Stu 'n' Jeanine

I have these friends — Stu Shostak and Jeanine Kasun — and I've written about them here before. Stu is a longtime expert and preservationist of classic television shows, and he's worked as a warm-up guy on TV shows and he had a much-envied job as Lucille Ball's assistant and archivist. Many of you follow an online program he does every other week. I don't know if you'd call it a podcast or a TV series or what but we have long been plugging Stu's Show on this blog.

If you've never seen it, go over to his website, click the Archives link and take a gander at the famous people who have appeared on the 612 episodes of Stu's Show. To steal the joke that Neil Simon admitted he stole from fellow comedy writer Gary Belkin, I'm the only one there I've never heard of.

Stu's career in warm-ups and working for Lucy make him interesting. So does his history of preserving and honoring TV programs of the past. So does the online shows he's been doing since December of 2006. I was his guest on Stu's Show #1 and I plugged it here. Back then, it was not on TV (as it is now) and it was part of a whole network of shows about old television.

So that's all interesting and so is the fact that Stu met this lady named Jeanine through their mutual love of old TV programs (Lucy's, especially) and they became a couple. And a little while after that, something happened which I wrote about here and will quote here…

Less than a year ago, our friend Jeanine Kasun suffered a completely unexpected brain aneurysm. She was alone in her mountain home at the time and if she hadn't been on the phone with her friend (in the romantic sense) Stu Shostak at the time, I would have had one more obit to write that month. Fortunately, she was talking to him when it happened. He was at their home in Chatsworth and he quickly called for help and emergency services were dispatched.

Jeanine was in a coma for many weeks. When she woke up, she couldn't talk, she couldn't walk, she couldn't make any part of her body do what she wanted it to do. She had no memory and no ability to retain information. Eventually — thanks to good doctoring, therapy, surgery and sheer determination, some of that started to come back. All of that was made possible by the heroic and selfless efforts of Stu Shostak. If you ever had a medical emergency like that, you couldn't do better than have someone like Stu as your advocate and protector.

I helped him out a few times but it was 99% Stu arguing with doctors, double and triple-checking hospital arrangements, dealing with the insurance companies, being at her bedside and watching her back.

She got better. They got married. And it all makes for not one interesting story but many: Stu's warm-up career, his hobby preserving old TV, his career with Lucy, meeting Jeanine, hooking up with Jeanine, saving Jeanine, doing 600+ shows with guests like Dick Van Dyke, Ed Asner, Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, etc., etc. Sounds like a movie, doesn't it? Well, it is.

Documentarian C.J. Wallis and his able crew have made Stu's Show, a film about Stu, his life, his love, his saving his love's life, his friendship with Lucy…there's an awful lot to tell here and C.J. packs it in well. The story is told by Stu, Jeanine, a bevy of former Stu's Show guests and TV stars, and even me. It will be available on all major streaming services and pay-per-view points on May 2nd. Here's the trailer…