Buster Keaton's career as a great movie comedian collapsed around the time silent pictures ceased and talkies began. But sound was not the main thing that ruined him. He made some bad career decisions, mainly involving the move from having his own small, independent movie company to becoming a contract player at M.G.M. where there were many, many people to tell him what to do. He was also drinking to excess and screwing up his private life at the same time.
He made what some feel was his last great feature, The Cameraman, in 1928. That was for M.G.M. before they began exercising real control over him. It was done with a large budget and "star" money for its star. By 1934, he was making short comedies — not even features — for Educational Pictures, a low-rent, low-run operation. It was like Rembrandt had taken a job painting designs on the backs of turtles.
This is Grand Slam Opera (1936), the best of the sixteen shorts he made for Educational. If you watch, don't compare it to Keaton's best. That's a terrible thing to do to any comedian, even Buster Keaton. But it's funnier than most of what others were doing on comparable budgets for comparable operations and it's certainly a lot better than most of what Keaton did the rest of his career to earn a paycheck. Even Educational Pictures couldn't completely squash one of the world's greatest comic talents…
This afternoon, I was over near the Beverly Center, a very large indoor mall here in Los Angeles. The Beverly Center is eight stories high so it's a pretty big building. One side faces La Cienega Boulevard and they had much of that busy street blocked off for construction. I couldn't tell exactly what they were doing but it looked like they were blocking off one half of it to begin digging it up to put in a new sewer line or storm drain…or something. They're digging up a lot of major L.A. streets to extend subway lines but I don't recall any plan that had a subway going north and south on La Cienega.
Anyway, as I walked by, I saw the most amazing machine. It was a crane — a very big crane that reached way, way into the sky. It reached up taller than the Beverly Center by at least three or four stories. The top 20-30 feet of it looked not unlike the fire ladder in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but I didn't see Spencer Tracy — or anyone — dangling from it.
That was my first thought: The Mad World recollection. My second, because the thing didn't look that sturdy, was that if that thing came crashing down, it would destroy quite a few buildings, cars and human beings. (A smaller but still formidable crane did crash down on that street two years ago injuring two workers.)
And my third thought — and the one I'm hoping some reader of this can help me with — is why do they need a crane that tall to dig up the street? (I tried to take a picture of it, by the way, but it was just too big. I couldn't find an angle that would give you any sense of scale.)
One metal cable came down from the peak of the crane. It was connected to, and seemed to be lifting up or placing, a large flat piece of metal. It was the kind that they put down over holes in the street so cars can drive over them. Clearly, they hadn't brought in this huge crane — the "truck" part of it was half a block long — just to move around steel plates and pipes.
Other people were staring at it the way you'd look up at Godzilla if you weren't worried about him stepping on you. We started asking each other, "What are they doing here that they need a crane that can reach up to (at least) the height of an eleven story building?"
Right across from the eight-story Beverly Center is a five-story mall called the Beverly Connection. You could use that crane to put the Beverly Connection on top of the Beverly Center…but I don't think that's what they're doing. I think they're digging up the street and for the life of me, I can't figure out why they need a crane that big. Does anyone reading this know what they're doing there? (I looked online and couldn't find anything.) Does anyone know why a crane that size would be needed to excavate a boulevard…or even for construction amidst already-built buildings? I'm mystified.
Another artist from comics' "Golden Age" has left us. Morris Weiss passed away this afternoon at the age of 99.
Weiss worked over the years on many newspaper strips, including The Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt & Jeff. He frequently assisted on and later took over completely the Mickey Finn strip, and also wrote Joe Palooka for many years. He worked in comic books, mostly for Holyoke, beginning around 1943. His comic book career was interrupted by military service and in 1946, he began drawing and sometimes writing for Timely Publications, the company now known as Marvel. He was a favorite of editor Stan Lee, who used him on comics including Patsy Walker, Tessie the Typist and a popular comic that Weiss created, wrote and drew called Margie. I have a special fondness for his work on the Pinky Lee comic book.
In the late fifties with many comic book companies downsizing or even closing, Weiss did his last work for Stan Lee, picked up some jobs for Western Publishing (their Nancy comic book, among others) and soon transitioned full-time into syndicated newspaper strips. He was active in the National Cartoonists Society and is said to have proposed the idea that became the Milt Gross Fund, an N.C.S. charity to aid cartoonists in financial trouble.
I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Weiss but his colleagues spoke well of him as both a creative talent and as a gentleman. He certainly had a long and happy life and career.
When you're a kid — we're talking under ten here — adults are always asking you the same questions…
When's your birthday? My parents were married March 3, 1951 and I was born on March 2, 1952 so I'd answer, "I was born on March 2nd. My parents were married on March 3rd." It always got a laugh. I didn't know quite why it got a laugh but it did so I left it in. It was usually followed by a hurried explanation from my mother.
What do you want to be when you grow up? From about age six on, that was an easy one: "I want to be a writer." I really did and I've never wanted to be anything else even though this response seemed to disappoint most of those who asked. They'd say, "Are you sure you don't want to be a fireman or a movie star or the President of the United States?" I'd reply, "Nope…a writer." They'd usually shrug and you could see them think, "Well, he's young. He has time to decide on a real career." I'm now 62 and I haven't come up with one yet.
What's your favorite color? Now, that was an odd one but I got it a lot. My parents would introduce me to some adult and within moments, the adult would be asking me what my favorite color was. I'd think, "Why? Are you going to paint me that color or something?" But I'd tell them it was orange and they'd react like I'd said something world-shattering…or at least interesting. Orange, huh?
Orange.
Orange is my favorite color but it's not a vast preference. I don't go out and throw rocks at green or spread vicious slander about yellow or anything. I like lots of stuff that's not orange, a fact that my Uncle Aaron never seemed to grasp. I wasn't present whenever he and Aunt Dot were picking out a present to buy me but I just know it went like this…
AUNT: Oh, there's that game Mark wants so badly. Let's get him that. He'll love it.
UNCLE: We can't get him that. It's not orange and the boy loves orange. Hey, instead of the game, let's get him a couple of traffic cones.
When Uncle Aaron and Aunt Dot gave me a gift, I never knew what it would be except that it would be orange. One time, they bought me an orange shirt that was a size too small…and they knew it was a size too small for me when they bought it but all the shirts that were the right size were not orange. I guess the logic was: Better it should not fit him than it should not be orange. If they were around today, I'd probably get John Boehner for Hanukkah.
My Aunt Dot was my father's sister and she had married this man named Aaron who had a sister named Emma. Emma was a sweet, befuddled little lady who was very old. How old? No one, including Aaron, knew. The last twenty or so years of her life, she worked as a salesperson in a variety of department stores and places that sold women's clothing. It was not a mystery why she kept losing jobs. The mystery was why it sometimes took a whole three or four months for her to lose one of them. A more confused woman you never met.
Every few months, she'd be fired and go looking for another job. To get one, she felt it necessary to conceal her true age so she'd just make up a new date of birth, shaving a decade or two off her life. At some point, she seems to have lost track of the truth and literally didn't know how old she was. About me, she retained three facts: (1) My name was Mark, (2) I was just wonderful and adorable and (3) I loved orange. She too was forever giving me gifts that were allegedly the color we now call The New Black.
That was another problem with having orange as my favorite color. Some people have very odd definitions of orange. For reference, my idea of the perfect orange is the color of Baskin-Robbins orange sherbet…or maybe one shade darker. But it's not red with a little yellow in it or yellow with a little red in it. Orange is orange is orange. Aunt Emma — she insisted I call her that — once gave me a jacket that I suspect she fished out of the trash at the last place that had fired her. It was about the color of steer manure mixed with Chinese mustard. She said, "I knew Mark would like this. It's orange."
It wasn't. But almost every time I went someplace where I was going to see her, I had to wear this hideous thing. "Oh," she'd say with glee. "I see you're wearing your orange jacket!"
One evening, we got a call: Emma had collapsed in her apartment and been rushed to a hospital. We decided to go see her the next day and I made a mental note to bring the coat along.
The next morning before we left, the mail came and in it was a mystery: An envelope addressed to me from the Beverly Hills branch of Home Savings and Loan, which was then a big financial institution in Southern California. In it was a bankbook in my name showing a deposit of five hundred dollars. That's was a lot of money in 1966 when I was fourteen.
Home Savings, Beverly Hills
I had never set foot in a Home Savings and Loan and we — my father, my mother and myself — could not for the life of us figure out where this money came from or who'd deposited it or why. Home Savings wouldn't tell us over the phone so we decided to stop there on our way to see Emma and find out. I went in, showed the bankbook and what little I.D. I had at that age and they told me. The account had been opened in my name four days before by Aunt Emma.
No other name could have been as startling. We didn't think she even had five hundred dollars, nor did it make a lot of sense that she would give it to me. Might she not need that money for medical expenses? Or to live on when she got out of the hospital? She had reached the stage where she probably was never going to get another job.
Twenty minutes later, we were in her hospital room. I, of course, was wearing the non-orange orange jacket.
She was surprised but not upset that we knew she'd opened the account for me. I expressed my thanks but told her I didn't think I should accept it. "You might need it," I said. She said she wouldn't need it for medical expenses because her insurance was covering every penny of that stay…and she also wouldn't need it when she left the hospital because she wasn't going to be leaving that hospital. Then she added in a joking manner, "Not alive, anyway."
She wanted me to have the money so her daughter, of whom she was seriously not fond, wouldn't get her hands on it. She sounded fairly lucid and serious about it so I said, "Okay, I'll hold onto it for you…but when you need it back, you're taking it back." She replied, clearly at peace and without the slightest trace of despair, "I won't be needing it back." Then just as we were about to leave, she said something else I'll tell you in a moment.
As it turned out, she died a few days later. She had prepaid for her funeral but it somehow fell to me to make some of the arrangements. When the mortuary called, one of the things they said was, "We're having trouble verifying her date of birth. We've checked hospital and government records and found several different ones that don't match the death certificate. Can you tell us when she was born?" I couldn't but I figured Emma would appreciate me lying about her age so I just made up a year. I don't remember now what I said but it's on her tombstone. I'm sure it was one she gave out at some point. She was somewhere between 91 and 100.
I left the five hundred dollars in the Home Savings account and eventually added to it. So did Home Savings. This was back in the era when banks paid real interest on the money they held for you.
Around 1975, I decided to start saving for a house so that became the purpose of that account. Any money I didn't need to live on went into the account Emma had opened for me. A good deal of that dough came from writing variety shows hosted by people who didn't speak English very well, including the infamous Pink Lady and Jeff. (Jeff's English was fine but his co-stars…well, that's a long story. Or probably a lot of long blog posts someday…)
In 1980 after an exhaustive search, I found a house that I wanted to purchase and a price was agreed-upon. The seller had one special condition of the sale: She was still paying off her loan on the place and under the terms of that loan, she could save a hefty fee if the person she sold to obtained their loan from the same outfit. So I had to either qualify for my loan there or if I couldn't, get a loan somewhere else and pay the hefty fee along with the purchase price. Fortunately, her loan was with Home Savings and Loan. In fact, it was at the same branch where Emma had opened the account…and there was yet another nice coincidence I'll get to, paragraph after next.
I made an appointment with the gent in charge of approving loans, dressed up nicely and went in to see him. He said, "Ah, I see you've been banking with us here for fourteen years." I said, "Yes, and I have most of my down payment money in your bank here." That helped me a lot to qualify for the loan and that account was there because of Emma. The gent then said, "Well, all I need now is to see your income tax forms for the last several years. Can you arrange to get me copies?"
I said, "If you'll let me use your phone, I can have them here in ten minutes." The office of my Business Manager was directly across the street from that Home Savings. That was the other coincidence.
I made the call, my Business Manager himself ran across Wilshire Boulevard with the necessary papers and I qualified for the loan right then and there. I'm sorry Emma never knew she started my home-buying fund…and that she started it in exactly the right place. She did me a much bigger favor than either of us knew at the time.
I'll never forget her for that but what I'll really remember is the last thing she said to me. Let's roll the tape back to that scene in her hospital room, a day or three before she passed. As we were about to leave, I thanked her one last time for the cash in the mystery account and I told her it was maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. Fortunately at that age, I had enough sense to not add, "And it sure makes up for this ugly coat."
She was lying in that bed, grinning with almost no teeth and she said, "I wanted you to have the money, Mark. I'm just sorry I couldn't figure out a way to make it orange."
I've long had an interest in a stand-up comedian named Dave Barry, not to be confused with the current funny columnist by that name. My Dave Barry had a long career doing occasional acting jobs — he was in Some Like It Hot, among other films — and a lot of cartoon voiceovers. He was they guy who did most of the celebrity impressions — especially Humphrey Bogart — in the classic Warner Brothers cartoons of the late forties and fifties. Here's a link to an obit I wrote about him in 2001.
As I said in that piece, his main line of work was doing stand-up and he worked constantly for about thirty years, mainly in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York and Miami Beach. Most of his visits to New York also involved an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This is one he made in 1964 and I'm afraid it's not one of his best. The audience is pretty cold and he doesn't bother to wait for laughs and massage them and work the material. He just rushes on to the next line. And the next line and the next line.
Also, it sure looks to me like he's working off cue cards. You can tell by his eye movements and even see what may be the cards reflected in his glasses. I don't recall noticing that often on the Sullivan program. Since this is undoubtedly material he'd been doing in clubs then, probably to greater effect, my guess is that Ed picked which jokes he wanted out of Barry's act and told him to do every one of them in six minutes…so he needed the cards to remember which jokes and to get them all in within the allotted time. Barry was a much better comic than this.
I wish I had a video to show you of when I saw him in Las Vegas in one of his last engagements there around 1992. He got more laughs in his first minutes than he did in the entirety of the clip below. In fact, if you watch the piece below — which I offer as a good example of what most stand-ups were doing in 1964 — watch a little of him in the clip I linked here from a 1991 appearance. I thought he was really good on stage — usually — and really good at adapting his act to changing times. Here he is doing what a stand-up was supposed to do in '64 before guys like Carlin and Klein changed the game forever…
David S. Cohen has just found the worst-ever argument against Gay Marriage…and as he notes, there are plenty of contenders for that honor.
I sure get the sense that even the folks fighting Same Sex Wedlock these days don't have their hearts in it…or any expectation that they can turn things around. I think most of 'em are just aware that there are enough people out there mad about this that one can make a very nice living, and perhaps advance one's political aspirations, by being a prominent soldier in this losing battle. Max Bialystock stood to make a lot of money if he really did put on the worst play ever. Pat Buchanan did make a lot of money running repeatedly for president without ever coming close to carrying one state. Lost causes can be profitable, especially when you can stoke the flames and keep people angry enough about something.
The best number in the 1959 Broadway musical Fiorello was "Little Tin Box." In it, a bunch of guys involved in New York politics imagine a scene in which several Tammany politicians are hauled before a judge and have to explain where all their ill-gotten money came from.
Here in concert with the BBC Proms Symphony Orchestra is British musical comedy star Nigel Richards and three other men to favor us with their rendition of "Little Tin Box." Maestro?
Leslie Moonves of CBS has denied that they actually offered either late slot to Neil Patrick Harris. The way he tells it, it's kinda like I said: A general discussion in which they dangled the possibility as a way of letting Harris know they want to keep him in the "CBS family."
In the interview, Moonves knocks down the rumor that they're talking to Joel McHale about the 12:30 slot and also denies that Chelsea Handler is out of the running. Frankly, I don't see them offering the show to either one but I've been surprised before.
I wonder if they've considered not naming an immediate replacement for Craig Ferguson but doing what I believe they did when Craig Kilborn left: Trying out different hosts over a period of time. Ferguson did not take over right after Kilborn's departure. Instead, they tried out a bevy of guest hosts for a few nights here and a few nights there. Then they gave one whole week to each of four "finalists" — Ferguson, D.L. Hughley, Damien Fahey, and Michael Ian Black — before picking the Scotsman.
That obviously has some benefit in terms of picking the best host. Doing it now, if they brought in a lot of women and non-white folks to try out, would eliminate some of the sense that they'd only consider a white male. The downside would be that they probably want to have their 12:30 person in place and established for a month or two before they shake up their other late night slot with the new guy. And I don't think they want to yank Ferguson off before he finishes out his announced term.
I don't know quite what causes Global Warming but I know why it's 105 degrees where I am right now in Los Angeles. It's because I have to write a Christmas story today.
This always happens to me. Between animation and comic books, I think I've written about eight Christmas stories in my lifetime. Without fail, every one had to be done on days when it was blazing hot. (In case anyone cares, I'm doing the lead story for whichever issue of the Garfield comic book will be out in December.)
I should be finished with the story tonight so expect temperatures to drop tomorrow. And I'm really, really sorry about this.
Warning: This video cuts off abruptly in the middle of something pretty interesting. But what comes before is interesting enough (and complete) so I decided to link you to it anyway.
A lot of people will tell you that the original My Fair Lady starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews was just about the most perfect musical to grace Broadway…and maybe it was. But the show had two major problems to solve before it could get to New York.
One was that Ms. Andrews, while ideal in the portions where Liza has learned to speak non-Cockney English, was having trouble learning the "before" part of that role. For the longest time, she simply couldn't speak Cockney in a convincing manner. It was so bad that at one point, Mr. Harrison either refused to rehearse with her any longer or so threatened. His position was that she would never "get it" and that it was a waste of his time to rehearse with someone who so obviously would have to be fired and replaced. Eventually though, the director Moss Hart and a vocal coach or two managed to do the reverse of what Henry Higgins did in the play. They taught her how to sound like an unrefined flower girl.
The other problem was that Harrison had never sung on stage before and while he was okay in the rehearsal hall with a lone pianist, he was terrified of having to sing with a full orchestra. It led to all sorts of temper fits and anxiety attacks and even after he overcame most of his fears, he had to pretend the orchestra wasn't there, couldn't even look at the conductor. (One night after the show had been running a bit, he came out and noticed the conductor was wearing a white coat. The first time Harrison exited the stage, he sent a note to the conductor that read, "Please take that coat off. I can see you.")
This video is an excerpt from a 1960 TV special in which Andrews and Harrison participated in somewhat fictionalized re-creations of what they each went through before My Fair Lady opened. The Andrews segment is complete but the Harrison part ends prematurely so don't be surprised. If I ever come across a link to the full video, I'll let you know.
Your host is Henry Fonda. The announcer you'll hear at the beginning is the legendary Jackson Beck…
Tavis Smiley is airing a two-part interview with Mel Brooks tomorrow night and Friday night. Which could be Friday morning and Monday morning in some markets. Consult, as we say in the television industry, your local listings.
In an interview with Howard Stern, Neil Patrick Harris says he turned down being David Letterman's replacement on Late Show because he thinks he'd get bored with that format. He also ruled out following Craig Ferguson on Late, Late Show for the same reasons.
As you may recall, I predicted Colbert would get Late Show and Harris would get Late, Late Show so maybe I oughta do a partial victory lap and say, "See? I called Late Show right and they would have given the other show to Harris had he not made it clear he was not interested." But the truth is that we don't know exactly what was offered. There's a big difference between someone saying "Are you interested?" and someone making you the kind of firm offer where all you have to do is say yes and you've got the job.
And in-between those two extremes, there's also the matter of negotiation, which can turn what sounds like a real offer into no offer.
I'm not sure this is true but a writer for Jay Leno told me once that Jay has several times been called by the folks putting on the Academy Awards telecast and they asked him, "We're putting together a list for the network of people we want to have host the Oscars and we really want you…but we hear you don't want to do it. Should we leave you off our list?" And Jay said each time, "Yeah, thanks but I don't want to do it. Leave me off the list."
Assuming that story is true, would it be accurate for Leno to say, "They offered me the Oscars and I turned them down"? Well, sort of but not exactly. My first agent used to say, "Don't confuse interest for an offer. It's not an offer until they put real money on the table."
So we don't know if what N.P.H. said no to was a real offer or just an exploration of whether he might want such a gig. Maybe they were already talking to Colbert, weren't sure they could make a deal with him and began conversations with Harris just in case. Or maybe they felt that in order to keep Harris in "the CBS family," they should at least approach him and let him know they were thinking of him for that prestigious job.
It's been done before. Long before Johnny Carson actually did retire from The Tonight Show, there were times when it looked like he might leave and NBC dangled that job before a number of folks to get them to sign NBC contracts. It was a big reason McLean Stevenson left M*A*S*H and wound up doing sitcoms for the Peacock Network. He thought Johnny's job would soon come open and was positioning himself for it. Jon Stewart once thought he was being groomed for Dave's slot as well as being offered the one on ABC that Jimmy Kimmel got.
So…with Harris out of the running, who will get that 12:35 time slot on CBS? If I had to wager right now, I'd say Aisha Tyler…but I feel far less confident of that than I did of my previous prediction. Who, let me remind you, could have had it if he'd wanted it. It also wouldn't surprise me if they went with someone who hasn't been mentioned on any of the "Who'll Succeed Craig Ferguson?" lists. After all, Craig Ferguson wasn't on the "Who'll Succeed Craig Kilborn?" lists.
And frankly, I'm more interested in N.P.H. saying that he'd like to do a prime-time variety show for CBS. If anyone could bring back that genre, I'm betting it would be him.
