where they are. There's one on Wilshire in Santa Monica, one on Santa Monica Boulevard near La Cienega and one at Larchmont and Beverly Boulevards. That's it. They're down to three.

I just captured the photo above from Google Maps. It's of one of the two I used to go to on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills and neither is actually there anymore. The location in the pic is currently being retooled into an outlet of The Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Company, a chain of bakery-restaurants. Larry King, who I guess needed something to do, is the most prominent investor behind this venture.

I came across this photo when I looked up the address of Mr. King's new line of work so I could know where it was…and there I found this image of the now-defunct Koo Koo Roo. I thought I'd share it with you because something in it struck me as funny.

Google Maps sends cameras all over the world to capture images of street scenes…zillions of 'em. There are often pedestrians in these photos and for legal reasons (I guess), they employ some kind of software that analyzes each image and blurs any facial features that appear. I don't know how well you'll be able to see this on your monitor but the software decided to protect the identity of the little rooster in the Koo Koo Roo logo.

The witty Peter David is the latest of several folks to send me this link to a blog post by Heidi Gilbert, an artist who thinks that the movie version of the Broadway show Wicked should be animated, not live-action. She makes her case quite nicely with a video she cobbled up with a song (the best song, most feel) from the show. Never having seen Wicked, I don't know what to think of this notion…but I do believe that the whole concept of musical comedy in the cinema has been served better by animation the last few decades than by live-action.

About a dozen years ago, I was briefly involved with an attempt to bring a Broadway musical to the screen in animated form. In that case, it was a show that no one wanted to film in live-action and the argument against doing it as a cartoon (which won out with the studio) was that if the show had any true following, it would have been done with real people, not drawn ones. In other words, they were afraid it would look like, "We did this in animation because it wasn't important enough to be done live-action." Silly, I know…but it would have cost an awful lot of money to do it animated and even that much of a negative was reason enough to not proceed with it. I don't think anyone would think that of Wicked. It's just too popular a show. What they would think is that in live-action, it might snag all those Glee watchers, whereas in animation it might get lumped in with kiddy fare. So even if it's a good idea, I doubt they'd chance it.

Today is the birthday of comedian Woody Woodbury. Woody was a big hit in the club circuit back in the early sixties with his slightly-bawdy act…though these days, I think Elmo's using some of those jokes on Sesame Street. Anyway, I became familiar with Woody when he replaced Johnny Carson on Who Do You Trust and later starred in his own popular talk show. He was one of the most likeable, friendly presences I ever saw on my TV screen and when I was old enough to, I ran out and collected his best-selling record albums.

Our pal Christopher Bay has assembled a little four-minute sampler of Woody from one of those albums and you can listen to it here. It's over on Facebook and while you're there, check out The Woody Woodbury Facebook Fan Page which Christopher operates. Since I can't figure out how to link directly to it, you'll have to do a search…but it's worth the five seconds it'll take you to do that. And while you're there, how about posting Happy Birthday wishes to Woody, who reads that page and will be mighty happy if you do?

Not all the reviews of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark are savaging it…just most of them. Broadwayworld.com offers a rundown of all the major ones with excerpts. And the critic for that site, Michael Dale, explains why he chose not to review the show before its official opening.