Monthly Archives: August 2022

The post about Dick Shawn being "banned" from Johnny Carson's Tonight Show brought a lot of mail and before I clear up some things that were said here, I should say this: I think Dick Shawn was one of the greatest comedians of his era and that he has never been properly recognized as such.

A weekend or two ago, I saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. Must have been the fiftieth-or-so time. I love that movie and often discuss it with others. Naturally, the question always arises: Of all the comedians in that film, who was the funniest? Many answers are possible but in the unscientific poll of me just thinking about comments from friends, I would say the winner by a slight edge is Jonathan Winters…and then tied for second, you have Dick Shawn and Phil Silvers.

All three of those men managed to wring every possible laugh out of every line or stage direction they were given. And Shawn's performance is especially remarkable when you recall how unknown he was at the time. He's still not as well-known as he should be. (He was also hilarious in another of my favorite films — The Producers.)

And no one who ever saw his one-man show would ever doubt his brilliance. I raved about that show here.

Anyway, one night when Rich Little was guest-hosting Mr. Carson's show, he had Shawn on as a guest and things got — shall we say? — "out of hand." My pal Jeff Abraham tells me the episode was on May 6, 1974. Jeff is the co-author of the book, The Show Won't Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage by Jeff Abraham & Burt Kearns, and he sent me the following excerpt from its chapter on Mr. Shawn…

"Shawn just decided to tear the set apart," Little told Mark Malkoff on The Carson Podcast. "And he turned the plants over, he turned the sofa over, he turned the desk over. We got in the desk and started rowing like we're going across the Potomac. You know, like George Washington. I was out in front with the oar. And we wrecked the set, totally wrecked the set. The people were in hysterics, so Fred DeCordova and all the staff were all just standing around, going "Well, this is awful. He's ruining the set but at the same time, this is the funniest thing we've ever seen." Carson wasn't there to see the humor — 'cause it was funny, all Carson saw when he came back was the set was ruined."

Johnny Carson was offended that his set, his desk, his plants were violated, but in fact, perhaps because of his affection for the comedian, Dick Shawn was invited back to The Tonight Show many times over the next dozen years — but he appeared only with guest hosts like David Brenner. Carson eventually reconciled with the comic in 1985, and Shawn made two appearances with him that year.

So there you have it. Shawn was not "banned." He just didn't appear with Johnny for a while and then he did. Here's his appearance with Carson on the episode for November 11, 1986. It's one of those stand-up appearances where you can hear Johnny laughing in the background and showing obvious delight for what his guest was doing. Thanks, Jeff.

Brian Dreger, who sends me a lot of good questions, wrote…

I really enjoyed your post about Rod Hull, and I very much enjoyed the video even more! It was great how Johnny and Richard Pryor both looked at the puppet if it were real! When Pryor said, at the end, "Will he go good with dumplings?," I laughed as hard as I've ever laughed!

My question is about people who push the line with Johnny and lost. There's a rumor that I've seen online — but I can't substantiate — that Dick Shawn was banned from The Tonight Show because he tipped Johnny Carson's desk over during some sort of schtick and pretended it was a canoe. Johnny, watching from home, was offended. Does any of that ring true? I looked on your blog and Wikipedia and I couldn't find anything about it (though maybe I missed it)…

I heard the story from…well, I can't remember where I heard it but I think it was from a good source. Reportedly, Rich Little was guest-hosting, Shawn was a guest and he did indeed turn Johnny's desk over and pretend it was a canoe. As I heard the tale, not only was Shawn not on the show again but it was quite a while before Rich Little was asked back.

There have been a lot of people who were once welcome on Johnny's show and then were not. I always think "banned" is the wrong word for this situation. "Not asked back" is a more accurate term and it could happen just because Johnny decided someone wasn't funny or entertaining. There was a long list of people who were frequent guests and then one day, he decided they'd worn out their welcome or just didn't sparkle anymore. That may sound cruel but it's kind of the way most show business works.

Folks like Tony Randall, Charles Nelson Reilly, Charles Grodin, Robert Blake, Jaye P. Morgan, Orson Bean and many others went abruptly from being very welcome to very unwelcome. Johnny could be pretty ruthless in that regard and also was pretty firm in dismissing writers who, he felt, weren't handing in enough usable material.

Other sins a guest might commit would include excessive plugging and straying wildly from the conversation discussed in the pre-interview. Carson might lead a guest to a topic that had not been planned but they were faulted for going there on their own. Some former guests claimed they'd been dropped from the talk show guest list because Johnny thought they were appearing too often with his competitors.

Getting back to Dick Shawn: I don't think he was ever a Carson favorite. The alleged canoeing occurred on a guest host night and I don't recall him ever appearing with Johnny. If he did, it wasn't often…so it was no big deal that Johnny didn't have him on after that. One of Carson's producers, Fred DeCordova, used to say that they got over 500 submissions per week of possible guests. They needed a dozen or less per week so they could afford to be selective.

By the way: Here's an article on talk show sets.

YouTube "Legal Eagle" Devin J. Stone, Esq. explains about search warrants like the one which allowed the F.B.I. to look into Donald Trump's underwear drawer at Mar-A-Lago. The news on this story is advancing so rapidly that Mr. Stone had to append several updates to this video between the time he first recorded it and the time he posted it…and it may be outta-date in about three hours because of the deadline Trump has to formally agree with or block the release of the search warrant.

Note how many things about this case Stone places in the "we don't know" category and then note how little that mattered to so many people in the public eye who didn't let that stop them from forming firm, extreme opinions.

I guess I understand it. Those who think Trump is lying, criminal scum have been on the edge of their chairs, waiting for Merrick Garland to take some bold, decisive action. Those who think Trump walks on water (or find it politically advantageous to act like he does) have been bracing themselves for Merrick Garland taking some bold, decisive action. Everyone in both camps thought, "This is it!" and leaped immediately into attack or defense mode. But I think it remains to be seen if this is what either side thought it was.

Here's The Eagle scurrying to keep up with the story. This guy's pretty handy to have around…

I'm going to stop watching how-to-cook videos. Lately, the ones I've seen have all involved a lot more kitchen equipment than I will ever possess, especially items that a professional chef (like the one making the video) might use several times a week and which I might use one or twice a year. My last few bottles of Worcestershire sauce all expired before I'd used up a tenth of the bottle. About ten years ago, I bought a potato-ricer and so far, I've used it to rice a grand total of two potatoes — one Russet, one Yukon Gold.

A lot of the videos go to elaborate lengths to make things that I'm not going to make and which I have a hard time believing anybody is going to make. I watched a few by a friendly gent named Brian Lagerstrom who seems to really know what he's doing in the kitchen but, for example, in a video about how to prepare a Chicago-style hot dog, he spent most of the video telling us how to bake hot dog buns. Counting the time I'd have to wait for my dough to proof or rise, it looks like it would take me about five hours.

I can understand how someone might think of this as a fun challenge like doing a crossword puzzle…or how someone who cooks a lot might factor hot dog bun baking into a full day of making many things in the kitchen. But I'd be very surprised if the hot dog buns that I'd make would be even half as good as the ones I can pick up cheap while I'm at the market. They sure wouldn't be so much better I'd be glad I spent the five hours.

Also, every chef lately I see talks about adding in red pepper flakes or cayenne or hot sauce to give the meal "a little heat." I don't like "heat" of the Tabasco variety and neither does my stomach. So I find myself thinking, "This chef's idea of what's pleasing to eat is very different from mine." It doesn't matter how orgasmic they look when they eat their own cooking at the end of the video.

I'm not knocking these people. Given the number of viewings some of them notch, they obviously have huge followings who enjoy their every concoction. I'm just coming to the much-too-late realization that they ain't cooking for folks like me with limited kitchens and even more limited palates. I'm going to save a lot of time by not watching cooking videos and I'll save even more by not baking my own hot dog buns.

When the great Larry Storch died last month, I plumb forgot I had a photo I'd taken with him at one of his many birthday parties. (When you live to the age of 99 as he did, you have a lot of birthday parties.) At that party, much of what was discussed was his series, F Troop, which is one of those shows that holds up pretty well many decades later. Not all of them do but that one does.

But I asked him about a record he made once called "The Eighth Wonder of the World." There was a trend in novelty records for songs that had one or more naughty words in the lyrics but some sort of sound effect would replace every naughty word at every opportunity. This was unlike some records of this kind because I was never sure what naughty words were being bleeped…but no, I didn't ask Larry what they were. I asked him if he'd made any money off this record and he didn't hesitate before saying, "About enough to buy a chicken salad sandwich."

Back when he recorded this, that was probably less than a buck but I still think it's a fun record…

Anthony Jaymes was the first of several folks who wrote today with this question based on this post…

I was intrigued to hear that that TV show you worked on aired on ABC but was taped at NBC. Why would they do it? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to tape at ABC instead of paying NBC to use their facilities?

The series was produced by Dick Clark's company and I assure you: If it had been cheaper to tape it somewhere else, it would have been taped somewhere else. I was very fond of Dick and I enjoyed working for and with him a few times…but if a dime could be saved, it was saved. If you ever see an episode of The Half-Hour Comedy Hour — and I don't know how you could unless you drop by my house — you just might notice who did the opening voiceover. It was our Executive Producer, Mr. Dick Clark, because that saved the cost of paying someone else.

And by the way: I should have mentioned that there was another, later TV series called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour. The one I worked on that had Rod Hull and Emu in its cast aired on ABC for five weeks starting July 5, 1983. It had no connection to the other show with that name that ran on MTV in 1991.

You seem to think that if you tape an ABC show at the ABC studios, you don't have to pay ABC. Not so. You pay wherever you go and you negotiate the best deal you can get. They will sometimes give priority and better terms to a show that airs on their network but not always.

I was not involved in the decision of where The Half-Hour Comedy Hour would tape but I would guess that at the time we needed a place to do the show, NBC had a studio that otherwise would have been sitting empty…and therefore costing the network instead of earning money. So they offered us a great price — and there was also this financial advantage…

If we'd taped at one of ABC's facilities, we'd not only have had to rent studio space but also office space to house the writers, producers, production people, etc., who need to be close to where the show is rehearsed and taped. By taping at NBC, that was not necessary. Most of those people could work in the office of Dick Clark Productions, which was then in this building in Burbank —

— because that building was directly across the street from the NBC Studios in Burbank.

Long ago here, I wrote about the late comedian Rod Hull and his friend Emu. If you click that link, you can read the whole article, most of which is about the first time Rod and Emu were on with Johnny Carson. It was in conjunction with a TV series Rod was doing here in "the states" called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour.

The Half-Hour Comedy Hour was a "summer replacement" show that was basically a rip-off of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, executive produced by Dick Clark and really produced by Chris Bearde, who had been one of the main writers of the original Laugh-In. The cast included Thom Sharp, Arsenio Hall, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, John Moschitta, Barry Diamond, Peter Isacksen, Diane Stilwell, Vic Dunlop, John Paragon…and Rod Hull and his rubber bird. I was one of the writers and I also wrote some of the songs and worked with Sergio Aragonés on some animated bridges.

ABC ordered five half-hours of the show and we produced five half-hours which aired to tepid ratings…and that was the end of it. But though the show was on ABC, it was taped at NBC on Stage 3, which was right across the hall from Stage 1, which is where Mr. Carson did his show. (When Jay Leno took over The Tonight Show, he started on Stage 1 and then when they decided he needed a new set which put him closer to the audience, they built it on Stage 3. Stage 3 is where a lot of the original Laugh-In had been taped. I used to poach there and watch that show taped or sometimes a Bob Hope special…so it was weird to be actually working there.)

One day while we were taping, Rod Hull and I went over to Stage 1 and studied Johnny's set so Rod could figure out how to work Emu in that environment. A few hours later, the following was taped there with me just off-camera.

It is important for you to know that Johnny never rehearsed in any way with Rod. He understood what Rod was going to do, though not how physical it would get. And as you'll probably be able to tell, Johnny was delighted with the segment, much to the relief of his staff. I do not think too many people who've ever hosted talk shows would have been willing to do this spot without rehearsals and prepared "ad-libs." As you will see, Rod was a very brave man and so was Johnny Carson.

I've linked to excerpts from this before but here's the entire segment…

One of the many things I don't like about Donald Trump is that he's very hard to ignore. No matter where I roam on the Internet, there are headlines about him…today about how he took the Fifth Amendment at a deposition with the Attorney General for New York, and how he and his team have now decided that anything incriminating that the F.B.I. found at Mar-A-Lago was planted there. Which I guess means something incriminating was found there, right? A lot of his supporters seem very angry about all these horrible, unethical things now being done to Donald Trump…and they're even madder that they weren't done to Hillary Clinton.

I'm going to try hard to get back to ignoring Trump and the politics that surround him. This post is just to restate my working premise that predictions about elections in the future are worthless; that dozens of game-changing things can and will happen. It's like we're playing a videogame with no clues as to what we'll be facing when we get to the next level. Keep your predictions to yourself until you can tell me who'll be indicted, what they'll be indicted for, how strong the cases may be, how long the legal proceedings may drag out, who'll turn on who…

You're booked on an airline flight and suddenly the airline has more passengers than seats. What do you do? This article might tell you.

I'm not paying that much attention to politics these days and a good example of why can be found in the news that Donald Trump announced that the FBI had raided his "beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach" and it was "currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of F.B.I. agents." We've had all sorts of theories about how much legal jeopardy Trump might be in and how it will impact upcoming elections…and now, here's this new twist that none of those theorists saw coming.

And all the same folks are theorizing about what the F.B.I. was looking for and what they might have found and how that will impact upcoming elections…even though — and I think I'll put this is in ALL CAPS and boldface — NO ONE COMMENTING ON THIS HAS ANY IDEA WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT. Here…read this article about what we know and take note of how little we know about it.

That's what politics is like these days to me: Lots of speculation based on things that either haven't happened yet or "facts" we don't yet know.

I don't think it's a contradiction to admit that I have had some interest in the Alex Jones trials, the first of which just concluded with others yet to come. The "Perry Mason Moment" in that case was really amazing and it will doubtlessly impact other trials, probably including some that do not directly involve Alex Jones.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's an explainer from Devin J. Stone, Esq., the "Legal Eagle" of YouTube. You will note how agog he is at how badly things went for Jones and even more agog at what sure looks like stunning incompetence on the part of Jones's attorneys…

From Kevin Segura comes this question…

This might be a question that could be answered on your blog, since I'm guessing more people than just me find the production process to be endlessly fascinating…

While rummaging around a second hand store up here in Portland (of all places!) I recently found an actual production copy of a script for a program that I remembered quite vividly watching during its original run, almost 40 years ago. On a whim, I bought it, since it was only $5.00, and to quote The Bullwinkle Show, "That's not something you see everyday, Chauncey." (at least not up here).

After I'd brought it home, I thought it might be fun to take the script (which was marked as being the "FINAL DRAFT", with a specific date), and read along with it, while the show was playing. Well, I'm sure you won't be at all surprised to hear this, but the "FINAL DRAFT" script that I purchased turned out to be considerably different than what ended up in the final program. So much so, that it took considerable page-flipping to keep up with the final show.

(I hasten to add that the cuts that were made were extremely well done, and admirably quickened the pace of the final product. There was the equivalent of about 20 or so pages (in this case, pretty much an entire sub-plot) that were cut from my 144 page version, before the final program was shot, with other small portions being somewhat re-arranged, to smooth the transitions.)

My (perhaps somewhat naive) question though, is this: By the time a script reaches FINAL DRAFT status, haven't just about all of the censors, note-givers & all of the other big dogs had a chance to lift their leg & make their mark on the script? Given the gauntlet of approvals that have to be secured, when can someone (a writer, actor, producer, director) rely on a "FINAL DRAFT" script actually being the final draft?

Just thought I'd ask a guy who's been on both sides of the production desk…

The answer to your question is that no script is really FINAL until the show or film made from it is being viewed by its intended audience…and even then, there may later be cuts or alterations. A lot of the later changes are for time. Suppose your show — not counting titles, credits or commercials — is supposed to be nineteen minutes and thirty seconds, and you film it and wind up with twenty-two, you have to trim it down, no matter what it says about finality on the cover page. And those cuts may involve rewriting some long speeches to say the same things in fewer words.

Or say someone comes up with a better joke. Or a better way to phrase things. Often as a writer, you say certain things in your script more than once to make sure the audience hears them or grasps certain concepts. Then when you see the scene played by skilled actors, you realize that the point is crystal-clear the first time and the repeats are unnecessary and boring….so out they go. If you're filming in front of a live audience, their reaction may tell you some joke ain't funny or maybe even that it's so funny, you want to end the scene there and cut the next three lines.

The point is that it's always a work in progress and it's generally understood that "final draft" means "Okay, this is the draft we're going to go with…further changes can and will be made." Because you never know what's going to suddenly need repair work. Neil Simon entitled one of his two autobiographies Rewrites because that's what his plays were. He was rewriting, rewriting, rewriting right until Opening Night and sometimes even after.

Some years ago when I was addressing a roomful of wanna-be writers, I mentioned Mr. Simon and how many different drafts he'd done of some of his most successful plays like The Odd Couple. One of those wanna-bes got up and announced that his scripts — none of which, obviously, had been produced — were perfect when he declared them done and would someday be treated as sacred. Not only would others not rewrite them but neither would he. The sounds of muffled giggles and rolling eyes filled the room.

On TV shows, I sometimes felt bad for the production assistants who had to keep issuing changed pages for that week's script. Each issuance was supposed to be on a different color of paper but the copy room often ran out of hues. They'd hand you the latest batch of changes and say, "Sorry, we had to go back to light green again."

And somewhere near the end of the process, one of those production assistants usually has to make up something called an "As Broadcast" script that incorporates every change and cut. And yes, I have seen "As Broadcast" scripts followed by "Revised As Broadcast" scripts.

I always enjoyed Olivia Newton-John's music and I wish I had better stories about her than the measly ones I now offer…

The first occurred on the second day I worked on the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter and my first tape date. I have about eighty stories about things that happened that day including the visit of Groucho Marx to the Kotter set, which I've written about several times. This happened about six hours before that. We taped on a stage over at ABC Studios in a building that housed two studios. The two studios shared make-up and wardrobe rooms and three floors of dressing rooms and a few offices. My partner Dennis and I were housed in an office on the third floor.

So at one point, I get in the elevator (alone) to go downstairs and the car stops at the second floor and two people get on, both of them elegantly dressed sort of like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in one of their movies — but it isn't Fred and Ginger. It's Elliott Gould and Olivia Newton-John. An Olivia Newton-John special is taping in the other studio in the building and Mr. Gould is a guest star on it.

The elevator doors close. The elevator car starts down. The elevator car stops and it takes us a moment to realize we are trapped between the first and second floor. Mr. Gould begins frantically pounding on the doors and pushing buttons. Ms. Newton-John is utterly calm. She just says, "Relax. They'll get us out of here. They can't tape the show without us."

So we all relax and we have a very nice conversation about nothing of consequence that lasts until the elevator starts up again and takes us down to the first floor and lets us out. I think we were in there about eight minutes. Some sort of maintenance man apologizes to us and some stars would have screamed their heads off at the guy and demanded someone's firing but Olivia just says, "It's fine…no big deal" and heads for the stage to tape the dance number. I had a high opinion of her as human being at that moment.

It never went down. Ten or fifteen years later, I briefly worked for an animation company that had an office on Melrose Avenue. The office took up the entire second floor of the building and the first floor was a shop called Koala Blue that sold fashionable clothing, much of it from Australia. Ms. Newton-John owned it or owned part of it…or something. I ran into her a few times when I was coming or going and again, she was gracious and friendly and just very charming.

She was genuinely interested in what we were doing upstairs and at one point when I told her we were producing episodes of the CBS Storybreak series for children, she said, "Well, if you ever need someone to sing a theme song or anything, you know where to find me." I'm not sure why we didn't at least see how serious she was about that — I think maybe our producer figured she'd never do it for the kind of money our budget would have allowed — but I wish we'd at least asked her. She was a wonderful performer.

Hey, let's watch another animated commercial starring Hanna-Barbera's first TV stars, Ruff and Reddy, selling Post cereals…

Earlier, I wrote about ordering from food delivery services that don't deliver. A few of you wrote me with similar experiences and I got a call from a lady I know who supplements her income driving for DoorDash. She thinks she knows what the problem occasionally is. If you deliver for one of those meal delivery companies, the amount you make off each delivery doesn't vary much. But if like many of those folks, you're also out there driving for Uber or Lyft, there are moments when those companies' rates go sky-high due to increased demand. So suddenly you bail on delivering a pizza for Postmates.

Uber and Lyft can double or triple the rate to get you from here to there when they're short on drivers and that causes more drivers to hit the streets. But if many of their drivers are answering Lyft or Uber calls, Grubhub or DoorDash can't double the price of the Chinese Chicken Salad they need delivered. They take the order but they can't find a driver to transport it.

That sounds like what happened to us during Comic-Con. We had a lot of trouble getting a cab too.

People are still asking me how Comic-Con was and if I'm happy I attended. The answer to the second part is yes, though I might not feel that way if soon after, I'd tested positive for COVID. Though my friends who've had it recently have not suffered much, I've managed to get this far through the epidemic without joining them in that experience and it would be so nice to keep it that way.

Comic-Con was Comic-Con. Everything people complain about was still there to be complained about. Just about everything people love about it was there to be loved except for the non-presence of my amigo Sergio…who, by the way, is in fine health. I had some problems with the hotel though they made everything right before we checked out.

I also had some problem with restaurants. One could sense with them and with some hotels, the slight presence of the following thought: "We have so many customers, we don't have to treat any of them particularly well." A friend of mine who used to go to Las Vegas every month says that that mindset is why he'd stopped going to Las Vegas every month.

My lady friend and I had the following problem twice during our stay in San Diego: When we checked into the hotel, I asked if it was any sort of hassle or problem to order food delivered from DoorDash or Grubhub. The desk clerk assured me that it's done all the time with no hitch…and we tried it two times. Each time, the order was placed and accepted. The usual "hold" was put on my credit card, to be charged when the meal was delivered and I was told the restaurant was preparing our order and we got updates on the promised delivery time…

…and then, five or ten minutes before that delivery time, I got a message that our order was canceled. No explanation. Just canceled. I guess they were just too busy to bother…but if you're that busy, why accept the order in the first place?

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I did not spend a lot of my convention time in the main hall. For obvious reasons, being in crowds was less comfortable this time. So was something I usually like about cons: Recognizing people I know and visiting with them. I also got real tired of all the walking. I walk a lot in my neighborhood at home but I think I need to train more before I attend another convention.

I enjoyed most of it and the parts I didn't enjoy weren't the convention's fault…so yes, I'm glad I went. That's my answer but I wasn't sure of it until I tested a few times after the con.