Monthly Archives: April 2011

I became a professional writer in 1969 and for the first year or so, I wrote a wide array of magazine pieces, press releases and the occasional comic book. After a while, the comic books became less occasional and I ditched most of the other stuff, not because it wasn't lucrative or challenging but because it involved a lot of "selling" and meeting with editors and going in to meetings. One of the many things I liked about writing comics was that the time I spent on it was like 90% writing and 10% "other." When I wrote for teen magazines and P.R. firms, it was more like 25% writing, 75% "other." Another was that the comic book writing was more honest work.

When I wrote for teen magazines, I ghosted an advice column for a performer who was then all the rage with 14-year-old girls. He agreed to let the magazine slap his name on this column as long as he didn't have to write it or read it or (especially) be embarrassed by anything in it. So we kept it pretty tame. What little mail was actually submitted by readers was either gushy I-love-you fan stuff or letters that said, "I'm 15 and my boy friend insists I prove my love for him." I ran neither. I made up questions and answers about boy-girl relationships…and at the time, I was 17 and had barely had any. So I was probably about as qualified to write the column as any of its readers except for the fact that I could spell.

The publishing firm also published straight gossip magazines for (one supposes) an older audience. One day, the lady who edited the teen magazines told me that the lady who edited the gossip magazines wanted me to write for her, too. I went over to her office and she said she'd like me to handle her next cover story, which was to be about the secret love nest of Elizabeth Taylor and Burt Reynolds. The cover, in fact, had already been designed and sent off to press. I said, "I wasn't aware Elizabeth Taylor and Burt Reynolds were involved, let alone had a secret love nest." The editor looked at me with an expression that seemed to say: "Don't you know how this game is played?"

Within minutes, it was explained to me. The actual existence of any such love nest was irrelevant. The point was that it was a good cover blurb.

She had, in fact, a whole list on her desk of stars who were then "hot" and there was another list of phrases that were deemed commercial. Some claimed X was sleeping with Y. Others said X was breaking up with Y. There were also three-ways — X is leaving Y for Z — and even some four-ways, all of which seemed to involve Sammy Davis Jr. for some reason. An especially popular one was was, "The secret blackmail photos that _____ doesn't want the world to see." The idea was that you'd then take a name from one of the other lists, plug it in and write about (but of course, not show) the secret blackmail photos that Frank Sinatra didn't want the world to see or the secret blackmail photos that Juliet Prowse didn't want the world to see. You might even insert an adjective like "desperate" or "forbidden." She had a whole page of those words, too. So she'd just scanned the lists, played this oily version of Mad-Libs and come up with Burt's and Liz's love nest. Burt had previously in this magazine had a secret love nest with Joey Heatherton and since that issue had sold well, it was time to give him one with Liz.

My mission, should I decide to accept, was to write an article that would go with the Liz-Burt cover line which, like I said, was already off to the printer. Accuracy, of course, did not matter…and oddly enough, neither did salaciousness. I could write that the secret love nest was a certain hotel suite in Santa Barbara in which both Liz and Burt had stayed at separate times with their then-current mates engaging in naught but monogamy. I could also write that Liz and Burt had checked into a Motel 6 somewhere, paid the six bucks that it then cost to stay in a Motel 6, and had sex in six different positions, six times a day for six weeks. The editor really didn't care which.

I was baffled. I baffled easily at that age. I told the lady I'd feel baited, switched and cheated if I plunked down my coinage for a magazine that suggested Liz Taylor and Burt Reynolds were going at it hot and heavy and instead got a piece about how they'd rented the same hotel room at different times. She said, "So would I but our readers don't."

Feeling myself about to decline a paying assignment for what I think was the first time in my life, I said, "I'd also feel cheated if you did write about Liz and Burt having an affair and there was never any evidence of it in reality." She said, "So would I but our readers don't." She noted that for six years, which was about as long as the magazine had been around, they'd been running a minimum of three cover stories a year about how Liz and Richard Burton would be announcing their divorce any day now. That hadn't happened either but it hadn't harmed their circulation, nor was there any indicator it had impaired the magazine's credibility. (As it turned out, Liz and Dick did divorce a few years later.)

The editor finally grew weary of my naïve questions and asked, "Do you want the assignment or not?" I opted for "not." It crossed some boundary of honesty in my brain, plus it meant working in an area that I obviously did not understand at all.

Oh, I understood the part about wanting to grab newsstand patrons with a hot, scandalous promise on the cover. Even if I couldn't lower myself to do it, I certainly grasped why a magazine would want to do that. What I couldn't comprehend was why, if the magazine didn't deliver what was promised and/or didn't deliver facts that stood even the briefest test of time, people still bought it. I still don't understand that…

…though I do ponder the question every time I watch Fox News.

In 1956, MGM released a film called Meet Me in Las Vegas starring Cyd Charisse and Dan Dailey. It was not the worst musical MGM ever made and I'd be very surprised if anyone thought it was among the best. But it made a few bucks and got one Oscar nomination. My parents took me with them to a movie theater to see it, though the original release date (when I would have been four) seems like too early to me, and I suspect what we went to was a reissue a few years later. Whenever it was, I didn't enjoy it that much. Maybe I'd like it better today (we'll find out soon) but I recall breaking the indoor fidgeting record when my folks and I attended.

Why we went: Because our neighbor was in it. From about the age of 1 until the age of 24, I lived in a home next door to a wonderful actress named Betty Lynn. Betty is now best remembered for playing Thelma Lou, lady friend of Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, but she had a long career in film and TV apart from that, including several television series. To us, she was more than a neighbor. She was an unofficial aunt.

Betty had a very small part in Meet Me in Las Vegas but when she signed on, it was a pretty large part and it included an elaborate dance number with a dancer then named George Kerris. A few years later, Mr. Kerris — now calling himself George Chakiris — would become a big star with his role in West Side Story and would win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He and Betty put in six weeks just rehearsing their dance number, which was very physical and called for Betty to be thrown repeatedly onto and against a table. She sustained so many bruises during the rehearsal that the studio doctor ordered them to stop rehearsing that part. She also spent many weeks filming non-dancing scenes.

A few weeks before the film's release, she received a phone call from its producer, Joe Pasternak. As Betty recalls the conversation, he explained that the studio has insisted on the film having a lot of cameos by name stars like Debbie Reynolds and Frank Sinatra. Adding all of those in had meant that something had to go…so about 90% of Betty's scenes were eliminated, including the entire musical number. Betty was professional about it but, of course, not very happy. Well, she's happy now.

This afternoon, my pal Vince Waldron wrote to tell me that the Warner Archive project has released Meet Me in Las Vegas on DVD. Usually, Warner Archives releases plain vanilla DVDs with no special features but in this case, they're including two deleted musical numbers — one with Lena Horne, and the other is the dance sequence with Betty Lynn and George Kerris. I'm going to order two copies — one for me and one for Betty — and I just phoned to tell her about it. Like I said, she's happy now. "You know, I've never even seen that number," she said.

I remember her telling me about it when I was ten or so. She wasn't sure a copy of it even existed and she certainly didn't expect it would ever see the light of a movie projector. I'll let you know what she says about it when she gets a copy. If you'd like to get one, order here. I don't make a commission on these and I'm certainly not recommending the film or predicting you'll like it…but if you want one, there it is.

Here, courtesy of Alan Burnett, is another article about Fred Willard.

Here's an article about the looming battle between In-N-Out and Five Guys for the Southern California area. For what it's worth, Five Guys already has my vote, partly because their food is so good and partly because my last few visits to an In-N-Out have been so disappointing. I don't know if my tastes have changed or their burgers have but they got me to wondering what I ever liked about them. I'm suspecting that deep down, I always liked the idea of In-N-Out more than I liked their cuisine. If you were going the fast food route, you always felt much classier at an In-N-Out than at, say, a McDonald's or Burger King.

I noted back here that a Five Guys was due to open in Culver City (a 'burb not all that far from where I dwell) by mid-May. The linked article says mid-April…and hey, it's just about mid-April now. I would still give them a few weeks to get their act together before I got judgmental about what they serve there.

A friend in that industry once told me that part of the success of In-N-Out was that a lot of the young employees they hire do not regard it as temp work until they begin their real careers. There's a fair amount of history of someone starting at In-N-Out peeling potatoes and steadily working their way up until they snag a well-paying managerial position. Ergo, they attract employees who take the job more seriously and extend themselves beyond merely dressing burgers with minimal interest, then getting the check and going home. The early days of McDonald's were apparently a lot like that, too.

But, this person told me, McDonald's ain't like that no mo. First off, in many areas they've expanded about as much as they're likely to expand, so if you're salting fries at one, it's hard to envision working your way up to managing a new one locally. Secondly, he said, corporate management became less interested in promoting from within and more interested in stealing away the good people from the competition. So fewer kids who get work at a McDonald's feel there's a chance of it leading to a lifelong, decent-paying profession. I must admit that when I go to a Five Guys or an In-N-Out, the employees sure seem to be happier working there and more attentive to my order than whenever I'm at a McDonald's. Which I try not to patronize too often.

Here's a good interview with Fred Willard. I've been following this man since his Ace Trucking Company days and he's always been one of the funniest, cleverest folks on stage or screen. In a more perfect world, he'd be making the kind of money various former Saturday Night Live cast members make in movies but he probably does okay. An awful lot of producers rush to hire him because he's always dinero in the bank. Thanks to Tim Dunleavy for the link.

Hidden imagery in Woody Woodpecker cartoons? Okay…

The clip I posted earlier reminded me: You can't go see Zero Mostel perform live anywhere. He kind of ended that possibility when he died in 1977. But a more-than-reasonable facsimile is around, currently playing in Toronto through April 16. It's my buddy Jim Brochu in his one-man show, Zero Hour.

In it, Jim somehow (don't ask me how) turns himself into the Conquering Zero for 90-or-so minutes of discussing his life, his career, art, the curious institution we call Show Business, the world…all sorts of fascinating topics as viewed by a fascinating man. If you do a bit of Googling, you'll see that I'm hardly the only one to dispense raves for this play…and I wish he'd do it closer to me so I could see it again and again. If you're anywhere near Toronto this week, it's playing at the Harold Green Theatre and you can find out more and order tickets here. In May, he's doing it in Pittsfield, MA, which is also not close enough for me to attend. But if it's convenient to you, go. It's one of those evenings you won't soon forget…and in a good way.

I originally wrote that Sidney Lumet had been beaten out for a Best Director Oscar the year of Dog Day Afternoon by Stanley Kubrick. Then, only moments after posting and seconds before a torrent of e-mails came tumbling in, I realized my error and fixed it. He was beaten out by Milos Forman that year.

I said he was nominated five times as Best Director. I got that number from several online obits like the one in Hollywood Reporter. The truth is he was nominated four times for his directorial work: Twelve Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and The Verdict. The confusion is because he was a five-time Oscar nominee but only four of those were for directing. He was also nominated for a shared screenplay credit on the 1981 Prince of the City…and he also won an Honorary Academy Award in 2005 that most obits aren't mentioning and which some say was last year, which it wasn't.

And this isn't something I need to correct here but the Hollywood Reporter obit also says he was married three times. His Wikipedia listing and his IMDB bio list four.

Lastly, here's one fun fact that I noticed when I researched the above. He directed seventeen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Katharine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Chris Sarandon, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Beatrice Straight, William Holden, Ned Beatty, Peter Firth, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, James Mason, Jane Fonda and River Phoenix. Four of them won for those Lumet-supervised performances. A pretty impressive record.

Speaker of the House John Boehner says failing to raise the debt limit "…would be a financial disaster, not only for us, but for the worldwide economy." Senator Lindsey Graham (also a prominent Republican) says it would lead to "financial collapse and calamity throughout the world."

So I guess we won't see any Republicans saying, in effect, "If we don't get everything we want — including more tax cuts for the wealthy, more cutbacks on a woman's right to choose and the elimination of social programs we've always hated — we won't vote to raise the debt limit."

Thank goodness they'll all put the general welfare of the worldwide economy ahead of stuff like that.