Monthly Archives: February 2019

Every ten seconds in this world, someone dies because of alcohol, a baby is born and a new production opens of Hello, Dolly. Or at least it seems that way. The 1964 musical with songs by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart was based on Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker and if there's a stage anywhere near you, Hello, Dolly will eventually be on it.

The most prominent production of it in recent years was on Broadway in 2017. It starred Bette Midler as Dolly Levi and David Hyde-Pierce as Horace Vandergelder. I didn't see it but my friend Shelly Goldstein did.

Bette and David did it for eleven months, after which they were replaced by Bernadette Peters as Dolly Levi and Victor Garber as Horace Vandergelder. My friend Shelly Goldstein didn't see this production but I did. I thought it was quite wonderful even though I'm not wild about the storyline of this play. But the sets, costumes and staging were wonderful, Bernadette was great and Mr. Garber was even better.

They did it for several months and then Bette and David came back for the final six weeks. The show then closed and soon after, its sets, costumes and some of the cast were sent out on a national tour which has been working its way around the country. This evening, it did its last show in Los Angeles and it opens Tuesday in San Francisco and plays there for a month before moving on to Las Vegas. After that, it moves on to Des Moines, Minneapolis, Nashville, Columbus and other towns. The schedule can be found here and the word is that additional stops will be added later.

In its closing days in L.A., Shelly Goldstein and I went to see it with its current cast — Betty Buckley as Dolly Levi and Lewis J. Stadlen as Horace Vandergelder. Shelly felt that the production wasn't quite as strong as the one with Bette Midler and I felt it wasn't as wonderful as what I saw with Bernadette Peters. In fairness though, I should report that the audience couldn't have cheered and applauded her any more than they did. We also thought the staging, costumes and sets were superb and we both thought that Lewis J. Stadlen was phenomenal.

Fairness also requires that I reveal that we know Lewis J. Stadlen. Shelly and I and a few other friends took him to lunch two weeks ago. We did not love his performance because we took him to lunch. We took him to lunch because we've always admired the guy and felt he was the best thing in any show that was lucky enough to have him. (He was Groucho in the original Minnie's Boys in 1970 which I never saw but wrote about here.)

Critics who never ate with the man have also raved about him in this production. He gets every single laugh it's possible to get in Hello, Dolly as well as a few that did not seem possible. His role is so focused and firmly defined that he helps hold together what I still think is a pretty weak, not-entirely-coherent book.

None of this should dissuade anyone from going to see it. It's an especially good show to get a young person interested in musical comedy because it has great dancing, great art direction and great songs. Here's a commercial for the company's stopover in Denver. And Lewis Stadlen alone is worth the price of admission…

As some of you know, I helped launch the Dungeons & Dragons animated series that debuted on CBS Saturday mornings in 1983. I didn't work long on it. I wrote the bible and pilot script based on a format and some characters created by others, and CBS bought the show on the strength of what I'd done. I had the option of story-editing and/or writing all further episodes but I passed on those jobs due to other commitments. A squad of very fine producers, writers and artists turned it into a successful three-season series that is still fondly-recalled by many.

Recently, a website called Toy Galaxy produced this video about the history of the show. They seem a lot more interested in discussing the toys based on the series (and why there were so few of them) than in the content of the program. I don't know much about the toys but I do know how my name is pronounced and it ain't the way the host says it here. I also know that contrary to what he says, I didn't leave the project to go work on Garfield and Friends. That show didn't come along until several years later.

And I'm pretty sure the outcry from parents' groups decrying the "violence" in the show was not as loud as this video makes it seem. At least, he doesn't claim as many do that the show was taken off the air because of those protests. The truth is that the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was never a huge hit (as this video suggests it was) and the ratings declined mightily during Season 3. That's why there was no Season 4. I wish there had been. And a Season 5 and a Season 6 and so on…

I suppose someone might argue that the ratings decline was due to those protests but like I said, I don't think they were that loud or that plentiful..or the least bit effective. I also don't think there's any evidence that labeling a kids' show as "too violent" drove viewers away from Dungeons & Dragons — or any program ever in the history of mankind. Here's the video…

I don't know who Taylor Lorenz is but she's right: It's impossible to follow a [complex] conversation on Twitter.

Here's a rough summary of some of the things that have gone wrong with the Academy Awards. Most of these are true to some extent but I suspect the biggie is something that may be beyond the Academy's power to fix. It's that people just don't care that much about the nominees any more. It isn't the show that's the problem.

Fact-checking Donald Trump's claims about immigration and the National Emergency he has declared. I am aware that there are folks out there who don't care about the facts but there are some who do.

Aw. Dave Smith died. Dave was the first archivist for the Disney company, founding a small division that grew into a large one. He went to work there in 1970 and I think I met him two years later when I began doing various writing projects for the firm. His self-described mission statement was to learn and preserve absolutely everything that had happened in and around Disney since before it was just the names of a couple of brothers without much money.

When he retired after forty years, leaving the quest to what had grown into a large staff, he hadn't exhausted the subject. That was impossible. But there was darn near nothing anyone would ever want to know about Disney that he or his crew couldn't answer.

I don't think I ever visited him without him saying "Look what we just found" and hauling out some amazing artifact that you couldn't believe had survived. He was truly a man who loved his job and did it well. Disney fans everywhere are forever in his debt. Here's an obit that probably has already been indexed and placed in the Disney Archives.

I guess if I were President of the United States and not one thing in this world mattered to me besides my popularity and my personal wealth…and if I thought the former would crumble if I didn't keep a stupid campaign promise that I made without even pondering how I could ever deliver on it…and if my aides told me declaring a national emergency was the only way I might at least look like I was trying to make it happen…

…yeah, I might declare a national emergency.

Okay, here's the Alice Ghostley story.  You all know Alice Ghostley, who somehow managed to guest star on 75% of all sitcoms and 50% of all variety shows in the sixties and seventies.  A very funny woman. Here's one minute of her selling refrigerators…

In 1997, I was working on a new cartoon show called Channel Umptee-3 and along with writing and rewriting episodes, I was to cast and direct the voice actors.  One of the roles we cast was the evil zillionaire, Stickley Ricketts. We selected Jonathan Harris (see previous post) for that part but we had trouble finding the right lady to play his shrewish wife, Pandora. I knew the perfect person was out there but couldn't think of who it might be.

When I asked the show's creator Jim George who he had in mind, he mentioned three possible names — Joanne Worley, Rue McClanahan and Edie McClurg. I said, "I don't think any of them are exactly right" and he agreed with me and said, "Let's keep looking." This was early February.

About that time, we lost a friend of mine — a fine actor (both on-camera and voiceover) named Bob Ridgely. Bob was the guy who played the hangman in Blazing Saddles, the airport flasher in High Anxiety, the bigoted businessman in Philadelphia, the game show host in Melvin and Howard and many more. In voiceover, he was an oft-heard network and promo announcer as well as the Saturday morning voices of Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Thundarr the Barbarian and many others.

And he was also one of the funniest men I ever met with maybe the filthiest sense of humor. Everyone who knew Bob loved him and much of Hollywood turned out for the most hilarious memorial service I've ever attended. It was so entertaining that on the way out, everyone was saying we could have a hit show on HBO if we could somehow figure a way to have Bob die every week. The host was Jack Riley and the speakers included Mel Brooks, Hugh Hefner, Chuck McCann, Martin Mull, Gary Owens, Thom Sharp and many more.

On the way in, I ran into quite a few people I knew including Jonathan Harris. He came up to me and asked when we were going to begin recording episodes of Channel Umptee-3 ("Soon," I told him) and then he asked, "Haven't you found a wife for me yet, dear boy?" That caused me to start thinking about that again and I happened to look over at a long line of attendees who were waiting to sign the guestbook honoring Bob. There in line, I saw Joanne Worley, Rue McClanahan and Edie McClurg.

They were not together but I could see them all in one "shot" and I thought to myself, "No…none of them are exactly what I'm looking for."

Just then, I got a tap on the shoulder from another voice actress I knew, Sharon Mack. She said, "Mark, have you met Alice Ghostley?" I hadn't so I turned and there — big as life but two-thirds the height of me — was Alice Ghostley. And the first thing I said to her was "You're hired!" That was how perfect she was for the part.

She was startled and she asked, "Hired for what?" I said, "Never mind that now. Who's your agent for voiceover work?" She told me and it was the same agent who represented Jonathan Harris and also represented Bob Ridgely. A few minutes later, I found that agent and asked her, "Do you think Bob Ridgely would be offended if a fellow actor got a job at his memorial service?" She said, "I think Bob would love it. He might demand 10% but he'd love it."

I said, "I think he'd love it too. I have a part that's perfect for Alice Ghostley but I'm going to need to convince the studio, the producers and the network. Is there a way I can get some tape on her and Jonathan Harris doing a scene?" She said, "Jonathan adores Alice. I'm sure he'd come in and read with her." The agent scurried off and found and talked with Alice. Then she found Jonathan and spoke with him. Then she found me again and told me, "It's set. They'll both be at our offices one hour after the memorial service lets out." Perfect.

After the celebration of Mr. Ridgely, I dashed home and printed out copies of the audition scene I'd written for Stickley and Pandora. The agency's office was within walking distance of my house so I hiked there with the scripts. When I arrived, Jonathan and Alice were sitting in the waiting room, bickering over something like an old married couple. I probably could have just pointed a microphone at them and recorded that conversation — don't think I didn't think of doing that — but instead I herded them into the agency's recording booth.

They did it three times. The first was so perfect, it couldn't have been any better. The second was better. The third was pretty much the same as the second. I had the agency engineer make me several copies of Take 2 on tape cassettes and I called a messenger service. An hour later, the producers, the studio execs and the network all had their copies and an hour after that, everyone who had to approve Alice Ghostley had approved Alice Ghostley and a deal had been made with her agent. (Today, I would have e-mailed everyone MP3s of the audition scene and the whole process would have happened even faster.)

That evening around 9:00, Alice Ghostley phoned me and said, "My goodness, that's the fastest I've ever gotten signed for a TV series. I've finally figured out what I've been doing wrong in my career. I should stop going to auditions and just attend more funerals!"

One of the great things about some jobs I've had has been getting to work with fascinating people. One such was the late Jonathan Harris, who played the diabolical Dr. Smith on Lost in Space. Our clip today will show you why he was so fascinating.

The show I did with him was a short-lived animated series called Channel Umptee-3. It was on what was then called the WB Network from 1997 to 1998 and I was its Story Editor and Voice Director. It was produced by Norman Lear's company and animated by Sony Animation and the regular cast consisted of Rob Paulsen, David Paymer, Alice Ghostley, Neil Ross, Susan Silo, Gregg Berger, Greg Burson and Jonathan. It wasn't a hit but it was a lot of fun and I was reasonably proud of what we did. Most of the credit should go to a brilliant talent named Jim George who created the program.

(Note to Self: Tell the story here of how Alice Ghostley was cast. I can't believe you haven't posted it on this blog but you haven't.)

Jonathan was a charming, lovely man but he had about eight anecdotes and at every tape day, he somehow got around to telling at least half if not all of them. We did thirteen episodes of the show and I heard some of Jonathan's stories thirteen times. It is a measure of how fine an actor he was that no matter how many times you heard one, it was still good.

Each tape date, there would be someone in the session meeting him for the first time. That person will tell Jonathan how much they loved him on Lost in Space. Jonathan would accept the flattery in a most gracious manner because he was a most gracious man. Then that person would ask how it was that he was always, for all three seasons, billed as a "Special Guest Star" on this series on which he was a regular. Jonathan would take his cue and launch into the story and it always went exactly like this for exactly seven minutes and forty-six seconds. I still enjoy hearing it…

Five quick links for your clicking pleasure…

• William Saletan discusses how most Trump supporters will believe any damned thing Trump says, even if it's contradicted by Fox News, other Republican officials, people in his own administration or existing documents. There's something going on there besides simple enthusiasm for a politician.
• Fred Kaplan points out that while Trump claims to be doing the best job ever at having our military be ready for anything, he's taking his own sweet time about finding a Secretary of Defense. Given how much TV Trump watches, he'll probably end up selecting Gomer Pyle.
• Up to 580,000 contractors could be missing out on back pay because of the last government shutdown. What is it with Trump and not paying contractors?
• Daniel Larison says the Trump administration is handling the Iran situation about as well as they handle anything. They make it worse and insist they're wildly succeeding.
• The National Debt has hit $22 trillion dollars. This is a horrible, destructive sign of government incompetence and negligence. Unless, of course, your party is responsible for the latest peak, in which case it's no big deal.

Speaking as we were about Broadway revivals being altered to fit today's sensibilities, that's being done now for the forthcoming revival of Kiss Me, Kate.

There's a pretty good argument that can be made that this should not be attempted; that a show staged in the past and set in the past should reflect the attitudes of the past. I'm not that interested though in making that argument. I think it's okay in some instances and not in others. The revival a few years ago of Annie, Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters changed a lot about American Indians and I suspect it was a better production for doing that. Kiss Me, Kate though is about men mistreating women and how it's wrong to do that. Don't you kinda have to keep in the part about men mistreating women in order to do that? We'll see what they do to it.

I'd never seen the 1970 Broadway musical about how four of Minnie Marx's five sons turned into Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo. The show Minnie's Boys opened March 26 of that year after an unusually-long string of previews — 64. Every so often, a new musical tries to open in New York without going outta-town first for tryouts. That means that New York audiences see the actors trying to perfect their performances plus all the stuff that the creative team decides must be tossed out or rewritten.

While Minnie's Boys was doing serious repair work, word got around and I recall reading an article at the time that said that much of the audience was going to see it not because they'd heard it was good but just the opposite. As I mentioned here, a lot of theater fans love it when a show flops and they can savor the pain of its creators and backers. Once it finally did have an opening night, it ran ten weeks and that was that.

Shelley Winters played Minnie and, according to all reports, lacked (1) the ability to sing, (2) the ability to remember lines, (3) the ability to deliver them in any tone but serious angst and (4) the sense and heroism to get out of a show she couldn't handle.

The producers wanted to fire her and bring in comedienne Totie Fields, who just might have had the star power to make the thing work, but Groucho (then 79 years of age) was insistent about how his mother would be depicted and for him, it was either Shelley W. or nobody. Also, it was rumored Ms. Winters announced that if she was ousted, she would sue the show into oblivion and also go on Johnny Carson's and others to denounce the whole project as the utterest of crap. So it was Shelley W. who stayed in it and is usually blamed for the failure, along with Groucho's stubborn refusal to allow her to be replaced.

After seeing a production of it last Sunday evening, I would like to suggest some blame is due to the script, which was by Arthur Marx and Bob Fisher and heavily rewritten on the fly during previews. A number of writers took a crack at fixing it and I dunno if they did too much or not enough but it was one of those. Ms. Winters is gone but the unimpressive book remains.

The production I saw was a one-shot staged reading in Glendale by the Musical Theater Guild, a prestigious organization which often takes on impossible challenges like this and usually succeeds. I really liked Susan Edwards Martin as Minnie and Matthew Patrick Davis, who played the man who would be Groucho. He did a fine job mimicking Groucho's famous delivery. His big problem was that Mr. Davis is 6'8" so even when he stooped over to do the famous Groucho walk, he was still taller than Harpo or Chico. Best of all was the score, which has many delights. It was by composer Larry Grossman (who was there for the performance and the limited rehearsals) and lyricist Hal Hackady.

The Broadway World website has posted two reviews of the one performance. This one I think overpraises it a bit and this one underpraises it a bit.

I admired the effort that the cast and their enablers put into it and there was a certain joy emanating from the stage that made me more forgiving of weaknesses. It also helps to remember that this was never represented as a polished presentation. It was a staged reading that was blocked, rehearsed and presented in a measly twenty-five hours with the actors holding their scripts throughout. I suspect if you saw Laurence Olivier do Hamlet book-in-hand after only 25 hours, you might well think he was among the worst actors ever.

I'm skeptical that we will ever see a major theatrical revival of this show. They don't do that for non-Sondheim shows that close on Broadway in ten weeks. But it does get revived a lot in community and local theaters. I did not have a bad time — and believe me, I've had them at musicals that had a lot more budget, a lot more prep time and a much better script to begin with.

Last June, Amber and I went back to New York and one of the things we saw there was the new production of one of my favorite musicals, My Fair Lady. I loved everything about it except the new ending. If you go to this post and scroll way down, you'll find a long explanation of why I didn't like the new ending.

The production has changed since then. Three of the stars I saw — Lauren Ambrose, Norbert Leo Butz and Diana Rigg — have departed. They've been replaced by (respectively) Laura Benanti, Danny Burstein and Rosemary Harris. Also, there appears to be a change to that ending I so disliked. Let me put up the spoiler alert —

— and then I'll quote a message I received from Dan Kravetz…

I saw the current production of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center for the first time the other night, after having read the detailed review in your blog last May. The ending seems to have been changed. Benanti's Eliza does not run away or storm off stage into the audience.

I had read that in some early performances, Lauren Ambrose had actually slapped Higgins in the face before turning and running from him. Now, after Higgins asks
where his slippers are, Benanti comes up close to him and gives him a smile and friendly pat on the cheek, then turns and walks slowly in the other direction. The lights black out before she has stepped off the stage.

I think it much more in keeping with Shaw's proposal that although Eliza intends to marry Freddy, she and Higgins have not seen the last of each other. Her brief return visit can be interpreted as a way for her to pay one more tribute to the man who changed her life and changed her father's life, while also being changed himself, as she had observed during their scene at Mrs. Higgins' home.

People in the audience were still a bit surprised that the two are not reunited as lovers (Shaw was apparently asexual, and may have wanted Higgins to be the same), but it was really touching and effective, unlike what you described several months ago.

That's nice to hear…but did someone really think Higgins deserved a slap in the face? For what? Taking in a "prisoner of the gutters" and giving her exactly what she asked him for? Making sure she was properly chaperoned? Offering to fund her in a business of her own? Did anyone there understand that Professor Higgins was not Harvey Weinstein?

I wrote this entire post yesterday and it's just a coincidence that today, I see my buddy Ken Levine is highly recommending it on his blog. He saw the softened ending that Dan saw and still thought it was wrong…and he adored Laura Benanti. If she's still in the show next time I make it to Manhattan, I'm going again. Thanks, Dan. I hope you and my other readers enjoy these clips from the current version of the show in New York…

Give a read to Jonathan Chait here. He's quoting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney admitting that when he was in Congress and Obama was President, the Republican Congress did everything in their power to stop Obama from having any legislative successes. In the meantime, we have plenty of Trump supporters saying it's unethical and evil to do that to the current President.

I am informed that on tomorrow night's episode of Jeopardy!, one of the categories in Double Jeopardy will be The Eisner Awards. I have no idea what the answer is but if the correct question is "What is Groo the Wanderer?," you can probably bet that the contestant won't get it and that Jeopardy! will be cancelled soon after.