One of the ten-or-so funniest human beings I've ever known was the late, great Carl Ballantine. It was very difficult to eat with him because…well, you can't swallow when you're laughing and when I was with Carl, I was usually laughing. He was even more delightful off-stage than he was on-stage and he was pretty damned good on-stage.
Here, a very youthful David Copperfield introduces an abbreviated version of the classic comedy act performed by the forever-youthful Amazing Ballantine…
I don't have a lot to say about the final Late Show with David Letterman. It was a fine, fitting broadcast that went an hour-twenty on my TiVo. I'd been told they were going to do a special "Stupid Pet Tricks" and I'm glad they dumped that idea and just let the show be about the show.
Comparison to Carson's last show is unavoidable, I guess. Maybe I'm reading too much into things but it struck me that Johnny's final words included this: "…I hope when I find something that I want to do, and I think you would like, and come back, that you'll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been." He never did find that thing he wanted to do but when he left, he expected to reappear on television in some format.
Dave ended with: "The only thing I have left to do for the last time on a television program…thank you and good night." Was that Dave saying he doesn't expect to ever host anything ever again on TV? Is it to be taken literally? I'd like to think that even if he believes it now, it's not so.
And now some 'net sources are saying Dave's last show will run ninety minutes! Better set the DVR to record all night, just in case!
Sources are claiming tonight's final Late Night with David Letterman runs long. Some say 12 minutes. Some say 17. My TiVo automatically updated and is allowing for the show to run one hour and 12 minutes but it still has the following program, The Late Late Show with James Corden, starting at its usual time of 12:37 and running one hour.
So if you want to catch Dave, I'd suggest padding his running time to an hour and twenty minutes, just in case. And if you want to catch Corden — well, I have no idea what time his show starts.
From a couple years ago: Steve Martin and Conan O'Brien with a funny bit about David Letterman's Top Ten lists…
Jonathan Chait on why some Republicans are praying the Supreme Court will wound Obamacare and some are praying it won't.
David Letterman can't complain his last show is going without notice. The tributes, the articles…amazing. Reporters are tracking down people who were in a running bit on Dave's old show in 1987 for comment. It's probably a lot more press than Johnny's departure got…though in fairness, Johnny left when we didn't have eight zillion online magazines and websites all vying for a piece of the story.
I can't be the only person who notices that most of the pieces that talk about the brilliance that is Letterman cite examples from the last century and the previous network. What they mention from this century and this network are not the moments that he and his writing staff came up with but when circumstances beyond their control created a special event: Dave coming back from his heart attack, Dave coming back from shingles, Dave announcing the birth of his son or his marriage, Dave getting blackmailed…and many more, including his post-9/11 broadcast. He handled most of them with skill and integrity but then the next night, it would be a pretty conventional talk show again.
One of the sharpest pieces I've come across about Dave's legacy is this one by Josef Adalian. Some of the non-sharpest ones act like Dave has still been donning suits of Velcro® and sending Larry "Bud" Melman to the Port Authority Bus Terminal for the last decade or two.
These days, most of America regards Johnny Carson as a sacred figure who practically owned the hour of our lives during which he was on the air. My recollection is that this view of Johnny was not widely-held until the nation realized he was going away. You will find few critical appraisals of his greatness while he could still be taken for granted. He was to many a boring, slightly smutty comic whose monologue jokes and Mighty Carson Art Player sketches all bombed and who sat behind a desk asking smirking questions of starlets and making faces to the camera.
Of course, that was before he went away. Once he announced his retirement, he started to become a demi-god and it accelerated from there.
America this week is appreciating Letterman anew. Folks who haven't watched him for years (save for those "event" nights) are hailing him…and I'm not saying he doesn't deserve plenty of hailing. Most talk shows of the last few decades have tried to "do" Dave's show on NBC to some extent, the one notable exception at times being Dave's show on CBS. In the grand tradition of his idol Mr. Carson, Dave is being appreciated because we can't have him anymore. Ain't it like that with so many things in this world?
Stu Shostak has a great guest this week on Stu's Show. It's Howard Storm, who's had one of the most amazing careers in show business as an actor, a writer, a stand-up comedian and most recently, a director. Anyone who could direct Robin Williams on Mork & Mindy for several seasons has to be a helluva director and that's just one of Howard's many credits. He's directed at least fifty different situation comedies including Everybody Loves Raymond, Major Dad, Laverne & Shirley, Rhoda and Too Close for Comfort. His acting credits go back to The Untouchables and he was seen in a couple of Woody Allen movies. (He was Woody's assistant on several.) Frankly, I think Stu could fill the show with Howard's tales of working as a comedian in mob-controlled night clubs, not that he didn't also work the cleaner joints. He's one of the best storytellers and I know and there's no way Stu's getting even half this man's career into the show today.
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 go to three or beyond. Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a measly 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three…and no, there's no extra discount for the ones that have me on them.
Frank Rich on how racially-charged riots don't vary that much from one to another. And they won't as long as we keep allowing the same explosive situations to exist.
Fred Kaplan on how all the scenarios to defeat ISIS are bad ones and which ones are the least bad.
Jill Lepore writes of how maybe the Supreme Court has it wrong when it rules that things like abortion and a right to contraception are issues of privacy. Maybe instead they're issues of discrimination.
One day back when John McCain was the G.O.P. nominee for president, he was scheduled to appear on David Letterman's show but canceled at very close to the last minute, claiming he had to rush back to Washington on vital gov't biz. In what was no doubt a panic, the producers scrambled to find another guest and they called in Keith Olbermann for reasons Keith Olbermann enumerates in the article to which I'm about to link you. Olbermann scurried over and filled Dave's guest chair.
In the midst of the taping, Dave learned that the Senator from Arizona was not on a plane back to Washington at that moment. He was a number of blocks away, getting ready to tape an interview with Katie Couric for the CBS Evening News. It was even possible for the crew in the Ed Sullivan Theater to use the CBS in-house feed to view what was going on at that moment in Ms. Couric's studio and there, chatting aimiably with her before the interview, was John McCain.
As Olbermann notes in this nice tribute to Dave, Letterman made the quick decision to address this matter then and there on his show, including putting some of that in-house network feed on his show. From his desk, he showed America the scene of McCain with Couric and delivered a very funny, spontaneous rant.
I believe though Mr. Olbermann is omitting one detail. For a show to do that — to put another show's feed on the air — is a major breach of protocol and probably corporate policy. I mean, if CBS News just grabbed the feed of Dave taping and used it in their telecast, he would have gone through several roofs with outrage. So what Dave did (I heard from someone on his show) was to quickly call Les Moonves, the head of CBS, during a break and say in effect, "I want to do this…is it okay?" And Moonves, who probably had about ten seconds to decide about this unprecedented, sure-to-piss-some-people-off move, said "Go ahead."
I'm not sure if Dave himself made that call — I think he did — or if one of his producers did but Moonves said yes because it was Dave…and probably only because it was Dave. And then he probably protected Dave from any anger from the news folks who might have felt violated. I do not know if Moonves called and told them before or as it happened. The point is that CBS wouldn't have let anyone else do that.
Anyway, read the Olbermann piece. It's pretty good — broadcaster saluting broadcaster — and watch his appearance with Dave that night. It's in two parts (slightly outta sync) that should play one after the other in the box I'm embedding below. I like it because it's two smart men talking with no pre-interview, no arranged questions, no planned anecdotes or anything. I wish all talk shows were this unscripted…
The Gallup Poll says that a record 60% of Americans support Same-Sex Marriage as opposed to just 37% who oppose it. So I guess the way this works is that if you want the G.O.P. nomination for president, you have to convince Republicans that you'll do something to stop or roll back Gay Wedlock and then if you get that nomination, you have to then convince the rest of America that you won't.
Here's a good, current interview with Woody Allen. He talks about his filmmaking process, how he casts actors in under a minute, how he's going to shoot his next movie in digital, why he never watches his films again after they're done and many other topics.
If you're interested in Woody, you will very much enjoy the forthcoming book on him by the other writing Evanier, my cousin David. I haven't read all of the manuscript but I've read enough to see that it's a very good, important work and that it does not merely go over ground that others have covered but instead says new things about the man, both in terms of new information and analysis of his role in the entertainment world. It's due out in November and can be advance-ordered here.
A lot of folks are now debating the question of whether the mess that was the Iraq War should be blamed on faulty intelligence or on the Bush administration manipulating the truth and selling us false info and premises. Jonathan Chait believes that the problem with that debate is that it presumes it was one or the other. He believes both were true.
Here's a post from December 29, 2003 about meeting Carlotta Monti, who lived for years with W.C. Fields. Reading it over now, I'm surprised I didn't include one line from her boy friend that she related to me. It was at a time when Fields was having trouble getting work and his agent told him one day he had to play the Hollywood game more. "Go play golf with Jack L. Warner," the agent advised. Fields fired back — and you have to imagine this in his voice and cadence — "When I want to play with a prick, I'll play with my own!" I don't know why I left that out but here's what I put in…
I mentioned meeting Carlotta Monti the other day and a reader made me promise I'd tell how that happened and all that I recalled. It was around 1974, a period when I often found myself in Westwood Village, right outside the U.C.L.A. campus. My Aunt Dot was donating two days a week as a saleslady at the United Nations Gift Shop, which was a charity enterprise that sold globes and flags and little sculptures that you'd never want in your house. When I was in the area, I'd drop in and say howdy to Aunt Dot and one day, she introduced me to another of the women who volunteered their time in the store. When she said, "This is Carlotta Monti," little bells went off in my head and I thought, "Hey, I think this is the lady who was W.C. Fields' mistress." She seemed about the right age (just shy of 70) but I wasn't sure enough to say anything other than, "Oh, I certainly know of you." Matter of fact, I think I changed the subject swiftly and awkwardly and hurried off. Once home, I consulted her autobiography, W.C. Fields and Me and, sure enough, it was the same lady.
I checked with Aunt Dot to find out when Ms. Monti would be there again and took the book up to get it signed. We wound up going to a shop down the street for cola and coffee, and I could see that Ms. Monti was thrilled to have a new audience for her tales of "Woody," as she called him. The way she pronounced it, it rhymed with "moody" and no, I have no idea where the nickname came from. She was proud of the book and upset that "certain people" who knew Fields or defended his memory felt she'd exploited her relationship with him. These "certain people" (unnamed) were also upset that she had sold or was about to sell the film rights…and I recall thinking to myself, "That's one movie that will never get made." Two years later, it was. Filmdom would have been much better off if I'd been right.
She kept coming back to the fact that she was being criticized for writing about her life. Her side of it, which did not surprise me and which I am not suggesting was at all wrong, was that she'd given "the best years" of her life to Fields and received precious little. So selling her life story was her inheritance, and "Woody" would have wanted her to be comfortable in her old age. She said she had plenty more stories…enough to fill several more books, but would have to wait a few years before embarking on one.
I asked her to tell me one of these stories and she mulled several possibilities before telling of an aging prostitute Fields knew. She wasn't sure if "Woody" had ever been a patron but they were friends, and Fields was always trying to find a way to throw her a few bucks since she was too old to get much work in her main occupation. There's a tale that makes the rounds about some guy who's in the hospital, attended by nurses and/or nuns and one day, one comes in, locks the door and begins ripping off her clothes and performing sex acts on his person. This of course shocks the patient who is unaware the nun (or nurse) is a hooker that his friends have hired for this treat/trick. Well, according to Ms. Monti, Fields's friend specialized in such missions and owned all the necessary costuming. Now that she was older, he occasionally hired her for non-carnal nun impersonation. He'd arrange for her to be in some restaurant or other public place when he was with some pals and he'd start verbally abusing this nun and saying foul, vulgar things to her. This would horrify Fields' friends who would try to shut him up but he would persist…until finally, the "nun" would start firing back with even better obscenities, and Fields' cronies would realize they'd been had. According to Ms. Monti, "Woody" loved the reactions.
The other main thing I recall beyond the talk about him wanting to play Scrooge was that she felt Fields's last few years had been squandered by Hollywood. He'd had a bad check-up and from that point on, no studio wanted to start a movie with him in the lead. He was in constant demand for short cameos but many offers fell through and some of what he did film was never released. She made the comment that he might have lived longer if the business hadn't decided prematurely that he was dying.
She didn't have a lot of time that day so we agreed to get together again for a longer chat but never did. And though she lived almost two decades after our chat, she never wrote that second book. I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with her because…well, how often do you get to talk to someone who slept with W.C. Fields? These days, hardly ever.
Shelly Goldstein suggested I embed this one. It has pretty bad video but it's too good to not share with you here…and anyway, the audio is the important part. Ladies and gentlemen — a medley of songs from Fiddler on the Roof as performed Motown style by the Temptations. No, I am not making that up…