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As we've been predicting here (and hoping), the Comic-Con International is going to be staying right in San Diego, at least through 2015. Read all about it.
Well, it's been a few hours since I posted an obit here. Character actor and comic Mickey Freeman passed away Tuesday at the age of 90. He was a comic of the Catskills variety (and often played that turf) and had bit parts in any number of movies and TV shows, mostly things shot in and around New York. We note his passing because he appears to have been the last surviving member of the regular cast of You'll Never Get Rich, also known as The Phil Silvers Show, also known as Sgt. Bilko. He played Fielding Zimmerman, a private in Bilko's platoon. Freeman didn't get a lot to do on the show but he usually managed to get at least one line in every episode. Silvers gave him the nickname, "But Sarge…" because if Freeman didn't have a scripted line that week, he'd throw that in at some point to elevate his pay to Speaking Role status. And once in a while, they gave him a good part, like in the episode where Bilko had to find a date for Private Doberman's sister. Here — watch Mickey in action…
My hero Stan Freberg and his wonderful partner Hunter Freberg will be interviewed tonight on The Jim Bohannon Show, which is heard coast-to-coast on hundreds of radio stations and at this link. They'll be talking about their new CD — Stan's first in many moons — Songs in the Key of Freberg, which you can still order here. It all starts at 8:06 Pacific Daylight Time…or so the show's producer, Paul H. Hill, informs me. Hey, Paul! Tell Jim to ask Stan about the time he almost killed Ann Miller. He hasn't told that story lately.
Rumor has it that these same two Frebergs will be interviewed November 19 at a Writers Bloc event here in Los Angeles. Further rumor has it that the louder half of Penn & Teller will be doing the interviewing. Tickets are not yet on sale but I'll tell you when they are. You might want to save the date.
As even the logo on the Google page is noting, today is the big five-oh for The Flintstones, which debuted on ABC on September 30, 1960. Two of the zillions of eyes that watched that night were mine. I was eight (eight and a half, actually) and I suddenly had a new favorite TV show. It was allegedly a cartoon for adults…and it was on at 8:30 and sponsored by Winston Cigarettes but come on! It was about funny animated cave people and dinosaurs and how could that not be for kids? I sure liked it. I watched every week…every week but one.
One evening — during the show's second season, I believe — someone gave my parents great free tickets to a Friday Night Lakers game. These were incredibly good seats, it was an important match-up versus the Celtics and my mother and father both wanted to go. They couldn't locate a sitter and felt I was still too young to leave alone…so I was informed I was going with them. Having zero interest in basketball (I still have zero interest in basketball) and total interest in The Flintstones, I did not like this idea. In those pre-V.C.R. days, not being home meant not seeing that episode, maybe ever.
My father said, "They'll rerun it" but I wasn't sure. An article I'd read somewhere said that they made around 30 shows each season. (They made 31 for Season 2) Since there are 52 weeks in a year and the program was occasionally preempted for a special, that meant not every episode was aired a second time during the rerun months. What if the one I missed was one they never reran? At the time, I didn't know that The Flintstones would rerun forever in syndication and elsewhere. I was horrified at the thought that there might be one I'd never experience.
I begged. I pleaded. I even argued (remember my age at the time) that the first half of a basketball game wasn't the interesting part. Maybe we could leave our house at 9 PM and get there in time for the third and fourth quarter? No quarter was given. We went and I had a miserable time which grew even more miserable the next day when friends told me what Fred and Barney had done the night before.
I have other memories of Flintstone Love: Finding the first Flintstones comic books…learning to draw the characters…actually getting excited when Wilma told Fred they were going to have a baby. I guarantee you I would not have been that excited if my mother had told my father she was pregnant. I had Flintstones toys and books. I even remember owning one of these…
As a purist, I was annoyed at the miscoloring of Barney's hair, as well as his and Fred's outfits and of course, I drew in Fred's missing ear on the box cover. It was a lousy game that really had nothing to do with the series…but it was The Flintstones so I made my friends play it.
And as a purist, I eventually lost interest in the show as it strayed from its funny, inventive roots. I think I stuck with it religiously for the first three years then it started to become missable. By the time The Great Gazoo showed up, he wasn't ruining anything I cared that much about. I loved the early ones though and the comic books. In the seventies when I got to write the comic book, it was a thorough thrill, in part because I got to be eight-and-a-half again. It also made me realize how important those characters have been to my generation and a couple of others. What a grand legacy.
Continuing with the sad parade of obits, superstar announcer Art Gilmore has left us at the age of 98. He may have had the "most heard" voice in the history of American entertainment, having voiced-over thousands of commercials, movie trailers, promos, radio shows, documentaries and TV shows. That alone kept him busy nearly 24/7 but somehow, he also had a decent on-camera acting career, as well. He was a very nice, important man and I was privileged to talk with him on several occasions. Leonard Maltin knew him even better and has written a far better appreciation than I could muster.
Last night after the play, before we'd heard Tony Curtis had passed away, I was telling someone a story about him. Mr. Curtis was, of course, a great movie star but there were those who said that what he wasn't was an actor. I once heard a prominent teacher of actors say precisely that, citing him as an example of someone who sought and achieved stardom and fame and fortune without ever really learning his craft. She said this to a roomful of acting students, some of whom didn't see anything wrong with that. Or if they did, it was that the limitation may have made that fame and fortune short-lived.
Anyway, I got to telling the story of what had happened when Neil Simon wrote a play called I Ought to Be In Pictures and decided that despite a total lack of stage experience, Tony Curtis was just the guy to star in it. Simon called Tony's agent, who I think was the legendary "Swifty" Lazar. Let's say it was him. Lazar said, "Neil, Tony's my client but you're my friend and my advice is not to take him. I don't think this will end well." Simon asked why. The agent declined to explain. He said, "But if you want him, I'll recommend he do it." Simon decided to take the gamble and Curtis was hired. Curtis, who'd never done anything of this sort, was nervous but excited about making his Broadway debut. He demanded and got a private acting coach to help him learn his lines and he called Simon every night to talk through the part, ask questions and mostly be reassured. Dinah Manoff was playing his daughter, by the way.
They opened with an outta-town tryout. The town was Los Angeles and it was down at the Music Center — I forget which theater. The Ahmanson, probably. Curtis was at least passable opening night and after the show, Simon went back and said something like, "You did fine, Tony. And it'll go even better once I do the rewrite." Simon was, of course, referring to the fact that once an audience sees a new show, the playwright usually rewrites whole scenes and speeches. Neil Simon is famous for doing a lot of that, including tossing out entire acts and writing new ones.
At first mention of the rewrite, Curtis paled. He said, "What do you mean? This is the show I learned. This is the show we're doing." It was explained to him but he insisted he'd learned that script and could not possibly learn changes. He was told he'd have to.
I saw the show a few nights later…apparently before they'd given him any. It was a nice, unmemorable evening — not one of Mr. Simon's stronger efforts but we were all entertained. Tony Curtis was okay in the play but Dinah Manoff was better. It was however possible to imagine Curtis would improve by the time the show got to Broadway.
That did not happen. When they began giving Curtis new dialogue, he couldn't learn it and he lost the unchanged lines. One night he went out and began ad-libbing (poorly) what he couldn't remember, getting angrier and angrier when the other actors on stage said things to him and he couldn't recall what to say in response. He began cursing them out and spewing out-of-character vulgarities and the entire first act was a shambles. At intermission, he solved the problem by getting back into his street clothes and going home…and when I Ought to Be In Pictures opened on Broadway, his role was being played by Ron Liebman.
Thereafter, Curtis concentrated on film and TV work. I didn't see everything he did, before or after, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he did something that demonstrated great ability. He wasn't bad in The Boston Strangler but for the most part, he seemed to define the difference between being an Actor and a Movie Star. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I just think it's important sometimes to recognize the distinction.
I met him briefly a couple of times, long after the stardom had cooled. Our longest conversation was at a book/photo signing and during a lull in the line, we chatted about a failed project that would have brought him back to the stage and (eventually and finally) to Broadway. It was to be a revival of the musical, Li'l Abner. He was to serve as one of the producers and to play several small roles, popping up (he explained) like Frank Morgan appearing in The Wizard of Oz above and beyond the title role. He explained to me how the deal fell apart but I frankly didn't understand it…and then people came over to ask for his autograph and he was more interested in that than in our conversation. He was very good at giving autographs, by the way. He was charming and self-deprecating and he made the signature-seekers feel they'd had a very special moment with a very special Movie Star. And when I think of him today, I think of how happy he made those people…and how happy they made him.
Last evening, I attended opening night of the Reprise! production of They're Playing Our Song up at the Freud Playhouse at U.C.L.A. As you may know, Reprise! does these short-run, hastily-rehearsed productions that only run for two weeks. They chose to open this season with the popular musical that features a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager and music by Marvin Hamlisch. Lucie Arnaz and Robert Klein first starred in the show on Broadway in 1979 and it ran through many cast changes for a whopping 1,082 performances. Which is remarkable because it really isn't a very good play.
I've seen it several times, including the pre-Broadway tryout in L.A. with Klein and Arnaz. (It may interest folks who know the show that when I saw the tryout, the character of Leon died near the end. By the time tryouts ended, that had been changed and he lived happily ever after.) There are moments that are great and some songs that are fun but I don't think the contribution of Neil Simon is up to the standard of…well, the standard of Neil Simon. There's a lot of funny banter but the show doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Here's a recounting of the plot, ridiculously slanted to make it sound silly…
Great male composer of music meets great female author of lyrics. They get on each others' nerves and he complains mightily about her all through the first two scenes. In the third, they have a brief moment of common bonding and in no time at all have fallen in love and are agreeing to sleep together that night. Before long, they move in together. There are apparently some problems with them trying to be mates and business partners at the same time but those are never explained. The big issue between them becomes that she keeps taking phone calls or rushing off in the middle of the night to help out her former boy friend who's fallen on hard times. Composer and lyricist break up over this. They start seeing other people. They get back together. Everybody sings.
That's slanted to make it sound silly but it's not slanted that much. I am aware that True Love sometimes occurs in real life because Person A looks at Person B and they inexplicably bond…but this is a play, not real life. I don't get why they mate. I also don't get why they get back together and why, in the version I saw last night, it seemed to work like this: Throughout the play, the lady had been the crazy person in this relationship and the guy had been the saner (somewhat) one, getting understandably ticked off at her craziness. And then at the end, they reunite when the guy apologizes for being insane and promises he'll change. I found myself wondering if the actors had memorized the wrong parts for that scene.
What I did figure out is the reason They're Playing Our Song has been so successful in spite of all this. It's a small musical — cast of eight and the two leads carry 90% of it…so it attracts great and talented stars. Great and talented stars can often make weak material work. For instance, as Jason Alexander did last night, they can take lyrics that don't quite rhyme and sing them so convincingly that you don't notice. Or as Stephanie J. Block did last night, they can be so darned adorable on stage and fascinating that you can understand why someone would fall in love with them even though the play itself doesn't tell you. Believe it or not at this late paragraph but this is a near-rave review. I had a great time at the show. Everyone who was there last night had a great time.
Someone — maybe Jason, who's not only the star but the Artistic Director of Reprise! — maybe director Lonny Price or the show's authors who were consulted — figured out how to jazz up and patch this show into something that Alexander and Block could play the heck out of. There's some new dialogue. There are a couple of new songs, including the interpolation of "If You Remember Me," which is a tune Sager and Hamlisch whipped up for the movie, The Champ. Ms. Block sings it so well, that number alone may just be worth the price of admission.
Stephanie J. Block was the big delight for me. That's her in the photo above and she's sensational. I expected Jason Alexander to be sensational but I wasn't familiar with his co-star, who has some nice stage credentials. I've seen her in some things and didn't really know who she was. I do now. The show is there until October 10 and they may still have some seats left at this link. Try entering SONIA in the coupon box and it may give you 10% off. And you may see me there because I may go again.
There are two other "stars" of these proceedings. Scenic designer John Iacovelli and Lighting Designer Jared A. Sayeg have conspired to create the most amazing set. The entire stage of the Freud looks like a giant Panasonic record player with huge JBL speakers on either side of it. The turntable part is where the action is played with the tonearm serving as a sofa in some scenes. It sounds wacky but it's quite functional and appropriate, plus it adds an air of magic to the proceedings. I would love to ask these two men how they came up with it…
Oh, wait. I can. This coming Saturday, the 2 PM matinee will be preceded by a lecture/interview conducted by the noted theatrical authority, me. At Noon, I'll be on that stage (We'll have to figure out where and how) to discuss the history of this musical and to chat with Mr. Iacovelli and Mr. Sayeg about their work. This one-hour discussion is free and like I said, it starts at Noon. If you're attending the matinee, come early and bring a picnic lunch to eat during the hour after we vacate that amazing stage and the crew sets up for the performance. Or you can just come and hear the talk and not stay for the matinee if you like. But do try to see this show while it exists. They've taken a musical that I didn't think was that wonderful and made it mostly wonderful. In some ways, that's more impressive than doing a great production of a show that was great to begin with.
This is from Michael Kilgore…and I should note again that one reason I blog (I get asked a lot why) is that I can ask a question and get an answer from someone who knows…
If you really, really want to know the arcane, satellite-TV-law reasons why DirecTV chooses infomercial and religious channels over C-SPAN 3, read on. If not, I completely understand.
Satellite providers, as part of their FCC licenses, are required to carry a certain number of Public Interest (PI) channels for free to all subscribers. The PI channels have to be non-commercial, and they have to be from different sources. So carrying C-SPAN 1, 2 & 3 only satisfies one channel against the quota because they're all from the same source. C-SPAN and a couple of different flavors of religious channels take up the same space but count as three against the quota.
No one requires anyone to carry infomercials (thank goodness!), but the economics are reversed. These channels actually pay the carrier a few dimes per subscriber per month to be in the lineup. (Or they cut the carrier in for a percentage of sales, but you get the idea.) That's why they're favored over good free channels with little demand.
C-SPAN isn't free to carriers. According to a reputable list, it costs 5 cents per subscriber/month. Dunno about C-SPAN 2 and 3; they might be included if you pay for C-SPAN.
I'm guessing they aren't…so I guess it just comes down to the fact that I'd rather they spent the nickel on C-SPAN 3 than on the DIY Network. And they probably would if they felt more subscribers felt as I do.
What I guess I'd really like is for C-SPAN's coverage of Congress (and just that) to be underwritten by the government and made available free to all. I think it says something very good about this country that we let everyone who's interested watch this process. I am not, as you may recall, in favor of the government funding PBS or really any of the Arts…a position that horrifies many of my friends. I would not even be in favor of Uncle Sam paying for the parts of C-SPAN where they interview authors or let folks call-in and yell at public figures…or anything other than pointing cameras at Your Government at Work. That would cause too many arguments about whether those shows are, ahem, fair and balanced. I just think you should be able to see your Congressperson or Senator doing their job…or not doing it, as the case may be.
Matt Taibbi on how the Tea Party movement may not know it but they exist to serve the desires of Corporate America.
If Hitler had had Twitter, he wouldn't have had to invade Poland to express himself. Good night, Internet!
Warner Archive, which puts out limited-edition DVDs, has recently added complete sets of several cartoon shows, including one I worked on called Thundarr the Barbarian. This is probably bad news for fans of the show since it means the rumored release of a "regular" DVD will not occur for quite a while. The Warner Archives DVDs contain no special features and little if any restoration work is done on the material. Probably none was done on these. I'm betting they just took the same transfers that run from time to time on the Boomerang Network, put them on four DVDs and now they're selling them.
Thundarr was a pretty good show…something I don't say about all or even most of the cartoon shows I worked on back then. My friend Steve Gerber was the story editor and he wrote the pilot with a little help from his friends. (I believe Marty Pasko, who also wrote episodes, named Ookla, Thundarr's hairy pal who was named when they saw a sign that said "U.C.L.A." And I think I named Thundarr, though I stopped claiming that when several other folks who worked on the show — though not Steve — claimed it was their idea and got real, real mad at me.) Others wrote scripts too, including Buzz Dixon and I think Roy Thomas. Alex Toth designed the three main characters and then most of the other design work was done by Jack Kirby.
Jack did some pretty good work on the series though it isn't always evident due to the poor (I thought) animation. A few years ago, an exec at Time-Warner had the idea to have the 21 episodes reanimated by a better studio — same scripts and voice tracks, and they'd salvage as much of the Kirby design work as they could. I actually thought that was a good idea but it was nixed by someone because it would, they thought, create a bad precedent. It was allegedly said that, "if we go back and start fixing all the shows in our library that were done on the cheap, we'll bankrupt the corporation." Well, maybe. But Thundarr was a show that didn't get enough of a chance to live.
It was only on ABC's Saturday morning schedule for two seasons. The ratings would have justified another but that was the period when someone at Paramount decided they wanted cartoons on Saturday AM based on Garry Marshall's hit prime-time sitcoms. This was back when if Mr. Marshall had said, "I want all the ABC executives dancing naked on my lawn and I want them there in ten minutes," they'd have all been there and nude in five. The year before, the animated Fonz and the Happy Days Gang show went on the schedule. In 1981, Thundarr had to be yanked to make room for one of them.
There were later a number of attempts to revive Thundarr. Buzz Dixon wrote a terrific script for a feature version that never got made — but nothing happened. There were even a few issues of a Thundarr comic book that were written and drawn for Gold Key but never published. I think it could still be a major property but no one at Time-Warner, which now owns the show, seems that interested…and I guess the DVD release is more proof of that.
Here's a link if you want to order it…and remember that the video quality may not be what you've come to expect from DVD releases. Then again, it might be. If someone buys one, let me know.
The set is, let us note, $29.95. Someone on eBay is taking advantage of the fact that some people don't know about Warner Archive and he's selling them there for $59.95. That may soon be the price at Warner Archive, which has sometimes raised their prices after initial offerings. So if you want one, order it now. I don't make a commission on these links and I don't expect Time-Warner to send me residuals or even a free copy of the DVD with my work on it. But I loved the show and I do like seeing it get some attention, especially because of all the hard work Gerber put into it.
As we all know, Johnny Carson hosted the daytime game show, Who Do You Trust (usually spelled without the question mark) on ABC before he took over The Tonight Show on NBC late night. A lot of folks don't know though that Who Do You Trust was originally called Do You Trust Your Wife…with similar punctuation. It started out as a prime time game show hosted by Edgar Bergen and his wooden pals. That ran from 1956 through 1957…and the premise was basically that a husband and wife would come on and the host would do one of those long, light-hearted interviews that hosts used to do on game shows. Groucho Marx was, of course, the master of that and there were many attempts to replicate that success with others. Then the show would progress to the game part where the host would ask questions for money and the husband contestant would have to decide if he thought his spouse could answer the question. The "gold" on the show would be when they'd fight a little, especially when he'd take the question for himself, get it wrong and then the wife would say, "I knew that one."
The Bergen version was shot in Hollywood and ran on CBS until March of '57. When it was cancelled, ABC picked it up as a daytime show that would be produced out of New York. Bergen declined to either relocate or do a Monday-Friday series so they hired Carson. His version debuted on ABC in the late afternoon the following September and began to evolve as Johnny made it his own. The interview portions became more important…and they'd even have contestants come on and demonstrate skills or what they did for a living so that Johnny could join in. A hula hoop champion would teach Johnny how to use a hula hoop or something like that. It worked very well but the producers began to have trouble finding married couples who gave Johnny interesting things to do. That's when they changed the name of the program and began having on "couples" that were a team of any kind — partners, brothers, mother and daughter, etc.
Another important change occurred in October of '58 when announcer Bill Nimmo (who you'll see in the episode below) left for another gig. The network suggested Carson try a female sidekick and auditions were done. The auditions left Carson unsure how to relate to a lady in that role so he asked for another man. A quick talent search came up with Ed McMahon and that combo worked out so well that when Carson left in September of '62 to go host The Tonight Show, he took Ed with him. He also dragged along some other personnel from the game show including its line producer, Art Stark. Comedian Woody Woodbury (and the returning Bill Nimmo) replaced Carson and McMahon but the program only lasted another 15 months.
This episode has Nimmo and married couples and it appears to be from January of 1958. The first contestant is a fencing master and Johnny gets a lesson. If you stick with it 'til the end — and I couldn't blame you if you didn't — you'll hear an announcement that Johnny is guest hosting "The Jack Paar Show" (i.e., The Tonight Show) that week. I guess he did all right with it…
I haven't read Bob Woodward's new book on Barack Obama and the wars we're currently fighting…but Fred Kaplan has. And Fred found something interesting in it.
Micah Olsen sent me the following…
I read your recent blog post about how polling doesn't really reflect approval levels, and I found I agree with most of what you write. However, I thought this article was a little off in general, and, in particular, you wrote something at the end of that post that I think, while true, isn't accurate: "there are people who disapprove of Obama because they think he's a Muslim Socialist just as there were folks who disapproved of Bush because they thought he arranged for the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center." The problem I have with these kind of all-too-common statements is that try to hit both sides with a false equivalency. On the one hand, you hit the right with a charge that millions of conservatives believe, and that gets insinuated or repeated on Fox News and right-wing radio daily. On the other hand, you hit the left with a charge that only a pathetically small number of crazies believe, and that I've never heard any left-wing media outlets mention.
Most people who opposed Bush did so because of a sincere disagreement over his policies, his corruption, his power grabs, his incompetence, or his lying to get us into an ill-conceived war. Meanwhile, a vast number of conservatives — and possibly a majority of them — oppose Obama to a large degree over fantasies ("death panels"), simplistic slogans ("socialist"), policies they agree with ("setting up a commission to lower the deficit"), the opposite of what he's done ("he raised taxes"), or something Bush did ("he bailed out Wall Street").
I realize moderates and liberals tend to blame both sides for any problem, and 20 years ago, it might have been reasonable to do so. However, while the Democrats are far from perfect, the new Republican party and conservatives in general have been taken over by fanatics and a right-wing media that lies to them to keep them riled up and often voting against their own interests. Today's Democrats and the left do not have those problems much outside of a tiny extreme. For example, related to your article on poll numbers, I've heard and read lots of grumbling on the left in the last few months about Obama and the Democrats in Congress. On the other hand, I hear almost universal condemnation of the same from the right regardless of the issue; while a few years ago, I heard and read only nearly unanimous lockstep admiration from them about Bush and the Republicans in Congress regardless of what they did. Making it look like both parties do the same things (a la Jon Stewart's 10/30 rally), and not pointing out that, nowadays, it's primarily one side that has a huge segment of supporters and media that are extreme, hyper-partisan, ignorant, and irrationally angry over false or distorted issues only gives that side cover.
I more or less agree with this though I don't know that Mr. Stewart's rally says both parties do the same thing. I don't see that he's bringing the parties into it at all…merely condemning irrational fear, wherever it might lurk. But I concur that nutcase charges are given a lot more dignity and dissemination on the right than on the left…and I think some of that's financial. There's more money in writing books that say Obama is the Anti-Christ than there ever was in saying Bush was an idiot…and there is no left-wing equivalent of Limbaugh, Beck, etc., though some have tried. A friend of mine and I sometimes discuss whether this is due to the character of Liberals, that they won't go for that kind of thing, or if it's just that no one has yet figured out how to do it for that audience. I'm inclined to think the latter.