Monthly Archives: July 2022

Cartoonist (and historian of cartooning) R.C. Harvey died yesterday at the age of 85. He was a constant presence in the more prestigious magazines wherein folks preserve and analyze the history of comic art. He also did some very fine comic art of his own and the only negative comment I ever heard about him or his work was from folks who wished he'd spent a little less time writing about other folks' comics and do more of his own.

His daughter Julia Harvey McDonald posted the sad details to Facebook…

Last week Dad fell and broke 6 ribs. We did not know at the time how serious this would become. After he fell, he stood up, continued walking with us to a favorite restaurant. He joked with the waitress, drank his favorite martini (bombay gin, very cold) and told a couple stories. His last few days were in the hospital with his family as his body struggled with complications from the fall. We were with him for his last breath.

An awful story…but to go on walking and joking with people sounds like the Bob Harvey I knew. He was a fascinating guy…the kind you could talk to for hours about comic books and comic strips and never feel you were descending into the childish end of the business. His book on the life and career of Milton Caniff was daunting in its size — Bob never did a half-assed job on anything — but not one sentence of it wasted your time.

Bob was an important contributor to our current series reprinting the newspaper strip, Pogo. He would annotate the strips in each volume, noting the historical context in which they first appeared and explaining a lot of the obscure references and terms. Walt Kelly's work was brilliant but even on its original publication, some of it needed explaining. His last "Swamp Talk" section will appear in Volume 8, which is now at the printers and due out in a few months. He will be just about impossible to replace — in the Pogo reprints and in our lives.

He made it to 99…and worked well into that decade of his life. The last time I saw Larry Storch in person was 2014…when he, at age 91, performed on the stage of The Comedy Store. I have seen comics seventy years younger not be as funny or as fresh as he was that evening.

That was the last time I saw him. The first time was when he came in to do guest voice work on Garfield and Friends. I told that story here and you might want to stop reading this and go read that.

In-between, I saw him at a few conventions and parties. There was one New York convention where he was sitting there in some replica of the cap he wore as Agarn on the show F Troop and he was signing/selling autographs. The end of the line for them seemed to be somewhere in New Jersey. He remembered me from Garfield — or at least he said he did — and he had me sit with him, ostensibly so we could chat while he signed. But he also was engaging in friendly banter with every single person in that line. They all wanted to tell him how much they loved him as Agarn, loved him in The Great Race, loved him on Car 54, Where Are You?, loved hearing him on Tennessee Tuxedo, etc.

I enjoyed watching this man be loved as he was but when he apologized to me for the distraction, I said, "It's okay. I'll come back when the line disappears." And for the rest of the convention, the line did not disappear.

I wish I'd had more time to tell him how amazing I thought it was that he was capable of being funny in absolutely everything he was ever in. But all those folks in that line — and I'm sure in many lines at many autograph shows and conventions — told him that for me. Being consistently hilarious is not easy but doing it for something like seventy years? Amazing.

Juggling many things today. There will be something here before long about Larry Storch, who died today at the not-unimpressive age of 99. I'll also be writing about the cartoonist and historian R.C. "Bob" Harvey, who was in his mid-eighties. Loud, long sigh.

As you may have heard, Boris Johnson has resigned his post as the Prime Minister of the U.K. Here with the latest on this story is Jonathan Pie, Master of Understatement…

This will probably only be of interest to folks who live in Los Angeles and mainly to good friends of mine…

A few years ago on this blog, I wrote a lot about Andre's, a small Italian cafeteria here in L.A. that serves great pasta and pizza for modest prices. They were (and for the moment, still are) in a mall, half of which is being torn down to build a huge new retail and residential building. Alas, Andre's is located in the half being torn down.

Some of us were fighting to get the city not to approve the construction of this new building…and as I understand it, we did succeed in getting its size and scope to be seriously reduced. But it is now going forward. Every business in that part of the mall has closed except Andre's and Andre's will be closing July 30.

That, however, will not be the end of Andre's. No, sir or madam. It's slated to reopen this Fall at 5400 Wilshire Boulevard, an address that until recently belonged to a place called the Eleven City Deli. I just did a search and if Google is to be believed — and don't we all believe Google? — 5400 Wilshire is 1.3 miles from the old location of Andre's. I can live with that, especially if they deliver because parking ain't that great in that area.

• So…instead of prosecuting any other police officers for violating the civil rights of black people, authorities decided to just make Derek Chauvin serve two concurrent sentences for doing that.

Since we've been talking here about the movie Who's Minding the Mint?, Joe Dante was nice enough to write and suggest I might link to its trailer as narrated by Larry Karaszewski for the "Trailers From Hell" series. For some reason, the caption on its YouTube page is partially for a write-up for the film White Zombie, which somehow adds to the charm of this project.

Two clarifications on what Larry has to say: Contrary to what is said often on the Internet, Woody Allen was never a writer for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. Mr. Allen's contribution to Mr. Caesar's body of work seems to have been limited to two somewhat obscure specials late in the time of Sid's TV stardom.

Secondly, Who's Minding the Mint? does not present any insight to how money is printed or ever was printed in the real world. It presents the way a buncha guys in Hollywood, with no knowledge of or access to accurate info — or probably the budget to replicate the real thing — thought it might have been done. Goldfinger did not show us what it really looked like inside Fort Knox either. But I'm pleased Larry liked this movie as much as I did. He and Mr. Dante have been involved with a number of my favorite films…

Back in the early seventies, a company named Aniforms (I'm not sure if it was hyphenated) introduced a TV character named Elliot Nootrac, his last name of course being "cartoon" spelled backwards. Elliot was described as a living cartoon, meaning from his home on a TV monitor, he could interact and ad-lib with others in real time. A lot of folks were mystified as to how what looked like an animated character could do that.

The secret was that he wasn't animated the way Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny were. Elliot was a two-dimensional puppet operated on a flat surface over which a TV camera was suspended. The puppeteer did the voice and made Elliot move…and for a while, he was popping up on different shows, including Laugh-In, Sesame Street and The Dick Cavett Show. Somewhere — I don't recall where — I saw a program that revealed the whole process and showed what the "puppet" looked like backstage and it really was ingenious. There wasn't a lot of call for it but it was ingenious.

Here we have the episode of To Tell the Truth for November 7, 1973. The second segment will probably be of little interest to most of you but the first segment is all about Elliot, who more or less takes over as host from Garry Moore. And at the end of the segment, you meet the fellow who was operating Elliot and supplying the voice. His name seems to be David Doren or Doran or something like that and I would love to know what became of him. He was pretty good at what he did…

Here we have a long interview with Larry Wilmore, a writer/performer I really like. Unmentioned in it is that along with all the other things he does well, he's also a really good magician. Every so often, he does a week in the Close-Up Gallery — which is mostly a showcase for card tricks — at the Magic Castle in Hollywood.

I've seen him there twice and the second time was last week. He's funny and he's obviously spent an awful lot of time practicing and perfecting sleight-o'-hand moves. Where he finds the time, with all else he does, I have no idea.

Preview Night of Comic-Con International is two weeks from tomorrow evening and the rest of the convention follows on July 21-24. If you're attending, keep your eye on the Comic-Con website as they will be posting the programming schedule. The way it usually works is that the schedule for Thursday of the con will be posted there two weeks before on Thursday, the Friday programming schedule will be posted two weeks before on Friday…so this week. I urge you to study the schedule and make notes on what you want to see…and what you'll take as your alternate picks if you can't get into your first choices.

I'm involved with ten panels and I'll post that list once the con has all the days up online. People keep writing to ask me if I'm doing Cartoon Voices panels, a Jack Kirby panel and Quick Draw and if so, when. The answer is yes and they're in the same time slots in the same rooms they've been in for the last 10+ years.

There do seem to still be some hotel rooms available in town, though most are not close to the convention center. There are no membership badges available through the convention except for a pricey few being auctioned on eBay with the proceeds going to benefit the Comic-Con Museum.

AND VERY IMPORTANT: Read the guidelines and rules involving masking, proof of vaccination and such. It can only slow up or prevent your entry into the convention if you don't.

I'll post some more tips over the next two weeks but for now, remember these: Comfortable footwear, plan ahead, don't expect to see and do everything, and — because this cannot be stated too many times — read those COVID guidelines.

The late Howard Morris was rightly hailed as one of the best character actors, comedians and voice performers in the business. He was also a very good director. He directed episodes of many of the great situation comedies of the sixties including The Dick Van Dyke Show, the pilot for Get Smart and a helluva lot of episodes of Hogan's Heroes.

I don't know if I've told this story before and I'm too lazy to search my own blog…but Howie's involvement with Hogan's Heroes started with its producers wanting to have him play Colonel Klink. It was a somewhat different role at the time and Howie — who did one of the best German accents in the business — seemed perfect for what they had in mind. Then when they were auditioning actors to play Sgt. Schultz, Werner Klemperer came in to read and someone started thinking of him as Klink instead. Ultimately, John Banner played Schultz, Klemperer played a somewhat different Klink and Howie got a contract to direct…which pleased him a lot.

Every so often, I catch an episode he directed. I think I've heard Howie's coaching in some of the German accents of day players in the show…as if he read the lines to them and they imitated his readings. I also heard at least one off-camera German-accented voice that I'm pretty sure was Howie himself. (It was very nice of the Germans in that prison camp to speak English to each other when no English-speaking people were present and to speak English on radios and phone calls.)

Howie was directing a lot then, including tons of commercials, many of them for McDonald's, where you also heard him voice some of the characters in McDonaldland. He directed several TV Movies and four theatricals — Who's Minding the Mint? (1967), With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), Don't Drink the Water (1969) and Goin' Coconuts (1978). The gap in dates there is notable. He was very unhappy with how Don't Drink the Water came out, feeling that others involved in the film overruled and altered his work so he didn't get to make the movie he wanted the way he wanted. But he still took much of the blame for its failure and so he had a hard time getting another directing job.

Who's Minding the Mint? was easily the best of the four and since it was his first movie that was going to be shown in theaters, he was very much afraid of…well, of what he felt later happened to him with Don't Drink the Water.

This happens a lot in businesses: You're given the responsibility to do something without always being given the power to do it the way you think is proper…oh, the stories I could tell. But what follows is what Howie told me — his version and there may be others — of what happened with Who's Minding the Mint? To him, it was a situation where he had the responsibility to deliver a good finished film on time and on budget…and others at the studio were making decisions that made that more difficult.

A lot of it had to do with simple scheduling — where a given scene would be shot (at the studio or on location) or how much time would be allotted to shoot it. Another director on another project once told me what to him was the most frustrating part of directing: "A guy in an office makes a schedule that presumes the crew can tear down one scene and set the next one up in twenty minutes….and then for unforeseen reasons, it takes the crew two hours. But it's getting dark and no one can reschedule the sun going down."

That kind of thing.

Anyway, I promised to tell the Milton Berle story here so let me get to it…and remember, I'm telling you what Howie told me. I wasn't there for any of this. But he said that without consulting him, the studio had signed Joey Bishop for a key role in the film. Howie thought that was a mistake. Then when they couldn't get Phil Silvers for the role of the pawn shop owner, no one talked to Howie. They went ahead and signed Berle.

He thought Bishop was wrong for the part and (Howie said) Joey had a reputation for arguing over every line of every script. When Howie was on or was directing The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Joey Bishop Show was on the same lot and stories got around. But, Howie decided, there was nothing he could do about Mr. Bishop. Mr. Berle might be persuadable. He took him to lunch and laid out his concern. I am here now paraphrasing what Howie told me — and he was paraphrasing what had been said at that long-ago lunch…

Howie said he'd buttered up Milton a lot, then said, "Milton, this is the biggest break I've ever had and I'm stuck with that S.O.B. Joey Bishop. The budget on this film is very tight and it's getting tighter every time I turn around. If you and I start arguing over every line in every scene, the film will never get done. My directing career will end and you'll be in a flop picture which won't do you any good. I'm asking you to please help me, not fight me."

According to Howie, Berle said something like, "I'll tell you what we can do. I've been in this business all my life. And I've directed so I understand what you have to do and the kind of pressure you're under. But I'll tell you what I hate. I hate directors telling me how to play a scene and how to read lines in front of the crew and the rest of the cast. I've been doing this too long to put up with that from anybody…

"So here's what we can do. If we're doing a scene and I'm not giving you enough energy and you want me to ramp it up a bit, give me this signal…" And here, Howie gestured as if someone was trying to say, "Come this way more."

Berle continued: "If you want me to tone it down for the next take, do this…" And here, Howie gestured as if to say, "Back off a little."

Berle then added, "If it's anything more complicated than that, you say, 'Milton, I need to ask your advice on something here…' and you take me to one side where the cast and crew can't hear and you tell me what you need. I swear to you, I'll take that direction, whatever it is, as long as no one heard you trying to tell me how to act."

Finally Berle added, according to Howie, "But if at any point, you try to tell me how to read lines in front of everyone else, I will take your fucking head off."

Howie said he thought for a second, then said "It's a deal" and they shook on it.

And Howie said that throughout the shooting — which was even rougher than he'd feared — Berle was almost perfect — good behavior, good performance, helping and not hurting. Except once. I'll try to re-create what Howie told me about the once…

We were on location. It was the last shot of the day and we had to get it. It was vital to the scene and if we didn't get it before the sun set, we'd have to come back the next day which would have cost a ton of money and I would have had to cut stuff that hadn't been shot yet, most of which was also vital. Plus, if we'd had to come back the next day, it would have thrown that day's schedule off and, God, it would have been a disaster. So the crew is hurrying to get set up for it and it's taking longer than it should have. I'm rehearsing the actors and in my panic, I corrected Berle in front of everyone else. I told him how to read a line and he got pissed and stormed off.

I was devastated. I saw the whole movie dying right in front of me and my career with it. Fortunately, he came back and did it right and we got the take at the last possible second.

Many in the movie business have written about how while directors often get way more credit than they might deserve, they also get way more pressures and headaches than they deserve.  It isn't all about a creative vision.  A lot of it is about budgets and schedules and sets and props and lighting and casting and special effects and wardrobe and a zillion and one other things.  In every area lies the possibility of some problem impacting the way the movie comes out.

When Howie told me this story, his directing career was largely behind him and he was telling me about the part of it that he didn't miss.  He called it "The Crap" and he had examples from every movie and TV show he'd directed.  He said, "They hire you to make the movie that they think is going to make them a lot of money…and then they conspire to make things difficult for you."  He was very proud of some of what he'd done, especially Who's Minding the Mint? and he did miss directing.  But he didn't miss The Crap.

The other day here, I showed you a sketch from an Easter Bonnet Competition where the folks in one Broadway show spoofed other Broadway shows.  Here's another sketch from another year, this one by the company of Hamilton.  Lin-Manuel Miranda shows you what it might have been like if he'd written Sweeney Todd and played the title role…

I've come to really dislike Independence Day. The premise behind it is dandy but it isn't about that anymore. Lately, it seems to be about idiots setting off fireworks where they shouldn't…and just not on the evening of 7/4 but all damned three-day weekend. Way up in the night sky, when placed there by trained professionals, fireworks can be beautiful and inspiring but down here on the ground, they serve no purpose but to start fires and to scare the bejeesus (I hope I spelled that correctly) out of half the people and all the dogs.

And this Independence Day starts as noted above — with some nut shooting at people at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois. I don't know why anyone does something like this…and on a significantly less important note, I don't know why CNN is referring to this person as an "alleged shooter." If they had a suspect in custody, it would be proper to label that person as such since they haven't been convicted and might not have dunnit. But are they now suggesting that whoever shot those people might not have been a shooter?

John Oliver with his most disturbing video ever…

Tom Michael wrote to ask…

Reading your repost of your article on actors who get fixated on people not knowing what they've done, I was reminded that you're also a fan of one of my favorite films, Who's Minding the Mint? I saw it in a theater (possibly a drive-in) when I was 6 or 7, and watched it a few more times over the years. It still holds up, and, as you've noted elsewhere, what a cast! Even at my young age I knew who a lot of them were — Victor Buono from Batman was a personal favorite — and in later years when I saw Jamie Farr on M*A*S*H and Jim Hutton as Ellery Queen, I recognized them from the film.

You've told a couple of stories about the film in other posts — how Jack Gilford got the deaf safecracker part, that Joey Bishop and Howie Morris did not get along (minus details), and a few mentions of actors having been in it; but given that you've worked with or known many of the cast, and had a long association with Mr. Morris, you've got to have more! Please share more about this film that, at about the age of six, had me considering a career with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

I don't want to oversell this movie because it's a modest little low-budget "caper" comedy but I liked it a lot…and I did get to know its producer (Norman Maurer), its director (Howie Morris) and several of its cast members. Norman, of course, was a former comic book artist and the manager for the Three Stooges. He was also a clever, nice gentleman and I worked with him on the Richie Rich cartoon show.

Before I forget: I am not providing an Amazon link to the DVD because it's not a good DVD — poor transfer, no extras, etc. I hope someday someone will do it right. If you want to buy it anyway, go ahead but I'm not going to help.

Howie Morris was a very good director when it came to getting the actors to say and do the right things.  By his own admission, he had a little trouble dealing with the aspects of his job like schedules and budgets and dealing with studio or network interference.  To hear him tell it, this film was woefully underfunded by a studio that expected him to film X number of pages per day like clockwork, regardless of whatever technical problems they encountered.  A lot of his stories about its making were about fighting to have enough time to do things right.

He was very proud of the film but wished, for example, he'd gotten certain cast members he wanted.  He thought Jim Hutton was very good in the lead but the person Howie really wanted for the part was a TV star who'd never been in a movie…and the studio said no.  The actor's name — maybe you've heard of him — was Bill Cosby.

The role of Luther (the pawn shop owner) was written for Phil Silvers but this was during a period when Silvers was having on again/off again medical problems — it's all in his autobiography — and they couldn't get him. Howie had other actors in mind but the studio went behind his back and hired Milton Berle for the part. Berle got a number of roles on TV and movie that way…intended for Phil but Phil was unavailable. That was, for example, how Berle got into Anthony Newley's very strange 1969 film with a very strange title, Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?. They wanted Silvers. He wasn't available.

Mssrs. Berle and Silvers had a very strong but odd relationship which I got to observe firsthand one day at Nate 'n' Al's Delicatessen in Beverly Hills. I've mentioned it from time to time on this blog and should someday write a whole post about it.

Howie did not want Berle in his picture. As with Joey Bishop and a few others, the studio just hired the person and told the director, "You're using him," end of discussion. This is getting kinda long so I think I'll cut it off here and tell that story here tomorrow…or the next day. In fact, I'll do a few posts about this movie. Thanks, Tom.