Monthly Archives: August 2016

Ken Levine has a great guest post from writer-producer Tom Straw, who knew Gene Wilder in a way that you envy.

Boy, I wish I had a personal Gene Wilder story. I met him only once for about two minutes and didn't even have time to tell him how absolutely marvelous he was in everything he did but especially in The Producers and Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and — oh, hell — everything he did. He was in some bad movies but he was never bad in anything.

I would have told him that. I might have told him that I've heard more than one actor and acting teacher suggest that actors who want to better themselves would do well to watch a movie with Gene Wilder in it and pay particular attention to him in a scene when someone else is speaking, someone else has the focus. He was always acting in those moments too, reacting or listening in perfect character and supporting the scene with his presence. A lot of good actors are good when they have something to do. Gene Wilder was good all the time.

And I'm not sure what else I would have told him. I heard him speak a few times and I remember he was asked, "When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?" He replied, "I wanted to be whatever Danny Kaye was" and I thought that was a great answer. I also thought he'd achieved it. If Danny Kaye had been younger and easier to work with, wouldn't they have cast him as Willy Wonka? He would have been great. But Gene Wilder was better.

The above photo is (of course) from The Andy Griffith Show, a series that has had one of the most stunning afterlives of anything that ever appeared on television. There probably isn't a moment any day in this country when some station somewhere isn't airing a rerun and though five of its eight seasons were in black-and-white, people are watching. The man in the picture is Don Knotts and the lady is Betty Lynn, who played his lady friend, Thelma Lou.

Betty Lynn now resides in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, a town which has patterned certain streets after Mayberry, the fictional city in which The Andy Griffith Show took place. For years, various Mt. Airy events and promotions would fly Betty in to be a guest and its citizens and tourists were thrilled to meet her. She finally decided to move there and now she spends a lot of time making personal appearances, posing for photos, signing autographs and telling people about that iconic TV series.

She's doing a lot of it today. Today is Betty's 90th birthday. I hear they have her booked for a full day of parties and honors and signings and personal appearances…and given the time difference, she'll probably have done about eight of them by the time I get this piece posted to my blog.

When she finally gets back to her home there, I hope someone has delivered the flowers I sent her. Yeah, other people are doubtlessly sending her gifts and flowers but they can't possibly love her as much as I love her. Here's a photo that may help explain why…

That's a photo of Betty that I took when I was around fourteen years old. I took it in my back yard and it's of her in her back yard. Betty was my neighbor when I was growing up.

You may have an "aunt" or "uncle" to whom you are not actually related but you feel like you are. Betty was like an aunt to me — a wonderful, sweet aunt who was always doing things for me. I always tried to be a good "nephew" and do things for her.

Our homes were not far from the Twentieth-Century Fox movie studio in West Los Amgeles. Fox had her under contract starting in 1947 and her first two movies, both released in 1948 were Sitting Pretty, which also starred Clifton Webb, Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young, and June Bride, featuring Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis. In 1950, her family bought that house and in 1953, the Evaniers moved into the home next door with their one-year-old son, me.

The Lynns were wonderful neighbors, always coming to our aid and vice-versa. One time back when I was in high school, another kid punched me in the mouth. I'm not sure why he did that…maybe because I had punched him in the mouth first. (He's still the only person I've ever struck in my 64 years.) Anyway, the school nurse helped stop my gums from bleeding and being over-cautious, she suggested that I go see my orthodontist and have him check the damage. My parents were both working so when I got home, I went next door and got Betty to drive me to Dr. Seltzer's office in Beverly Hills where he said everything was fine.

A day or two later, I got to return the favor. Betty had locked herself out of her house and I knew how to jimmy open a certain window, climb in and open the front door from the inside. She locked herself out at least a dozen times over the years. I got to be pretty good at breaking into her house.

One time, she and her mother went off on a trip to Europe and her mother somehow left a big pot of ox-tail soup cooking on the stove. Her mother was the sweetest woman who ever walked this world but she was sometimes a bit — shall we say? — forgetful.

A few days after their departure, my mother came running into my room in a panic and said, "I think the Lynns' house is on fire!" There was a thick, black smoke billowing out of all the windows near the kitchen that had been left open a crack. My mother called the Fire Department but by the time they got there, I had broken into the house, made my way through the smoke to the kitchen and turned off the soup. Most heroic thing I ever did in my life. I would have done anything for the Lynns.

I'll tell some other stories about my lovely ex-neighbor one of these days. Right now, I just want to wish her the Happiest of Nineties. She really is an amazing lady.

As an actress, she did lots of things besides playing Thelma Lou. She was in quite a few movies, including Meet Me in Las Vegas, which I wrote about here. She was in quite a few TV shows, including Texas John Slaughter, which I wrote about here. I'm glad they're celebrating her entire career today. You can read about the celebration and about her life in this article.

In it, you'll notice they say that her home in West L.A. was robbed twice, which helped prompt her move to North Carolina. Yes, I was good at breaking into that house but I have airtight alibis for both dates. Besides, I would never have done anything to harm this woman. She was…and still is so wonderful.

We — and by "we" of course, I mean "me" — would like to see Comic-Con International remain in San Diego forever and ever. It's the perfect town for an event like that and as I've explained in other messages here like this one, I think the con would be greatly harmed by relocation elsewhere. I've also said that I think it will remain there indefinitely as long as the city doesn't do something really, really stupid.

Something really, really stupid might be to pass Measure C on the November ballot in that town. Measure C would raise San Diego hotel taxes by more than $1 billion to build a new NFL stadium and convention center annex in downtown S.D. It would be the new home to the Chargers and would keep that team in San Diego for decades to come. It would also make a ton of money for the owners of the Chargers and would put the city on the hook for all sorts of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls. Has anyone ever built a stadium and convention center without cost overruns and revenue shortfalls?

Now in the interest of Full Disclosure, I should probably stop here and tell how I feel about football. I don't care about football. In fact, I can't think of too many things I care about less than football. I don't just mean I wouldn't care if my local team moved away. I wouldn't care if the whole sport ceased to exist. If you love it: Fine, great, whatever. Its extinction wouldn't bother me and I'd be happy if cities in this country no longer raised taxes and cut social services and schools in order to ram more tax money up the buttocks of zillionaire team owners, lest they take their lucrative franchises elsewhere.

It sounds to me like Measure C could cause San Diego to lose a fortune and maybe have to divert money that should be used for street repairs and other civic improvements. It also could be very bad for the continued future of Comic-Con in that burg. They might be able to find a way to carry on there but they also might not.

Not being a San Diego resident, I can't vote on Measure C but I'm sure someone reading this can. For more info, this website has been set up by opponents of the measure. And this article summarizes what the whole battle is about and will link you to a piece giving the Chargers' view of all this. It sounds to me like the Chargers' view is that they'll make acres of cash from this new stadium and that they feel about the well-being of San Diego the way I feel about football.

This is another bunch of men performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

There's a Red Skelton movie called A Southern Yankee in which he plays a spy who goes back and forth between being a soldier for the North and a soldier for the South. At one point, he has to walk the battlefield between the warring factions and he gets cheers from both armies because he's wearing a uniform that is half-and-half — a Yankee costume on one side, a Rebel costume on the other, plus he's carrying a flag that is North on one side, South on the other. So each army sees him as a patriot for their team. It's a great joke, one that is often attributed to Buster Keaton, who was employed as a gagman on this and other Skelton films.

And I keep thinking of it as I hear Donald Trump attempting to walk the line on Immigration, trying to convince one side he'll throw "criminal illegal immigrants" outta the U.S. within an hour of being sworn in as prez but also trying to convince folks who are against mass deportations that he is, as well. It didn't work for Skelton and it won't work for Trump.

Here's a piece about just a few of the many, many TV shows that cannot be rerun today because someone didn't have the foresight to preserve the tapes or films. The one on this list that's really a shame is The Shari Lewis Show, which was on Saturday morn from 1960 'til 1963…and which I remember as a wonderful, clever program full of great stories and songs. Some of it has been preserved though. I wrote about it here and linked you to a few brief clips.

Jack Kirby would have been 99 years old today. I write and talk a lot about the man because I think a lot about the man and I get asked a lot about the man.

I like that people seem to be getting that while he was an extraordinary artist, the great drawing was an extension of something more remarkable about Jack: He was a great thinker. He had ideas and visions and insights on a whole different level from the way most of us have ideas and visions and insights. Jack's were vast and prescient and always about what he called The Big Picture.

A teacher I had back in high school used to say that the mark of a great writer was not fully evident when you read their work but rather when you re-read their work. Was there something there the second time you didn't get at first read? The third time? The tenth? Because, she said, a great writer sets you to thinking about the characters and the concepts…and as you think, you get more and more out of what's on the paper.

I was 17 when I met Jack. At the time, I admired how he drew. Just about everyone did. But working for him for a few years and knowing him for the rest of his life, I came to more admire how he thought. A fellow I knew back then — a devout Marvel fan — went out and paid a visit to the Kirbys, who were sometimes way too hospitable in terms of inviting strangers into their home. The fan had but one goal: He wanted a free, original sketch from Jack.

Didn't want to talk to him. Didn't want to ask him questions. He just wanted Jack to do him a drawing, preferably of all his favorite Marvel heroes in a big crowd scene.

He came away disappointed that he didn't get it. Jack did do a lot of free sketches for people over the years, largely because he liked pleasing people. But he cut way, way back on that in the seventies because of several incidents where he realized that all he was doing was giving someone something they could and would sell for a lot of money. His profession — writing and drawing comic books — did not pay him so well that he could indulge in that kind of philanthropy; not when he was constantly worried about being able to provide for his own family.

So instead of spending a half-hour drawing something magnificent for his visitor, Jack spent a couple of hours talking with the guy, telling him stories, etc. The fan left angry, unaware he'd been given something far more valuable than a pencil sketch of The Hulk.

You cannot go visit Jack since we lost him back in 1994. Still, a pretty high percentage of his work remains in print or is easy to find because it was recently in print and will soon be again. It has a wonderful endurance and an ability to speak to new generations, far more so than other concurrently-created work which was perhaps more celebrated at the time. I like reading Jack over and over and damned if there isn't something new there every time I revisit a story I read before. It's not as good as actually talking to him but it's still pretty good.

At the moment, I'm revisiting a lot of his staggering output because I'm trying to finish a long-promised book that will tell the world everything I know about Jack. When you see it, which I hope will be some time next year for his centennial, you will understand why it took so long. Some of that is because I had to keep stopping work on it to wait out certain legal matters. Most of it is because he is such an awesome subject that it takes a lot of pages and a lot of thinking to get anywhere near close to The Big Picture.

Happy 99, Kirby. I just started to write, "You left us too soon" but with someone like you, any time is too soon. I'm so glad we still have so much of you around — what you did and what you inspired.

This is a whole bunch of people in sequins performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Ol' pal Andy Ihnatko wrote in about the Marvin Kaplan Story I posted here the otherday…

What an amazing story you posted this morning! It left me with a couple of questions, though I imagine that they're unanswerable. I'm blown away that he tried the same trick twice, even after it cost his client a job the first time. Do agents of that ilk have terrible memories, or are they just that dumb?

And have you ever wanted to reach out to one of these clients about their rep's behavior? I have a book agent and I'd hate to learn at her funeral that I was the top pick to write George Lucas' official biography, but she insisted that I get cast as Darth Andy in a future film and made it a dealbreaker.

Your story reminded me of something that occurred to me while listening to an interview with the principal screenwriter of WALL*E. He talked about how everything clicked into place when he happened to listen to that song from Hello, Dolly and how intensely he and the rest of the team hoped Pixar/Disney could make a deal to use it. I immediately imagined a Broadway Danny Rose type of agent, fantasizing that he was back in the good old days when he routinely held the big boys' feet to the fire, smelled blood and an infinite checkbook in Disney…and ruined everything.

Ego is a terrible thing when aimed in the wrong direction, isn't it?

There are agents who harm clients' careers by being greedy. More often in Hollywood, I think that happens with managers who don't just want to get their clients a job but want to get one for themselves.

A friend of mine, a stand-up comic, was picked for a regular role on a new situation comedy. It was not the lead role, but it was a good one and the money offered was quite acceptable — or at least, it would have been had the offer reached my friend. When they called his manager to present it, he did not check with his client before demanding twice as much, plus he [the manager] had to be credited as Executive Producer and paid even more. The show said hell, no. The manager stood firm. The show hired someone else for the role.

That kind of thing happens a lot but I'll tell you what happens more often: The client and agent playing Good Cop/Bad Cop with the agent as Bad Cop. In the story I told, we don't know (and will never know) if it was the actor calling the shots, telling the agent what to demand. Sometimes, especially when the actor has a rep for being nice and easy-going, it's because he stays out of those battles, pretends he's totally uninvolved and lets his agent be the heavy.

The actor may have been unaware of what his agent was doing. Or maybe the actor told his agent, "I don't want to do any jobs for under X dollars." That's a perfectly ethical thing to say. Everyone has the right to set his or her own price. There are even offers in this world so low, I won't accept them.

The actor may have done that and the agent, wanting to earn a commission, may have been trying to manipulate me into an offer that his client would accept. Or maybe the actor was telling the agent, "Agree to it, then call them at the last minute and raise the money." There are people who do that. There was a famous stand-up comedian who was notorious for trying stunts like that. His agent would agree to, say, $1000 for the gig. Then the client would show up at the job, ask to confirm the fee and when told what it was, feign shock: "That's not possible! I don't work for that and my agent knows it! Either you pay me $2500 or I walk right out that door!" Occasionally, he got away with it, getting a small raise if not the whole thing.

Come to think of it, I had a comic book artist do that to me once back when I was editing funnybooks. He agreed on the rate and accepted the job…then he handed it in late and knowing I was desperate to get the material to press, told me we'd agreed on a different, higher fee. We argued and I told him I was paying what I said I was paying and he backed down. Later, he apologized and told me that one of his mentors — a rather famous comic artist — had told him to always try that.

While I was writing the above, this message came in from Jim Houghton…

The ethics-challenged agent for the unnamed actor may have been using these tricks with his client's full knowledge, but it seems like maybe not. Is there any ethical and/or socially acceptable way for you, as a producer, to check with the actor and let him know what happened? Obviously, a producer going around an agent to "talk" to an actor directly is potentially an ethical red flag. But if the guy was not that famous and maybe didn't have enough work, and if his agent was losing jobs the actor needed through the use of sleazy tactics, well, it sure feels like the actor is entitled to know. And of course, one can imagine what the agent might have said to his client: "Sorry, this Evanier guy cancelled your job at the last minute again!" So you may even have had a personal reason to let the guy know what really occurred.

I suspect I know the answer to my question — no, unless you run into the guy and he asks what happened, you can't reasonably take pro-active action. But this isn't like going out of your way to let a friend know their spouse is cheating on them (not necessarily a "favor"), and — if the agent had, say, asked for a kickback, I assume it would be your moral or even legal responsibility to let the actor know. Still, this wasn't fraud in the stricter sense. How does it work in this case?

You answered your own question: Unless you run into the guy and he asks what happened, you do nothing. The actor has a right to designate the person who is going to negotiate on his behalf. If he picked wrong — if the agent is not representing his interests the way he wants them represented — it's his problem, not mine. It's not ethical to go around the agent (or lawyer or manager) to the client and it isn't like a child who is disciplined by Mommy rushing to Daddy to see if he can get better treatment. It's trying to change the rules of the negotiation. You shouldn't do that.

Now, if the actor had contacted me directly and asked, "Could you tell me why I didn't get that job?"…well, that's different. I should also have mentioned that I believe this agent had represented this actor for quite a long time. That led me to believe that the actor knew he was setting his price higher than the market might suggest, even if he didn't know about the last-minute extortion attempts. There are actors who would rather do two or three high-paying jobs a year than twenty jobs for scale that would collectively pay a lot more.

If I had to guess, that's what I'd guess…but like so many things in life, we'll never know for sure.

It must be tough to be a Trump backer these days. There are a few polls like this one that show him neck 'n' neck with Hillary or even a point up…but clearly he and his campaign are behaving like they believe the vast majority of surveys. I don't think there are any sites tracking the state polls that don't show Clinton with at least a near-lock on the Electoral College and there are many that say she's got it with 10+ point advantages in enough states.

It's also getting tougher to define what it is that he stands for and to say with a straight face that he's a straight talker. I thought the one issue on which he'd never budge or backpedal was immigration…and I don't think anyone is clear as to what his position is on that at the moment. It seems to vary from hour to hour depending on which audience he's addressing.

The other day when Trump was addressing the imaginary black voters who will swing to him en masse and boost him from 2% black support to — oh, I dunno, maybe 3%? — he was shouting at them, "What the hell do you have to lose?" I keep thinking that that's his new mantra for campaigning. No matter what insane, groundless accusation someone can invent about Hillary Clinton, he might as well hurl it because what the hell does he have to lose?

It looks like despite some waffling, he'll be in the debates after all because, you know, what the hell does he have to lose?

This is a whole bunch of people performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Well, it's sort of about Marvin. He's in it, anyway. But first, it's about the kind of agent who gives that profession the reputation of a Zika-carrying mosquito, only lower.

I used to write and voice direct the CBS Saturday morning animated series, Garfield and Friends. It was one of the best jobs I ever had, in part because once we started getting decent ratings, I was granted a lot of power and control. I had a great relationship with Jim Davis, creator and controller of The Cat. I also had a great relationship with the folks over at the network.

The second of these is the impressive one. Everyone who's worked with Jim for any length of time has had a good relationship with him. A good relationship with the execs at a major television network…ah, that's not so common. Basically though, I could write whatever I wanted — within reason. And I could cast any actor I wanted to have do voices — within budget. We had a set fee we paid our guest actors and only a few people I tried to hire were not fine with that amount.

This gave me the opportunity to engage actors whose work I'd always loved and many of those actors had appeared in my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Elsewhere on this blog, you will only find a few billion places where I express my fondness for this film. Among the thespians who appeared in Mad World and who also did at least one episode of Garfield and Friends were Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Stan Freberg, Arnold Stang, Don Knotts, Lennie Weinrib, Jesse White…and Marvin Kaplan. As our story begins, I had yet to hire Marvin, though I certainly intended to. I just hadn't gotten around yet to writing an episode with a Marvin Kaplan type character in it.

I had, however, just written a script with a role for another actor who had a small part in Mad World. For the purposes of this story, he shall remain nameless. I found out who his agent was, called the man, explained what we wanted and when we wanted him and what we paid. The agent tried to dicker with me over the money but I stopped him. I said, "This is what we pay for this kind of role and it's been fine with dozens of other actors over the years we've been on the air. I'm afraid it's Take It or Leave It. I'm not empowered to go any higher."

The agent called his client, then called me back and they accepted. Something seemed a bit odd to me about the agent's attitude so after we hung up, I faxed him a memo confirming our agreement. It stated the amount we'd be paying, the name of the studio where we were recording and its address, the call time, etc. We would be recording the following Tuesday.

I assumed everything was set. I assumed wrongly.

Monday evening at 6:05 PM, the agent called me and said, "I believe you wanted my client tomorrow at 9 AM. Let's firm up what you're paying him." I looked at the clock, saw what time it was and knew exactly what was happening.

I said, "We're paying him the amount you and I agreed upon, which is the same amount I put down in the fax I sent you shortly after our last phone conversation." The agent denied ever receiving a fax from me and denied that he'd agreed to any dollar figure. If we didn't settle on one now, his client was not showing up the next morning at nine.

If you haven't figured out the 6:05 part yet, allow me to explain: Agencies close at various times but most are closed by 6:00. He was hoping that it was too late for me to call another agency and book someone else. He was further hoping that not having someone to play that role at 9 AM would screw up my recording session and cause me enough problems that I'd agree there and then to a higher amount.

I told him what the job paid. He told me that amount was an insult to his client, who never worked for that kind of money. I named some actors who were much bigger stars than his client who'd been on the show working for that money. He told me his client was a much bigger star than any of them, which was not even close to true. He told me what I'd have to pay to have his client there the next morning. I told him I wasn't permitted to pay above the price I'd cited and I said, "If your client doesn't work for that kind of money, he doesn't work for that kind of money. I'll go find someone who does." End of call.

This was not all that gutsy on my part. I knew a dozen actors well enough that I could call them at home if I couldn't reach their agents just then. I could also rearrange the schedule for the next day's recording session and move the 9 AM episode to later in the day. That would give me time to call another agency in the morning and book someone else to be there in the afternoon.

But I didn't have to do that because I immediately phoned Paul Doherty, the man I considered the best, smartest voiceover agent in the business. It was 6:15 and Paul was still in his office. His secretary had left so he answered his phone himself. "An agent with a lot less ethics than you have just tried to pull the 6:05 PM trick on me," I told him. He knew exactly what I was talking about. "Who have you got who might not be working tomorrow morning?"

Paul read off a list of about ten names and I probably could have hired any of them…but when he got to Marvin Kaplan, I decided he was perfect. Paul knew what we paid and had the integrity to abide by an oral agreement…so when he said, "Great. I'll have Marvin there at nine," I knew Marvin would be there at nine. Actually, he was there at eight but I'll get to that. First, I have to tell you that at 6:25 PM that same evening, the agent for the other guy in Mad World — the one who didn't work for what we paid — called me back.

He said, "I've got to apologize. I looked next to the fax machine and I found the fax you sent the other day. It must've fallen out of the machine and behind the stand, and on it, you did specify the amount. My client never works for this kind of money but I just talked it over with him and we both feel that, since there was this confusion and part of it was my fault for not noticing the fax earlier and calling you, we should make an exception this one time."

I said, "That's very decent of you but you don't need to make that sacrifice. I've already booked someone else. Please tell your client I very much admire his work and I'm sorry we won't be working together." The agent did not sound happy.

Now as I mentioned in the obit on Marvin, he had a lot of trouble with his eyes. He showed up at the recording session an hour early, hoping that he could get his script and study it so that he wouldn't make too many mistakes. One of the marks of a true professional is that he or she does everything possible to not cause problems for their employers and co-workers, and Marvin was very much a professional. In fact, he was a professional with a big magnifying glass with which he hoped to go over the script we would give him.

The problem was that I wasn't there at 8 AM. No one was except our producer Bob Nesler who had piles of the nine scripts we'd be recording that day. Marvin asked him if he could have a copy of the script he was in…and since Bob didn't know which one that was, he gave Marvin a stack containing all nine. Marvin reportedly reacted in horror to all that paper. Then he scurried off and found an empty office in the studio and began reading them all, trying to find the Marvin Kaplan role.

A little before nine, I arrived for the session and all the other actors strolled in. By 9:05, we had everyone but Marvin. I knew he was a pro so I decided to wait for him, rather than start on some other script. When he hadn't shown at 9:15, I called his agency and a junior agent there told me he'd been given the proper call time and it was quite unlike Marvin to be late.

At 9:30, I told Nesler I'd decided to start on some other script since Marvin Kaplan was late. He said, "Oh, Marvin's not late. He was here at eight o'clock."

I quickly searched the studio and found Marvin sitting at a desk in an empty office, looking panicky as he paged through script after script with his magnifying glass, trying to learn every part that might have been his. I greeted him and showed him which role it was and he said, "Oh, I was afraid of that. That character has an awful lot of lines and I don't see very well and…"

I pulled out a script I'd printed out just for him. It had VERY LARGE TYPE and I asked him, "Will this help?"

He flipped through it, gave me a big grin and said, "Mr. DeMille…I'm ready for my close-up."

We recorded that script in the usual amount of time. Marvin took two or three takes for a few lines but not many. His first reading was almost always perfect and I was kinda glad that the other guy had uncast himself the way he did.

Hey, wanna see it? You'll have to hurry because I'm linking to an egregious copyright violation and at this very moment, lawyers are probably doing whatever it is one does to get something yanked from YouTube. But if it's still there, you can enjoy Marvin Kaplan in the title role of "Angel Puss"…

Wasn't he great? If his voice hadn't been so distinctive, I wouldn't have felt I had to wait a while before hiring him again to play a different character.

There's actually more to this story but it doesn't involve Marvin. A few days after the recording session, the agent for the actor who didn't work for what we paid called and told me his client would work for what we paid. "He really likes your show and wants to be a part of it," said the agent.

I didn't know if the client was complicit in the last minute extortion or if it was just the agent trying to up his commission money and show off for the actor. I decided to give the actor the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was good at what he did and he was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. So I said, "I don't have anything now but the next time I write a role that I think suits him, I'll give you a call."

Some months later, I did. I called the agent, reminded him of the fee we paid and we made a verbal deal. I faxed him another memo and this time, he phoned me back to acknowledge receipt and to say his client would be in the proper place at the proper time. You can probably guess what happened when my phone rang at 6:05 PM — of all times! — the night before that recording session.

This time, it was: "There was some misunderstanding between my client and me. I know I agreed to the money and I thought he had…but I just called to remind him of the call time and he asked me what the job paid. When I told him, he said, 'I won't do it. That's less than I've ever gotten before!' and…well, I think I can get him to show up if you could just give me a little help in the money department here. Just a 50% bump, that's all. That's still way less than he got for a job last week…"

I said, "Let me put you on hold for a minute." I put him on hold, called Paul Doherty and asked him who he had who was available the next day. Paul said, "How about Buddy Hackett? He was in here a half-hour ago asking me to get him more animation work." I said I'd take him and then I went back to the non-ethical agent and told him, "Your client is off the hook. I just booked Buddy Hackett for the money your guy won't work for. You know Buddy Hackett. The guy who's on with Johnny Carson tonight and who's headlining at Caesars Palace in Vegas starting Friday? Bye!"

And of course, Buddy Hackett was fine. He was a very funny man and he even told me and the rest of the cast and crew a number of great dirty jokes. He was also a much bigger star than the sleazy agent's client, plus Buddy was one of the major stars of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, as opposed to the guy he replaced on our show, who was a bit player in the film. I think that alone makes the end of this whole story just about perfect.

Dear, sweet, funny Marvin Kaplan passed away in his sleep either early this morning or late last night. He was 89 and he was still acting and producing and writing, right up until either early this morning or late last night.

You might know him from his recurring role on the TV series, Alice. You might know him as the voice of many cartoon characters, including Choo Choo on Top Cat. You might know him from his roles in movies, including The Great Race, The Nutty Professor (the original), Wake Me When It's Over and so many more, including hundreds of guest roles on television and before that, radio.

You must know him from his role in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World as one of the two attendants — Arnold Stang was the other — who demolished an entire gas station brawling with Jonathan Winters. After Mickey Rooney passed, Marvin became the "person in that movie who was still alive and had the largest role." (I believe that honor now passes to Carl Reiner or if we count screen time instead of lines, Barrie Chase.) Marvin loved turning out for the many Mad World "reunion" panels at screenings and he was as funny at them as he was in the film.

Marvin was — like you couldn't guess from his accent — from Brooklyn where he graduated law school, decided he didn't want to be a lawyer and in 1947 moved out to Hollywood to try and get work writing for radio and perhaps break into playwriting. Acting was something he thought might be fun to try, also. He got a job as stage manager at the Circle Theater, which was mounting a play directed by Charlie Chaplin. Later, he got a small role in a play at the Circle and one night, Katharine Hepburn came to see it.

She recommended Marvin for a part in the movie she was then starting…and as a result, Marvin Kaplan made his screen debut in Adam's Rib, starring Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, directed by George Cukor. After that, there was no stopping him. He landed or was offered role after role, including a regular part on Meet Millie, which was a popular radio program from 1951 to 1954 and later a TV series. He was rarely out of acting work until late in life when he was confined to a wheelchair. And he was not all that unhappy about not acting much because it gave him time to write and direct plays and films.

I was so pleased to know Marvin and to direct him on a number of cartoon shows. You want to know how you directed Marvin Kaplan? You told him, as I did, "Try to sound like Marvin Kaplan." He'd usually respond, "I'll do my best" and he always did. The only difficulty we had — and he was well worth this minor accommodation — is that we had to print out a Large Type version of the script for him because his eyes were very poor. (We had to do that for Don Knotts, too.) Even with that handicap, he was great on darn near every take.

Marvin actually talked like that in real life and he was bursting with great anecdotes. He'd worked with everyone and remembered everything worth remembering. Though he played nebbishy characters on screen, that was not Marvin. He was a man of great passions and integrity, who was known to be quite militant about political causes and issues within the Screen Actors Guild.

He even occasionally played roles that were not what you'd think of as Marvin Kaplan roles. I once saw him portray a serious, outraged rabbi in a production of The Dybbuk by S. Ansky. You would never have known it was him without a glance at the Playbill — and even then, you would not have believed it.

You can learn more about him at his website or by reading Kliph Nesteroff's fine interviews with the man. Here's Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.

Just a fine actor and a fine gentleman. If you never got to meet him, I'm sorry. You would have found him to be delightful. Absolutely delightful.

For my pal Steve Stoliar: This is a whole bunch of men performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…