Here's an article about the Bullwinkle statue up on Sunset Boulevard…which is darn close to the most lasting relic of the Sunset Strip as some of us recall it from the sixties. I took the above photo a few years ago.
Bill Scott, as you all know, was the voice of Bullwinkle and the cartoon's head writer and producer. At the time of Bill's passing in 1985, I was collaborating with him and Frank Welker on a screenplay for a live-action Dudley Do-Right movie that the folks at MGM wanted to make. This has no relation to the one made by others in 1999 with Brendan Fraser. At the time, the statue had fallen on hard times with cracks and chipped paint…and Bill said it pained him to even lay eyes on it. Frank and I were witness to a friendly argument between Jay Ward and Bill about having it refurbished. Jay would only trust one certain artist to handle the task and since that artist had died, it was kinda unlikely they could get him.
But Bill kept after him about it and finally, Jay agreed to engage someone who was still alive. Just a few days after that engagement, Moose and Squirrel had a makeover and looked like new again. I remember how happy Bill was.
He passed away less than a month later — over the Thanksgiving weekend. He had directed a play out in Sunland…a production of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor which, he told us, Mr. Simon would have hated due to extensive, against-the-rules rewriting. I was too busy to get out there for it but on Saturday night, Frank went to the final performance…and at the curtain calls, someone (Bill's son, I think, who was in the play) announced that they'd performed it in the "show must go on" tradition since Bill had died a few days earlier. It was quite shocking to the audience and Frank was extremely rattled when he called me from his car on his way home.
I had planned to stay in that Saturday evening but when Frank called to tell me, I had a sudden urge to get out of the house. I had nowhere to go: Just that sudden, urgent need to go somewhere else. It was around 10:30 and my options were pretty limited as to where I could go. I decided on the Comedy Store, forgetting for the moment that driving there by way of Sunset would take me right past the Bullwinkle statue. Seeing it there, repainted and bathed in light, only depressed and frustrated me further.
When I got to the Comedy Store, I went backstage to see a friend of mine who was performing there, a fine comedienne named Louise Du Art. I'd decided on the way there not to start babbling to people about Bill Scott and I kept to that decision for around two minutes. When I told Louise, she was depressed. Then I ran into Garry Shandling and told him and he was depressed. Then I told Jeff Altman and a few others…and everyone I told, I depressed. None of them knew Bill personally but they sure knew (and loved) Bullwinkle.
I guess it was around 1 AM that I suddenly got what seemed at that moment like a brilliant idea. I decided to see if I could get a funeral wreath and go over and somehow get it onto the Bullwinkle statue. I figured the next day, news crews would be reporting on Bill's passing and someone would send a camera crew down to get some footage of the statue. So my question became where do you get a funeral wreath at 1 AM on a Sunday morning? There were no florists open at that hour but it occurred to me that large funeral homes have someone on duty 24 hours a day. I went into a pay phone, looked up the number of Forest Lawn and dialed. The conversation would have been difficult even if I hadn't had to cope with the noise of Sam Kinison performing in the next room.
A sombre voice answered and I asked the gentleman if he could tell me where to procure a funeral wreath at that hour. He asked, "Where is the deceased lying in state?"
I said, "This isn't for a deceased person. Well, it is but I just want to put a wreath on a statue."
The sombre one said, "I see. Can you tell me where this statue is located?"
"Sure," I said. "You know up on Sunset how's there this big statue of Bullwinkle Moose? And he has Rocky the Flying Squirrel on one hand and…"
The line went dead. He'd hung up on me. And when I thought about it, I decided that I'd have hung up on me, too.
It was about then that I decided the wreath was a silly idea and I should just forget about it. Bill would not have appreciated the gesture. On the other hand, I'm sure he would have laughed himself sick over that phone call.