Monthly Archives: January 2014

• The Captain and Tennille are divorcing…and the folks on Twitter are way too happy about it.

A medley of tunes from MGM movies, conducted by Stephen Colbert John Wilson…

Brian Pearce writes…

As you probably have not heard because it's only been reported on a fist-full of blogs and unofficial Facebook posts, Hal Sutherland passed away last week on January 16th due to Gallbladder complications (according to the email from his daughter, Lisa). I know that folks in the field of animation are passing away with more and more frequency these days, but I was wondering why nobody — and I mean nobody (other than Jerry Beck) seems to have commented about the passing of the sole surviving founder of Filmation! I know (or think I know?) that you never worked with him personally, but surely somewhere between founding Filmation, working on Sleeping Beauty, animating Star Trek and giving birth to He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe, somebody would have taken note of this other than a lowly blogger such as myself?

Any ideas of how something like this slips through the cracks?

Also, if you have any memories/interactions with Hal, I'd love to hear about them (I know, ranty-angry mail followed by a request… I'm sorry, I'm all emotional over this. Please forgive?)

Also, here's a link to my 1980's Saturday Morning Historical Reenactment Society Community where there are links and whatnot detailing my search to confirm Hal Sutherland's death. Thank you for your attention.

For those of you reading this who don't know the name of Hal Sutherland, he was a one-time Disney animator who went on to co-found Filmation, the prolific studio that did the cartoon shows Brian mentions, as well as many more. I never met Hal, never had any interaction with him and couldn't have written an obit about him here without Googling his name and just paraphrasing what I found online. He sure seems to deserve many tributes and thanks. I'm just not the guy to write them.

So let me address Brian's question of how something like this falls through the cracks. The answer is that no one takes the initiative. Obits do not just "happen" when someone dies. Someone has to phone newspapers and write the equivalent of a press release. This is especially true, I've found, when people in the fields of animation and comics pass away. The reporters who work the obit beats for the major newspapers and wire services simply are not versed in that info and are, understandably, a little reticent to trust online sources. Newspapers hate running corrections but they especially hate running them for obituaries.

Or to put it in simpler terms: If you want to see the press note the passing of someone you care about, write the basic facts of the obit yourself, then contact the appropriate department at some major news sources. Give them the facts. Give them contact info for some likely interviewees and, more important, a means of contacting a representative of the deceased. Most newspapers will not move an obituary unless they have verified the death with the family or with someone like the deceased's lawyer. In some cases, they may also want a means of fact-checking the details you give them.

I hope this doesn't come across as morbid but one big hunk of evidence of how comics have become mainstream is the obits. Back in 1973 when Bill Everett and Syd Shores died, it didn't make the New York Times or any major newspaper. The same was true of comparable folks in animation. But now, kids who grew up on such creators' work are in journalism and the impact that an Everett or Shores had on popular culture is more evident. Still though, someone has to tell the press when someone of that sort dies and help them collect the facts.

Time for three more of these…

My entire experience with Dairy Queen in the last thirty years came in 2008 when I was a Guest o' Honor at Convergence, a terrific multi-media fan convention in Minneapolis — terrific because it was all about people having a good time socializing and not particularly about anyone making any money off anything. They are also, if my experience is at all typical, extraordinarily nice to their Guests o' Honor, which is not always the case with conventions, especially conventions which figure the guests will be making a lot of loot selling autographs or artwork.

Anyway, right across the parking lot at the hotel there was a DQ Grill & Chill — close enough to be the convention lunchroom. I went over there to eat often and really liked the burgers and I think I tried the chicken strips, too. I no longer eat ice cream or desserts but if I did, I'd have tried theirs and I'll bet you the very computer on which I'm now working that I would have liked 'em fine. There are very few DQs in my hometown but if I'm near one when a rapid meal is needed, I won't hesitate to go there. So I have nothing but good things to say about Dairy Queen except that they don't have enough of them in my area.

The Popeyes chain was founded in 1972. It has no business connection to Popeye the Sailorman and I'm not quite sure what it's called; seems to be either Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits or Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.

I first went to one in the early eighties on a visit to New York. If they had Popeyes on the West Coast then, I sure hadn't seen one. I was literally stranded in Manhattan one weekend due to a blizzard that had closed the airports just when I was supposed to have gone home. So Saturday late morn, I was wandering around the Times Square area, observing the snow removal — we don't see a lot of that in Los Angeles — and I decided to find and patronize the legendary Drama Book Store which I'd heard about for years. I found its location in a phone book, hiked to that address and found that it had moved. There was a sign on the door saying where it had moved to…but someone had torn off that part, presumably because they needed the new address and didn't care if anyone else did. I tried Directory Assistance but they still had the old address.

So I gave up looking and when I spotted a Popeyes in the ground floor of the huge office building at 1600 Broadway, I decided to grab a bite of lunch in this fast food place I'd heard good things about. Though the chain had, as I said, no official connection to Popeye the cartoon character, the store was decorated with cut-outs of Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy and Bluto that were then sold in novelty stores. Leonard Maltin later pointed out an amazing coincidence to me: That building at 1600 Broadway was where Max Fleischer had had his animation studio that made the first Popeye cartoons. But the more amazing coincidence was that as I sat in a window seat there and munched on my chicken, I looked out and on the second floor of the building across the street, I saw a sign that said "Drama Book Store."

The chicken I had there was okay but nothing I'd miss if I never went to another Popeyes. As it turned out, it was at least ten years before I did, by which time they were all over Southern California. And in the interim, they had not only expanded but gone seriously Cajun on us. My friend Harlan Ellison persuaded me to try the new Popeyes chicken and I did, forgetting that Harlan loves spicy, hot food and I do not. I literally could not eat it…and I am not misusing the word "literally" in saying that.

That would have been the end of Popeyes for me but years later, I was trapped at an airport, needed a meal and the only open eatery that seemed even remotely possible was a Popeyes. I asked the lady at the counter if I could get chicken without cajun seasoning. She said, "We have a mild and a spicy." I said, "Fine, give me the mild." She gave me what she said was mild. I took it to a seat and it was too spicy for me. I took it back and said, "There must have been a mistake and you gave me the spicy." She said, "I don't think so but I'll give you another order and we'll make sure it's the mild." She did and I still thought it was too spicy.

Friends tell me the chain's mild really is mild and that the outlet must have been confused. I haven't been to another one to check. I do hear their biscuits are great, though…and mild.

To most folks, Panda Express is to Chinese Food what Sbarro is to Italian. Yeah, it's Chinese Food and it's edible but that's about it. The same company operates a chain of very fine sit-down restaurants called Panda Inn, where I can get a very good meal if and when I can impress on them that I don't want hot and spicy. Based on my past experiences at them, I feel I need to specify that about everything, including the steamed rice and the check. Also, because I have my myriad food allergies, I have to ask them to leave things out…say, the zucchini in the Mushroom Chicken.

The steam tables at their fast food eateries present too many hazards for me. Everything is pre-made and therefore already mixed with something I cannot eat, usually red and/or green bell peppers. They have the Mushroom Chicken but if you ask them if you can get it sans zucchini, one or both of two things will happen. One is that a server will start trying to make up a plate from their steam table, picking out the zucchini. For me, that's like if they were serving Chicken with Arsenic and they started trying to pick out most of the arsenic for me.

Or sometimes, they get that I'm asking if it's possible to get a fresh batch made without the zucchini in the first place. I've given up asking this because they react like I'm asking them all to grow feathers and fly to Mount Olympus. I hear "no can do" from the ones with limited English and the others explain that everything has to be made in whole batches and they can't make a whole batch "wrong" for one person.

Thus, there are but three things I can eat at a Panda Express: The fried shrimp appetizer (passable), the Teriyaki Chicken (pretty decent) and the steamed rice. If all of this is fresh, meaning it's been on the steam table for under two hours, I'm fine. Often, it is not, which is my other problem with these places. I'd like to like them but they don't make it easy.

More to come…

Here's a link to David Remnick's very, very long profile of Barack Obama for The New Yorker. I finally made it through and didn't learn a lot other than Obama is reasoned, patient, cautious, disinclined to melodrama and he was a fan of the Philadelphia 76ers because he liked Julius Erving. A lot of it's dull so to keep your interest up, imagine you work for Fox News or some similar organization and it's your job to scan it and find little quotes you can yank out of context and quote to prove bad things about this man.

Robert Reich rebuts a particularly Scrooge-like column by the New York Times' David Brooks. I am amazed at the gymnastics of logic some affluent folks will attempt to try and justify the fact that they really don't care about human beings living in poverty, going hungry, dying due to lack of cash, etc. I actually think that some really rich folks have a problem with the concept that very poor people even are human beings.

Today (Wednesday), your host Stu Shostak welcomes Chris Costello to his famed Internet talk program. Chris is the daughter of the legendary comedian, Lou Costello and will be talking about his life and some of the false notions about it that seem to have crept out into the world. I'll be listening and I suggest you join me.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes top three.

Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite records was half of an LP called Bugs Bunny's Songfest. Why half? Let me explain.

For years, the kids' records of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, et al) were produced here in Hollywood by Capitol Records, and Capitol did an absolute first-rate job with them. They hired Mel Blanc and some of the guys who wrote the cartoons, and Capitol had a superb, full orchestra and great arrangers. The same guys who were arranging and conducting music for Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole (etc.) were doing the music for Bugs, Daffy and Porky. Great stuff…and not enough of it is available today.

At some point in the fifties, Capitol stopped doing this kind of material and Golden Records got the license. Golden Records did some fine discs that didn't feature the WB players but the ones they did of Bugs 'n' Company were for the most part, pretty poor. They used cheaper orchestras and cheaper orchestrations, and they did them from New York, not as Capitol had from the heart of Hollywood. So they didn't use much talent from the WB studio and worst of all, they didn't use Mel Blanc. Even though they sometimes advertised their records as "Original Cartoon Voices," what you got were New York actors imitating (usually, poorly) Mr. Blanc.

I felt very burned when I bought these records…a mistake I made several times. I'd get one home, put it on my little turntable and ten seconds in, I'd moan, "That's not Bugs Bunny." But I only felt half-burned when I purchased Bugs Bunny Songfest.

One side of it was non-Mel material that Golden Records had produced and released as singles. But the other side was apparently material that had been produced by Capitol with their musicians and Mel Blanc, but never released by them. It consisted of twelve songs, all but one sung by Mel, each a "Happy Birthday" song for a different month. Sylvester sang the song for January, Tweety sang for February, Daffy for March, etc. They were short but, I thought, pretty good.

Someone has digitized them and put 'em up on YouTube with decent still graphics. I'm going to run them here over six non-consecutive days, two at a time. Here are January and February. And if this topic sounds familiar, it's because I wrote about it here back in 2004. Here are the first two…

Somewhere on this site, I'm sure I've complained about hotel Resort Fees. For those of you who don't know how these work, here's how they work…

You go online in search of vacation lodging and find a great price at the Hotel Trousers — $18 a night. You book it and then find out that the hotel charges a mandatory Resort Fee of $12 a night. This covers High Speed Wireless Internet, admittance to the Fitness Center, a copy of USA Today each morning, a couple of bottles of water and a glass of buttermilk. It doesn't matter that you didn't bring your laptop, don't believe in exercise, can't read, prefer tap water to bottled and are Lactose Intolerant. You have to pay the fee. So your $18 room is really $30.

For obvious reasons, a lot of folks object to these fees, especially when they only tell you about them in really tiny type. According to this, the F.T.C. is considering a ban on such and so are some legislative bodies. I wish they'd leave them be.

Here's why. The way I see it, abolishing Resort Fees is not going to give the traveler in our example the $18 room for $18. The hotel will merely mark it up to $30.

And then since they don't need to separate out those amenitities to build a package for which they can charge their Resort Fees, they'll be able to separate them out as options and charge for them. Suddenly, there'll be an additional fee for the High Speed Internet like there used to be. There'll be an additional fee for the Fitness Center, you'll have to buy those bottles of water and your USA Today, etc.

Another article about the Criterion release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, including an interview with some of us involved in its production.

Steven Brill writes about a couple whose money (and probably at least one of their lives) is being saved by Obamacare. But they didn't go near it until tricked into it by their insurance agent because, you know, they'd heard how terrible it was.

Floyd Norman has more on the silly accusation that Walt Disney was a gender bigot.

Today is the official release date of the new Criterion Blu-ray/DVD set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which means reviewers have all long since received theirs. So far, I see unanimous raves like this one and this one and this one. That means someone will try to draw attention to themselves and prove they have higher standards than everyone else by slamming it…but so what? Fans of this movie will be very, very happy. I'm told Amazon is already shipping sets so if you order one here, you can have your copy in a day or so.

On Stu's Show last week, Stu Shostak more or less challenged me to defend the film against its detractors. There are times when I feel like playing that game and times when I don't, and with this movie, I don't. As I've tried to make clear, a lot of my affection for it has to do with when I saw it and what it meant to my life. A lot of it is affection for the people on the screen and their style of comedy acting.

When folks say it's too long, I say, "No, no…you're missing the point. That's like saying a Where's Waldo? page is too cluttered." Part of what I love about this film is the length and breadth of its cast; how every time you turn around, there's someone else popping up. If you'd cut the running time in half, you would have cut half those people out. Contrary to the bromide, Less is not always More. More, on the other hand, is almost always More..and there are places where even Too Much is Not Enough.

Over the years, I've felt a powerful urge to "connect" with this movie and the people in it. As I explained on Stu's Show last week, I saw it while this nation was still in shock at the murder of John F. Kennedy. I was 11-and-a-half years old and on a night when my mind desperately needed a Change of Subject, there it was: A huge, all-star extravaganza with so many performers I loved from movies and television.

Kennedy was shot, as we all know, on November 22, 1963. That was a Friday. We got the news at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School a little before 11 AM over the school public address system. Speaking was Mr. Campbell, the principal, and I was sitting in a Third Period Math class taught by Mr. Totman.

Mr. Totman was the kind of math teacher who'd find any excuse to talk about topics other than math so we spent the rest of the period discussing what we knew…which was, of course, nothing. Fourth Period was a lot of everyone looking at each other, wondering aloud what it all meant. Then at lunchtime, all over the school yard, you could see students assembling around anyone who had a transistor radio, listening to what little news was available. Bringing a radio to school was against the rules, and teachers — if they spotted one — were supposed to confiscate them. But that day, they weren't confiscating. They were crowding around them with everyone else, glad to have them around.

I had an idea. I ran over to the principal's office and suggested to Mr. Campbell that they pipe a radio newscast over the P.A. system. He thought that was a great suggestion and together, we tuned in the CBS news on his office radio and placed the P.A. microphone by its speaker. Later that day, students were told that if they wanted to go home early, that was okay. I walked home and stayed in front of the TV, as did my parents, all evening. In hindsight, I'm not exactly sure what we were waiting to hear but if forced to make a guess, I'd say we were hoping for anything that would make a lick of sense.

Saturday was more parking before the TV, waiting for something to be said — anything! — that might bring a little more reason and order to the world. "Bleak" is a good word to describe how everything seemed that day. It all seemed bleak. Then around 5:30, my father got a call from Ben Zukor, one of the folks I've described on this blog before as "our wealthy friends." The Zukors had tickets that evening for a special benefit screening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the new Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. They were in no mood to laugh or even to budge from in front of the TV.

We, on the other hand, had a desperate need to not just keep staring at the news. So when Mr. Zukor offered us their tix, my father accepted. The film started at 8:00 and we had to scramble to shower, dress, drive to the Zukors to pick up the tickets, drive into Hollywood and then — and this was the hard part — find a place to park.

We got there with moments to spare and were directed to seats in the front row where, as we would soon find out, Jimmy Durante's nose was the size of Mothra. The seats were really Too Close for Cinerama and I believe the theater, which had then been open for a mere three weeks, later removed that row. That night, the closeness only added to how overpowering the entire experience was.

As I've probably said here (because I've been saying it everywhere), it's sad that you can only see this movie for the first time once. Much of the joy that night came because I didn't know who all was in it and what would happen…or even how long it would turn out to be. In the scene where Captain Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) tells the miscreants to go turn themselves in, I felt a tinge of letdown because, obviously, the movie was moments from being over. Little did I know! It had, like, twenty-three minutes left to run. There were still new stars to spot and more Southern California shooting locations to recognize.

And all around us, people were laughing and howling and enjoying themselves and not mentioning Dallas.

It was really a great, great evening even though when we got back to our TVs at home, President Kennedy was still dead and likely to remain that way. In the weeks that followed, I read everything I could find about the film and I began to pester its producer-director with questions.

Stanley Kramer's son Larry attended Emerson Junior High. He was in my class and he had the gym locker directly above mine. I gave him questions to pass on to his father, first verbally and then in writing. Then I gave him a letter to give to his father asking if I could take him to lunch and interview him.

Yes, you are understanding this correctly: An 11-year-old boy invited the great Stanley Kramer to lunch. What would I have done and where I would have taken him if he'd said yes?  I still have no idea but I never had to get one. He sent back a polite letter that said he was too busy and I should write to him again in six months. Six months later, I wrote and he sent back another polite letter that said he was too busy and I should write to him again in six months. Six months later, I wrote and he sent back yet another polite letter that said he was too busy and I should write to him again in six months.  I collected four or five more such letters in bi-annual exchanges before I got the message and stopped pestering him with them.

Over the years, I got to meet and/or work with many folks involved in the making of this movie. Just counting comedians in front of the camera, I worked with Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan, Stan Freberg, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Jesse White and Jonathan Winters. And I got to meet — in some cases, briefly — Milton Berle, Edie Adams, Jack Benny, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Barrie Chase, Peter Falk, Charles Lane, Carl Reiner and the 1963 configuration of the Three Stooges. But I never got to meet Stanley Kramer. Until…

In 1999 — I may be off by a year on that date — the comedian Chuck McCann and I drove out to the Motion Picture Country Hospital to visit a mutual friend, the brilliant comedy writer, Pat McCormick. Pat had suffered a stroke and an auto accident and between them, he was unable to speak for, as it turned out, the rest of his life. He could nod and giggle and make heartbreaking sounds in lieu of speech…but when you talked to him, you were never quite sure if he was understanding what you were saying. He was sharing a hospital room at that wonderful facility that serves the Hollywood community and there was a man on (not in) the other bed.  The bed was made and he was lying atop it wearing a jogging suit and sneakers.

He looked familiar and Chuck noticed me staring at him and came over.  He said, "Yeah, that's Stanley Kramer."

I looked at him lying there and  thought, "Hmm…he doesn't look busy now." And when an orderly brought him a meal on a tray, I thought, "…and I don't even have to take him out to lunch." I spent a little time with him that day and then went back two days later to spend the afternoon alone with both men.   Worthy of note is that Pat had a guest book and when you were there, he'd point at it repeatedly until you signed it. When I signed it on that second visit, I noticed the signature of someone who'd been there the day before: Buddy Hackett.  I later asked him about that and he said, "Yeah, I went to see Pat and who should I find in the next bed?  The director of the best movie I was ever in!"

So I finally got to interview the director of the best movie Buddy Hackett was ever in.

I believe that movie is a major reason I now do what I do for a living. This is largely why I don't want to engage in debate with someone who tells me it's too long, too overpopulated, too silly, too anything. I said to one detractor who craved mortal combat, "It may be a movie to you but it's magic to me." I am not here to tell you it's The Greatest Movie Ever Made or The Greatest Comedy or The Greatest Anything. At most, it was The Greatest Experience I Ever Had At A Movie…and watching it can still take me much of the way back to that evening.

I went into that movie the night of 11/23/63 feeling gloomy and disoriented by the world around me. "Bleak" is a good word to use again, this time to describe my mood before I first saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It not only took my mind off the assassination when I needed it off but it gave me some sort of transfusion of Light and Funny and Silly.  And believe it or not, as ridiculous as so much of Mad World is, when I went home after seeing it, the world around me seemed a little less mad, even with my President dead.

Of course, the next day, someone shot the guy who made my President dead and things got mad again…not to mention bleak.  Despite what they tell you each year at the Academy Awards, movies don't really change the world.  But some of them sure make it easier to live in, mad as it is.

Daryl S. Herrick sent me a link to this. It's June 22, 1952. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are doing a live telethon to raise money for Olympics athletes or something like that. And here come Dean and Jerry…

In recognition of Martin Luther King Day, this would be a good article to read. It's a copy of his instructions, written in 1956, about how black folks in Montgomery, Alabama should behave when riding on the newly integrated city bus system. Note the line, "Remember that this is not a victory for Negroes alone, but for all Montgomery and the South. Do not boast! Do not brag!"