Monthly Archives: November 2014

This is the group called The Magic of Voices. For obvious reasons…

Fred Kaplan on the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years ago today. Much has changed since then. Much has not.

Hey, you know what we haven't done in a long time? We haven't checked to see if Abe Vigoda is still alive!

Between 1962 and 1964, the U.P.A. cartoon studio — best known as the purveyors of Mr. Magoo — produced a syndicated cartoon series called The Dick Tracy Show. I was ten when this thing came on and even then, I looked at it like I'd just seen a chicken with lips or a cat with antlers. Many years later when I worked in the animation business and met some of the folks who'd worked on this show, I asked them what was on anyone's mind and I always got pretty much the same reply: "I still don't know."

If you've never seen one, I've embedded a typical episode below. As you'll see, the famous Mr. Tracy carried almost none of the action. He'd not only do the same thing in every episode, they'd usually use the same animation, often with his mouth hidden to make it easier to insert different dialogue. Each cartoon would open with Tracy hearing of a crime and passing it on to one of his team of detectives and officers.

None of these law enforcement figures were the kind of cartoon characters who belonged in Tracy's world. One, Hemlock Holmes, was a talking cartoon bulldog who sounded like Cary Grant. Another was a broadly cartooned guy named Heap O'Calorie whose voice was an impersonation of Andy Devine.  (One of the producers told me that when the show went on the air, they got a call from Andy Devine asking why they hadn't just hired him.)

Then you had an Asian stereotype (Joe Jitsu) and a Hispanic stereotype (Go-Go Gomez) and occasionally someone else, equally unlike anything Tracy's creator Chester Gould ever drew.

The crime at hand was something being perpetrated by two (occasionally, one) of the villains from Mr. Gould's strip — Pruneface, Itchy, Mumbles, Flattop, B-B Eyes, Stooge Viller, The Brow, Oodles, The Mole, Sketch Paree, etc. Tracy's operative would chase them about in a world that contained almost no other characters to animate, almost get killed and then triumph in the end.

Somewhere in the middle, Tracy's man would often freeze the action for a moment and check in with Tracy via two-way wrist-radio, which was kind of the iPhone of its day. At the end, Tracy would either show up to congratulate the officer or do so via the wrist-radio. They made 130 of these 5-minute cartoons which were shown in various packagings on TV stations across the land.

I see one every so often and I still wonder the same thing: Why? Why do you get the rights to Dick Tracy and then not put Dick Tracy in the show but use him to anchor cartoons about a talking bulldog? I can imagine doing a show about Tracy. I can imagine doing one about these weird law enforcement officials. I just never quite got the mix.

And there's another mystery. People are always asking me who did which voices. Well, some of them are known. The great dramatic actor Everett Sloane voiced Tracy. "Uncle" Johnny Coons, once a prominent kid show host in Chicago, spoke for Heap O'Calorie. Benny Rubin supplied the voice of Joe Jitsu. Jerry Hausner (who also voice-directed) was Hemlock Holmes. And Paul Frees and Mel Blanc split the role of Go-Go Gomez.

Okay, so who did the villains? For years, I puzzled over this until I finally realized three things that didn't dawn on me at first. If you're one of those folks who, like me, likes to identify voices, put your detective skills to work on this series but remember three points…

1. As far as I can tell, all of the voices in the show were done by the above-named actors. Some historians say Don Messick, June Foray and Howie Morris were in the cast. Howie, I know wasn't, though he later turned up in some U.P.A. productions.  I've never heard a voice in one I thought was Messick and I'm not sure there was ever a female voice in any of these, though perhaps I haven't seen all 130.
2. Unlike most cartoon characters, many of the villains had rotating voices. This is why it's hard to make up a list of who played which ones and why it differs every time someone attempts such a list.  Flattop was always a Peter Lorre impression but sometimes it was Frees, sometimes it was Blanc and sometimes it was someone else, probably Hausner. Brow and B-B Eyes had at least two different actors trying to approximate the same voice in different episodes and so did Itchy and probably others.
3. A lot of those villains — especially Pruneface, Sketch Paree and Stooge Viller — were voiced by Everett Sloane. Somehow, this did not dawn on me when I first tried to figure it out. I assumed he just did Tracy…but no. U.P.A. was a frugal studio and I guess they had to get their money's worth out of the guy. Every source I've ever seen credits his roles to others but listen with him in mind.  You'll hear it.

Here's a fairly typical episode with Benny Rubin as Joe Jitsu, Everett Sloane as Tracy and the old man and Paul Frees as B-B Eyes and Flattop. If you don't like this cartoon, there's no point in ever watching another one because this is as good as they get.  And as racially-sensitive…

Bruce Bartlett, who was a policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and also worked for the first President Bush, explains why Barack Obama is actually a Conservative. I don't completely buy this argument but I sure agree that he's accomplished a lot of things that Republicans would have thought made him The Greatest President Ever — greater than Reagan even — had they been done by a Republican. (To get some to that view, he'd also have had to have been a white Republican.)

If all a Republican president had accomplished was the deficit reduction charted in Bartlett's piece, the G.O.P. would have started clearing brush on Mount Rushmore to add another face. If that president had also presided over the killing of Osama bin Laden, they would have dynamited the four likenesses already there so they could make the new one bigger.

• Andy Dick arrested for Felony Grand Theft. He's been apparently trying to steal George Michael's career arc.

• Turkey bacon is the meat equivalent of non-alcoholic beer.

Here's the last one of these: Favorite Monty Python bits as selected by — in this case — Chevy Chase, Phil Jupitus, Matt Lucas, Steve Coogan and Lee Mack. This link will go away in about a week…

We're hearing that David Letterman's last Late Show will be on Friday, May 22, 2015. Why that date? Well, throughout his career in late night television, Mr. Letterman's response to many decisions he had to make was to ask, "What would Johnny have done?" Johnny Carson's last Tonight Show was Friday, May 22, 1992.

If indeed the rumor mill is correct about the date, CBS is probably pleased that it's finally been decided but a bit disappointed. As you may know, there are certain periods of the year which are called "sweeps" periods. Those are when the ratings matter a little more than they usually do in terms of determining who "wins" the season and how the advertising rates are set. Networks like to have their strongest programming appear during "sweeps."

Johnny's last show was Friday, May 22 because that year, the May sweeps ended on Friday, May 22. [Correction: No. it didn't.]  In 2015 though, the May sweeps will end on Wednesday, May 20. So Letterman's last show, which looks to be a ratings monster, will occur outside the period. As Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by that much!"

Once the rumored date for Letterman's exit is firm — and it may well be — then will come the question of (a) when Stephen Colbert's first Late Show will happen and (b) what CBS will air in that time slot for the 10-12 weeks it will take to move Letterman's crew out of the Ed Sullivan Theater building, move Colbert's in, remodel and upgrade the studio, do test shows, etc. Last I heard, the folks who have to decide that were still puzzling. It might be something like Big Brother reruns.

In the meantime, Dave's probably trying to figure out what guests he wants to have on his last broadcast that has guests since Bette Midler was never a regular on his show and Robin Williams is dead. I'm guessing Bill Murray and Regis Philbin…and Murray will sing a "farewell" tune.

Craig Ferguson's show has announced its guest list through the end of its run, and a friend at CBS tells me that every last ticket for those tapings is gone and that they expect huge stand-by lines. His sole guest for the last show on Friday, December 19 will be Jay Leno, which seems like an odd choice but maybe not. The two of them can sit around and discuss Life After Late Night. The new host of that show, James Corden, starts March 9 and I'm hearing the eleven weeks between will be filled by guest hosts.

Mr. Leno guested last night with Jimmy Fallon and I thought the spot went well. So when will he show up in Letterman's guest chair? They haven't yet announced a start date for Jay's new CNBC show other than that it will be "sometime in 2015." Maybe, since he'll actually have something big to plug, Jay will want it to be then.

You probably know Dan Castellaneta as the voice of some yellow-faced donut-eating TV character. I knew him first as one of the best comic actors on a stage or screen. He sent me this…

Dick Schaal is one of the few great character actors that I met that you haven't. I of course remember Dick from all those shows and was always delighted to see him show up in anything else. He was one of the many legendary and actors to come out of Second City and the Broadway hit, Story Theater. Amongst the improv community he is most noted for his physical work. Somebody once said in an improvisation Dick could create forty-six objects in a scene and remember where each of those items were.

Ironically in the last ten to fifteen years, this great physical actor was confined to a wheel chair. I don't remember exactly why other than he went in for a routine operation and complications set in causing him to gradually lose the use of his lower body. But he remained incredibly, energetic, spirited, enthusiastic and still taught improvisation. My wife and I had the great fortune to take a master class with him teaching improvisation. Not only did we enjoy participating but we got to witness him improvise a wordless scene. It was extraordinary. Out of nothing, he created a whole room and you could see all the things in that room. All done from a wheel chair. Not only did he teach us how to be present in improvisation, theater, and acting, but how to be present in life.

Here's another one of these: "Favorite" Monty Python sketches as selected by Bill Bailey, Harry Shearer, Kate Beckinsdale, Warwick Davies and Steve Pemberton. Watch soon as this link will be disappearing as fast as you can say Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson…

Several of you have sent me links to this article about Welcome Back, Kotter, a show I worked on in days of yore.

I have not yet ordered the new boxed set. You can here but I'm waiting for someone at the Shout Factory to call and ask me a favor, as they do from time to time. I don't really have an overpowering urge to watch the episodes I worked on again. I TiVoed them off MeTV and they're just sitting there, unviewed by me because other shows I've recorded interest me more. And I have zero interest in watching the ones done before or after I was on staff.

So, not that I think anyone would but don't buy this set because of me.

Anyway, the piece says "Behind the scenes, things weren't so cozy. [Gabe] Kaplan was reportedly so temperamental that by the third season he and [Marcia] Strassman were barely speaking to each other." I was gone by the third season but during the second, Gabe was a joy to work with and, I thought, a guy who had very little ego and a good, healthy idea of how to be the star of a situation comedy.

It was true that things weren't cozy and that Gabe and Marcia weren't getting along but the problem wasn't Kaplan. The problem there was that everyone — meaning the producers and the network — had decided that Welcome Back, Kotter wasn't a show about the wife of a school teacher. The "gold" was in featuring the Sweathogs — John Travolta, Bobby Hegyes, Larry Hilton-Jacobs and Ron Palillo.

And from where I sat, the bigger cause of open warfare on the series was that Jimmie Komack and Gabe were fighting for control and neither thought the other knew what he was doing. As a general rule of thumb, when the star of the series and the Executive Producer hate each other, you do not have a happy set. Or the best possible show. Or a place I wanted to keep working.

My partner of the time (Dennis Palumbo) and I worked on a few of the episodes singled out in this article. One of them started with a script that had been written by an outside writer. We on the staff began rewriting it and rewriting it and when it aired, it contained not a trace of that writer's dialogue and had only the vaguest connection to his plot. Still, it ran with his screen credit on it because that's the way we did it on that series.

The day after it aired, the outside writer called one of our producers about something and casually inquired as to the if and when of his script possibly being produced. The producer told him, "It was on last night." The writer responded, "Oh, that was mine? Gee, I thought it was a pretty good episode but I didn't catch the credits."

One time when I was on Stu's Show, Stu Shostak and I came up with a trivia question we had trouble answering for ourselves. Was there anyone who had guest-starred on all three of the following shows: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show? Before we could come up with an answer, a listener e-mailed with an obvious one: Richard Schaal.

Of course Richard Schaal was on those three shows. Richard Schaal was on every show of the sixties and seventies…or at least it seemed that way. He was occasionally a regular, more often a recurring character and most often a one-shot guest actor. There were shows that brought him back several times to play different people. Why? Because he was so good.

I never met the man but I saw him so often, I feel like I knew the guy. He died the other day at the age of 86 but will live on forever…on TV Land, Antenna TV, MeTV, etc.

If you're going to try to preregister this Saturday for Comic-Con International in 2015, it may help you to read this.

The folks at Mashable have put up a video — which I think is new but I'm not sure — called "5 Facts About Batman (with Adam West)." I've embedded it below.

The first one is about how Bill Finger really created Batman and not Bob Kane. I absolutely agree that Finger has been tragically, almost criminally deprived of recognition for his work. (I am, let us remember, the Administrator of the annual award that bears his name because the comic books and movies of his character do not.) However, there are two large problems with the Mashable video…

1. They woefully understate Kane's contribution when they say, "All he really did was drawn a blonde guy in a red suit with bat wings." Well, no. First off, the drawing they show of what folks will assume is Kane's contribution is actually a speculation on what Kane's design might have looked like. I believe my pal Arlen Schumer did this drawing a few years ago. Secondly, Kane also sold the strip to DC Comics and worked quite a bit on the early stories. I don't think any of that makes him the sole creator of the character — others did as much or more — but he did a lot more than that one drawing that's actually by Arlen.  He did, for example, a lot of drawings that were actually by Jerry Robinson.  (No, seriously, Bob did do a lot of drawing and head up the crew that produced the early material.)
2. They say "Finger got no recognition" as they show a photo that they think is of Bill Finger. It's actually a photo of DC writer Robert Kanigher…and I think I know how they made this mistake. The Bill Finger Award goes each year to some writers who, like Finger, have not received proper recognition. Last year, one of the ones who received it was Robert Kanigher. I obtained a photo of Kanigher from his family, did a lot of retouching on it to make it look decent and used it on my site and in our press releases. Obviously, someone at Mashable did a search for "Bill Finger photo" or something of the sort, that pic came up and they grabbed and used it.

So once more, Bill Finger is not receiving his proper recognition. And I don't consider it a welcome change that Bob Kane isn't, either. Here's the video. Adam West's participation is, uh, interesting…

UPDATE: A few folks have written to ask me about the claim in this video that Bill Finger created The Joker. Well, Bob Kane claimed that Finger created The Joker and Jerry Robinson said Jerry Robinson created The Joker working with Finger and I believe the weight of evidence is on Robinson's side. So Jerry was a bit wronged here.