Monthly Archives: September 2016

• Trump won't release taxes or medical records or even explain his secret plan to defeat ISIS. But Hillary's the one who's hiding stuff.

The other day here, I mentioned a Red Skelton movie called A Southern Yankee, which was made in 1948. My buddy Tom Galloway suggested I mention to you that it's on Turner Classic Movies this evening as part of their Slapstick Festival. On my set (it may be different on yours), it starts at 11 PM following The Bank Dick with W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I don't think Mr. Fields, Mssrs. Abbott and Costello or Mr. Skelton were in any movies that were much better than those.

Another great of comedy was represented in A Southern Yankee. At the time, Buster Keaton was out of favor with audiences…or maybe just the folks who then ran studios. He was also out of money so he worked as an uncredited gagman on a lot of movies, this one included. You don't sense the Keaton mind in many of the others but you sure do in this one.

As I wrote here, I once had the chance to hang out with Red Skelton once or twice a week for a while. I kept peppering him with questions about his work and he kept telling me dirty jokes — often the same dirty jokes, each time I encountered him. At the time, Buster Keaton's features were just becoming available to me for viewing at local film fests so I asked Skelton over and over about Keaton. Over and over, Skelton would say something like, "Oh, great comedian but a very sad little man. Oh, so this nun runs into two sailors on shore leave…"

In other words, I didn't get a lot out of them about working with Keaton. But I did hear the story about the parrot in the whorehouse four times, including twice in one encounter.

Anyway, those are three fine comedies there…and the Skelton one is followed by The Inspector General, one of Danny Kaye's better efforts. Then comes Always Leave Them Laughing, which starred Milton Berle and Bert Lahr. This is not one of anyone's better efforts but it does have some nice scenes with Lahr. I wrote about this movie here.

Speaking of Keaton: When he was at his best, he was the best…and on Saturday evening, TCM is running what I think is the best film he ever made and one of the best anyone ever made. It's The General and like most comedies, it's a lot better when you're sharing the experience with a live audience. If you can only watch it on your home TV with a friend or two or even alone…well, you'll enjoy it but try some time to catch it on a big screen with a big audience. Even better.

Keith Olbermann has a new show on the web. Once he gets fired from this one, he's going to just go door-to-door and rant in folks' living rooms.

None of that however means he's wrong in most of what he says. I'd quibble with a few of his statements about Donald Trump here but even if you throw out anything even slightly questionable, it's still a helluva case against the Republican nominee…

When Jersey Boys vacates the August Wilson Theater in New York next year, it will be followed there by a musical based on the movie Groundhog Day. The producers plan to begin previews of the show in March…and then in the spirit of the film, the actors will do the same thing over and over and over and over…

Here's a replay of a piece I stuck up here on 5/13/10, a month before the Little Orphan Annie strip went bye-bye. This one got a few people mad at me and wondering if lack of cole slaw in my diet had made me demented. Others wrote to say I'd said something they were thinking but it seemed kind of unAmerican to admit to not loving Little Orphan Annie. If nothing else, I helped make it safe for those who want to admit to that…

The Little Orphan Annie newspaper strip ends on June 13. It started August 5, 1924, the creation of cartoonist Harold Gray, and I have to say that its appeal has long eluded me. I know its popularity had something to do with the taste then for Horatio Alger melodrama and that it really became a smash during the Great Depression…but I never understood why people of that era were so infatuated with the thing.

It's nice to think that an affluent industrialist might take in a poor, parentless waif…but Daddy Warbucks always seemed like the worst kind of rich guy to me, filled as he was with patronizing speeches about how if you're not wealthy, it could only be because you haven't worked hard enough. It also never struck me that Annie had a particulary happy life. She always managed to look sad and homeless, even though her dialogue was peppered with clichés of optimism and hope. And of course, every few weeks something awful would happen to her and she'd be a sad case until someone came to her rescue.

I have friends, some of them scholars of comic strips, who love Orphan Annie and when I tell them I always found it a talky, reactionary bore, they tell me, "Oh, no! Read these weeks of it and you'll see how wonderful it can be!" So I read those weeks of it and I always decide it's even more of a talky, reactionary bore than I'd thought before.

Perhaps my problem was that I first read the strip in the sixties when Gray really sounded like he was cribbing dialogue from pamphlets for the John Birch Society and there was very little in the strip besides that. It was just Daddy Warbucks standing around, lecturing people about some strange, friends-of-Richard-Nixon interpretation of the American work ethic. And then every so often, Gray would think of something awful to do to Annie and she'd be a sad case until someone came to her rescue.

Gray died in '68 and that's when Little Annie truly became an Orphan, handed off thereafter from one creative guardian to another. While I'm sure others will argue, I thought it was one of those rare cases when a strip got better when it was no longer done by its creator, particularly when Leonard Starr was in command from 1979 to 2000. Some of the others were good, too…though as Annie lost papers, they weren't playing to much of an audience. I read a few of those sequences and liked them more than anything I ever read by Harold Gray. I also preferred the Broadway musical and the movie made from it…though I didn't like either that much.

At times after Mr. Starr quit, the syndicate tried to find someone who'd write and draw it for rates commensurate with its income as a newspaper strip, which meant Depression Era wages. At one point, they got so desperate that they even offered the gig to a writer-artist team, of which I was the writer. I told the artist, "Well, if you want to do it, I'll do it," and then hoped he'd say no as I pondered what the heck I could bring to a feature that to my mind had outlived its relevance some time around when the New Deal kicked in.

I sat there with my eyeballs probably as vacant as Annie's, pondering for almost a half-hour before the artist called and said (to my relief), "I just found out what the job pays. Forget about it." I assume the others who then took it on got more than they'd offered us. They must have.

While writing the above, I was interrupted by a call from a nice lady from CBS Radio who interviewed me about Annie's demise. I pretty much said what I just wrote above but she threw me when she asked what I thought would take Annie's place in the world. I should have said, "I don't think Annie has a place in the world and hasn't for a long time."

Instead, I muttered something about how, well, I guess someone could come along and whip up a strip to cheerlead for victims of the current economic downturn. If they could just get everyone who's currently out of work to follow the strip, it could make its creator as rich as ol' Dad Warbucks.

Republicans are charging that Hillary Clinton is running for Obama's third term. Jonathan Chait wonders what's wrong with that? So do I.

This whole argument about Hillary Clinton's health is pretty ridiculous, especially the parts where her foes are believing and spreading stories of what's "really" wrong with her that obviously did not come from anyone in a position to know. But as Eric Levitz points out, it's really a non-issue because no one who was going to vote for her or not vote for her is likely to change that vote even if she is gravely ill. (And of course, there's no actual evidence that she is.)

Dominoes. And I don't mean the bad pizza…

Bob Cesca reminds us that once upon a time, Republicans believed that if you opposed the Iraq War, you were a coward and a traitor and you didn't love America and if you sought public office, your opposition alone made you unfit to lead. Here's one of several money quotes from the article…

The party that engaged in a nationwide lynching of anyone and everyone who opposed the Iraq War, including, by the way, anti-war celebrity liberals like Bill Maher, Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks, has nominated Donald Trump. Apart from being an extreme dilettante and an unstable nuclear weapons fetishist, Trump has been vocal throughout his 15-month campaign that the Iraq War was "the worst decision ever made in the history of our country." That's a direct quote, by the way.

Heck, I can remember when the worst thing some Republicans could say about Bill Clinton or anyone who wanted your vote was that he was a Draft-Dodger who had never served his country.

Here's an interview with Penn Jillette about how he and his partner Teller work together. I find those guys kind of fascinating in the way they work…and how much they work. I don't mean how often people want to hire them. I mean the sheer volume of things they say yes to.

My pal Keith Scott is not only a top voice actor but probably the leading historian out there about those who preceded him in that profession. Here, he writes about Mel Blanc, specifically about Mel's many contracts over the years and how his fame and fortune rose. It has been widely believed that Mel's various deals with Warner Brothers precluded the other voice actors in those cartoons from getting credit — a belief spread by many of those other actors saying that was the case. Keith says it's not so.

Aidan Colvin is a 16-year-old boy with dyslexia, who has been writing to successful dyslexics for advice on how to cope with his condition. He got some sound advice from Jay Leno.

Here's a handy-dandy guide to Donald Trump scandals. In another year with another candidate, any one of these would lose him the support of many of those who now hail him as their savior.

Two film critics rate all of Woody Allen's movies from worst to best. This is one of those lists that you read just so you can go, "Are they insane? They think Interiors is better than Radio Days?" But it does remind us of something amazing; that Woody Allen has made 47 movies…and made them pretty much on his own terms and without pandering to any visible notion of what's commercial.

Two days before 9/11/01, George Carlin performed in Vegas, prepping and honing lines he'd perform on his forthcoming HBO special, which was tentatively called, I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die. Ian Crouch fills us in on what happened to that material when a lotta people did die.

Lastly for now: Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwanese-American scientist who in 1999 was indicted, first in the press and then in courtrooms for allegedly stealing secrets about the U.S. nuclear arsenal and passing them on to the People's Republic of China. He spent nine months in solitary confinement and had his life largely ruined by the accusations…but eventually everyone had to apologize to him and some paid him a lot of money, though he probably did not receive enough of either. Lowen Liu looks back on this injustice and how it impacted the way Chinese-Americans view the United States.

John Oliver has an interesting view of birds…

Claude Teacher writes…

I'm a long time reader (started following you when you started doing POV in the CBG), but first time caller. Here is my question for discussion: at what point in the 1970s is the end of the Silver Age?

I've been taking part in a Marvel Reading club where we have been going through Marvel year by year and recently went through the early seventies. A lot of comic book historians debate the point, citing events and trends. So I wonder, as someone who is familiar with a large number of the creators from that period, do you have any insight on the topic?

Yes. My insight is that there are no rules for this and anyone can set the years of the Golden Age or the Silver Age or any other age wherever they want to. In fact, you can just make up your own rules if you like. Personally, I say the Silver Age ended in 1970 and the event that ended it was that I got into the business that year. That's when a certain generation of quality ended.

And really, that's as good a marker as anything. For the end of the Silver Age, you can select the years that DC and Marvel had corporate takeovers, the year Kirby left Marvel for DC, the year Carmine Infantino took over and started a major revamp of DC, the year Marvel changed distributors and doubled the size of their line, the year they started beating DC, the year comic book prices went up to 15 cents, the year the standard size of comic book original artwork was reduced, the year Marvel launched the Conan the Barbarian comic, the year DC put out Green Lantern-Green Arrow, the year the San Diego Comic-Con started or several other events.

That gives you a range of about 1967-1971. I'd still opt for 1970, the year I got in. It's been all downhill since then.

We all have our stories on where we were the morning of 9/11/01 when we heard. I don't think I've ever told mine here but it was no more remarkable than yours and maybe less.

I had my phone ringer off and my voicemail poised to answer any calls while I slept. I woke up, staggered to the bathroom and then noticed the number of waiting calls on my answering machine. I think it was something like 14 and I instantly thought, "Something has happened." It could have been very good or very bad, but when I played back the first message, I knew instantly it was in the "very bad" category.

It was from my friend Tracy and she was near hysterics, crying and moaning about "those poor people in New York." But she didn't say what it was that had happened to those poor people in New York. I listened to other messages and got a snatch here and a snatch there of what it was, then I rushed into my office, turned the TV on to CNN and sat there for hours with, I'm sure, the "Springtime for Hitler" look on my face. I was sitting right where I'm sitting now to write this.

I think I started watching about 8:30 AM Pacific Time. That was 11:30 in New York. By that time, the twin towers of the World Trade Center had each been hit. Each had burned for a time. Each had finally collapsed. The Pentagon had been hit. All air travel in the United States had been halted. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had ordered evacuations and other emergency efforts. (Whatever happened to that fine, brave man of that morning?)

Most of the shockers were over by the time we West Coasters joined the trembling audience but we didn't know that. We were still wondering: What can happen next? Is there another plane somewhere? Is there more to this? When the unthinkable happens, you brace yourself for more unthinkable things.

I flashed back, as most of us of a certain age have to with moments of tragedy, to 11/22/63 and the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Immediately upon hearing, we were all desperate to know: What can happen next? Will someone now assassinate the Vice-President? Is there more to this?

On both days, what had already happened was horrifying enough. But part of the horror was that sense of suddenly being in another world where that kind of thing happened…and you had no idea if or when something else like it would follow. On both days, it took a while to accept that maybe we were back to where most things made some sort of sense.

I'm thinking about that today and also about what would happen if a tragedy of that magnitude occurred today. I think we'd still have that feeling of being lost and helpless for a time. I'd like to think we'd have at least some of that feeling of togetherness and of being one country indivisible, with partisan differences set aside. But I don't think it would last very long.

I think the President of the United States would be impeached, and for many people that would be a higher priority than tending to the dead bodies and living victims. Even if that President had snapped into action, rather than sit in a classroom and read to children…even if that President hadn't ignored certain warning signs, I think we'd immediately have hearings like the ones on Benghazi, only bigger and more of them with real, not manufactured outrage. Four Americans died in the Benghazi attack. When Americans and others were killed by attacks on U.S. eembassies during the administration of George W. Bush, no one cared. No hearings were held. No one was blamed.

I'm not saying that was right or wrong; just that that's how it was.

3000 Americans died in the 9/11 attack and perhaps another thousand have died indirectly because of that day. So instead of seven investigations like we've had over Benghazi, we'd have 7,000 over an attack the size of 9/11…and yes, I know the math is ridiculous. I'm just trying to suggest scale here. Another tragedy the size of 9/11 or even a tenth the size would be a lot worse than Benghazi, right?

I don't think 9/11 brought our country to our current level of partisanship. We were well on our way to it back when they impeached Bill Clinton.

So now we have the situation where no matter who gets elected in November, 40-49% of the country will be livid and will be hating our new president and predicting the imminent destruction of the United States of America. Some will even in a way be hoping for it so they can say "See?" to those who voted "the wrong way."

So as I sit there — in the same place where I stared aghast at the morning of 9/11, sitting in the chair I bought to replace the one I was sitting in on that day — I don't think I'm scared of another tragedy of that size and scope. Of these days, there will be one, just as there will be hurricanes and earthquakes and massive fires and plane crashes…and I just accept that as the downside of being alive. The upsides are good enough that I can live with those possibilities. We've had them before and we survive them or we don't.

What does scare me are the unprecedented disasters, the ones that don't follow any history, the kind that leave us desperate to know, "What will they do to us next?"

And then, because of the way this country has changed in the last few decades, I'm really scared of what we'll then do to each other.

Much to write, much to do so I'm taking the day off from blogging…I hope. Seems like every time I do this, I have to scurry back here and post an obit. Let me see if I can get through all of today without that happening.

In the meantime, here's Adam Davidson debunking Donald Trump's claims about unemployment in the U.S. and Josh Marshall explaining why Hillary Clinton must not back down from her statement that a lot of Trump's supporters are "deplorables"…except that as you'll see in the update, she then did, partially.

Jersey Boys, which opened on Broadway November 6, 2005, will close there on January 15. When it does, it will have played 4,642 performances. It's already the twelfth-longest-running show in Broadway history — a distinction it will probably retain for a long, long time.

The Book of Mormon would assume that position on the chart if it runs for another 295 weeks, which does not strike me as likely. The next contender would be Kinky Boots, which would have to stick around for another eight years…also not likely. The longest-running show, of course, is The Phantom of the Opera, which will not lose its top status in our lifetimes or maybe Elroy Jetson's.

We'll take a look back at the long-running hit that is Jersey Boys in a moment but first, these headlines from the Great White Way…

The current production of Fiddler on the Roof has announced the cancellation of its October 11 performance. Why? Because someone suddenly noticed that was the eve of Yom Kippur. Not a good night for Jews to be working. I want to know why they just now figured this out.

This production of Fiddler closes December 31 and appears to be going into the books as a money-loser. Broadway vets will surely debate why and I'm guessing two reasons will be suggested. One will be that its Tevye, Danny Burstein — though widely hailed in the role — wasn't a big enough star. I doubt that's the reason but someone will say it would have done better with Martin Short or Kerry Washington in the role.

The other reason is the one I favor: That it was simply too soon for yet another revival of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. This one opened only nine years after the last one closed. The last Broadway revival of Gypsy — the one with Patti LuPone — probably had the same problem, opening as it did less than four years after the revival there with Bernadette Peters.

There is still apparently talk of another revival of Gypsy in New York next year — an import of the stunning London production starring Imelda Staunton. If you haven't seen the video of this yet, lemme tell you: It's really, really good. It will be aired in this country on PBS on November 11.

And now, this…