Monthly Archives: May 2011

Rick Santorum thinks John McCain doesn't understand how torture works.

This has been today's edition of You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

With the help of a few readers of this site, we're doing vital detective work to figure out the precise airdates of Johnny Carson's early TV venture Carson's Cellar and of the episode we embedded here the other day. Stu Shostak, who owns a kinescope of said episode, told me it said 11/22/52 on the leader. Turns out he misread it. It actually says 11/23/52, which was a Sunday.

Bill Mullins researched old listings in the TV section of the L.A. Times and found dates listed for Carson's Cellar. It seems to have debuted on Saturday, October 4, 1952 at 7:00 PM. It then skipped a week, aired October 18 in that slot, then moved to Sunday at 5:30 as of October 26. It then skipped another week, aired again on Sunday the 9th, then was seen every week in that slot until its telecast of 1/18/53. It then moved to Friday nights at 8:30 as of 1/23/53 and ran there for five weeks. So it started on 10/4/52, ended on 2/20/53 and there were 19 episodes in all. Don M. Yowp (who runs a great Hanna-Barbera blog, by the way) dug into the online archives of the Long Beach Independent and found confirmation of the 10/4/52 date plus this clipping about it…

Mr. Mullins further notes that starting in April of '53, Johnny had a show called simply Johnny Carson at 10:00 pm on KNXT which ran on Fridays through June 29. Beginning on April 20, 1954 he hosted a morning show (also listed as just Johnny Carson) at 9 AM. The infamous episode of Red Skelton's show where Johnny filled in for Red was on August 18, 1954. I believe the official story was that during rehearsal, a breakaway door didn't break away and Red was injured. I seem to recall reading somewhere that while that was what was told to the press, Skelton was having some sort of emotional problem fueled by alcohol that day. Red was a very funny man but he did tend to keep his staff in a constant state of worry as to whether he'd show up, whether he'd looked at the script, whether he would follow that script…

The online library listings for the collection at the Paley Center for Media (formerly known as the Museum of Television & Radio) show two hits for Carson's Cellar. One is the episode that was embedded here…and they give no date for it but say the series aired "1951-1953," which is obviously off by a year. There's no description given on the other listing and I'm wondering if it isn't just the same episode listed twice. Next time I'm over there, I'll try to take a peek. Does anyone know for sure if a second episode exists?

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.

Hmm…my earlier item on Jerry Lewis no longer hosting the Labor Day Telethon was based in part on that article I linked to, the one headlined, "Jerry Lewis to host his final telethon this Labor Day." But maybe that's not exactly what's happening.

A reader of this site who signs his messages "GE" points me to the actual press release and it doesn't say Jerry's hosting. In fact, it notably does not say that. It says he's retiring as host of the annual Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon and quotes him as saying…

As a labor of love, I've hosted the annual Telethon since 1966 and I'll be making my final appearance on the show this year by performing my signature song, "You'll Never Walk Alone". I'll continue to serve MDA as its National Chairman — as I've done since the early 1950's. I'll never desert MDA and my kids.

So it sounds like he's not hosting, just coming on at the end to sing his song. But this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Do they mean that if he's around and reasonably healthy during the 2012 telethon and continuing to serve as the charity's National Chairman, he won't set foot on the stage? To no longer host is one thing…but to not even show his face on the broadcast? If that's the case, I revise my informed guess as to what's going on here. I'd heard he wanted to host the whole thing and that the telethon operators didn't want that. They, I'm told, were hoping to just get a brief appearance so they could thank him and he could pass the torch.

Sounds like they may be getting their wish…but I still think there's going to be a pretty big deal made out of Jerry's exit. Which brings us to the question of who will host and whether they're going to try to establish anyone as an ongoing replacement or if it'll just be like the Oscars each year. Hey, Billy Crystal wouldn't be bad…

So you think the folks at Goldman Sachs are the scum of the Earth. You think they couldn't possibly sink any lower in your estimation…

You haven't read this yet.

Last October, it was announced that the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon was being pared to a shorter length, that Jerry apparently had not been consulted on this, and that there was some speculation as to whether he'd want to stay on…or if the telethon organizers even wanted that. Now, it's been announced that his next will be his last.

Rough translation, I'm guessing: Jerry wanted to keep doing it. In fact, now that it was going to be shorter, he wanted to do all of it and dispense with the other hosts. The telethon overlords didn't want that and instead wanted to negotiate a figurehead role for him. Negotiations ensued. The bosses saw wisdom — i.e., donations — in giving him a big, splashy last hurrah as the star and then he'll transition to his reduced role. Jerry agreed to settle for that. (This is actually a bit more than a guess…it's based on what I'm hearing…)

I'm thinking they'll get a helluva tune-in, especially for the last hour. I'm also wondering which of two routes they'll take. One would be to invite every big star they can get to come in and be a part of this event. An awful lot of them would turn out. The other would be for Jerry to remain loyal to the less-than-stellar-but-often-quite-entertaining-friends who've turned out every year to fill his stage — the Max Alexanders of the world, the Tony Orlandos, etc. Reportedly, he's considered them an integral part of the telethon all these years and has objected when the producers suggested eliminating any of them. Six hours, which is all he has this year, is not a lot of time to shine the spotlight on those performers, on all the celebs who might want in on his final year, the clips they'll want to show (memorable past moments like Dean's walk-on, the annual tribute to Ed McMahon, a new one for Charlie Callas, etc.)…and, oh yeah, they'll want to talk about Muscular Dystrophy and the fine works the MDA has done and could do in the future if the tote board goes high enough.

Plus there's the annual pitch for Jerry's Nutty Professor musical which has been about to open at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego before going to Broadway for about the last five years. Have they even talked to the Old Globe yet about this? And they have to give Jerry time to reminisce and talk about what all the past telethons have meant to him. He could probably fill the old, all-night length with that.

They'll probably try to cram it all in but once you subtract the 20 minutes per hour they take for local cutaways, it's not nearly enough. And I guess I'm curious as to what Jerry would like to see happen…

This will be of interest to those of you who attend Comic-Con International in San Diego and who scramble for hotel rooms nearby. Mayor Jerry Sanders has proposed a new hotel tax to help pay for the current expansion of the city's convention center. He's talking about 3% for hotels right near the center, 2% for those a little farther away and 1% at hotels so far away that you might even be able to get a room at one of them.

The expansion plan has a current completion date of 2015, which probably means 2017 but some of the increased space is supposed to be available well before either date. When it's done, the "gross floor area" (and some of it's pretty gross) would increase by 961,187 square feet — from 1.76 million square feet to 2.72 million square feet. Most of the added space is expected to be filled by extremely large people in Star Wars costumes.

Actually, it includes 225,000 additional square feet of exhibitor space and a new 80,000 square foot ballroom. And since there will be 100,101 square feet of new meeting rooms, I plan to host an additional 200 panels each year.

I am told the hotel tax (or something like it) looks likely. Apparently, there are still a lot of questions about how the city is going to pay for the convention center upgrade and they're also talking about surtaxes on taxis that serve the area and on restaurants in the vicinity. The current cost estimate is 24% less than the original $711 million price tag but they don't even have all of the lower bill fully funded. A few months ago, a reporter in San Diego interviewed me about the Comic-Con and told me (approximately), "The city was so worried about losing big conventions — Comic-Con, especially — that they rushed through the expansion deal without totally figuring out how they were going to pay for it." Sure looks that way. The $711 million figure, by the way, does not include the cost of the new pedestrian bridge between the convention center and the Gaslamp Quarter. That's another $40 million.

In the meantime, because parking and hotel space around the convention center are not utterly unobtainable, another group has proposed the construction of a new $800 million buck football stadium between Petco Park and the convention center. Yeah, that's just what they need down there.