What I did Monday evening was to take Leonard and Alice Maltin, along with my friend Amber, to see the fine cabaret performer Mark Nadler. It's rare to see him playing the piano and singing show tunes in Southern California but he was briefly in town. I wanted to see him. I wanted Amber to see him. I thought Leonard and Alice would enjoy seeing him. If and when you get the chance, you will too. He plays well, he sings well and he annotates the songs he plays with fascinating and funny facts. In this case, it was an evening of songs written by Cole Porter…and showtunes don't get much better than that. Just as performers of them don't get much better than Mark Nadler.
The location for this was Upstairs at Vitello's, a small but serviceable room on the second floor of Vitello's restaurant in what they call Tujunga Village, but I think it's actually Studio City out in the valley here. Vitello's is probably most famous as the Italian restaurant where Robert Blake dined with his wife just before she was murdered by some unknown person who most people think was Robert Blake.
The place should be known as one of the better rooms around L.A. for cabaret-style performing, which is as easy thing to be as most of them are pretty awful. It is a constant frustration of performers that the venues where they can perform do not share the income fairly and force them to invite people to come see them in a room with cramped seating, poor sight lines, mediocre food, overpriced mediocre food and, often, maddeningly-poor service. A subject for another time here.
Naturally, we talked a lot about our friend Chuck McCann. Leonard has penned a fine tribute to the man and you can read it here.
As you may know, my life abounds in strange coincidences. Just as we were getting away from the topic of Chuck, Leonard and I noticed that about twelve inches from us, seated at the next table was Sonny Fox. At the same time Chuck was a superstar of kids' TV in New York, so was Sonny Fox on Wonderama and other shows, and their paths crossed constantly. After Mr. Nadler did that voodoo that he do so well, we had a great conversation with Sonny about Chuck. Sonny even produced Chuck's last attempt to do classic-style programming for children. It did not go well but Sonny's love and respect of Chuck was not diminished.
Then last night, I attended a meeting of Yarmy's Army, the local social club of funny writers and performers to which I belong. Chuck was among its founding members and we all sat around, ate Chinese food and told anecdotes about the guy. I still don't know if and when there's going to be a memorial for Mr. McCann but I feel like I've already been to two of them. Which is fine because there's no end to the stories that can be told about the guy.