Monthly Archives: March 2024

My mention of the comedy team of Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster brought any number of e-mails that said I should have mentioned that Frank Shuster was a cousin to Superman co-creator Joe Shuster. I knew that, just as I knew that Frank had a daughter, Rosie Shuster, who was an important writer for Saturday Night Live in its early days. I'm just not sure why I should have mentioned this.

I also received a couple of messages from Canadian folks who took issue with me saying that to those of a certain age, Wayne and Shuster were "best known for appearing incessantly on The Ed Sullivan Show." Here, to quote one, is what Doug Cuff had to say…

Unless you're Canadian and "of a certain age," in which case they are best known for having 3-4 comedy specials a year on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Those CBC specials were a seriously big deal. They were a big deal in the schoolyard the next day. They were a big deal in the media. Even my father loved them and he rarely had time for TV.

I get it. People who read the blog aren't likely Canadian. But at least some of them qualify as "of a certain age." (You and my eldest brother are about the same age.)

Okay, you're right. I should have said it differently. I also received a number of messages about the Fantastic Four radio show with links to this interview with Peter B. Lewis, its producer. Lots of interesting stuff there including the fact that the shows were recorded in the same studios as The National Lampoon Radio Hour, which ran from November of 1973 to December of 1974, but not always as an hour. That was a pretty impressive show and it's often cited as a breeding ground for the kind of material (and many writers and performers) on Saturday Night Live when it debuted in 1975.

The National Lampoon had its offices (and recording studio) at 635 Madison Avenue in New York. That was the same building where the Marvel Comics editorial office was located at the time and this confuses people. The address printed usually in the comics was the official company address, which was then 625 Madison Avenue, a few doors away. The comic books were done out of a surprisingly-small office at 635. Later in the seventies, the whole operation was consolidated at 575 Madison Avenue and it later relocated to Park Avenue South and elsewhere. At times, I felt like they were hiding from me.

All stuff I might have mentioned (but didn't).

It's 1959 and someone thinks — not for the last time and maybe not even for the first time — it would be a good idea to adapt Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series into a weekly TV show. So they cast Kurt Kasznar (not a bad choice) as Nero Wolfe and William Shatner as his sidekick, Archie Goodwin. Not a bad attempt if you ask me…

G. Elliott Morris, who's in the business of analyzing polls, explains why it's way too early to tell. Your guy is not necessarily doomed and his opponent doesn't necessarily have the race in the bag…or vice-versa. Not today. Not 236 days before the election.

Above and beyond the fact that there's plenty o' time for voters to change their minds or merely learn a lot more about who and what they'll be voting for, there are also countless things that could happen that would shake up the race. How much cognitive decline will each candidate demonstrate? What new scandals or indictments will appear out of thin air? What really, really stupid statement will one candidate say? Which way will the economy go and who'll get the blame or credit?

Just too many variables.

I've written here before about Junior's Delicatessen, an important gathering place in West Los Angeles — a restaurant with so many happy memories for me. I wrote about some of them here when the deli that replaced it went out of business.

Well, there will be no more restaurants in that building. It burned down last night. Very sad.

In 1975, Marvel made a deal to adapt the early issues of Fantastic Four by Lee and Kirby into a radio show. I don't know who did the script adaptations but the cast consisted of Bob Maxwell as Mr. Fantastic, Cynthia Adler as The Invisible Girl, Jim Pappas as The Thing, Bill Murray as The Human Torch and Jerry Terheyden as Doctor Doom. Mr. Terheyden also played other villains as did, apparently, other actors. And yes, that Bill Murray was the Bill Murray we all know from Saturday Night Live and so many movies.

Stan Lee functioned as narrator and there were thirteen episodes released. Many years ago, I obtained them all on one LP record plus a couple of tape cassettes and I must admit: I found the first one so tedious and overacted that I never made it to the second one. In fact, I'm not even sure I made it all the way through Episode #1. See if you can…

If you love it and want to hear 'em all, you can find the first ten episodes at this link and the last three at this link. Let me know if any of them get any better than that first one.

The comedy team of Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster — best known for appearing incessantly on The Ed Sullivan Show — created and wrote this pilot that starred the comedy team of Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber. One suspects that Wayne and Shuster wrote it for themselves and couldn't get it produced with themselves in the lead roles. (Wayne and Shuster once starred in a short-lived sitcom called Holiday Lodge which was a summer replacement for Jack Benny. I recall it being kinda funny but I was nine at the time and haven't seen it since.)

(One other parenthetical aside: The year before, Burns and Schreiber starred in a summer-replacement series for CBS called Our Place that was produced by Ed Sullivan's company.)

This one — Operation Greasepaint — was directed by Bud Yorkin and at first glance, you might think they were going for the look and feel of M*A*S*H but the movie of M*A*S*H wasn't made until 1970 and the TV show didn't go on until 1972 and Operation Greasepaint was made in 1968. It also stars among other people, a very young Fred Willard and the character actor Johnny Haymer who we talked about back here and who did wind up with a recurring role on the M*A*S*H sitcom. I kinda like this pilot…or at least, I like it more than a lot of pilots that did sell…

Jerry Foley, who directed David Letterman's CBS show from 1995 until the end of its run, died earlier this week, reportedly from a skiing accident. Here's a short but wonderful video of Foley talking about his career…

I'm having major construction work done on my home at the moment. These guys are really good. I wish they fixed broken ankles. But the noise is making it hard to get work done…and that includes blog posts.

For those who are interested: My ankle gets a wee bit better every day but I'm not expecting to be mobile enough by WonderCon to show my face there. If you go, have a good time there, as I always do…and if you see someone you think might be me, it's probably someone cosplaying as Busted Ankle Boy, one of the more obscure members of The Legion of Clumsy Super-Heroes.

The Spam Call I'm Sickest Of: "Mr. Evanier [mispronounced], I'm [FIRST NAME] with [NAME OF PHONY MEDICAL BUSINESS SOMETIMES WITH "MEDICARE" IN ITS NAME] and our records show you're experiencing serious pains in your back and knees. We would like to send you, at no cost to you –" And that's about as much of it as I hear.

"Professor" Irwin Corey died in 2017…but if you miss his unorthodox, incoherent syntax, it's alive and well and coming out of Donald Trump's mouth in almost every speech. I'm not completely kidding about that.

Lastly and to speak of The Devil: I keep hearing people on cable speculate that Trump will pick Ron DeSantis as his running mate. Aren't those two guys residents of the same state? And doesn't The Constitution say that two individuals from the same state can't comprise a presidential ticket? Not that either of those guys would let that stop them if Trump wanted that combo but I doubt Ron is under consideration. I think I stand a better chance of being his running mate.

[UPDATE, A LITTLE LATER: Several folks have written to correct me. There's nothing in the Constitution saying that the President and Vice-President can't be from the same state. But a rule of the Electoral College puts such a ticket at a possible disadvantage. Several folks sent me a link to this explainer.]

In 1971, Garry Marshall and his then-partner Jerry Belson produced and wrote Scared Stiff, a sitcom pilot much in the vein of an old Abbott and Costello movie. Bob Denver and Warren Berlinger starred and Paul Reed, who played the police captain on Car 54, Where Are You? played the police captain here. This was the year after Marshall and Belson had turned The Odd Couple into a hit for ABC so I guess they were coasting a bit on that success but ABC didn't go for Scared Stiff. Warren Berlinger once told me he was told the pilot was a smash hit and was going on the air as a mid-season replacement — and then it never did…

If you want to know more about the song "Hallelujah" — the one Steve and Eydie sang, not the Leonard Cohen version — you can find out more over at the blog of my pal Bob Elisberg. He'll even show you the original version, not in our language.

In 1967, most of the folks who brought you the Batman TV show tried to bring you a Dick Tracy series. This is the pilot that didn't make it…with the too-timely title of "The Plot to Kill NATO." A gent named Ray MacDonnell — who later had a 40 year run as a character on the soap All My Children — had the title role. It ain't bad but I'm not sure its makers were really certain how much they were ridiculing the source material, as they did with the Adam West Batman — and how much to play it straight. To me, it kinda doesn't work either way.

The most interesting thing to me is that the end credits say it's based on the character created by Chester Gould and Henry G. Saperstein. Gould, who wrote and drew the Dick Tracy newspaper strip, I can understand…and all the elements of the show seem to have come from that strip. But Henry Saperstein was the owner of the U.P.A. cartoon studio which had made the Dick Tracy cartoon studio in 1961. I suspect his co-creator credit had to do with him having some control over the TV rights to the property and I wonder if he contributed anything else.

Here's the show. If you make it all the way through, lemme know what you think. And hey, I promised I'd post another unsold pilot tonight and I made it with seconds to spare…

Two more things about the song "Hallelujah" which I still think coulda/shoulda been a bigger hit than it was. First off, Joshua Kreitzer corrects the date of the Tonight Show clip I posted earlier. It was May 25, 1979 (not 1976) and I have corrected the previous post.

Secondly: Here's an interesting theory as to why it didn't sell better than it did. Figuring that the names of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé were not exactly "hot" with record buyers at the time, they initially released it under the names of "Parker & Penny." See that record label above? It doesn't say it's by Steve & Eydie. It says it's by Parker & Penny.

Later on, they put it on more than one album under their own names but I think that if you'd heard them perform it on Johnny's show either time in '79 and you decided you wanted to run to your local record shop and purchase a copy, they'd have told you, "Sorry, we don't have a record by that name by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé!" Might that not have reduced sales somewhat? It also sounds to me a bit like the start of a Marty Feldman sketch.

There will be an Unsold Pilot here later today but I wanted to share this with you first. It's Steve Lawrence appearing with Johnny Carson on 5/25/1976 5/25/1979. First off, you'll see what a good talk show guest Mr. Lawrence was. Secondly, you'll get to see/hear him and his wife Eydie Gormé perform "Hallelujah," a record they were pushing at the time. A week earlier she was on, allegedly as a solo guest, and when she went out to perform the number, Steve miraculously appeared to make it a duet. This time, she not-so-miraculously appears.

I always thought this was a real nice, bouncy tune which might have been a big hit if they'd recorded it ten years earlier. If you want to skip the panel and go straight to the song, it starts around 14:20.

You'll also get a look at Stage 1 in Burbank which had one of the steepest "rakes" of any theater I've ever seen anywhere. Reportedly, it was built this way because either Milton Berle or Bob Hope (accounts vary) wanted to be able to do a monologue and see as many faces as possible. You'll also see a Tonight Show stagehand who made the unfortunate error of being in the wrong place at the wrong time…

Remember how little interest I had in the Super Bowl?  I have about the same for the Academy Awards tonight.  I don't care who wins.  I don't care what they say.  I certainly don't care how anyone is dressed.  Hell, I don't even care who is "snubbed" by not being included in the "In Memoriam" montage.  (I had an idea though about how they could liven up that segment about people who died in the previous year.  They should select five or six people who are actually there at the ceremony tonight and put clips of them in that package.  Just to see how everyone reacts.)

Seriously, I don't think I saw any of the nominated films this year and my tolerance for watching wealthy, successful people praising and honoring each other is hovering around the zero mark.  If you enjoy this kind of thing, have a good time.  In a way, I envy you.

Bozo the Clown was created in 1946 by Alan Livingstone, a writer-producer at the Capitol Records company who later became a senior exec there. Bozo at first was a story-telling clown heard only on Capitol Records for kids and his voice was done by Vance "Pinto" Colvig, a former circus clown and animation storyman who'd become a top cartoon voice actor heard in many Disney cartoons (as Goofy and other characters) and occasionally films for other studios.

Bozo the Capitol Clown, as he was sometimes called, was a huge success and soon, Capitol was exploiting him in areas other than kids' records. In 1949, for example, Mr. Colvig donned clown makeup every day to host Bozo's Circus, a kids' show on KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles. Other folks played Bozo for personal appearances.

A lot of people think Bozo was created by a gentleman named Larry Harmon. This may be because Mr. Harmon at times said he was. Actually, he was among those who played Bozo when Colvig didn't. A company he headed up acquired the rights to the character in 1956 and began franchising him for television. Among their successes was a Bozo show which ran on KTLA Channel 5 here in Los Angeles from 1959 until 1964. It featured Bozo cartoons produced by Harmon's company and live hosting by Vance Colvig Jr., stepping into his father's role. Many other people played Bozo on Bozo shows produced in other cities.

Before Harmon got his mitts on "The World's Most Famous Clown," a TV pilot was produced by Hal Roach Studios for what would have been a weekly situation comedy. For reasons I would love to know and don't — though they probably involved money — they didn't hire Pinto Colvig to play the character. They hired longtime character actor Gil Lamb.

That's a photo of Gil Lamb, who was often in that position when he appeared. The very flexible Mr. Lamb did a lot of odd poses and eccentric dancing in movie musicals — you can see him in Bells Are Ringing and Bye Bye Birdie — and other places. He was kind of an odd choice since Bozo was best known for his voice and Lamb sounds nothing like Colvig but that's hardly the only thing wrong with this pilot. It didn't sell, like all the unsold pilots you'll see each day here on newsfromme.com during Unsold Pilots Week!

I don't think you'll make it all the way through this but you may watch enough to see why it didn't become a regular series…