Monthly Archives: November 2014

Frank Rich in conversation with Chris Rock.

In 1962, a man named Allan Sherman came almost out of nowhere to become, for a brief time, the biggest name in comedy records. As a purveyor of funny song parodies, he remains unmatched, and his rags-to-riches tale is one of the great show business success stories.

Born Allan Copelon in Chicago on November 30, 1924, the man who would later be known as Allan Sherman endured a rocky childhood. His father was a race car driver and an entrepreneur in questionable businesses who walked out on the family when Allan was six. His mother (whose maiden name of Sherman he later assumed) was a "flapper" who was perpetually moving from city to city, occasionally parking young Allan with other relatives for months at a time while she tried to set up her life in some new town. All in all, he attended twenty-one different schools. After flunking out of college and being discharged from the Army for health reasons, he went to New York (arriving on V-J Day in 1945) with aspirations of becoming a top songwriter and/or performer. He eventually achieved both but it took a while.

At first, no one wanted his songs — or the hilarious song parodies he liked to sing at parties — and the only work he could procure was as a lower-tier comedy writer on radio shows and eventually in early television. That he was able to secure those had a lot to do with a gag file that he and his then-new bride, Dee, compiled. They clipped gags out of joke books and old magazines and pasted them in scrapbooks categorized by subject. Sherman later said that his tenure on some writing jobs lasted as long as his file on the show's topic held out.

For a long time, he seemed to be setting some sort of record for being hastily fired from each new position. Then in 1950, he and a writer friend, Howard Merrill, sold a game show idea to Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, television's most successful producers of such programs. Industry legend has it that when Sherman and Merrill pitched the idea, Goodson and Todman replied that it was a blatant copy of their hit show, What's My Line? and Sherman responded, "Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don't, someone else will." Somehow, that logic appealed to the producers because a year later, the show — entitled I've Got a Secret — debuted on CBS. 1951 was also when he recorded his first (and for ten years, only) comedy record, singing two of the silly songs he liked to sing at parties. The record did not succeed but, happily for the Sherman family, the game show did. It became a long-running hit and he stayed with it, eventually moving up to the title of Producer.

In the mid-fifties, Sherman began to write and produce TV specials in his spare time, winning much acclaim while continuing to produce I've Got a Secret. This caused Goodson-Todman to increasingly believe he was spreading himself too thin and in 1958, he was fired from the show he'd co-created. He immediately resumed his old pattern of going from job to job, never holding one for very long. During this time, he explored several possible routes into performing but none succeeded. He was well known within the entertainment industry for performing at parties but that was as far as his gift for parodies took him.

In 1961, he moved to Los Angeles to produce the short-lived game show, Your Surprise Package. When it was cancelled, he managed to secure a job as the Producer of a new talk show Steve Allen was doing for the Westinghouse Broadcast Group. In one of the more embarrassing show business firings of its day, Sherman managed to get terminated before the show debuted, and he spent many months looking for work and not finding it. The saving grace was that, as in New York, he had become the darling of the Show Biz Party crowd. His next door neighbor was Harpo Marx, and both Harpo and Steve Allen kept getting Sherman invited to parties and encouraging him to sing his song parodies. With encouragement from party-goers like Jack Benny and Jerry Lewis, he began shopping his songs around to record companies…but his biggest boosters were Hollywood agent Bullets Durgom, and a composer-arranger-record company exec named Lou Busch. Busch had the musical abilities that Sherman lacked and was able to take his lyrics and turn them into recordable songs. In '62, Warner Brothers Records agreed to put out an album of those songs.

Sherman later said he wrote the first record in three weeks, but some of the tunes appear to have been ones he'd performed at parties for years. Several comedy writers would later claim to have helped or outright ghosted much of his material, including for the first album — an assertion Sherman denied. He did receive major assistance from the music skills of Lou Busch, called by some the "unsung hero" of Allan Sherman's stardom. Among other contributions, Busch was responsible for the deadpan nature of the accompaniment. Lush, serious arrangements only made Sherman's silly lyrics and untrained voice seem funnier.

My Son, the Folk Singer was released in October and quickly became one of the fastest-selling records in history. His success would last less than ten years but it would leave behind a number of very funny records. He passed away in 1973. Today would have been his 90th birthday.

I never met Mr. Sherman and in a way, I'm kinda glad. The one distant contact we had was unpleasant and I've since met a lot of folks who knew him and didn't get along with him in the way I would have wanted to. Still, his work meant so much to me that I have nothing but good thoughts about the man. And when a reader of this site, Derek Tague, messaged me that today Sherman would have been 90, I felt I oughta say something. He deserves to be more remembered than he is.

Here's a good interview with Eric Idle on Spamalot — an interview recorded the day after the show opened on Broadway…

I would like to talk about an aspect of creative work (writing, drawing, etc.) that doesn't get enough attention. It's the part about making a living. And in what follows, I am not talking about trying to earn enough to live in a mansion, own a summer home and a yacht, drive a Rolls, etc. I'm talking about living in a decent home with enough to eat and having health insurance and providing for one's family. A few dollars in the bank is also nice. Everyone has unexpected expenses and should have the dollars to coast through life's little emergencies.

We live in a society where if you declare yourself a businessperson, a lot of folks cheer you on as you amass wealth. That's more or less the defining scorecard on whether you're a success and worthy of admiration. When you're supposed to be an artist, it's a little different. An awful lot of folks expect you to create your Art for the sake of Art and nothing more…which might be okay if we lived in a world where food, rent, clothing and even the tools by which you create your Art were free. 'Til then, one must pay one's mortgage and Visa bill. A person may well be a capital-A Artist but first and foremost, he or she is a person with human needs and realities.

It is difficult to judge someone's life from afar. I have found that frequently, the guy you think is loaded is in actually in desperate financial trouble. And very often, people don't think of that at all. (How many of you were surprised to read that Burt Reynolds was broke?)

A few years ago, a Creative Person I know — I won't say if he's a writer or artist or actor or anything — took on a job for which others pilloried him as a sell-out. It was not worthy of him, they said. Not up to his high standards. He lowered himself for the Almighty Buck. It was like Olivier had gone out and dropped his pants in an Adam Sandler movie because someone had waved a big paycheck.

But to those who knew the Creative Person, it wasn't that at all. He hadn't done it because he was greedy. He'd done it because he was trying to save his life. He was in hock to Loan Sharks (in the guise of a perfectly respectable bank) for a large amount and they were talking about taking his home away…taking away everything he had in the world, in fact. He was literally "borrowing" money from friends to buy groceries for himself and his wife and kids.

I put "borrowing" in quotes because they all knew he'd never be able to pay it back. And he was running out of friends who were willing and able to make such "loans."

Needless to say, a Creative Person cannot be very creative in those circumstances. A painter cannot paint when he can't afford paint. A writer cannot write when his electricity is turned off. It's hard to create anything, good or bad, when your stomach is tied in sheep shank knots and you're panicked about the rent that's due in ten days.

Increasingly, I find myself discussing this when I speak to classes of wanna-be actors or writers. There's a certain romance to some about being in the situation where if you don't start getting decent-paying jobs soon, you'll be out in the street. I've also met some who think that putting themselves in that precarious position is a way to guarantee success: "I'll make it because I have to." It's been my observation that that rarely works. It's why there are more people in Los Angeles waiting tables who want to be Professional Actors than Professional Waiters.

What I suggest to them is that they find a steady source of income to tide them over while they wait for their break. Ideally, that might be in a related field — say, writing tech manuals while you wait to sell your screenplay — but that's not always possible. Second best would be something that gave you a steady income but flexible hours. You may have to, in effect, work two jobs at the same time: One to make your weekly nut and one to break into your chosen profession.

An actress I knew was getting small acting roles — a good start on a full-time career but not yet a full-time career. She signed with a "temp" agency to do typing and secretarial work and she did something I thought was smart. She told them to never send her to any job that involved show business. She'd drive to Downey to type mailing labels for a plumbing supply company but she wouldn't go type scripts over at Paramount. She didn't want people in the industry to see her and then think of her as a secretary who was trying to act. Getting "inside" that way might have been a pathway if she'd had no credits but she had enough that when she went in on auditions, they thought of her as an actress, not a secretary.

In my case, I was kinda lucky because I landed writing jobs right out of high school. They weren't necessarily the kind of writing jobs I wanted to make my career but they subsidized me while I got ever closer. When I was trying to break into writing for television, I had a decent income writing comic books and that made it easier to break into TV. When you're financially desperate, you can make some very bad decisions you wouldn't make if you had some cash banked. And a lot of folks just plain aren't inclined to hire you if you appear to be desperate.

But the main thing I want to get back to here is that a Creative Person has a duty to his or her muse and to his or her audience…but there's also a duty to paying down that MasterCard that's charging you 18.99%.

I know one Creative Person who's dealing now with a duty to pay a whopping tax bill to the Internal Revenue Service. He's doing jobs he might not otherwise do and selling things he might otherwise not sell, and some observers and acquaintances are saying he's greedy, he's a sell-out, he's just out for the Almighty Buck. But that's not what's really going on. What he is is desperate. (But of course, he doesn't want people to know he's desperate. Not only it is humiliating, it's also — see above — a good way to not get hired.)

And I want to also get back to something I said before: Sometimes, people you think are well-off are actually desperate. There are a thousand reasons why it happens but the point is it happens. Don't begrudge them the necessities of life: Home, food, car, health care, etc. Human beings need that and I don't care what anyone says. Actors, writers, artists, directors, producers, editors…they're all human.

Well, maybe not some producers…

Back in 1978, Rudy DeLuca and Barry Levinson produced an unsold NBC pilot called Peeping Times, which was basically a parody of 60 Minutes. The on-camera correspondents were Alan Oppenheimer and a new comic named David Letterman who was never heard from again. Here's a segment in which they uncovered "rare footage" of Hitler's home movies…and yes, Hitler looks and sounds a lot like Mel Brooks. (The gent rolling the film is played by James Cromwell and Eva Braun is portrayed by Sharon Spelman)…

There's someone on eBay (a seller with 100% positive feedback) selling an oil painting of a nekkid lady and saying it's by Jack Kirby and it's "Said to resemble Jack's wife and the superheroine he created, Big Barda."

The painting is not by Jack — or at least not by the Jack Kirby who created Big Barda. It also doesn't look a thing like either Jack's wife or Big Barda. Starting bid is $500 if you're really, really gullible.

Fred Kaplan on why Chuck Hagel ain't Secretary of Defense no longer. It has something to do with not being very good at your job…not usually a disqualifying characteristic in the world today.

I doubt anyone cares but I have pretty much given up the "Bill Cosby could be innocent" disclaimer in talks about this matter. I suspect most of his staunchest defenders have too, in their hearts if not in their discussions. You want to be fair but there comes a point where you can't even make yourself believe you think that's a possibility.

People keep asking me, "Why doesn't he go on Oprah or somewhere and explain his position?" The answer to that probably is that he can't. When you try to think why he doesn't do this or that, you have to remember that he and his advisers are making those decisions with a whole different, larger set of facts than we have. They know what else might come out, which victims may be poised to cause Cosby more trouble, how his closest friends and family members feel about all this, etc. They're probably also trying to keep him out of future legal situations where he might have to give testimony under oath. (See William Jefferson Clinton v. Paula Corbin Jones, 1997)

And people keep asking me, "What, if anything, will be left of his career?" Well, that may depend on what else comes out and what kind of legal problems, if any, he encounters.

Assuming it gets no worse for the man — which, given the way the last week or two has been going for him, is not a great assumption — I think we can say this: Someone will hire him to go on stages and do his routines and someone will pay to see him. Even O.J. Simpson had a certain amount of earning power after he lost the civil suit and before he went to prison for the less-serious crime. So if Cosby does want to continue performing, as he might, he can be playing someplace. But I don't think we're going to see any more Jell-O commercials or honors or talk show appearances or new Cosby Shows, though the reruns will trickle back into view.

Still, I dunno. Who would have thought that Mike Tyson, who did prison time for rape and committed a barbaric act on live TV, would claw his way back to some manner of respectability? He did a one-man show on Broadway to packed houses and he has a cartoon show on Adult Swim. Then again, Tyson did his time and never pretended to be America's Dad and a scolding moralist. A guy who becomes famous for beating people up never really lets anyone down by being violent.

I seem to be in a Silver Lining mood today so I have one for the Cosby matter…

In Miami last weekend, I got to talking with Denis Kitchen about his fine biography (buy it if you haven't yet) of Al Capp. Capp was a scolding moralist and a hero to some before it came out that along with being a great cartoonist, he was an accomplished raper of college girls. Some who want to believe in Cosby's innocence argue that if it was true, he couldn't have gotten away with it as long as he did without it becoming public knowledge. Capp got away with it for a pretty long time and kept it even quieter.

The creator of Li'l Abner finally got busted in 1971. In the years just before that, I was starting to get to know some of his peers, some of the more prominent syndicated cartoonists. I therefore observed a rather amazing transformation. I watched grown men learn that rape is not a funny, colorful prank that goes just one notch past talking a cute woman into bed. I heard a couple of Capp's peers talk about his antics (to them, they were antics) with amusement and even a hint of admiration. These were men between the ages of, say, 50-70, and they just didn't get it. One even said something like, "The girls today, going around dressing like that, they're practically begging for it."

That was before what Capp was doing was reported widely, starting with a scoop in Jack Anderson's newspaper column and a report by one of his aides, Brit Hume. Yes, that Brit Hume. None of those on whom Capp had preyed had pressed charges or insisted on Capp's arrest. They didn't want to get into a "my word against his" battle with a famous man who could afford the best lawyers and most feared a legal system that would in its own way, put them on trial.

But the news stories emboldened one recent victim, Capp was charged and while he got off without jail time, he was humiliated and ruined. And a lot of men — not enough but a lot — figured out that rape wasn't like a great practical joke or a good way to get laid without buying her dinner. Some of them even learned that it wasn't about sex so much as about power, violence, and even pathological hatred. I witnessed this enlightenment on the part of several of Capp's friends and colleagues. The next time I was around some of those gents, it was not, "Hey, did you hear how Capp got a college girl to blow him?" It was, "What a sick, horrible man." Correct. Even the "practically begging for it" guy said that.

Few (if any) of Cosby's current accusers seem to be doing it because they see fame 'n' fortune. That's one reason, along with their number, that they have so much credibility. Some may be doing it because they still need to not feel that bastard got away with it…but I'll bet you they're all thinking others can learn from this. Men can learn that rape is a serious crime…and by the way, so is slipping a drug in someone's drink even if you don't rape them. Women can learn to beware and that even a famous, seemingly-benevolent person can be not so benevolent.

And this kind of thing needs to be reported. Even if you think no one will listen to you, it needs to be reported and those reports need to be investigated, not dismissed because the alleged perpetrator is beloved and/or wealthy. This whole matter with Bill Cosby is so sad and so troubling in so many ways…but if you're searching for some good to come of it, there's this: Some people are learning that it's a crime no less serious than if someone came up behind you with a knife and stabbed you. And somewhere, someone is going to be dissuaded from trying what Cosby did because he'll think, "Geez, even a rich guy like that couldn't get away with it…"

There's this new book out called The Art of the Simon and Kirby Studio, assembled by me. You can order one here from Amazon. If you're the kind of person who likes to flip through a book before you purchase it, click below. Someone has done that for you…

The Real Cause of Thanksgiving Sleepiness. I used to think it was conversations with certain relatives.

Dozens of people have written me about this line in my Burt Reynolds piece…

I understand how very, very rich people can turn into very, very poor people but I don't understand how very, very rich people can turn into very, very poor people.

They all think it's a typo. It's not a typo. I understand it but I don't understand it. Understand it?

The cartooning community — and actually, anyone who ever met the Sakais — mourns the passing of Sharon Sakai. Here's one of many articles being written about her and what she went through.

Kate Brannen writes How to Make Your Last Name Plural This Christmas Season. This is actually a good guide to how to pluralize any name at any time of year.

Burt Reynolds is broke and selling many of his belongings — including his Emmy and Golden Globe awards — to raise cash. I understand how very, very rich people can turn into very, very poor people but I don't understand how very, very rich people can turn into very, very poor people.

Let's say Burt was at some point worth $25 million. I don't think that's an unreasonable guess given the success of some of his movies and TV programs. Then one day, he's worth $24 million and later on, he's worth $23 million…and the day comes when he's at $10 million. Well before that moment, don't you say, "Hmm…I'm doing something wrong in the way I handle my money"? A few years ago, it was reported that he was trying to sell his home in Florida for $8.9 million but appraisers said it wasn't worth more than $2.5 million. He was being sued by his bank for not paying his mortgage and by his ex-wife (Loni) for not paying his alimony.

Years ago, a prominent Hollywood business manager — too prominent to have me as a client, certainly — explained to me that these kinds of situations can be explained in one word: Overreach. He said, "The star has $20 million and somehow, that's not enough for him to live on. He wants a bigger mansion and more cars and whatever. So he invests $10 million and those investments go bad and he chases them with more money, like a losing gambler trying to get even…and there goes the bankroll." That sounds like what probably happened with Burt.

I knew an actor who was on a series. When he got it, he felt he had to live like a Big Star even though — deep, dark secret — he really wasn't making the kind of dough everyone assumed. But he tried to live at that level, flying First Class, picking up checks, throwing parties, loaning money to friends in financial distress (he had a lot of friends in financial distress)…so he didn't sock much of that income away for himself. Then his series was canceled, that income stopped and he felt he still had to live at or around that level. For a while, another series or some movie offers seemed right around the corner…

But he was never quite able to turn that corner.

I always liked Burt Reynolds…I mean, from afar. He seemed like a guy who didn't take himself that seriously. I suspect that if I ever got to know the real person, I'd find plenty to dislike but he was in some good movies and he was often quite funny when on with Carson. So I'm sorry to see him selling his awards and wardrobe and hairpieces and whatever else is going on the block — and especially sorry to hear he has serious medical problems. I know there are people out there who derive great Schadenfreude when a Big Star takes a big fall. They're probably grinning about this and also about Doc Cosby's downfall. I just think it's sad…and an important reminder that it can happen to any of us, even if we aren't and never will be rich like that.

The best Thanksgiving cartoon ever made: Jerky Turkey, released in 1945 — and for some reason, in April. Directed by Tex Avery. Story by Heck Allen. The IMDB credits Daws Butler and Bill Thompson with the voices and they're wrong. Daws hadn't even arrived in Hollywood in 1944 when this voice track was done — his first cartoon jobs were in '48 — and the pilgrim is someone else imitating Thompson's famous radio voice. The turkey might be Harry Lang, who popped up in a lot of Avery's cartoons of the period but the voice coming out of that turkey call sounds like the very versatile Frank Graham and it would be odd to bring him in just to do that one voice…