You've all seen the side-by-side photos of the crowd at Obama's first inauguration and the crowd at Trump's first (and let's hope, only) inauguration. They clearly show a helluva lot more people at Obama's.
Mr. Trump is said to be furious because everything he does is the biggest and the best and he never loses fair and square…not even in competitions that exist only in his own, narcissistic mind. He's arguing, I guess, that the photo of his audience is a photo from before the speech when everyone had yet to arrive. That might be valid if he could produce some photos taken during the speech that showed the unoccupied areas filled-in…but apparently, he can't. Thousands of photos must have been taken that day but apparently none that show the audience he insists he had.
Meanwhile though, there are Trump supporters who don't want to believe their guy has lost in any conceivable way. They don't believe his approval rating is at a historically dreadful 36%. They don't believe Hillary really did better in the popular vote. And they look at those photos of the two inaugurations and insist that even in those pics which enrage Donald, his turnout was better.
Why do they see something different? Alan Levinovitz discusses the human tendency for self-deception.
We seem to be in full obituary mode here at newsfromme.com. Mike Connors, best known as the star of TV's Mannix, passed away yesterday at the age of 91. He had a long career as an actor and was very active in social causes such as animal rights and trying to lift some of the stigma surrounding mental illness.
I liked the Mannix series but never met Mr. Connors. Fortunately, for those who come to this blog seeking anecdotes about the departed, I have a friend who worked with him the last time he played the role of Joe Mannix. This is my buddy Lee Goldberg. He and his partner wrote the last appearance of Joe Mannix…
I'm sad to hear that Mike Connors, who played Mannix, died today. I loved the show when I was growing up and wished I could write for it. I made that wish come true. When Bill Rabkin and I were producing Diagnosis Murder, we came up with idea of bringing back Mike Connors as Mannix, continuing an old case from 20 years ago, and using an old episode for flashbacks (and bringing back the old guest cast, too).
But first we had to convince Mike to do it. So we called him up and he invited us to lunch at the Riviera Country Club. That alone was a thrill. He was incredibly nice but worried we'd make fun of Mannix instead of treating him with respect. We assured him we loved the character, too, and wanted to see how he'd changed in the decades since the series ended. He signed on. We wrote the episode…and I still remember the thrill of writing the words "Joe Mannix" for the first time in the script. A childhood dream came true.
He was an absolute joy to work with on the episode and we became friends. The episode became the highest rated in Diagnosis Murder's history and I believe it played a big part in convincing CBS to promote us to the showrunners. I still remember a wonderful lunch we had with him and Robert Stack at the Riviera Country Club. It took all of my self-control not to geek out.
We lost touch over the years, but I'm glad to say I ran into him on the street last spring and we had a nice conversation. He's a big reason why I'm a writer today and I'm grateful I had the chance to know him.
Can't add much to that except that I never heard anyone with a bad word to say about Mike Connors. Not a one. Thanks, Lee.
I'm mentioning this because I doubt a lot of the press will give it the attention it deserves. Bob Holiday, who had the title role in the 1966 Broadway show It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman died this morning at his home in Hawley, PA. He was 84.
The show opened March 29, 1966 at the Alvin Theater in New York. It received what they call "mixed notices" and it closed there July 17, losing its entire capitalization. Usually, shows that have that short a run and are not by Sondheim are never seen again but productions of Superman are still done all the time. I attribute the many revivals to how much fun it sounds like it would be to do a musical about the character, not to the merits of this particular musical about Superman. In any case, Mr. Holiday was expertly cast. He had made a rep for himself in the musical Fiorello! and as anyone who has heard the cast album can attest, had a fine singing voice.
He subsequently played the Man of Steel in several touring companies and revivals but for the most part, transitioned out of show business and into building homes. Still, he remembered the show as a great time in his life and was always available for ceremonial appearances and interviews. His performance does not seem to exist on video anywhere but it will live on thanks to that cast album. And he will always be the first singing Superman.
I've been telling friends lately not to get too rankled over Trump tweets and public statements. Remember that he's not talking to us. Trump almost never talks to those of us who didn't vote for him and are unlikely to ever vote for him or cheer him. It's all about playing to his base, keeping them enthused about his greatness, making them believe they're winning, winning, winning.
In some ways, he's a natural extension of George W. Bush, whose credo in his presidency was to never admit anything didn't go exactly the way he wanted. It was kinda tough after 9/11 but he never even said, "Gee, maybe I should have read some of those memos." Remember all the times Bush was asked about his biggest regret or if he could name one mistake his administration had made? He always looked surprised that anyone could ask such a thing, like it should be obvious to all that he and his aides were flawless. Trump is all about everything being not just a victory but also the most terrific, super-spectacular victory ever.
Every time our new White House resident talks about building a wall, I can't help but think of the wall he's built around himself — a wall behind which he got more votes than Hillary, behind which he got a bigger turnout for his inauguration than Barack, behind which he gets the credit for every bit of good economic news that has happened since November 8, including the ones — like the Dow hitting 20,000, etc. That last one was on target to happen around now even if we'd elected the puppy-monkey-baby from the Mountain Dew commercials.
I dunno how much of his self-idolatry is conscious strategy and how much is due to some sinkhole in his own ego…but he no doubt attributes much/most of his successes in life to that "I always win" attitude and ain't about to abandon it. In that sense, he will be on the campaign trail for his entire life. At most, at some point, he will occasionally acknowledge some failure that even he can't spin as a Huge Win and he'll briefly go into humble mode for that one thing.
I once worked for a producer who insisted he was right 99% of the time. He would have claimed 100% but he seemed to believe that admitting the 1% error made him more human and credible when he bragged of his 99% perfection. I pegged his real success rate at around 50% — or about what you'd hit if you just flipped a quarter every time you came up against a yes or no decision.
That, incidentally, is not the worst way to make decisions, at least in the fields in which I work. I've worked for editors and publishers who carefully evaluated and studied each decision they were required to make and could still only be right less than 40% of the time. They could have done much, much better flipping that quarter.
I don't expect I will hate everything Trump does as president. I do expect to be repulsed by the way he will exaggerate all his successes (including taking credit for things that would have happened anyway, as he's already doing) and lie about all his failures, insisting they're successes and anyone who says otherwise is lying. I'm going to have to keep reminding myself that he's not talking to me. That's his act and it got him to the White House so there's no way he's changing it.
Fred Kaplan tells us what's going on with our State Department. Like so much of our federal government this week, things have happened that don't make a whole lot o' sense.
I feel I've failed when I need to explain a joke but I will. In the piece about Frank Ferrante in Laughter on the 23rd Floor, I said that the character of Max Prince "is basically Sid Caesar rolled into one." I now have a half-dozen e-mails from folks who think I left some names out of that sentence.
I didn't. What I was trying to say is that the character was like Sid Caesar if you'd mixed him with Sid Caesar and then thrown in a few touches of Sid Caesar, Sid Caesar and maybe — just for a different approach — a bit of Sid Caesar. In other words, Sid Caesar rolled into one. Sorry for the confusion.
For eons on this blog, I've told you about my buddy Frank Ferrante, a wand'ring thespian who fills two roles. One is that he tours the world brilliantly impersonating Groucho Marx in An Evening With Groucho. The other is that he plays a character named Caesar who stars at times in productions of Teatro ZinZanni, a superb dinner show theater in San Francisco and Seattle. We have some news to report…
Frank's doing something else. Last night, he opened in a production of Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, PA. Wish I could get back there to see it. Frank directed the production and also stars as Max Prince, a character who is basically Sid Caesar rolled into one. It's there through March 5 and if you, unlike me, can get there, tickets are available here.
There's a special joy for Frank to be performing at the Walnut Street since it was Groucho's favorite theater. The Marx Brothers' first Broadway show, I'll Say She Is, played at the Walnut Street — which I trust has been cleaned since then. It is highly appropriate that Frank will be performing An Evening With Groucho on that stage on one of his days off, February 27. Same link for tix.
He may or may not be appearing again soon at Teatro ZinZanni, a wonderful institution that is becoming sadly homeless. A few years ago, they lost their San Francisco location. A new one is being erected but is still quite far from opening for business. And they seem to be losing their Seattle location as this article explains.
I've only been to Teatro ZinZanni once but it was a great evening…kind of a Cirque du Soleil for adults, and I don't mean it was naughty in any way. Just funnier and more mature with a gourmet dinner served as you watched singers, acrobats, jugglers, dancers, etc. I went to the one in San Francisco before they got evicted there. Looks like I won't make it to Seattle before they get evicted there. I sure hope they find a couple of good homes for a great place to see great performers.
The guy in the White House — the one who spent a lot of time trying to convince Americans that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and that there was a mountain of evidence that would put Hillary behind bars — is upset that people are smearing him. They're claiming he didn't win the popular vote! And that's because somehow, utterly undetected, millions of illegal aliens voted!
Josh Marshall runs down some of the reasons why claims of massive voter fraud are ridiculous.
Jack Mendelsohn died a few hours ago. He was 90 and the cause was lung cancer…and though his friends all knew it was imminent, the news was still a jolt. Jack was a very sweet, very funny man who had a glorious career in comic books, a glorious career in newspaper strips, a glorious career in animation and a glorious career writing for live-action TV shows. Let me go through these and the biographical stuff and then I'll tell you about the man himself. And I apologize but he did so much, I am unable to do all this strict chronological order…
Jack was born November 8, 1926. His father was an agent for many cartoonists and newspaper columnists including the legendary Winsor McKay and Jack, growing up in Brooklyn, watched cartoons avidly and filled notebooks with his cartoons. In his teen years, he lived next door to two men who became famous cartoonists. On one side was David Levine, soon to be among America's great caricaturists. On the other side was Norman Maurer, who was already making what then seemed like vast sums of money drawing comic books. Three or four decades later in Hollywood, Jack would replace Norman as the story editor of the Richie Rich cartoon show for Hanna-Barbera.
Being around so much cartooning determined Jack's future. He did some assistant work on comic books for the Jerry Iger shop in 1942 while still in high school. Then he quit high school to join in the Navy and fight in World War II…though even in the service, he dabbled in silly pictures. When he got out, he began selling gag cartoons to magazines and scripts to comic books.
His earliest known comic book work was for DC's More Fun Comics in 1946 and Animal Antics in 1947. He worked for dozens of publishers, mostly writing but occasionally drawing teen comics and funny animal titles. Among the "name" comic books he did over the years were Nancy and Sluggo, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Miss Peach, Beetle Bailey and Felix the Cat. He also wrote the Felix the Cat newspaper strip for a time and ghosted for other strips.
And I'll mention two other credits of many: When EC Comics decided to put out its own imitation of its hit funnybook, MAD, Jack was the main writer for that imitation, which they called Panic. And when Tower Comics put out its imitation of Archie, Jack wrote most of the issues of Tippy Teen.
Jack also wrote for MAD and for a time, worked as an artist at Famous Studios in New York, the animation outfit owned by Paramount. There, he met cartoonist Howard Post and they formed a longtime friendship and collaboration. Most of the funny animal comics drawn by Post for various publishers were written by Mendelsohn. Years later, when Jack's newspaper strip Jacky's Diary became popular, Famous/Paramount brought him back to write TV cartoons for Beetle Bailey and Krazy Kat the studio let him write and direct several short theatrical cartoons. For King Features, he wrote the Saturday morning cartoons of The Beatles and co-wrote the animated Beatles feature, Yellow Submarine.
Jacky's Diary started in 1959. Drawn in a childlike art style by Jack and signed "by Jacky Mendelsohn, Age 32½" (or whatever age he was each year of its run), it was enormously popular for a time. Jack called it the fastest sale in the history of newspaper strips. He submitted it one afternoon to King Features Syndicate and they bought it on the spot. The run was recently collected in a beautiful hardcover book from IDW Publishing.
I am bouncing around in his career here because for a long time, Jack bounced around. In the late fifties, he lived for a few years in Mexico where he became friendly with a Mexican cartoonist named Sergio Aragonés. This was well before Sergio came to America and joined the Usual Gang of Idiots (including Jack) at MAD.
Around 1966, he moved from New York to Los Angeles to work for Hanna-Barbera and contributed to most of their shows for the next decade or so including Abbott & Costello, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones Comedy Hour and Hong Kong Phooey. He snuck over to Jay Ward's studio and wrote George of the Jungle, Super Chicken and many of the Cap'n Crunch commercials. He went over to Filmation and wrote Shazam! and Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down? and he created and wrote The Groovie Goolies. He also for an independent studio wrote Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert!, the first animation of Bill Cosby's character.
Somewhere amidst all this animation work, Jack segued into writing for live-action, prime-time TV shows. The list included Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Carol Burnett Show, Three's Company, Van Dyke and Company, Chico and the Man and The Love Boat.
His later animation credits included Richie Rich, Muppet Babies, Dennis the Menace, Beverly Hills Teens, Camp Candy, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin and a huge number of episodes of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He story-edited most of these shows, as well.
He was nominated for three Emmy awards. In 2005, the Writers Guild of America presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in animation. And in 2014, he appeared at the Comic-Con International in San Diego to accept the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. I will embed video of that ceremony below.
This is a very incomplete list of Jack's achievements and honors.
I'll post more about him in a few days because he really was an amazing man. Right now, I need to tell you he was one of my favorite people…a very dear, compassionate man who loved writing and cartoons and creativity. I was aware of his work and a fan of it well before I met him. When I met him, he became one of my closest friends within a matter of minutes. That was the kind of guy Jack was. He had a wonderful career (and a wonderful wife, Carole) and he sure deserved both.
Here's the video of the 2014 Bill Finger Awards. That's me with Athena Finger, granddaughter of the late Bill Finger. The presentation to Jack begins at 9:50 into the ceremony…
Once again, I was groping for a way to say something here on my blog and someone else said it much, much better than I could. Here's Kevin Drum…
One of the things Donald Trump taught us last year is the ultimate hollowness of the Christian right. Trump is the most obviously unreligious person to run for president in — well, probably forever. He doesn't go to church. He hasn't read the Bible. His lifestyle would make Hugh Hefner blush. He doesn't pray. He doesn't ask forgiveness from God for his sins. He's not born again. There is literally nothing in his 70 years on this earth that suggests he's anything but a stone atheist.
But that didn't matter. All he had to do was make a few awkward and obviously fake protestations of faith, and that was that. His insincerity was palpable to anyone paying the slightest attention, but everyone decided not to pay attention. As long as he mouthed the right words, everything was fine.
The Christian right has never been about actual faith. Like any other interest group, they just want what they want: abortion restrictions, money for private schools, opposition to gays, and so forth. As long as you're on board, they don't care what's in your heart. They never have, and that's why the suggestion that Democrats need to be more publicly devout has always been so misguided. Faith doesn't matter. Empathy for people of faith doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is supporting the Christian right's retrograde social views, and Democrats were never going to do that.
Every guy my age I know — even the gay ones — had a crush on a couple of women who were on TV or in Playboy in the sixties. Chronologically, I think Mary Tyler Moore may have been my first. This was not a crush that acknowledged her intelligence or talents or accomplishments. It was all based on the fact that I thought she was beautiful on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Forgive me my shallowness. I was ten at the time. I wasn't quite sure what women were good for except to look at.
I thought she was beautiful in black-and-white on our little 19" TV set. When I attended a filming of the show and saw her in person and in color…oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Later, I realized how good she was on that show as an actress and that made me like her even more.
I have had the pleasure — and it's happily always been a pleasure — to get to know some of the women who had a big impact on me back then but I only met Ms. Moore once for a few seconds and it was a moment of great embarrassment. You will therefore like this story very much…and as a bonus, it also includes a moment of symbolic parallelism.
On the old Rhoda TV series, produced by Ms. Moore's company, there was an unseen character named Carlton the Doorman. His voice was done by a lovely man named Lorenzo Music, who was one of the producers. In 1979, someone had the idea to do a spin-off show of the adventures of Carlton…but to do it in animation. At the time, it had been many years since there had been a successful cartoon show in prime-time but the MTM Productions company had the clout with CBS to get the project bankrolled.
CBS ordered a pilot and two back-up scripts. The pilot would show what the series would be like upon its debut and the back-up scripts would demonstrate other things that could happen to the characters. I had experience in both cartoons and sitcoms so I was engaged to help out on the pilot and to write one of the back-up scripts. That's how I got to know Lorenzo, a few years before he also became the voice of Garfield the Cat. A few more years after that — and there was no connection here — I was hired to write and voice-direct most of the Garfield cartoons.
The Carlton, Your Doorman pilot was recorded and animated. Eventually, CBS decided to not pick the show up as a series but the pilot aired as a special in May of 1980, and later won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. Before it aired, there was a screening of it on the CBS Radford lot for various execs and folks who'd been involved in it and I was invited.
When I got there, I was supposed to have a pass to drive onto the lot and park but someone had screwed-up. No pass. I had to go find parking on the street, which turned out to be a space blocks away. Then I had to talk the guard into letting me onto the lot. By the time I got in, the lights were down, the screening had just started and the only open seat was at the far end of a row so I had to squeeze past about nine people, which I did with great awkwardness. I have feet the size of gondolas and one of them stomped on the toes of a lady in the second seat.
You'll never guess whose foot that was.
I didn't. When I reached my seat, I made a mental note to apologize profusely to the lady, whoever she was, once the film was over. When the lights came up and I saw it was Mary Tyler Moore, I briefly contemplated just staying in that seat for the rest of my life. Somehow, I managed to go over and apologize about eighty-two times to her and she was nice enough about it but there was a certain frostiness in the air so I never really got to talk to her. Some of that frost may have been because she apparently didn't like the pilot very much.
Those of you who know The Dick Van Dyke Show have probably have already noticed the symbolic parallel. In a flashback episode to the time Rob and Laura first met, we saw how Rob (DVD) was instantly smitten with Laura (MTM) but Laura thought he was a creep until he stepped on her foot, broke it and then was so charming in his apologizing and visiting her in the hospital that she finally fell for him.
In my case. I instantly fell for her, then I stepped on her foot and that was pretty much the end of any possible relationship. Maybe if I'd tripped over an ottoman…
I still think she was wonderful on Dick's show and also on her own. She died today at the age of 80 but I will always smile when I see her at a much earlier age, dancing in the Petrie living room, trying to convince Rob that they didn't bring home the wrong baby from the hospital, or apologizing to Alan Brady for telling the whole world that he was bald. And boy, was she an important part of television history.
Today on Stu's Show, Stu Shostak welcomes Bob Leszczkak, who's an expert on TV situation comedies that last but a single season. Bob has written a couple of books on the topic and they'll be discussing programs like Guestward Ho!, The Cara Williams Show, Margie, The Practice, Bridget Loves Bernie, Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, Amanda's By the Sea, I'm a Big Girl Now, One of the Boys and animated shows such as Top Cat, The Alvin Show, Calvin and the Colonel and The Jetsons. Hope they have time for a few others I remember fondly like The Hero, Mona McCluskey, He and She and Captain Nice.
And as they say in infomericals, That's Not All! Immediately after the program, Stu and Bob will continue the discussion on UStream TV with a video version of Stu's Show on which they'll show several of the programs they've been talking about! Listen to the audio version or check out Stu's website linked below to find out how to watch!
The audio version of Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. 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. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. Best deal of the year so far!
