The comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello split up in 1957. Abbott didn't work much after that but Costello was semi-successful in establishing himself as a solo performer. Part of that was because he became a frequent guest star on Steve Allen's TV show. Allen was glad to have him because it gave the show an excuse to use old burlesque comedy routines — the "Sunday School" versions, which was the term in burlesque for the cleaned-up versions of these classic bits.
Here's Lou on a show from December 15, 1957 performing one such sketch — The Lemon Table, a routine he and Abbott had performed hundreds if not thousands of times on stage and TV. In fact, Abbott — working as a straight man in burlesque — had done this routine for years with other comics before teaming up with Costello. Everyone who ever worked in burlesque probably did this routine.
Tom Poston takes Abbott's role…and doesn't do it nearly as well. Louis Nye plays the stooge…
Our friend Frank Welker is, I believe, the "workingest" member ever in the Screen Actors Guild and certainly the "most heard" voice talent ever in the world of animation. It is about time that the TV Academy recognized him…and soon, they will. Here is a press release that just came out. I'm running it verbatim even though they got a lot of show names wrong and I don't understand some of their punctuation at all. But the sentiment is right on target…
FRANK WELKER, THE VOICE OF SCOOBY-DOO AND CURIOUS GEORGE TO RECEIVE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD AT THE 43rd ANNUAL DAYTIME CREATIVE ARTS EMMY® AWARDS
New York, NY – April 12, 2016 — The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) today announced that Frank Welker, legendary performer of the voices of Scooby-Doo and many others will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 43rd Annual Daytime Creative Arts Emmy® Awards on Friday, April 29th, 2016 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites in downtown Los Angeles.
"Every child in America has grown up listening to Frank Welker bring the adventures of Freddy Jones and Scooby-Doo to life," said Bob Mauro, President, NATAS. "Frank is an audible magician. He has made an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of us all with his ability to bring these and so many other characters into our lives and make them real. It is with great pleasure that the National Academy bestows the prestigious Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement to him for his great body of work."
"I have been a fan of Frank Welker's work my entire life," said David Michaels, SVP, Daytime (NATAS). "He is a unique person creating very unique characters such as Curious George, Wonder Dog, Shmoo, Megatron and his body of work over the last 40 years is remarkable. It is our great pleasure to acknowledge his long career in front of his many peers at the Daytime Creative Arts Emmy gala."
Responsible for creating the voices and sound effects of hundreds of animated characters over a span of nearly fifty years, Welker has garnered the respect of audiences and peers alike for his unparalleled skills as a voice actor. While he has also appeared on television series, variety and talk shows, in pilots and commercials, it is because of his invaluable work behind the camera that Frank Welker has been chosen to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's 43rd Annual Daytime Emmys.
Jim Davis and Frank Welker.
Born in Denver, Colorado, Welker developed a stand-up comedy act in college, which got him started on the concert circuit touring with The Righteous Brothers and Sergio Mendes. He continued with stand up, appearing in places including Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe as the opening act for such headliners as Sonny and Cher, Diana Ross, Loretta Lynn, Ann-Margret and Neil Sedaka.
Welker's first on camera film role was as a bar fight participant in Stan Dragoti's Dirty Little Billy. He played a college kid from Rutgers University in the Elvis Presley picture, and later co-starred with Don Knotts in Universal's How to Frame a Figg. Welker also appeared in two Disney films, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and Now You See Him, Now You Don't.
His on camera television appearances included Love American Style, The Partridge Family and The Don Knotts Show. He played a prosecutor in the highly acclaimed ABC special, The Trial of General Yamashita, and as 'Captain Pace' beside Richard Dreyfuss' Yossarian in Paramount television's pilot Catch-22. He also made appearances on Laugh In, The Dean Martin Roast, The Mike Douglas Show, The Tonight Show, Merv Griffin, The Smothers Brothers, The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour and returned to an on-camera role in the film The Informant, playing Matt Damon's father.
His first cartoon job was for Hanna Barbara voicing Freddy Jones in the legendary Scooby Doo series. It is believed that Frank holds the record for voicing the longest running character in the history of animation Freddy Jones. Frank is still doing the teenaged Freddy 45 years after he began and is currently recording the latest iteration Be Cool Scooby Doo. In addition to Freddy Jones, he has been the voice of Scooby Doo for over a decade. Frank was also voices of Dinky on CBS's Dinky Dog, Fangface on Ruby Spears' Fangface and he also played Dynomutt in The Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour. He was the voice of Jabberjaw and the voice of Bufford on The Bufford Files, Schlepcar on Sid and Marty Kroftts' Wonderbug, Herbie on Fantastic Four and seven regular voices on Hanna-Barbera's Yogi Space Race.
Other indelible characters created by Welker include Wonder Dog, Shmoo , Doctor Claw on Inspector Gadget, including various G.I. Joe heroes and villains, Baby Kermit and Skitter on the Muppet Babies. Also, he brought many characters alive in Steven Speilberg's Tiny Toons! and in Animatics, including the studio boss Mr. Plotz, and the studio's questionable "guard" Ralph the Guard. He also played Runt, the sweet but dumb dog, against Bernadette Peters' Rita the cat; both strays.
His other characters include the wide-eyed monkey Abu in Aladdin to the Green Ghost Slimmer in The Real Ghostbusters. Welker voiced Gargamel's cat Azrael in live action/animated film versions of The Smurfs, a role that he will reprise in the upcoming Smurfs Feature Film. He can be heard as Nibbler in Futurama, as well as the very opinionated cat Garfield and the mischievous, curious monkey, Curious George.
Welker voiced many recurring characters in the multiple iterations of Transformers animated series, including eight of the original 14 Decepticons including Megatron, Galvatron, Soundwave, Skywrap, Laserbeak, Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage and Ratbat. Welker also reprised the roles of Megatron and Soundwave in the series Transformers: Prime (retitled Transformers: Prime – Beast Hunters for its third season) and the video game Transformers: Devastation. In the motion picture world he voiced Soundwave in the film Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and reprised his role as Galvatron in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), adding to his already large list of roles within the Transformers franchise.
Responsible for a broad spectrum of character voices, and other vocal effects that have appeared over the last 45 years in American television and motion pictures, Welker was listed as the number one All Time Top 100 Stars at the Box Office for five consecutive years, not as a box office draw, but in terms of the total revenue generated by the films in which he has participated.
Another one of these. For those of you who are new to this blog, the mushroom soup can signifies that Mark is busy with something that is likely to keep him from blogging and maybe even responding to e-mails for a brief period. It should not in any way be considered product placement for the Campbell's company which has never sent me so much as a noodle, those rat bastards.
One nice thing about being this busy is that I don't have time to think much over whether it's going to be Trump vs. Hillary or Cruz vs. Bernie or what's the inevitable surprise twist that's going to happen here? There's going to be one of them…something no one saw coming except that after it happens, they'll all say they did. I'm thinking Donald may pick a wombat at his running mate in a desperate attempt to lock up that all-important marsupial vote.
Some folks on the 'net are making a big deal about news that a new showrunner is coming in to preside over Stephen Colbert's show. That might be a significant development if he's going to truly supplant in any way the real showrunner, who of course is Stephen Colbert. I think Colbert's doing the best late night program that's currently airing and given its ratings, it's doubtful his job is in any jeopardy. But his numbers could be higher and one assumes that's what the new guy is there to work on.
Personally, I think the show needs to make more use of Colbert's ability to ad-lib. First thing I'd do is make a rule: We tape in real time, no edits and less rehearsal. A late night show does not need prime-time polish. There ought to be moments which not only surprise the audience but the host as well. Second thing: At his old gig, Colbert often seemed to be bigger than his own series, turning up on other shows and in Washington and in the news, surprising us every which way. His new show's a good one but they fit him into standard talk show format instead of reinventing talk show format to fit him. I'd love to see him break out more. Hope that's what the new guy will help him do.
If you are an aspiring actor, make sure you read my buddy Ken Levine's piece about a scam that's taking mucho dinero from aspiring actors. It's all about casting directors and others of like profession charging people to audition. Oh — and read the Hollywood Reporter piece Ken links to, as well. This has been going on in various forms, some of them quite subtle for a long time but lately, it's gotten quite blatant and more costly. A casting director is paid to be up on the current talent pool and to know who's out there and what they can do and to find new talent. There's no justification for them taking money from that new talent.
Here's yet another of those articles where I share what little I know about the writing business just in case there's anyone out there who knows less. Part 1 can be read here, Part 2 can be read here, Part 3 can be read here, Part 4 can be read here, Part 5 can be read here, Part 6 can be read here and Part 7 can be read here. Part 8 begins now…
If you want to stop being an amateur writer, it helps to stop acting like one. This will probably not, in and of itself, get you work but it may remove an important obstacle that is making that less likely.
There are lots of amateurs around and there's a reason that some of them remain amateurs: Their work isn't that good. If you have never been in a position to hire writers and been deluged with submissions and applications, you may not realize how many people there are out there who want to be writers who aren't that good. It's probably more than you imagine.
Anyone who's in a position to hire writers or buy their work for any length of time has seen plenty of them. And if you in some way resemble them…well, you don't want to do that. It causes your submissions or samples to not be taken seriously and not given even the shortest of shrifts.
Every editor or producer has some indicators in this category. One of the most prevalent is a kind of mindless sense of oversell and bragging. Put simply, the top writers do not have to tell you how good their work is. If anyone will, it's their agents but they themselves don't feel a need to try and convince you. If anything, their work and their credits will convince you. Amateurs, however, usually think they have to. And then the potential buyer of your writing thinks, "He's pretty desperate so he's probably not very good."
I don't particularly enjoy being in a position to buy work from or hire other writers. Given the choice of one, I would much, much, much, much (add at least three more muches in there) be the writer than the editor. But occasionally, I have been in an editorial position and I was amazed, as stated above, how poor or inappropriate some of the submissions were. I was also amazed how many people tried to sell their writing with a sales pitch as opposed to letting their writing speak for them. The merits of the writing were all that interested me.
A very common mistake — I thought — was to quote what others had said. One applicant said in a cover letter, "Three different writing teachers told me my work was excellent. One said I had the potential to be the next Kurt Vonegutt." I of course wrote back to him that he couldn't be the next Kurt Vonnegut until he'd learned how to spell the first Kurt Vonnegut's name…and while I was at it, I also told him I wasn't looking for the next Kurt Vonnegut. The gig he was applying for, as he well knew, was writing for the Richie Rich cartoon show. Mr. Vonnegut was among my all-time favorite writers but I was not sitting there thinking, "Gee, I wish I could find the next Kurt Vonnegut because he'd be so ideally suited for Richie Rich."
Beyond all that, there's this: Why should I care in the slightest what three writing teachers I never heard of allegedly thought? There are writing teachers in this world who can't tell good writing from bad, and they certainly have no idea what I'm looking for. There are also writing teachers who will tell you your work is good because you're paying them…just as you have friends who'll tell you it's brilliant to make you feel good and/or to get you to go away.
You know what a lot of editors and producers think when you tell them how simply brilliant your work is? A lot of them feel insulted; like you think they're so dumb that that will mean something to them. They think to themselves, "Hey, pal…I'll decide if it's brilliant." They also worry that you may have a bit of an ego problem.
Remember that the person who's considering buying your writing or hiring you to write is asking him- or herself two questions. One is whether you're capable of producing work that fits their needs both in terms of style and quality. For the most part, they will make that decision based on reading your work, not on how you hype it. Then there's the other question, which pretty much comes down to "Can I work with this person?"
Will you be reliable? Will you give me grief if I tell you something needs a rewrite? Will we have the kind of rapport I need to have with someone? This is where what's on the paper isn't as important as how you come across. This is where being pushy or frighteningly in love with your own work may make someone think you might be trouble. Not long ago, a movie producer told me that she has found some good, new filmmakers for high-level projects by looking at low-budget student films. Of course though, that means sitting through a lot of bad ones.
We got to joking about how in such productions, the lower the budget is, the more times the people in charge will put their names in the credits. I don't remember the name of the guy about whom she told me the following but let's say it was Harvey Lipsitz. She said, "The film he made wasn't bad but the credits…oy! It said, 'Produced by Harvey Lipsitz, Directed by Harvey Lipsitz, Written by Harvey Lipsitz and Someone Else, Based on an Idea by Harvey Lipsitz, Cinematography by Harvey Lipsitz, Costume Design by Harvey Lipstiz, Music by Harvey Lipsitz…' He probably ordered lunch delivered himself just so he could put down 'Catering by Harvey Lipsitz.' And then at the beginning of the film, he gave himself a possessive credit. It said 'Harvey Lipsitz's' before the title and at the end, it said 'A Harvey Lipsitz Film.' And this wasn't a joke."
She said it made her decide not to get into business with Harvey Lipsitz.
None of this is to suggest one should not promote and sell one's work and one's self. But just as a car salesman can sell you so aggressively that you think, "Gee, there must be something wrong with that Hyundai," a writer can sell his or her work in a way that makes you wonder if just maybe there's something wrong there. If you're going to sell, sell with a little class and wit and please, please don't sell so hard you appear desperate. Desperate is not a quality that makes people think, "Hey, this person must be a good writer." It makes them think you're an amateur.
That's longtime MAD Art Director Leonard Brenner in the photo at above left. It's another one of the many times he also functioned as a photo model.
Lenny was laid to rest Tuesday morning. Many of the magazine's staffers and contributors were present but not Nick Meglin, the longtime Assistant Editor and later Editor of MAD. No one alive worked longer and more closely with Lenny than Nick but Nick was in another state and unable to be there. Instead, he sent the following letter, which was read by Charles Kochman, executive editor at Harry N. Abrams Publishing and a member of the extended MAD family…
Beyond being a great friend to everyone in the MAD family, Lenny (known affectionately as "The Beard") held a unique place in the magazine's formative years. Along with the talented artists and writers who helped shape the look and voice of MAD, Lenny, together with the brilliant, free-spirited art director John Putnam, anchored the art department with solid execution, allowing the creative juices of the staff to flow freely, confident that whatever we came up with, they would make it work.
Lenny also contributed what can best be described as the voice of unreason. His comments were, for the most part, blunt, and at times uniquely decorated with detailed suggestions of what certain individuals should do with their anatomy.
While not an editorial idea man per se, Lenny maintained a throw-all-caution-to-the-wind attitude about what he thought we should be doing more of on the front covers of MAD. His brazen approach led to discussions from which several successful MAD covers emerged — along with one total disaster. During one long, boring cover conference going nowhere, Lenny finally stood up and with a colorful display of profanity stated that he had had it and was going to lunch. Seizing a similar escape route, I followed, flashing a middle-finger salutation saying, "Here's our next cover idea, guys — MAD, The Number One Magazine of Good Taste," and exited.
When everyone cracked up, Lenny did an about face and declared, "Now, that's a great cover idea!" He was dead serious and so insistent that several of creative team started to lean in his direction. I pleaded, "Hey guys, it's just a joke, let it go," but despite my protestation, the group voted to show the mock layout to our publisher, Bill Gaines, the final arbiter of covers (his one editorial involvement in the magazine's content).
Bill asked incredulously, "Do you really want to do this?" I said, "Not me, Bill!", prompting Lenny to describe me in a volley of adjectives of which "chicken-hearted bastard" was the most complimentary and mentionable in mixed audiences. He ended his tirade with, "…and people will be talking about this cover for years to come."
Bill shrugged and said, "Okay, I hope you're right about this, Beard." When magazine outlets, especially super markets and drug stores, saw that cover, they returned the bundles unopened. It proved to be our worst-selling issue of the seventies.
Afterward, Bill sometimes needled Lenny about this cover at one of the countless food orgies we enjoyed together. "Should we have a Burgundy or a Bordeaux tonight, Beard?" If Lenny answered "Burgundy," Bill would ask me, "What do you think, Meglin?" "Bordeaux, Bill." "Sorry, Beard," he would say as he ordered the Bordeaux. "I should have listened to Meglin on that finger cover!"
Lenny was known for being the Garlic King of MAD and would order an extra side dish of lightly sautéed garlic wherever we were, including Italy where garlic was already the prime ingredient. His reputation as such was especially beneficial when we were doubles partners through thirty-plus years of pitiful MAD tennis parties and trips. Lenny believed his prowess at the net kept our opponents at bay, while I claimed it was his breath that kept them anchored at the baseline.
Lenny was always appreciative of art and some of my fondest memories include the museums and galleries that he, Angelo Torres, and I visited, whether on MAD trips or on our own to D.C. and Philadelphia. Needless to say, great food was at least as important as the great art we traveled to experience.
Several weeks ago, Lenny's son Marc contacted Ange and me about his father's weakened condition. Both Ange and I called Lenny immediately. My call lasted longer than I expected. After a few laughs we talked about our plan to visit him in June. Lenny's energy level heightened considerably.
After a few days, Marc e-mailed a photograph of his father's response to my pep talk. It would be the last visual contact I would have of my beloved friend Lenny — giving me the finger. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Jonathan Chait comments on a pro-Trump newspaper endorsement from a newspaper run by a Trump relative. Hey, how could that possibly be biased? Anyway, its message is that Trump must be the perfect person to be president because he has all those supporters he has. And he'd be a much better president than Barack Obama because…wait. Didn't Barack Obama have even more supporters in the last two elections?
Nate Silver crunches the numbers on the remaining Republican primaries and comes to the conclusion that it all comes down to California on June 7. Trump could come up with the necessary 1,237 delegates to lock up the nomination, he could fall slightly short but be able to make it up by persuading uncommitted delegates or he could fall short enough to make that real difficult. At the moment, the third option is looking likely. This brings us to some scrambling that Jonathan Chait (him again) writes about here.
I still don't believe the Republicans are going to nominate — or even come close to nominating — anyone other than Donald or Ted. I especially don't believe this alleged strategy of getting people to vote for Cruz in order to stop Trump, and then bait-and-switch them to some other guy — unnamed now since Ryan took himself out of it. Sounds like a plan to make sure every single member of the party is pissed-off that his pick won fair and square and then got cheated out of the nomination. The only way it would work is if the "some other guy" is Dick Van Dyke since everybody loves Dick Van Dyke.
Much to do today, not enough time to do it in. So, election-wise, what do we think it's going to be? All the Donald Trump supporters screaming that their guy won it fair and square and had it stolen by Ted Cruz? All the Bernie Sanders supporters yelling that their guy won it but it was stolen by Hillary Clinton? Both? I get the feeling someone's going to insist someone cheated.
Last night, I had a conversation with a Sanders supporter who thinks there's something terribly wrong with a system where Bernie can win the last seven caucuses and primaries and not be way ahead of Hillary. Sanders is probably the guy I most want to see win but I do recognize that he's trailing by a wide margin in delegates — and not that it's the determining factor — total votes as well.
There are a lot of folks out there talking about how the system is unfair and should be changed once their party's convention convenes. These people, of course, are all backing someone who's behind. No one in the lead ever thinks the system is flawed…or if they do, they keep it to themselves. So the question becomes which of the two is less fair: The system as it stands or changing it in mid-game because someone doesn't like the way it's going? I have no answer for this. I'm tempted to wish they'd just do whatever's going to get this election over with sooner.
Whoops! Look at the time! Gotta get ready to go somewhere. Hey, before I skedaddle: How come I can order something from Amazon and they have it here in what seems like twenty minutes…and if I don't like it, I can make like two clicks on their website and send it back for a refund in two minutes…but if they accidentally shorted me an item (I ordered three of something and they delivered two), that takes forever to rectify? And then they don't want to send me the missing item. They want to refund my money and let me order the missing item anew? Strange system. Gotta run. Another installment of "Rejected" tomorrow in this space.
My favorite stand-up comedian working today is probably Lewis Black and I really enjoy his TV series. What? You didn't know Lewis Black has a TV show? Well, he sort of does. It appears every time he does a stand-up date. He and his opening act John Bowman go to some city and they each do their acts. Then a video camera is turned on and Black does a 15-25 minute webcast that's broadcast live on the Internet. It's usually just him answering questions submitted from the audience in the theater and at home. Some nights, it's better than others but it's different every time he does it and I always find it worth watching.
If you want to watch live, you first of all have to find out when he's doing a stand-up appearance, which you can do on this page of his website…or better still, subscribe to his Twitter feed. On it, he or someone posts the approximate time each webcast will start. Then you can watch on this page.
But you don't have to watch live. On that page when he isn't webcasting, you can watch the last few shows. This is all free. If you pay to join his fan club, you can view all the past webcasts and also get better seats for his live appearances, plus other perks.
I've mentioned this before but I don't think I stressed how wonderful some of these videos are. Also, the web address has changed so I wanted to give you all the new one. When he's good, he's really good.
Back in the sixties, the makers of Contadina Tomato Paste claimed — in commercials created by the great Stan Freberg — that they "put eight great tomatoes in each little bitty can." This prompted MAD magazine to do a parody ad showing the hapless chef who had to do that.
But right now, we don't care about tomato paste or the ad. We care about the guy in the above photo. His goateed face should be familiar to everyone who read MAD back then because it was always turning up in photo features for the publication. As a kid reading MAD back then, I wondered who he was. Answer: He was Leonard Brenner, the Production Manager and later Art Director for MAD and someone who made an enormous contribution to it.
"The Beard" (that was his nickname) didn't write or draw articles in the same way as most MAD contributors you could name but he touched almost every page between 1958 when he joined the magazine and 1995 when he retired. Aside from publisher William M. Gaines, Lenny's name appeared on MAD's masthead more than anyone else's.
His sense of humor and painstaking attention to design and detail were often evident, especially when the staff had to replicate a piece of someone else's advertising or mimic the look and feel of another publication. He and his longtime colleague John Putnam made sure MAD always looked good and always got to press on time. He was also a delightful, funny gentleman, dearly loved by everyone else at MAD. He passed away last Saturday and those who knew him are really, really sad about that. If you ever met the man, you understand why.
I have the feeling that this whole thing is going to come down to a fight over the interpretation and modification of party rules; that Trump will be arguing he's got it won and that Cruz and other opponents will be arguing that he hasn't. And both sides will be pushing to clarify and change rules that will make their position so.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Chait notes that Paul Ryan is positioning himself to represent a saner, more traditional Republican party as its spokesperson if not its nominee. But Ryan's platform is still pretty much to take from the poor, give to the rich and "We'll unveil a great Obamacare alternative any day." Ryan is among the many Republicans who've been promising that great Obamacare alternative "any day now" for six or seven years. They'll probably still be promising it "any day now" six or seven years from today.
Lastly for now: Last week, Paul Krugman penned a column arguing that Bernie Sanders is wrong when he says "Break up the big banks." Matt Taibbi has since written a piece that says Krugman is wrong and Sanders is right. I hope you know which of them is right because I sure don't.
