Monthly Archives: June 2012

Some nights, The Daily Show is bifurcated. Jon Stewart does his usual funny job of pointing out hypocrisy and insanity in the news…and by the way, after the last week or so, those who argue that he only slams Republicans and Conservatives really need to stop trying to "game the ref" by claiming that. Anyway, some nights, his interview segment runs so long that it turns into another, almost-as-long-if-not-longer show of its own.

Last night, the chat was with Edward Conard, a former Bain Capital exec who's out selling his book about how we need more of the Bain way, not less. The part of the conversation that ran on Comedy Central lasted seven minutes and then it continues on the Daily Show website for an additional 34 minutes. I won't embed them but here's Part One, here's Part Two and here's Part Three.

I find these little discussions fascinating on two levels, one being the content. This one loses its way in Part Three and peters out…but before that, Stewart manages to get to the core of the critical question facing our nation's economy: Do we run it for the money managers or do we run it for the small investors whose money those managers are pumping into high-risk, high-return slot machines? And there's the ancillary question, as well: In that model, who are the risk-takers? Mr. Conard thinks we need to "incentivize" the next Mark Zuckerberg and that a difference of a few percentage points in that person's tax rate will make a difference. I think Stewart "wins" that debate here partly because he has Home Court Advantage and a friendly audience but mainly because he manages to point out essential contradictions in Conard's argument.

The other way I find these one-on-ones of interest is that no one else does them. No one but Jon Stewart, at least on TV, sits down with folks of opposing viewpoints and has a friendly discussion largely free of pre-scripted talking points — plus, he also manages to be funny and entertaining. When I watch or listen to other political-type debates on TV and radio, each guy parrots arguments he's made before and there's no real attempt to arrive at a consensus. Stewart's in there looking for common ground, trying to dig out the points on which both sides can agree…and when he can't find any, he crystalizes the illogic on the other side of the table while still making his guest comfy. It's not Pro Wrestling. It's two intelligent people talking. We don't get enough of that. Boy, do we not get enough of that.

Number two hundred and fifty-three in a series…

Every few years, Cathy Rigby retires from touring as Peter Pan and every few years, she goes out again with the musical. This woman has actually quit that role more times than I quit Hanna-Barbera. But I'm happy to lose to her in the resignation derby because she's wonderful in the part…and I'll bet you that a lot of the adult theater-goers of the future will cite her as the reason they go to plays. We usually have one show we saw as a kid that struck a chord…and thereafter, we're like druggies staggering about, trying to recapture the glorious sensation of that first high.

I assume her new tour is like her last few…with a set made deliberately simple so it could be trucked from town to town and with a cast low on overhead. (If you look carefully, a couple of the Lost Boys in the troupe are girls, thereby putting the female understudies to good use when they're not needed to play women.) I've seen Cathy several times and I actually prefer her version of the show to the Mary Martin one I watched year after year on TV when I was a lad. They tossed out that weird number where Peter (played by a woman, remember) impersonates a woman with an operatic voice to entice Captain Hook…who in the Martin version was so gay, his feet touched the floor less than Peter's. The Rigby version butches Hook up a tad, thereby making him more of a real villain and they also got rid of that pointless ballet with the dancers trying to dance in bad animal costumes.

Mary Martin was a great star of the musical theater but when she played Peter, at least on TV, she didn't become him for me nor did she fly. She looked like someone's very sweet grandmother dangling on a wire. Cathy Rigby, on the other hand, makes me forget about Cathy Rigby and the wires.

This time out, her Hook is Brent Barrett, who has a magnificent singing voice and stage presence — or at least he has in other shows I've seen. I haven't shlepped down to La Mirada to see this go-round of Pan and might not, as all the good seats seem to be sold. Which makes me wonder why Rigby, Barrett and other members of the company arose early enough to do a couple of live spots on the KTLA Morning News the other day.

They give you a good look at how the flying is done and it's a lot simpler than people think. They imagine computers and winches and intricate programming. Nope. It's just a couple of stagehands pulling ropes and you'll see one in the background as Ms. Rigby, defying gravity and age, soars over the La Mirada stage. But most of all, I'm embedding these to tout the production — which may come near you — and because I admire the effort of the folks who got up in the middle of the night to do these segments for the TV audience. I thought a few more people should see them…and that someone should mention the name of Brent Barrett since the reporter didn't…

This is a link to Part One, in which KTLA reporter Allie McKay interviews Captain Hook and he and some of his crew perform a brief number from the show.

This is a link to Part Two, in which Cathy Rigby demonstrates how she flies.

And this is a link to Part Three, in which Allie McKay gets her chance to fly around as Wendy.

I originally embedded the three videos in this page as I usually do but found that one of them has an "auto" commercial built into it. In other words, the commercial would play immediately if you came to this page. I don't like websites that make noise without being asked so I stripped out the embeds and you can click on the links and see the videos on the KTLA site if you care.

June Foray's hometown newspaper celebrates her first-ever Emmy nomination at age 94.

The Daytime Emmys are announced in two separate ceremonies — one that favors the technical and backstage awards and one that favors the on-camera stars. June's category will be presented at the tech/backstage one which they call the Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Awards gala. It's on Sunday, June 17th, 2012 and as far as I know, it will not be televised…but you'll hear all about it since I'm June's date for the evening. Hope we both get lucky.

Facebook just sent me an e-mail telling me that Mark Evanier is on Facebook and suggesting I might want to connect with him.

Number two hundred and fifty-two in a series…

So…what is the Pentagon going to do about America's last prisoner-of-war?

This isn't the best video but it's a piece of TV history. You're probably a fan (as am I) of the great situation comedy known variously as You'll Never Get Rich, The Phil Silvers Show and Sgt. Bilko. I'm a little fuzzy on when each title was used but the names were at times interchangeable. I believe for a long period, TV Guide called it Sgt. Bilko or Phil Silvers, regardless of what name was on the screen. (They also referred to The Tonight Show by its host's name. It would say "Jack Paar" or "Johnny Carson" as if that was the name of the program.)

If you were a fan of the show on which Silvers played Bilko, you probably think that it's opening looked like the above image. That was a title created, I believe, when the series went into afternoon syndication. The original show had main titles that plugged the hell out of its sponsor, Camel Cigarettes. When it went into syndication, Camel was no longer its sponsor so the opening had to be changed.

Here's a look at the way the show began if you were watching it during its original prime-time incarnation. It's followed by a very brief Camel commercial with Brian Keith…

Sam Weller, who knows more about Ray Bradbury than any man alive, cites a seminal anecdote from Ray's life. This is one of the tales I got Ray to tell the first time I interviewed him in San Diego and it was a very memorable moment…for the audience and for me. It had a lot more power when you heard Ray tell it than it does in print, and I will long remember sitting there, hearing him speak of the moment when a man up on a stage changed his life by opening his imagination a few notches. And there's an audience of thousands, some of them surprisingly young, sitting there having their imaginations pried open a few notches by a man on stage named Ray Bradbury.

I just saw a list on one of Kliph Nesteroff's many fine sites and decided to just steal it. Don Bendetto supplied a rundown of the folks who hosted The Tonight Show between the time Jack Paar left and Johnny Carson took over.

In case you don't know the history: When Johnny agreed to take over the program, he still had six months left on his contract hosting Who Do You Trust?, the afternoon game show on ABC. It was commonly reported that the network refused to let him out early but as I understand it, it never really got to the point of ABC saying yes or no. Don Fedderson, who produced Who Do You Trust?, didn't want to let Johnny go before he had to…so that was that. By some accounts, ABC then told Johnny, "If it were up to us, we'd be glad to let you go," which of course doesn't mean they really would have.

NBC filled in with guest hosts for six months. Some of them reportedly regarded the gig as their audition to take over the show if and when Johnny failed to match Mr. Paar's ratings. Even if he succeeded, there was then the feeling that no one could host a show like Tonight for very long; that even if Carson did well, that meant he'd do four or five years and they'd then be shopping for his successor. As it turned out, a couple of them did profit from the gig, though not in the way they'd hoped. Jerry Lewis was reportedly so good as a host that he got offers to do that kind of show elsewhere, leading to his infamous, short-lived live, prime-time two-hour talk/variety show in ABC the following year.

Merv Griffin, who'd been more or less next-in-line if Johnny had said no, got himself a daytime talk show on NBC. It debuted the same day Johnny finally assumed the Tonight Show position and was obviously NBC's way of keeping Merv on deck in case Carson flopped. Actually, Merv probably wound up doing better from his deal than Johnny did. Merv's contract gave his production company some commitments to do game shows for NBC and that arrangement led to Jeopardy! and later, Wheel of Fortune. And of course, Merv wound up with his own long-running syndicated variation on The Tonight Show.

It's interesting to me to wonder which of these hosts someone at NBC thought could actually host the show after Johnny. Jerry Lewis was still wildly popular making movies in Hollywood so he was probably not an option. Art Linkletter had a successful daytime show on CBS which he might or might not have been willing to abandon if his contract permitted. Groucho had finished You Bet Your Life and was unemployed. He later said in some interview he wished he'd been considered when they were considering Carson and wished he'd gotten the gig. Some of the others seem like possibles to me, though some seem like "trade-off" bookings. Back then, they were a lot more common than they are today. That's when a big agency represents Sinatra and Herman Shmendrik, and if you want Frank to do a movie for you, you have to find Shmendrik a juicy role in that film or one of your others.

So anyway, here's the list. I remember my parents letting me stay up late so I could watch Soupy Sales one night. And I remember my disappointment that he did it in a suit without pies or puppets or big dogs or any of the things he did that I loved. I also remember Carson saying in some interviews that he couldn't watch some of those who hosted during this period because they turned the show into an hour and 45 minutes (that's how long it was then) of solid plugging. Those shows are almost certainly lost forever so we'll probably never know what they were like.

• 4/02 – Art Linkletter (2 Weeks)
• 4/16 – Joey Bishop
• 4/23 – Bob Cummings
• 4/30 – Merv Griffin (2 Weeks)
• 5/14 – Jack Carter
• 5/21 – Jan Murray
• 5/28 – Peter Lind Hayes
• 6/04 – Soupy Sales
• 6/11 – Mort Sahl
• 6/18 – Steve Lawrence
• 6/25 – Jerry Lewis
• 7/02 – Hugh Downs
• 7/09 – Jimmy Dean
• 7/16 – Arlene Francis
• 7/23 – Jack E. Leonard
• 7/30 – Merv Griffin (2 Weeks)
• 8/13 – Hugh Downs
• 8/20 – Groucho Marx
• 8/27 – Hal March
• 9/03 – Joey Bishop
• 9/10 – Art Linkletter (2 Weeks)
• 9/24 – Donald O'Connor

Neil Gaiman (again!) with a fresh, just-written appreciation of Ray Bradbury. In it, Neil says…

Last week, at dinner, a friend told me that when he was a boy of 11 or 12 he met Ray Bradbury. When Bradbury found out that he wanted to be a writer, he invited him to his office and spent half a day telling him the important stuff: if you want to be a writer, you have to write. Every day. Whether you feel like it or not. That you can't write one book and stop. That it's work, but the best kind of work. My friend grew up to be a writer, the kind who writes and supports himself through writing.

That's me. I was actually more like 14 or 15 when I first met him but otherwise, that's what I told Neil over dinner last week. That thing about writing every day whether you feel like it or not…that's one of the most important things I learned from Ray. A few years later I learned it again from Jack Kirby. I've been fortunate to know a lot of brilliant writers and artists (Neil is yet another) and while some work harder than others, they all work hard.

You and I may never be as brilliant as a Ray Bradbury or a Jack Kirby…but it is possible to work just as hard as Ray Bradbury or Jack Kirby.

Number two hundred and fifty-one in a series…

I'm reading all sorts of post-mortems on yesterday's recall election in Wisconsin and what it means for organized labor in this country, what it means for Republicans versus Democrats, what it means for the fall election, etc. Seems to me that it may mean nothing other than that (a) Republicans way outspent Democrats and (b) Democrats failed to come up with a candidate who seemed like a major improvement over the guy in office. You can't beat something with nothing.

As I mentioned, it helped me tremendously in my life/career (I do not separate those things) to have spent time listening to Ray Bradbury talk about writing. I did not take his word as Gospel and indeed found that some of it did not apply to me and some didn't apply to anyone starting out when I started out. But it can help to understand how a very smart person views the world and it can even lead you to your own, competing view.

This is an hour of Bradbury addressing (mostly) new writers at the Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea in February of 2001. Some of what he told me when I was fifteen and older is in this video. He starts out by advising new writers to write short stories instead of novels. That's probably good advice but it's not as good as it was when he was a new writer, selling to a marketplace that bought and published tons of short stories per year.

Back then, you could get your work into print if you wrote short stories and now…well, now the opportunity to get them into print is limited. That's bad not just for monetary reasons but because you learn from having your work published. You get reactions, you get distance and you're forced to apply professional standards to your work because by the sheer act of getting into print, those are the standards that now apply. When Ray was starting out, he published a lot of short stories. Tons of them. And as the market for that form declined, he still published the few he wrote because he was Ray Bradbury. For a new writer, it's still good advice but maybe not as easy to apply.

Still, everything he says is worth hearing. And some of it will make you want to stop watching videos and instead use that computer for more constructive purposes. Like, say, writing…

Neil Gaiman on Ray Bradbury. I have a feeling there are or will be a lot of great essays out there about Ray in the next few days. He inspired an awful lot of people who now write for a living.