Yearly Archives: 2015

You like photos of old movie theaters? Grauman's Metropolitan was one of the biggest ever with 3,387 seats. It was built in 1923 and torn down in 1961. Here's what it looked like.

The photo at left above is our pal Frank Ferrante who, as you know, plays Groucho Marx in a wonderful touring show that I plug here more often than I plug my own endeavors.

The photo at right is of Robert Kanigher, a writer and editor who worked in comics for years, mostly for DC. What do these photos have in common? Answer: They're constantly being misidentified on websites. Hundreds of pages identify the shot of Frank as the real Groucho and this photo has even turned up on several Groucho CDs and DVDs. The picture of Mr. Kanigher is often identified as a shot of Bill Finger, who worked for DC Comics for much of the same time.

Why the frequent mistakes? Because people are looking for a photo of Groucho or Bill Finger and they go to Yahoo! or some other search engine, search for the name and these photos come up. Right this minute, if I go to Google and search for "Groucho Marx," the shot of Frank is the second thing I see.

This is not because any person at Google thinks that's Frank. It's because of the way search engines work. Almost every time the Google "spiders" that crawl the Internet come across that photo, it's adjacent to the words "Groucho" and "Marx." Google isn't saying it's a photo of Groucho. It's saying that photo relates to the term "Groucho Marx."

Same deal with Kanigher. In point of fact, photos of Kanigher and of Bill Finger are very scarce. When Kanigher passed in 2002, I searched high, low and everywhere to locate one to use with my obit of the man. I couldn't find one and had to do without.

In 2014, we presented Kanigher posthumously with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. For this, as administrator, I had to track down someone in Kanigher's family so we'd have someone to present the award to. I located his daughter and she supplied several photos to me, the best of which was this one…though it was torn and had sections of his face missing.

I did some fancy Photoshopping to clean it up and it was used in the announcements and press releases and such. Anyone who uses it now has taken it from there, which is fine with me. But it's annoying to see people who are writing about the criminally-undercredited Bill Finger display it as a photo of Bill Finger.

(And you've probably figured out why they think that. If you search for "Bill Finger," it's one of the top hits. That's because of the award. That photo may never have appeared on the 'net more than an inch or so from the phrase, "Bill Finger.")

Devout fans of Groucho Marx or Bill Finger have been known to get exasperated when their heroes are represented by photos of others. The Marx fans have to put up not only with photos of Frank dressed as Groucho but of other folks like photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt in Marxian makeup.

They're right to be annoyed at art directors and web authors who can't tell the difference…but the root of the problem is that they don't understand this: Google Images isn't saying that's a photo of Groucho Marx. They're just saying that's a photo that is often accompanied by the words, "Groucho Marx."

DragonCon 2015 was held a week or two ago in Atlanta and one of the guests was Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. At a musical event, my friend Ken Plume led the crowd in a rousing rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" and guess who was among the surprise performers who joined in. Also up there, you may spot Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff and other notable folks. The tall guy with glasses near Mr. Jones is Kim "Howard" Johnson, the world's greatest expert on Python, who always comes through on this blog when I have a question about those silly boys…

• When Obama was 1st elected president, a lot of people said "Racism in America is over!" Notice you don't see anyone saying that lately?

As we have noted here, some chain restaurants focus on certain areas and certain states. It was a huge change o' policy recently when White Castle decided to open a single outlet in Las Vegas, far from their usual area. Here's the head of In-N-Out Burger explaining why they're going to stick to the six states they're in and — if she has anything to say about it — not expand to others.

Andy Rose read the piece I posted earlier today about Laugh-In and wrote…

Sorry to be pedantic, but the Bob Eubanks version of Card Sharks went on the air in 1986 and was taped at CBS. The NBC version was hosted by Jim Perry, and it went off the air in '81.

Not sure what Eubanks was doing at NBC in 1983…maybe an unaired pilot?

I erred. He was doing a show called Dream House. These things all blur together.

An oral history (i.e., a lot of short interviews) about Aaron Spelling. I had some very brief dealings with the man and the thing that impressed me the most was that while he was then the most successful of all producers in television, the thought never seemed to have entered his mind that he might be infallible or have some "magic touch" or anything close to that.

Over on Facebook, Skeeter Ullman sent me this message. Don't fault me for his punctuation…

so I wanted to ask about a laugh-in taping. how many were involved.obviously the joke wall and music numbers had the complete cast, but when taping blackouts did everyone hang around and how much time devoted to taping of a single blackout? that really fascinates me how they got that show togather wold love to find a mod world song from it

During that little period of my life when I was occasionally trespassing over at the NBC Studios in Burbank, I would occasionally drop in on Stage 3 where Laugh-In taped. They had no real studio audience but there were bleachers and anyone could come by and sit in them if they behaved themselves. Often, the NBC tour would wander through and if something interesting was being done, they'd stay for a while.

It was hit-or-miss. Sometimes, nothing would happen for a long stretch and sometimes, I'd catch them doing a batch of eleven blackouts, six of which might be in one show, two of which might wind up in another and three of which would never air. They were always taping stuff for different episodes and I believe one way they lured some big guest stars in to do quick cameos is by promising that the bits they did with the person would air in multiple programs, which meant multiple paychecks.

Another way: The Laugh-In folks kept a close eye on what else was taping in the building. At the time, there was a lot: Bob Hope specials, The Flip Wilson Show, The Dean Martin Show, Hollywood Squares, all sorts of other specials, Johnny Carson whenever he brought The Tonight Show out from New York for a few weeks, etc. If they found out that, say, Jack Lemmon was appearing with Carson next week, they'd go to Lemmon's agent and ask, "Hey, while he's on the premises, would he come by and do some bits for us?

Sometimes, they wouldn't ask in advance. They'd write some gags for a celebrity and then George Schlatter or someone would go visit the celeb in their Tonight Show dressing room and say, "Hey, you've got an hour before taping. Want to come over to our set and do some spots?"

In 1983, I was one of the writers on The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, a short-lived series that was darn near a Laugh-In clone in every way but ratings, produced by Chris Bearde, one of the main folks behind Laugh-In. Though the series was on ABC, we taped at NBC on the same stage Laugh-In had used, Stage 3, and we did the same thing, finding cameo guests in the corridors there. Once, game show host Bob Eubanks was taping Card Sharks Dream House across the hall in Stage 1 — the stage Mr. Carson used, though his show was in reruns that week. We wrote some Bob Eubanks lines and one of our producers went over and talked him into coming over between Card Sharks Dream House episodes and taping a few for us.

The following week when Johnny was back, one of his guests was Christopher Reeve. We wrote up some short blackouts for him and then our Exec Producer Dick Clark and I and one other writer went over to his dressing room to see if we could get him to come to Stage 3 and do a few of them. I hadn't written any of the jokes but Dick took me along because he was aware I was a comic book expert and figured that might give me some rapport with Mr. Reeve.

Christopher Reeve was about as nice and polite as human being as I've ever met. He read the jokes which all referenced Superman and then said he'd be glad to do anything we wanted as long as it wasn't about Superman. He was on with Johnny to promote a non-Superman film of his and was trying to remind the world that he was an actor who could do other things. He said it so graciously that you couldn't fault him…and he absolutely understood when Dick said that he didn't think it would work to have him on if he wasn't going to refer to Superman. (We weren't asking him to don the costume or even pretend to be Clark Kent, understand; just to appear as Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman.)

Laugh-In worked the same way and I'm sure they had similar turndowns. Most of the time though, these things were planned. Once, I snuck a peek at the taping schedule and saw an item: "5:00, Zsa Zsa Gabor cameos." It was 2 PM and I decided not to stick around for Zsa Zsa.

My observation was that no performers were on the stage or nearby unless they were in the bits being taped or waiting to be in the next one or two things on the schedule. I never saw Gary Owens there because he taped most of his spots in the morning so he was free to do his radio show and various voiceover gigs with the rest of the day. He'd sometimes go back to NBC after his afternoon radio broadcast so he could be in one of the "group" segments. Those seemed to mainly be done in the early evening.

There was no set time for how long it might take to tape a blackout — and they rarely did one at a time. I watched once as Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson did about twenty of the park bench spots. I think twelve or so had been written and they did each in 1-3 takes, then they ad-libbed a few more or some writer on the set would invent one on the spot. That whole segment probably took 40 minutes and then Ruth and Arte ran off to get changed while the crew taped some wild lines from Goldie or JoAnn or someone.

It was a very fun place to be at times (so was the set of our knock-off) but it was on-again, off-again, like a party that stops for twenty minutes at a time then resumes. The fast pace was in the editing room, not on the stage. On the stage, some of those things seemed to drag on forever but I still liked being there.

The Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles is about to host a new production of The Sound of Music directed by Jack O'Brien. It opens September 20 and runs through October 31.

I have two good seats for the September 29th performance at 8 PM. They're seats 4 and 5 in Row C in the orchestra. (Here's the seating chart.)  Alas, I have something else I have to do that evening and can't go. I would like to sell these to someone, preferably someone with a PayPal account.

The scalper sites are currently asking $180 each for seats in this row for this performance. With their service and delivery charges, two would run you $493.15. When I bought them, they were were $85.00 each and all the extra charges brought the total up to $187.00. I want $220.00 for the pair because that's what it'll cost me (or you) now to buy tickets in the same section for another date, though neither of us will get seats this good.

If you're interested, drop me a note.

[UPDATE: The tickets have been purchased.]

Rich Eisen mainly does sports interviews on TV but every so often, he chats with folks like Carl Reiner. Here he is interviewing a person who happens to actually be Carl Reiner…

DC Comics has announced that they've reached some sort of agreement or awareness or deal with the Bob Kane estate or — well, I don't know what it is — so that "Bill Finger will be receiving credit in the Warner Bros. television series Gotham beginning later this season, and in the forthcoming motion picture Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice."

This is a very good thing and I don't know anything more about it than what's in the press release. I'm guessing though that it isn't a deal with the Kane estate, which has always insisted that as per past agreements, Bob Kane be credited as the sole creator of Batman. Past DC execs have tried and failed to amend that because even Kane himself, not long before he died, admitted it was not right. I'm going to assume that DC has decided that they can give Finger some sort of credit that won't violate the Kane deal, and I hope they're also paying some kind of significant money to Finger's grandaughter, Athena.

Without getting too deep into this again, I occasionally mount a slight defense of what Mr. Kane did to his partner, Mr. Finger. It may not have been right but it was not unusual in those days for one guy to sign a strip and for all others who contributed — even if they did substantially more than the guy who got sole credit — to remain largely anonymous. Finger in his lifetime did loads of comic book work unconnected to Batman and Kane, and didn't get his name on 98% of that, either.

The credit, whenever it appears, should say "Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger." Since the press release doesn't promise that, I assume that's not what's happening here…but even partial credit in some areas is way more than no credit in any areas so some justice has been done. Some justice, as we all know, is a whole lot better than no justice.

We will continue to award the Bill Finger Award each year at Comic-Con International to writers who have received insufficient credit and/or rewards for their work…and some of us will continue to lament that Bob Kane did not put things right before he died. Batman would have.

The First Lady of Cartoon Voices, June Foray, celebrates her 98th birthday today — the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale and Granny (owner of Tweety and Sylvester) and Jokey Smurf and Magica DeSpell and Mrs. Cauldron (on The Garfield Show) and Cindy Lou Who and if I list them all, this post will run into her 99th birthday and maybe the big 100.

A few years ago, the late Earl Kress and I assisted June with the writing of her autobiography. Before we started, we figured we knew everything she'd done and boy, were we wrong! As we find out, not only did we not imagine the length and breadth of this lady's career, it turned out she didn't even grasp it. For close to three-fourths of a century, she was so busy working in cartoons (and radio and commercials and dubbing movies and…) that she couldn't track all she'd done.

I remember one day when she phoned me and said, "Mark, I just got a residual check for a Frank Sinatra movie called Dirty Dingus Magee! Was I in that?" Apparently, yes. I haven't seen it but June probably looped a couple of voices somewhere.

This is an amazing woman. For around four decades, she was the "workingest" voice actress, working at the top of a highly competitive field. (Do you have any idea how many people think they can do voices?) 5-6 days a week, she would work from morning 'til after dark going from session to session to session. Everyone wanted to hire her because she was the best at what she did.

It has been a pleasure and an honor to know her and to work with her. And it's a pleasure and an honor to wish her a happy birthday. I have some other things to say about her but I have to save something for her 99th birthday, her 100th birthday, her 101st…

I have not yet had the time to watch the four-hour American Experience profile of Walt Disney that debuted earlier this week. On my TiVo it sits.

Floyd Norman, however, has. Floyd is the first person who speaks in the documentary and he's one of the few "talking heads" interviewed specifically for it who actually worked with and knew Walt. Floyd thinks the portrait it paints is not of the Walt Disney he worked with and knew. Just what I was afraid of.

My pal Christine Pedi — who hosts show tunes on Sirius Radio and sings them on stages around the country — demonstrates her gift for mimickry by performing "The Witch's Rap" from Into the Woods. That's her fellow Sirius Broadway Jock Seth Rudetsky playin' the pianny…

David Letterman has his first post-Late Show gig. And if I gave you a hundred guesses, you'd never guess what it is. He's going to take over playing Flo in the Progressive Insurance commercials.

No, he isn't. But this strikes me as almost as unlikely.