Monthly Archives: September 2020

According to this site, the Sizzler USA restaurant chain has declared bankruptcy and the future of its 107 outlets is in serious question. This is not surprising in a time when all restaurants have been hit hard and the buffet-oriented ones (like Sizzler) have been hit the hardest.

But though The Pandemic obviously has a lot to do with it, that may not the the only reason. Note that in the linked article, they say this…

Sizzler USA has been in decline in recent years. Its unit count declined 6.9% last year, according to data from Restaurant Business sister company Technomic, and the number of locations it operates now is 15 fewer than it operated at the end of 2019. System sales have averaged a 2.5% decline the past five years, including a 3.8% decline in 2019, according to Technomic. Franchisees operate all but 14 of the company's locations.

Now, this is just anecdotal based on my experiences but during those last five years, I probably dined in four different Sizzlers in the greater Los Angeles area. I used to really like them as a place to pop in and get a quick meal that was fast but not fast food. I gave them up because in all four instances, I thought the food was not what it used to be. The steaks were tougher and less flavorful. The goodies in the all-you-can-eat-bar tasted older and/more sprinkled with preservatives. I felt like I was in a Sizzler knock-off that was trying to imitate Sizzler for less money.

The Pandemic has forced the closure of a lot of good, quality business establishments. No question. But it's also hastened the demise of a lot of not-great-even-if-they-once-were stores and eateries that were already on the downslope. If these places want to crawl back to viability, they might have to do more than blame COVID-19 and make everyone shop or dine six feet apart.

My old pal Pat O'Neill wrote me with this…

After your comment about actresses playing Dolly when they're too young, I wondered: Just how old do you think Dolly is supposed to be?

For the record, Carol Channing was 43 when she played Dolly for the first time in 1964. Mary Martin was 52 when she starred in the London production the next year. Pearl Bailey was 57 when she was in the all-black cast in '75. Tovah Feldshuh was 54 when she did it in 2006. Bette Midler was 66 when she did it in 2017. Betty Buckley was 70 during the national tour in 2018. The casting for the role has gotten consistently older over the past 50 years.

In 1955, in the original run of The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, Dolly was played by Ruth Gordon, who was then 59. Shirley Booth starred in the film version at the age of 60. I've always thought of her as being young middle-aged, 45-60 at most. Someday I want to direct a community theater production of Wilder's play.

As I recall when this question was raised years ago on some theater chatboard, the answers went like this: "Well, I loved Barbra Streisand in the movie so Dolly should be whatever age Barbra was when the film was made." Or "Well, I loved Carol Channing on the stage so Dolly should be whatever age Carol was when I saw it," etc. Keying it to when you saw Carol do it would give you a wide range of ages spanning several decades because I think she played the role here and there for something like forty years.

And I would imagine the answer, if you asked anyone who was producing a production of it, would be: "Dolly should be the age of the actress I can hire who is most likely to sell tickets." And it just dawned on me I should have started this post with one of these…

If you want to just look at the story, Thornton Wilder in the script of The Matchmaker said that Dolly was of "uncertain age," which might mean Wilder wanted her to be of the age where women don't like their ages divulged…or he could have been thinking like a producer: Who's Box Office? But 59-60 (Ruth Gordon and Shirley Booth) seem about right to me. Of course, we're talking about if the actress is believable on stage or screen playing someone that age, not how old the actress really was at the time.

I don't think Barbra played someone who was over fifty when she made Hello, Dolly. She could do it now but I don't think anyone's going to go to the trouble of having her redo her scenes today in front of a green screen and editing the present-day Barbra into it.

I also don't think it hurt that movie as much as the overblown production values, the lack of any rapport between her and Walter Matthau or the fact that it's really a very small, silly story. (I dunno if I ever mentioned it here but the one time I got to spend some time with Gene Kelly, who directed the film, I asked him what the most difficult part of it was. He replied, in a manner that suggested he'd used this line many times before, "Deciding whether to strangle Barbra Streisand and then Walter Matthau or Matthau first and then Streisand.")

But if you look at the script itself — what she says and what she does and what others say about her — there are two indicators. One is that the most important moment in the whole show is the musical number when she returns after a long absence to the Harmonia Gardens and the staff is so excited to have her back where she belongs.

Harmonia Gardens is not the kind of place where kids go so she had to have at least been in her twenties when she frequented the place. And her absence has to have been long enough that it's an event that has the waiters doing somersaults and backflips that she's returned. So that would suggest she's in her thirties or forties.

Meanwhile, the main story point about Dolly Levi is that she was married for a long enough time that she felt married forever. Then when her husband died, she had a hard time rejoining the world and opening herself up to the concept that her life was not over and that she might ever love again. That sounds to me older than her thirties and probably older than her forties. Many of the on-stage Dollies I've seen did not strike me as looking that age even if they were.

So that's my view. Oddly enough, I once discussed the casting of Streisand not only with Gene Kelly but with Ernie Lehman, who produced the movie, wrote the screenplay and who was the person who actually decided on Barbra. He said he thought picking her was a mistake on his part not because of her age but because of that lack of Chemistry with Horace Vandergelder (Matthau) that I mentioned and mainly for this reason: Streisand was and is the kind of performer who is always the lead in everything she does.

She is not a supporting player and in Hello, Dolly — despite the name of the play/movie — Dolly is almost a supporting role. The story spends at least as much time on those childish ribbon clerk characters. If you were a Barbra Streisand fan going to see a Barbra Streisand movie, you could feel very cheated by having to sit through all those scenes that she isn't in. I mentioned this once to a friend who loves Barbra and the film and he agreed but said he just fast-forwards through all of that. I don't think you can do that when you're watching with a crowd in a movie theater…though I wouldn't be surprised if the AMC chain is working on making that happen.

And I put the Trivia Warning Banner up because I'm well aware how unimportant all of this is…and it's Hello, Dolly we're talking about which is full of plot inconsistencies and illogical actions. It's not supposed to make strict sense. It's just something to get your mind off the real world for a while…and these days, we need all of that we can get.

I don't know why I didn't mention it at the time but back in 2016, my friend Valerie Perri was starring in a production of Hello, Dolly! down in Redondo Beach. Valerie is this wonderful lady I've known a long time who stars in musical comedies and concerts and has a wonderful voice and of course I'd go see her in anything.

I took Amber and I think also my friend John and we went down there and had dinner and saw Valerie give a great performance…and she won't mind this one criticism: She's not old enough for the part. Many a lady who plays Dolly — from Ms. Streisand on down — is not old enough to play Dolly Levi. Valerie probably won't be old enough in twenty years either because she seems to be able to do anything except age.

But it was a really fine production of a show that I've seen an amazing number of times considering that I'm not the biggest fan of it. But I am of Valerie. Here she is doing her part of the title number…and she's wearing Carol Channing's original headpiece! That's pretty impressive as is this video, though I recall better audio in the theater than you'll get here. Thanks to Shelly Goldstein for telling me this was on YouTube…

I spent a couple of hours yesterday upgrading my iPhone and iPad to the new iOS 14.0 software. Then I read many an online article about what my phone and tablet can now do that they couldn't do before and trying out some of the new features. In the end, I decided that very few of the improvements were of any use to me and I wound up putting most everything back the way it was. I'm on 14.0 but things look and function pretty much as they did a few days ago.

I am not turning on my TV. If I do, it will be to watch Turner Classic Movies or some DVD from my library. I need my Sunday away from the news and even if John Oliver had a new show tonight, I think I'd let it sit and marinate on my TiVo until tomorrow before I watched it. Mr. Oliver will be back next Sunday night.

The original production of Fiddler on the Roof ran on Broadway from September 22, 1964 until July 2, 1972. It was then revived in 1976, again in 1981, again in 1990, again in 2004 and again in 2015. Another revival was in the works before The Pandemic put a halt to everything that was in the works.

Here, folks involved onstage and off in the revival before the last one gather together via the extremely Kosher Internet to wish you a joyous 5781…

Last night's earthquake in L.A. felt…oddly appropriate. After the day some of us had — mine was rough in ways unrelated to politics — you just know lots of people were sitting, looking through the news and wondering, "How could things be worse?" And then came the tremor. No reports of damage and certainly none here but if ever there was a time we didn't need those moments of anxiety…

Seems to me this whole Supreme Court thing could go many ways. If just a few more Senate Republicans refuse to go along with it, it goes one way. If Biden says that if elected, he'll expand the court and appoint X number of new justices, it might go another. If Trump nominates his son Eric or maybe even a dachshund puppy…or if Dems can stall, stall, stall…

But in the end, it all comes down to Abortion…and when does it not in this country? It's the biggest One Issue for One Issue Voters and one where some voters who accept they're in the minority feel they're enforcing God's Will so it's perfectly fine to cheat to win. I think a certain amount of Trump's appeal to some voters is that they think he will cheat to win and that's fine with them.

And I'm going to try to not think about all this or post about it over this weekend.

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To answer a question that several folks have asked in e-mails: I do not know if Janet Waldo's voice tracks as Judy for The Jetsons: The Movie still exist or if anyone knows where they are. There's an awful lot of stuff in Hanna-Barbera history which was lost for years and years before someone stumbled across it in some warehouse…and there's plenty that remains unfound. I also don't know if Tiffany's contract creates legal problems with putting Janet's voice back where it belonged or if anyone would think to check to see if it did.

Every time I get a delivery from a restaurant or a market, some app asks me to rate the delivery person. It often seems unfair to me because, for example, if the order came egregiously late, I don't know if the delivery guy or gal was the reason. Maybe my pizza was delayed because the pizza-maker was way behind or outside smoking. Maybe my groceries were tardy because the dispatcher was late in dispatching. And often, my complaint is clearly not with the deliverer but with the company. But the people who run the company rarely ask you to rate the company…just the minimum-wage, easily-replaceable worker.

Have a good weekend, people. I'm sure gonna try.

You'll probably see this clip elsewhere and often…

Need something almost meaningless to take your mind off the news? Every so often, I feel the need to do the kind of post that requires one of these…

In 1990, an animated feature was released based on one of my all-time favorite cartoon shows, The Jetsons. The movie was not successful but it did mark the final performances of George O'Hanlon as George and Mel Blanc as Mr. Spacely, although a few lines by each character were done by Jeff Bergman imitating them. When it's mentioned at all these days, it's almost always because of what happened with the role of Judy Jetson, a character always voiced before that by the wonderful Janet Waldo. As I've written here before…

[Janet Waldo] continued voicing Judy Jetson in many incarnations of The Jetsons but in the 1990 animated feature, a controversy erupted. Janet recorded the speaking role of Judy and it was expected that the then-current pop sensation, Tiffany, would only supply the singing voice. Tiffany was signed but she and/or her managers reportedly insisted that Tiffany also replace the spoken lines. At the insistence of Universal Pictures, which was releasing the film, this was done. Janet was upset, though comforted by an incredible outpouring of support from her many fans. In 1997 at a retirement party for her frequent co-star Don Messick, Joe Barbera spoke and took the opportunity to apologize in front of most of the voiceover community to Janet for letting that happen. She forgave him and that more or less buried that matter.

But it didn't bury the matter, at least insofar as some Hanna-Barbera fans are considered. It keeps coming up on cartoon-related chat forums where some people treat it as a catastrophe worse than any of those that caused massive losses of actual human lives, and they curse Joe Barbera for allowing it to happen. Such talks have erupted again since the Kino Lorber company, which issues fine DVDs and Blu Ray editions, will soon release one of each of The Jetsons: The Movie. (Don't go rushing to pre-order it. It's not coming out for a while.)

About this matter, I would like to say the following…

• Joe Barbera said that if they hadn't made the change, the movie would never have been made. I believe he was probably correct. Joe loved Janet (and as I'll mention in a moment, it was mutual) and it must have upset him greatly to allow that to happen.
• He might not have been able to stop it. Hanna and Barbera had long since sold the studio that bore their names and while they stayed on to run things, their powers were limited, especially with regard to decisions that cost serious money. They kept finding themselves working for different bosses and fighting with different bosses.
• Just during the years I worked there, I saw the studio develop dozens of animated features that never got made, some of which were big Pet Projects of Mr. Barbera. He did not have the power to say, "Let's spend the X million bucks on this one." He had to find some other company with deep pockets to put up those bucks. The Jetsons movie was financed by Universal Studios and in Hollywood — as in most of the world — he who puts up the money calls most of the shots.
• It was a shame that the film was made without Janet as Judy. It would also have been a shame if it had been aborted in mid-production and George O'Hanlon's final recordings as George Jetson (and Mel's as Mr. Spacely and a few others) had been lost along with Janet's.
• Janet was paid in full for her work on the film and she was heard elsewhere in the movie in at least one other role. But her performance as Judy was replaced and she was understandably upset. I am pretty sure she would have been more upset if she saw anyone bad-mouthing Joe Barbera. She loved that man so much.
• Apart from how kind and charming he was to her personally, he was most of the reason she had a career for the last 50+ years of her life. She had never voiced animation before she was cast on The Jetsons in 1962. Hanna-Barbera then used her on other shows at darn near every opportunity.   That was mainly Joe's doing. I would guess that 80% of the work she got doing voices after her on-camera work largely ended was for H-B. And the 20% that wasn't probably wouldn't have happened if she wasn't doing all that work for H-B.

• Someone on a chat board recently wrote that "Joe Barbera should have been horsewhipped for what he did to Janet Waldo."  Again, I don't think he's the one who did it…and I think most actors would give anything to have some big producer treat them the way Mr. B treated Janet.
• As noted, Joe made a very gallant, touching apology to Janet at Don Messick's retirement party. It was the kind of apology that one rarely sees in this industry and Janet loudly forgave him. I had my quarrels with Joe Barbera to the point where I respectfully told him to his face I would not work for him any longer. But I still admired the man and thought he was a true mensch most of the time, including that time.
• If anyone was really wronged by that movie, it was my friend Dennis Marks who wrote the original screenplay. There's a long, ugly story having to do with what he was paid — he did not write that script to be a major motion picture — and what was done to his work…but I'm not sure he'd want me to share it here. Just trust me on this. Dennis passed away in 2006 and he still felt a lot more mistreated than Janet ever did.

Lastly, I don't think it was a very good movie. I don't think it would have been a very good movie even if they'd used Janet's voice tracks as Judy. We wouldn't even be talking about it.

I shouldn't even be spending this much time on it but I loved Janet and I know that even after her Judy was recast, she thought J.B. was the most wonderful man in the world and would not want him horsewhipped on her behalf. Even if you used Quick Draw McGraw's whip.

I seem to recall a time when the idea behind selecting a Supreme Court Justice was to pick someone who'd be so fair-minded that they'd rule on the merits of each argument…not merely side most of the time with the left or the right. It would be someone who'd be confirmed by a consensus of both Liberals and Conservatives, both Republicans and Democrats. In Bill Clinton's two terms, he nominated two Justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was confirmed 96-3 and Stephen Breyer, who was 87-9. Going back just a few presidents, you see quite a few who were confirmed unanimously.

I dunno what's going to happen this time but it won't be pretty.

Well, I do know we're going to hear endless quotings of Mitch McConnell's statement in 2016, "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president" and a similar one later on by Lindsey Graham. We're going to hear the "H" word — "hypocrite" — a lot. And Trump is already trying to figure out how to best exploit this for votes and/or to have a Supreme Court that will vote his way on election-related disputes and about criminal prosecutions of him and his aides and family.

The most important election of our lives just got more important.

Here's a short animated Ted Talk about comedy writing by one of the best comedy writers I know…Cheri Steinkellner. Listen to this woman. She knows of what she speaks…

Your One Trump Item for Today is this fact-check on Trump's Town Hall — which folks on Fox News described as an "ambush." Around Fox, if you ask Trump a question for which he doesn't have a good answer, it's an "ambush." I would recommend keeping an eye on Politifact because they really seem non-partisan and they do a good job of pointing out the fibs and errors of our politicians and pundits.

I am genuinely mystified why Trump's advisors don't steer him away from some of the lamer talking points he recites…or if they try, why he doesn't listen. The Cook Political Report, which is pretty good at gauging these things, currently says Biden's doing great. This PDF file there shows that if you tally up the electoral votes of states that are Solid Democrat, Likely Democrat and Lean Democrat by current polling, Biden has 290 votes — twenty more than he needs to win. That's without Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and one Congressional District in Maine that Cook says are presently toss-ups. Trump still has many paths to victory but where he is now is not where you want to be.

So he needs to do well in the debates. The topic of his administration's response to COVID-19 will doubtlessly arise and if he says, as he's said many times including at that Town Hall, "We have 20% of the cases because of the fact that we do much more testing. If we wouldn't do testing, you wouldn't have cases. You would have very few cases," does anyone think Joe Biden won't have a planned/rehearsed rejoinder to that? Maybe something about how that's like saying if we all stopped going to our dentists for check-ups, none of us would have any cavities.

And then if I were him, I'd say: "I was shocked when you began chanting, 'Slow down the testing!' Testing is good. It's how we determine where the virus is so we can isolate it and keep others from getting it, and it's how we determine where it isn't so we can open up businesses, get people back to work and begin normalizing our lives!"

And now having said that, I can go back to not thinking about this stuff…because nothing I read or write about it is going to change anything. This thing may be over. I'm surprised ABC could even find enough Undecided Voters to fill the bleachers at their Town Hall.

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I just turned down an invite to a comic book convention that may be held in the mid-west next February. I'm optimistic that we'll get back to a world where we can go to conventions without worry but I'm not that optimistic.

But I don't think I'd accept this invite even in a COVID-free world. I asked the gent what he wanted me to do there and he said, "Oh, just sit behind a table, sign autographs and sell stuff." I don't like sitting behind a table, I don't sell stuff at conventions and while I don't mind signing things, I don't derive the joy that some do from being asked. One time when a writer-friend of mine returned from an outta-town convention, I asked him how it went and he said, "I had a lousy time. Almost no one wanted my autograph."

There are downsides to having your groceries delivered. You put yourself at the mercy of some stranger's opinion of what looks like an almost-ripe banana. But an upside is that you can comparison-shop from the comfort of your computer chair.

As you may know, I really like Rao's Marinana Sauce. It seems kind of expensive but only in certain stores. Here's what I just found by checking the listings on Instacart. These are for having it delivered from the three markets from which I get deliveries here in Los Angeles…

The first of these is Vons, aka Pavilions.  The second is Ralphs and the third is Gelson's.  Gelson's usually seems a bit higher on most items but as you can see, they're way below the other two on this one.  Still, since my delivery order has to be $35 or more, and I'll be buying other items to get it to that total, it might still be cheaper overall to order my Rao's from Ralphs.

That's assuming I don't get it from Costco, which is currently charging $12.69 for a two-pack of 28 oz. jars.  Not only that but they have an offer that if you buy one two-pack, you get $2.40 off on the second.

And people make jokes about Whole Foods being so overpriced, they oughta call it Whole Paycheck…but they currently have the 24 oz. jars for $6.29. And Walmart has 'em for $6.98.

Here's a strange bit of TV history. Jack Paar, as we all know, hosted the show called Tonight on NBC for a few years before it became The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson took up what for a long time seemed like permanent residency. Among the many competing talk shows that came and went opposite Mr. Carson was Dick Cavett's.

Unlike all the others that "went," Cavett made a good showing against Johnny. He was on for almost exactly five years and when he went off, it was one of those "golden goose" things that happens in television. He was finishing a respectable, profitable second and someone at ABC got horny to knock off Carson and be Numero Uno…and what they replaced Cavett with did much worse. It was several years before that time slot was at all profitable again. They'd have been better off leaving Cavett right where he was.

They replaced him in stages. He went from weekly to every fourth week, displaced by ABC's Wide World of Entertainment, a rotating mess that some referred to as ABC's Wide World of Indecision. One out of four weeks, you got a week of Cavett. Two out of four weeks, you got a jumbled array of specials and pilots and special pilots and news magazines and they ran a couple of Monty Python specials made up of excerpts that were assembled so ineptly that the Pythons sued and won.

And then one week out of four, you got Jack Paar Tonite. Jack Paar came out of retirement to do what he'd once done on TV…and to show why he wasn't doing it any longer. As I wrote here in 2004 when Mr. Paar passed…

The new show didn't work, in part because it was the old show: Paar remained more or less stuck in 1959, trotting out his old regulars (those who'd survived) and telling stories about having Adlai Stevenson on his old show. In later years when he surfaced for the occasional interview, he still hadn't advanced much. He criticized "current talk shows" for eschewing witty guests for dizzy starlets…an odd criticism from one who gave so much air time to a woman named Dody Goodman whose mouth never once connected with her medulla oblongata. He also devoted a lot of TV hours to chatting with Genevieve (a French starlet who didn't speak English well), Reiko (a Japanese lady who didn't speak English well) and the Gabor sisters. I suspect that, like a lot of old TV shows, the Paar Tonight Show is legendary in part because the shows aren't available to be seen and fairly evaluated.

When he was doing Tonight, Paar's rerun episodes were titled The Best of Paar. The new show was like The Worst of Paar, even though they weren't reruns and even thought they sometimes felt like they were.

Well, guess what I found for you today, kids! It's an imperfect-but-watchable video of the first episode of Jack Paar Tonite as it ran on January 8, 1973. You will probably feel sorry for its host because the taping was beset with tech problems. Paar made his entrance to a thunderous ovation from the live audience and was halfway through a strong monologue when the director (Hal Gurnee, who later worked for David Letterman) had to stop him and say they had to start taping again from the beginning.

You don't see that part because it was not recorded. You see the Second Take as Paar and the audience attempt to recreate what happened moments before…and there are other technical glitches in the program. That would throw anyone off their game.

The announcer is Peggy Cass. The first guest was Goldie Hawn, who one suspects was booked because they thought she'd be a total airhead and Paar could treat her as he used to treat Dody Goodman. Mostly, Paar — who in retirement was constantly criticizing TV for being "smutty" — wanted to talk about how flat-chested she is.

Jonathan Winters followed and instead of being funny, they talked about how funny he was on the old show. Then the last guest was Dave Powers, who worked for John F. Kennedy. Paar was congenitally unable to go an hour without talking about his close relationships with John F. Kennedy and/or "Brother Bobby" and/or Richard M. Nixon.

Jack Paar Tonite lasted a year of appearing every fourth week. I watched it from time to time and don't recall it getting much better than this…

Dale Herbest writes…

I loved Howard Morris's role as Gopher in the original Winnie the Pooh featurettes and I wonder if you could clear something up for me. I've heard from other fans that the reason he didn't reprise the character for The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is because he was under contract to Garfield & Friends at the same time and legally couldn't. I know you were just the head writer and V.O. director but do you know if that's true? I'm sorry he never reprised the role either way.

I do know if it's true and it isn't. Howie was free to work on any cartoon show…and I think he missed one recording session (with my permission) because another show needed him that day.

It is very, very rare that cartoon voice actors these days have any kind of overall contract, probably one that just says they agree to be available for a certain number of recording sessions and that they'll be paid some higher-than-most rate for their work. Most just sign a short contract for each episode we call them in for but I've never heard of any kind of exclusivity clause stopping anyone from working on another show. If it happens, it's very rare.

Did someone else take over the role of Gopher while Howie was still alive? If so, it would mean he couldn't do it for health reasons, he wouldn't do it for the money he was offered or someone at Disney decided they simply wanted someone else in the role. Paul Winchell was replaced as Tigger for at least two of those reasons if not all three.