Reader-of-this-blog Andy Mansell just sent me four questions…
I just received my inscribed copy of Why and When the Dick Van Dyke Show was Born by Carl Reiner. For my inscription, I chose "Shut up, Mel!" I'm dying to know what you requested.
Since I already have Carl's other books autographed by him, I asked to have this one signed by Alan Brady. Mr. Brady signed it in big letters and farther down the title page, Carl signed it as well. For some odd reason, they have similar handwriting.
Can you (or have you already) list the quintessential Laurel and Hardy films for a newbie?
I think their three best features are Sons of the Desert, Our Relations and Way Out West. There are dozens of must-see sound shorts but I would suggest The Music Box, Towed in a Hole, Come Clean, The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, Be Big!, Our Wife, Me and My Pal, One Good Turn, Busy Bodies and Scram! Silent comedies would be Big Business, Double Whoopee, Do Detectives Think? and From Soup to Nuts. But just about every film they made for Hal Roach has wonderful moments and even the non-Roach ones do. The non-Roach ones just have less of them.
Which version of "Up the Ladder to the Roof" is your fave? I gotta go with Bette Midler's voice-cracking version.
I really like the one from the Broadway show Everyday Rapture. But to me the interesting thing is how the many renditions are different or similar to each other.
I just watched I Know that Voice and enjoyed it but there should have been a bit more of you and a lot more Daws Butler and anything about Don Messick. Is there a retrospective about these two giants you'd recommend?
A gentleman named Arnold Kunert did a good documentary on Daws called Daws Butler, Voice Magician. You can probably find it on YouTube. I'm afraid there's been very little about Don Messick, although he is interviewed in the film about Daws.
I was just as happy for there not to be much of me in I Know That Voice because I'm never comfy in front of cameras and also because there were many voice actors who were not interviewed for that film and others who were but got little or no screen time. It's too vast a topic for any one film. You could do five hours just on Daws and the folks of his era without even getting into the hundreds of fine vocal talents of later decades.
But really, all voice actors — even Mel — have been under-celebrated. It's one of the reasons I started doing panels of those folks at Comic-Con back in the days when there were almost no voice actors in the programming unless I put them there. They all deserve a lot more attention even if some of them got into the field because they wanted to be actors but didn't want a lot of attention.
Thanks for the questions, Andy.
