Monthly Archives: April 2013

The PBS series Independent Lens is running an episode this week about Wonder Woman. Based on the promos, it's about how the image and concept of Wonder Woman inspires real women to be stronger and to not feel that they can't or shouldn't be dynamic forces in the world. It's not necessary for a female to be Wonder Woman, just as it's not necessary for a male to be Batman. (I personally decided not to be Batman the first day in gym class when I was confronted with a rope climb.) But women should all be reminded that they don't have to be victims and male-dependent and I think that's great and it's darn near the only thing l like about Wonder Woman except the neat visual. Here's a preview…

In the New York Times, Robin Williams has a nice remembrance of Jonathan Winters.

I obviously have nothing to say about the tragedy out of Boston that others aren't saying. You know how you feel about it? That's how I feel about it. It's bad enough when people are killed or maimed by fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and other "Acts of God" we are powerless to prevent. It's even more chilling when lives are lost or damaged just because someone thinks random strangers ought to suffer.

I have a usual group of folks who forward links to me about every possible thing they come across that suggests Barack Obama might not be the most honest, perfect man who ever lived. They seem to think I've said somewhere on this blog (and often) that I think he is.

As it happens, I agree with a few complaints about the man. I also agree with a few things that didn't bother these people one bit when anyone named Bush or Reagan did them. An awful lot of them are just bogus criticisms…things that never happened or did but have been twisted into ginned-up outrage. If Obama eats a tuna salad sandwich, there's someone out there thinking, "Hmm…how do I get upset about that?" Then they figure out a way and we have Tunagate for a few days until it goes nowhere and they try something else.

The latest horror seems to be that Obama paid a low income tax rate. I feel about this the way Josh Marshall felt about it this morning when Joe Scarborough, one of them MSNBC Liberal Commies, launched into a tirade about that. Marshall wrote…

I'm not sure Scarborough realizes there's a difference between a wealthy person who pays a lowish tax rate and wants to raise rates and one who pays a lowish tax rate and want to make them lower. Seriously, Joe, you're being a moron.

Out of manners and a desire to dial down the personal invective, I'd have left out the "moron" part. But I'd have thought it.

I love Carl Reiner. Carl Reiner is one of my heroes. I think he's one of the ten-or-so most talented men ever in the world of funny. Maybe the five-or-so. I've met him a few times, never for long enough, and he's a lovely, funny man who intimidates me. Before I talk about his new book, let me tell you how much he intimidates me…

At the memorial service for his friend and co-worker (and mine) Howard Morris, Mr. Reiner led off the proceedings with the greatest, funniest eulogy I ever heard in my life…and as readers of this blog know too well, I go to a lot of funerals. I was sitting there, enjoying every syllable of it when I heard Andy Griffith, who was sitting right behind me, mutter to a companion, "Boy, I'm glad I don't have to follow that."

Which was a chilling thing to hear when you're the one who's supposed to follow that. Howie's son David had asked me to deliver the second speech.

I have no problem speaking in front of crowds at comic book conventions. My skills in the speechifying department are not great but they're good enough for that. More importantly, I kinda belong on those stages. Where I feel uncomfy is if someone else on the premises clearly belongs "up there" a lot more than I do. At the funeral for Lorenzo Music, for instance, Bob Newhart was in the front row.

Bob Newhart's in the audience. I'm up on stage where the microphone is. What is wrong with this picture?

Not only that but he was positioned so if I looked out at the crowd, it was "Hi, Bob!" He was right there…taunting me by deliberately looking exactly like Bob Newhart.

There are seasoned comedians, I am sure, who would be intimidated by trying to be funny with Bob F'ing Newhart less than three yards from them. A year or two later in the same auditorium, there was a memorial for the brilliant comedy writer, Pat McCormick. The speakers list was a Who's Who of comedy and I was so happy not to be on it. But I was in charge of the seating at that event and I could place all those great comedians wherever I chose. As a personal joke, I decided to select the guest I thought would most intimidate each person who got up at the lectern and put that person into The Bob Newhart Seat. As a result, every one of them except for George Carlin had to deliver his speech staring directly at George Carlin.

I got through my Lorenzo Music tribute largely by not looking at Mr. Newhart. Well, I did once. I said something that got a big laugh from the assemblage and while they were laughing, I peeked at Bob, saw he was laughing too and then never looked at him again that evening.

So here we are at the Howie Morris funeral and Carl Reiner delivers the perfect eulogy and then sits himself down in the front row in The Bob Newhart Seat…the seat I'll be staring at in a moment when the rabbi calls me up there to speak next. I am genuinely afraid. Carl Reiner in that chapel's Bob Newhart Seat is even more terrifying a thought than Bob Newhart in a Bob Newhart Seat…and Bob Newhart in a Bob Newhart Seat is pretty damn scary.

Fortunately, I get a reprieve. The rabbi forgets there's a predetermined order so instead of introducing the poor sap who's supposed to go next, he just asks for volunteers. Several others are quicker to put up their hands and/or just go charging up to the podium. So as each finishes, someone braver/pushier than I am goes next.

A few of them even talk about Howie. At Show Biz Memorials, there's always at least one fellow whose idea of a eulogy is to go on and on about himself and his own career, perhaps mentioning his "dearest friend in the entire world" (i.e., the Deceased) as a brief aside. I sit there, ever so glad to let all those other folks go ahead of me in order to put more distance between my speech and Carl Reiner's. I even come up with a thought of how I could maybe bring myself to look at Carl F'ing Reiner sitting there in the front row.

Here is my idea. You know how they say to overcome fear of an audience, you should imagine them all naked? That wouldn't work here. The average age in the room is Howie's and who the hell wants to see that? But what I decide I'll do is to tell myself over and over, "That's not Carl Reiner sitting there. That's Alan Brady." They look very much alike, you know, but Carl Reiner is a genius, whereas I always thought Alan Brady was kind of an untalented schmuck. It's not that hard to give a speech in front of an untalented schmuck…and maybe, I think, he'll even heckle me and I can tell him to shut up.

But then by the time I have that idea and a moment when I could claim the microphone, I realize it's just too late. Too many speakers, I decide, have gone on too long about themselves and even at times about Howie. The audience is getting restless so I motion to David and he understands and nods in agreement. So that's how I didn't speak at Howie Morris's funeral and it's all because of Carl Reiner.

Nevertheless, I want to recommend his new book, I Remember Me, which I purchased and am now reading on Kindle. But though I am Kindling it, this book is not kindling in the firewood sense. It is, like everything Alan Brady's look-alike has done, quite wonderful and delightful and I recommend you order a copy, on paper or not, by clicking right about here. As long as Mr. Reiner keeps putting out these little freeform memoirs, I will be purchasing and enjoying them…and now here comes the "But."

But! I am bothered by something that keeps happening in this book. I will cite two examples from around the middle…

A year before I had the opportunity to direct George Burns in the film, Oh, God!, we had one short but significant exchange. It was at a Hollywood party, where Mel Brooks and I were asked to perform The 2000 Year Old Man. At that time, we had no thought of recording it, as it was just something we did at parties to amuse our friends. At one of these soirees, after we had performed and received a goodly amount of laughs, George Burns asked, "Have you boys put this on a record?" When we said we had not, he puffed on his cigar and said, "Record it or I am going to steal it." It was excellent advice, and we took it.

I do not understand why that paragraph is the way it is. The first 2000 Year Old Man record came out in 1960 or 1961, depending on which source one believes. But it definitely came out at least sixteen years before the movie, Oh, God!

A few pages later, Mr. Reiner writes about an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in which actor Lennie Weinrib was a last minute substitution for Shecky Greene…

It was the third year of the show, and we had invited Shecky to guest as an acerbic, Don Rickles-type of insult comedian. It had been written for Don Rickles, who had agreed to do the part, but a last-minute conflict with his recurring role on McHale's Navy left us one player short.

The episode in question was entitled "Buddy, Can You Spare a Job?" and it aired on December 26, 1961. It was the 14th episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show broadcast and it was in the show's first season, not its third. I'm not sure Don Rickles was ever on McHale's Navy but he certainly wasn't a regular and even if he had been, it wouldn't have kept him off that episode of Dick Van Dyke. That's because McHale's Navy didn't even go on the air until October of 1962. (There's a possible explanation for Reiner's confusion here. In 1961, Rickles had a one-time guest shot role on a different navy comedy that was then on the air — Hennesey starring Jackie Cooper. And I'm not sure if this connects in any way but Jimmy Komack, who had a recurring role on that series, directed the "Buddy, Can You Spare a Job?" episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.)

Whatever the circumstances, there's no excuse for this kind of mistake…and I don't blame Carl Reiner. The publisher of a book is supposed to vet and verify such things and the dates are easily checkable with the tiniest amount of Googling. Just e-mailing an advance manuscript to an expert like Vince Waldron would have caught plenty of them.

There are other such lapses in the book which I may or may not list. I don't want to prevent you from ordering it because it's quite good and I'll bet Reiner's memory is perfect on the punchlines and clever story points. That's the kind of thing a good creative mind will retain forever even if it gets some dates wrong.

Carl Reiner, even at age 91, has a good creative mind. I was going to write, "I hope I have one half as good when I'm that age" but the truth is I wish I had that now. I'd settle for a third.

This week for Stooge Sunday, we have their third short, Men in Black, which was released September 28, 1934. It was the only film they ever starred in that was nominated for an Academy Award but it didn't win.

The reason it was called Men in Black was that earlier that year, Clark Gable and Myrna Loy had starred in Men in White, which was also about doctors. The Stooges' romp has a number of things to recommend it, including a nice performance by character actor Billy Gilbert and an establishing shot of the old and hallowed Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, which now houses the Church of Scientology. It was also the debut of the best thing ever to come out of a hospital's P.A. system: The paging of "Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard." Stand back. Here they come…

There's a silly debate going on across the Internet as to whether Ronald Reagan would have supported Gay Marriage. His daughter Patti says he would and a lot of folks don't want to believe her. It is, of course, not something that can probably ever be proven, at least to the point of getting folks who are wrong about the issue to admit it.

But here's the thing. Ronald Reagan died in 2004. Even if during his last days, he said "What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman," that doesn't mean that Reagan today would still feel that way. That same year, that's what Barack Obama was saying.

Mark Waid wrote a nice piece about Carmine Infantino for the L.A. Times.

Marc Maron, meanwhile, wrote a nice personal remembrance of Jonathan Winters. If there were more hours in the day, I'd be able to listen to more of Marc's WTF podcasts than I do. They're available in many corners of the web but especially on this page where, at this moment, it's possible to listen to his chat with Jonathan via one click.

Mr. Maron is going to be interviewed at one of those great Writers Bloc events in Los Angeles on May 15. I'm going to try to be there and if you're within being-there distance, I suggest you do the same. He's a very clever man. So is Mark Waid.

Everyone on the 'net who ever had their photo taken with Jonathan Winters is posting theirs so here's one of mine. It was snapped at a recording session for Garfield and Friends in 1990 where we spent about four hours with the man, only two of which were used to record voice tracks for the show. The other two were spent listening to Jonathan. Which meant they were spent laughing at Jonathan.

He was booked to be there at 1 PM. At Noon, the deli delivered food and we broke for lunch, having been at it since 9 AM. Sandwiches were just being unwrapped as Jonathan Winters walked in and just began telling stories…like we'd hired him to come in and perform for us as we ate. No "hello." No introductions. He didn't even ask if we were the Garfield show. He just found an audience and began talking and weaving in and out of characters. When he got bored with one, he'd seamlessly segue to another…and every so often, I'd throw a question — not at him but at whoever he was at that moment. He would immediately start to answer and you could see that he had no idea where he was going. He just knew he'd eventually find a destination…and he always did.

For about a fourth of our non-recording time, he was even Jonathan Winters, telling stories like one that went roughly like this. He was in a store and a little old lady ("You know the kind," he said, though all we knew at that point was that she was a little old lady in a store) came up to him and said, "I've read about you, Mr. Winters. You're crazy!" He lapsed into semi-mock outrage ("How dare you approach me in a public place and say such a thing?") then cross-examined the woman as to whether she was married (she was) and how much money her husband made.

"That's a very personal question," he quoted her as saying, whereupon he fired back that calling someone crazy was a very personal thing to say and she owed it to him to answer. She cited some figure around $100,000 a year and Winters replied, he said, "A hundred thousand a year? I've made that much in one day making commercials for trash bags and you have the nerve to say I'm crazy? You just wish your husband was as crazy as I am, lady!"

He was wonderful, just wonderful. I had to play Bad Guy twice that afternoon and stop the performance. Once, I had to announce it was time to go in and record a Garfield cartoon. After the recording, when the funnier show resumed in the waiting room, I had to call it quits after an hour so we could record things without Jonathan. I softened the blow to him by pointing out that Muppet Babies was recording next door. Jonathan promptly walked into their studio and the folks over there had a great time not getting any work done.

I cannot claim to have known Jonathan Winters well and I'm sure there were many people who were around him more than I was who can't claim that, either. Much of the time when you were with him, you weren't with him. You were with a U-boat commander or the King of Thailand or a Civil War General.

But every so often, a hunk of Jonathan would peek out from behind the character and I'd observe something I've observed with a few other performers, most notably Sid Caesar. The following incident will explain it clearly…

For a period in the eighties, Jonathan could usually be found at lunchtime in one of the restaurants along a stretch of Riverside Drive out in Toluca Lake. I ran into him at Paty's and at Honeybaked Ham, and he was known to turn up in two or three others. You'd encounter him and the monologue would just flow — fascinating and always funny. If it wasn't funny, Jonathan would make a face like he didn't like it either and just launch into something or someone else. Then at some point, an onlooker who didn't know better would approach him and say, "Mr. Winters, you're the funniest man who ever lived. I've loved you in everything you've ever done —" and then they'd start naming movies or TV appearances or records…

And all that would be fine until they'd make the mistake of saying one or both of two things…

"You know, I think Robin Williams [or Johnny Carson or other name of someone then earning more money than Jonathan Winters] stole so much from you…"

"Why aren't you on TV more? You should have your own series."

You know those smiles we all make when someone has said something painful and we don't want to let on that it stings? You'd see one on the face of Jonathan (or Sid…or Soupy…or several others I've encountered) and they'd mutter something noncommittal about the first observation — neither agreeing nor disagreeing, which meant they were agreeing. And they'd say of the second point, "I really don't know."

That was the sad thing about a guy like Jonathan Winters: He really didn't know. No one really did.

If you were a baseball player — it was all you ever wanted to be, all you thought you could be — and no team wanted you. Well, if you were batting .150, you'd probably understand that…and you'd understand how to change that. You just had to get better at swinging the bat.

But let's say you were an aspiring comedian. Now, granted, it's a little more difficult to count laughs than home runs. I mean, you could argue that Richard Pryor wasn't funny but not that Barry Bonds didn't know how to hit the ball. Still, there are some comics whose "funny" seems beyond question…but they still can't get on a team, don't get to play as often as they think they should. That was the subtext I saw every time I was around Jonathan Winters. He was either out of work or doing marginal (for him) jobs like commercials or cartoon voices. One time, I heard him respond to someone who said both of the above things. Jonathan muttered, "Robin Williams? Oh, he's the guy getting ten million dollars to star in movies while I'm sitting home, praying they bring back Hollywood Squares!"

It wasn't like Jonathan could rationalize his lot in life by thinking, "I'm not working more because I'm not that funny." Everywhere he went, people howled at everything he said and told him he was the funniest human being on the face of this planet. It just didn't make sense. To him, to anyone.

Producers and networks couldn't figure out what to do with him…and it wasn't like they didn't try. For a long time there, there were new shows and pilots and new formats. The problem was that if you put him in something scripted…well, why? That's like hiring Luciano Pavarotti and insisting he not sing but instead just hum along. There were other people who could read lines as well as or better than Jonathan Winters.

So instead, let's let him do what he does best. Let's let him ad-lib as characters. Well, what's that show like?

Jonathan was not an improv actor. Jonathan was an improv monologist. Improv actors can create a scene together and he couldn't do that. He either had to be out there all alone, controlling every aspect of the narrative or he had to work with a straight man who fed him questions and challenges. Where is the place for that on television? It worked for short segments on talk shows and on The Dean Martin Show and other programs in the variety genre that has since become extinct. But how could you wedge this brilliant comic mind into a starring position?

They tried. He had two different programs called The Jonathan Winters Show, both of which forced him into the template of the classic variety show. Neither of them were wonderful in the way Jonathan was wonderful. Neither of them were that successful. Greg Garrison, who produced and directed Dean Martin's shows, tried a couple of ventures where they just put Jonathan in an attic set and let him ad-lib little scenes with an array of hats and props. That didn't work so well, either. They'd spend hours taping anything that came into Jonathan's mind and then Garrison would edit the weaker moments out, losing any sense of "live" to the performance. What's the point of improv if it looks and feels edited? (A lot of the success of Whose Line Is It Anyway? is because it doesn't, though they way overtape and chop out the chaff.)

In 1981, producer Paul Keyes, who'd been one of the main brains behind Laugh-In, crafted a pilot for NBC called Take One with Jonathan Winters. Keyes had a sharp comedy mind and you'd think that if anyone could invent the kind of show where Jonathan Winters could be Jonathan Winters for an hour of prime-time television each week, he could.

He did not make Jonathan the host. Jonathan wasn't comfortable (or particularly valuable) when not in a character. For some reason though, they brought in Rich Little as the host and I didn't understand that, either. Rich Little not doing impressions is like Jonathan Winters being forced to stick to a script. Then they loaded the show down with guest stars, including Jimmy Stewart, Ernest Borgnine, Phyllis Diller and Charlie Callas.

The way it worked was that they set up little scenes, each involving one of the guests. Jonathan, Rich Little explained, would enter each scene with absolutely no idea what it was about or even who was in it and then he'd wing it. I only remember two of them — the only one that worked at all and the closing one, which was a spectacular flop.

For the one that worked, they had an airplane cabin with Jonathan's old champion Jack Paar sitting in one seat as a passenger. Jonathan, who didn't even know Paar was on the premises, entered the scene and sat down in the seat he was told to sit in — the one next to Paar — and I guess the idea was that Paar would then engage him in conversation about where they were flying or why or something. What I recall is that Winters walked into the plane, sat down, turned and found himself next to Jack Paar and said, "Gee, I was hoping you'd look younger." Or words to that effect.

Paar cracked up and the scene was effectively over. It wound up basically being just the one big laugh. The other spots didn't even have that.

The finale was amazing for its failure. As Mr. Little explained in his role as emcee, they'd brought in several men and women who were practicing nudists. They placed them — naked — into a set that had been constructed so that the studio audience and cameras couldn't see their privates but when Jonathan entered the scene, he would. Paul Keyes obviously thought this would be hilarious. Then again, I met Paul Keyes a few times and he thought Richard Nixon was the greatest statesman the world had ever known.

Jonathan entered, did a little Candid Camera "take" when he saw the naked people —

— and then, chuckling, just walked off the set and over to Rich Little. He did not, as I'm sure was expected, fall into a character and do a scene talking to them.

It was a spectacular thud…and of course, they couldn't go back and do it again. The show was called Take One because each scene had to be done in one take.

I never asked Jonathan about it but my sense was that by the time they got to that last bit, he knew the experiment was D.O.A. and his attitude was, "Get this over with." As far as I know, no one ever tried to star him in a prime-time show again.

After it aired, I found myself at dinner one night with a bunch of comedy writers. We'd all seen it. We'd all been stunned that an hour built around Jonathan Winters could be so totally devoid of laughter. The problem, we decided, was that they'd tried to formalize spontaneity. The glory in what the man did was in how simple and organic it was, spilling naturally out of his mind and mouth. Take One had treated it like a game show challenge and oversold it. When I asked the table what kind of show Jonathan could have done that would have showcased his unique skills, no one had an answer.

I don't think there was an ideal format for Jonathan Winters. He was funny when someone like Paar interviewed him in an unrehearsed talk show setting but that only worked in short doses. He was funny standing on a stage, just free-associating in character but that's not a prime-time series. To me, he was funniest when you were standing outside Honeybaked Ham on Riverside Drive with him, just listening as he turned from a prancing hair stylist into the last Japanese soldier fighting World War II. Once, I practically fell over when that Japanese soldier bragged about how he'd managed to use his long-range artillery gun to shoot down Bob Hope's airplane and "You could see cue cards fluttering to the ground." It was hilarious…and a good reference to how Jonathan differed from his Toluca Lake neighbor, Robert "All the Money in the World" Hope.

So letting him improvise on TV never amounted to much more than short bits on the kinds of TV shows they stopped making years ago. It also didn't work very often to stick a script in his hand. In his earlier days, he was able to dial down the improvisations and deliver great comic acting jobs like he did in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or The Loved One or The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. The only time after about 1968 I thought someone knew how to cast him and direct him in a scripted role (not that he probably followed the script verbatim) was in '91 when he had a supporting part on a sitcom called Davis Rules. He even won an Emmy for it but the series didn't last.

What clearly didn't work was when he was added to the cast of Mork & Mindy. That was what he did right after that Take One pilot failed. Robin Williams' sitcom was on the downslide and they brought Winters in to try and save it. Having two guys — even them — wandering off from the script in often different directions, just made things seem disconnected.

It was sad to see some of Jonathan's obits sport the headline that a star of Mork & Mindy had died. I guess we should be grateful they didn't say, "Spokesman for Glad Trash Bags Dies."

I loved listening to Jonathan Winters. He was funny in a way that no one else, not even his imitators, was ever funny. I want to hold that thought and remember that above all but I can't quite get around the fact that for the last few decades of his life, his greatest talent went largely unexhibited. No one ever really knew what to do with him…and he could never quite understand why he wasn't working much. Those are probably the two great curses of being the only one of your species. Oh — and there's also the sad fact that we'll probably never see anyone like him again.

Here's a clip from the occasion of Jonathan Winters receiving the Mark Twain Award at the Kennedy Center in 1999. There's a story associated with this that I've heard from a couple of different sources. I'm going to tell it here with the caveat that I have no idea if it's true or not.

Winters is sitting home, shortly after the award is announced but some months before the ceremony. The phone rings. It is Milton Berle.

Berle says, "Jonathan, I know you and I were never close. We worked together and I always respected you. I don't know if I ever made it clear how much respect I have for you. You are truly one of the greatest comic geniuses of all time."

He continues: "Now, I know you don't owe me anything but I'm going to ask you for something. I'm 91 years old. I've had a great life. I've done everything I could ever have wanted to do. I've had every honor a comedian can possibly have but one. The only thing I've ever wanted and not achieved is to win the Mark Twain Award. I don't have many years left. It would be the perfect capper to my career."

By now, there were tears in his voice as he got to the point: "Now, you deserve it as much as anyone in the world. You probably deserve it more than I do. I am asking…no, I'm begging you. I might not live to win it next year or the year after. Just imagine if you went to the Kennedy Center people and said, 'Please, give it this year to Milton Berle while you still can.' They would have to say yes and everyone would say what a wonderful, selfless human being Jonathan Winters is to do something like that for an old man.' And of course, you'd win it next year. Or maybe they'd even give out two this year. I would be proud to accept one alongside you. But you're 74 and there's time for you to get it in the future. Could you…would you possibly see your way to helping me win it before I go?"

The conversation is so unexpected and so startling that Winters has no idea what to say. He gasps and he stammers and he finally says, "Milton, let me think this over and call you back."

He hangs up, thinks about it for three minutes, then calls Berle back. He says, "Milton…just think of it this way. You have the huge dick and I have the Mark Twain Award."

I don't know for sure that happened. If I had to bet, I'd bet it didn't. But in some ways, I kinda hope it did.

There will be a very long post about Jonathan on this blog later today.  For now, here's the video of him and the Mark Twain Award, including a rather serious interview with Jim Lehrer…

Ten words that are guaranteed to win any game of Scrabble® and which you'll never be able to make from the tiles on your rack.

Hey, remember that Stooge bargain I said you could score at Fry's Electronics? Well, they're now accepting orders for it on their website. If you don't have it and you care about the Stooges, this is probably the best price you're going to find for a terrific DVD set of their shorts. I don't make any commission on this but I'm recommending it anyway. 'Til 4/18, it's $34.99. Amazon currently has it for $53.60.

I can't think of too many funny men who are universally admired by those who do comedy for a living.  And it wasn't just that Jonathan Winters made his fellow practitioners laugh.  It's that they'd look at him and that awesome body of funny, shake their heads and envy someone who was just plain born that way.  Jonathan's humor seemed to come from someplace deep within him; not like a lot of guys who decide they could make it as a comic and then sit down and write an act.  Jonathan was his act and vice-versa.

People said he was "always on."  In my encounters with him, that was true as long as he had his finger on the "on" switch and didn't feel someone was manipulating him into providing free entertainment.  He would start doing bits in restaurants, bits in hallways, bits on the street.  For a time at Hanna-Barbera, he'd come in to do voices on some show and then spend hours after the session, working the corridors and performing for anyone willing to listen.  And of course, everyone was.  You couldn't go up to him and ask him to be funny but…well, here's how it worked.  A bunch of writers would be sitting with me in my office, plotting against Management.  I had a great office there, far better than I deserved…but a perfect room for Jonathan Winters to work.  So he'd poke his head in seeking an audience and I'd say, "Oh, are you here to fix the plumbing?"  And suddenly, it wouldn't be Jonathan Winters there.  Suddenly, it would be a plumber talking about how my sewers were backed up clear to Escondido.

I first discovered him on his records.  They were great records but what was wonderful about Jonathan was his spontaneity.  What really made me love him was when he appeared with Jack Paar and you could tell, as is never the case with today's talk show hosts, that Paar had no idea where Jonathan was going.  Jonathan probably didn't know either but when Paar introduced him, no one was sure who or what would walk out.  Then, I thought, he stole one of my favorite movies, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.   Given the competition on the screen, that was like winning the World Series of Comedy.

I'll probably have to write several posts about Jonathan, especially given that I should be getting ready for a lunch meeting instead of writing this.  I'll write about working with him.  I'll write about seeing what I believe may have been his last stage performance.  (I'm wondering if his last lengthy interview was his two-plus hour conversation with Stu Shostak on Stu's Show last September.)  There's just so much to say.  He was also a fine artist and one-time cartoonist and I'd half-talked him into doing the foreword for the next Pogo collection.  The other guy we were going after was Roger Ebert so let that be a warning to you if you're asked.

Remember what I wrote here the other day about how we're losing too many of the great comic book artists of the past?  Well, it would apply to comedians like Jonathan Winters but for the fact that there are no other comedians like Jonathan Winters.   There never have been and, alas, there never will be.

Steve Billnitzer suggests I share this with you. Through next Friday (4/19), the Fry's Electronics shops seem to be selling the 20-DVD Three Stooges: The Ultimate Collection for $34.99. That's in their stores only, not online. Steve got the info from this ad so you might want to verify before you scurry on over, just in case they don't have them in the one near you.

Think of it: You can get all 190 of the Stooges' Columbia shorts (plus selected Shemp, Joe Besser and Joe DeRita solo shorts) for thirty-five smackers. Leaving aside the solo films, that's like 18 and a half cents per short. That's four cents per poke-in-the-eyes, six cents per "Nyuk nyuk nyuk," nine cents for every piece of pottery broken over someone's head, a dime per crippling physical injury to Larry and exactly $5.83 per moment of human dignity.

For those of you who don't know Fry's, it's a chain of 34 stores in nine states that sell an odd array of low-priced electronics items amidst usually-odder decor. They carry some but not all of the major brands and then supplement them with cheap non-major brands. The ones I've been in all always have that "going out of business" feel like they hauled everything they had out of the warehouse and stuck it on the shelves, not always in the most logical arrangement, for the public to pick through. If you can find what you want there, you usually can't find it anywhere else for less. That is, assuming you don't get one of those items that looks like it was sold, returned, put up for sale again, sold, returned and put up for sale again.

I really like Fry's but I've never been able to figure out what, if anything, was on the mind of their interior decorator…and sometimes you need to go on a scavenger hunt there. Like, you go in to buy a cheap external hard drive and you find the display of cheap external hard drives in the cheap external hard drive section and you select a cheap external hard drive. But later, wandering the aisles, you also find another display of even cheaper external hard drives over in the section with the kitchen appliances, right between the cheap panini presses and the cheap hand blenders. For some reason, I like that. I also like the fact that, at least in every Fry's I've ever visited (maybe four of them), they have all this wonderful high-tech equipment and then the person who checks you out and takes your money is working with a cash register that's one step above an abacus.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's the perfect place to buy Three Stooges DVDs. Moe himself may even be there to wait on you.