Monthly Archives: December 2017

The PBS series American Masters has a two-hour look at Bob Hope that's airing these days and it's well worth the two hours. There are clips of Hope's work, including some rare stuff, and his story is told in large part "by him" as Billy Crystal reads excerpts from Hope's (ghostwritten) books. There's also testimony from Woody Allen, Brooke Shields, Dick Cavett, Leonard Maltin, former Hope writer Bob Mills and — via vintage footage — writers like Larry Gelbart, Mel Shavelson and Sherwood Schwartz.

It's a rags-to-riches story with few rags and a whole lot o' riches as Hope becomes something more than just another skilled comic, actor and song 'n' dance man. It may go a long way to answer the question, "What was so special about that guy?" — a question which must have occurred to a lot of people who knew him only from what he did post-1975 or so. He seemed to some like a legend only because so many people said he was one.

Much of the documentary is pure hagiography, making Bob out to be perhaps a bit more than he was but they did deal with two possible negatives about the man which have gone largely unmentioned before, at least on TV…

One was Hope's legendary (but whispered) unfaithfulness to his wife of 6+ decades, Dolores. It was well-known to those in the industry, including folks who would not have kept the secret of a lesser star's peccadilloes. I think they were afraid that Bob was too much a symbol of decency and "family values" to America and that they would have been accused of (a) lying and (b) smearing all that is sacred and holy had they talked about it.

It was just something that much of this country would have refused to believe and would have been angry to hear. Today, it is less of shocker that wealthy, powerful men do things like that.

The filmmakers are to be commended for not evading the issue since it was very much a part of Mr. Hope. If anything, they went easy on him since some of the stories — one of which happened to a close friend of mine — aren't just of a man who cheated on his wife but of a man who sometimes ventured near Harvey Weinstein territory.

The show also dealt with Hope's support for the Vietnam War, which always struck me as flowing from Hope's need to be the Star Comedian in any president's court. Larry Gelbart and I talked about this once and he felt as I sensed that Hope's personal politics were secondary; that his assumed role of America's Preeminent Comedian had led him to one of those "America is never wrong" postures. You couldn't go against the President of the United States because then the President of the United States might not play golf with you and refer to you as a National Treasure.

It was fascinating to hear in the show a tape of Hope expressing his doubts — in private, of course — about that war to Nixon. And to hear Nixon — who clearly prolonged the war for personal partisan advantage — selling Hope the same load of dung he sold the public and even advising Hope on how to sell it himself. People say that one of the main factors that turned this country against the Vietnam War was when Walter Cronkite spoke out against it…

Imagine what might have happened if Bob "Mr. Saigon" Hope had done what Walter "Most Trusted Man in America" Cronkite did. And remember what they said earlier in the doc about how Hope, through actions and words, told his fellow stars that if you were famous, you had a duty to use some of that fame for good causes.

And I can't let one part of this pass without comment. Tom Selleck, who served in that war, said in the documentary that Hope's support of the troops meant everything to himself and his fellow soldiers because of the hostility many of them felt from those opposed to the war. That's probably very true and very much to Hope's credit. But Selleck also said, "I think the great lesson that came out of Vietnam is we must never blame our troops for a mission that is unpopular."

That's also correct of course but one of the big problems was how hard it was for those of us protesting the war to express any disapproval of the mission or how our leaders were leading it without supporters of the war firing back with "You hate our troops! You cheer when they get killed!" That dishonest conflation was one of many factors that moved me from supporting the war to marching against it. So as not to get this post irrevocably off the topic of Mr. Robert Hope, I may write a separate piece about this here in the next few weeks.

Getting back to him: I liked Hope but as with many of his contemporaries — Jack Benny, George Burns, Lucy, et al — it wasn't that I found them funny as that I found them entertaining. They projected stardom and history and a total command of the stage. I chuckled at Hope's rhythms and attitude more than at his jokes — and even at a young age, I was aware that when I did laugh at something Bob Hope said, I was laughing at something his writers had given him. I think I just liked how good he was at being Bob Hope.

One of the folks behind the American Masters special was Richard Zoglin, who wrote this very good book about Hope. I recommend it if you enjoy the documentary and wish to delve deeper into the subject. Whatever Bob Hope was, he was the only one of its kind and that alone makes him kinda fascinating.

This Thursday evening, 1/4/18, Jay Leno's Garage on CNBC has its season premiere with an episode about dangerous things people do in cars. In it, Mr. Leno attempts perhaps the most daring feat of all: He attempts to teach Gilbert Gottfried how to drive…in a Ferrari!

The listings are screwed-up on my TiVo but if you want to record this, I think the episode you want is entitled "In Harm's Way."

Speaking of Gilbert: I continue to enjoy listening online to installments of Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. If you love the kind of show biz trivia into which this blog often descends, you'll enjoy the conversations that Gilbert and his co-host Frank Santopadre have with folks like (recently) Mario Cantone, Art Metrano and Bill Saluga. Coming up some time in January: Me. That's about as scary as teaching Gilbert how to drive…in a Ferrari!

John Green has some interesting facts about candy…

Two days ago, Donald Trump did an impromptu interview with the New York Times that has people again talking about his mental health. One of those is Ezra Klein who explains why he believes "The president of the United States is not well."

Want to get a second opinion? Glenn Kessler — fact-checker for the Washington Post — says that Trump made 24 false or misleading statements in thirty minutes. A few of these seem nitpicky to me but there are enough inarguable howlers in there to make you wonder if he really believes this stuff and is making decisions based on fantasy information.

And Trump has started arguing that the U.S. Postal Service should be charging Amazon more for transporting its parcels. The problem with that accusation, as Jen Kirby notes, is that the U.S.P.S. makes money transporting parcels. The post office is in bad financial shape because delivering First Class Mail is becoming increasingly unprofitable. You'd think a great businessman like Donald Trump would understand something like this but he's apparently too angry at the guy who who owns Amazon because he also owns the Washington Post that prints things like Glenn Kessler's article.

Meanwhile, Roy Moore hasn't conceded and will probably never concede an election that has now been certified for his opponent. A problem I always have with these "God is in control" people is that what they really believe (or insist is so) is that "God is in control and He wants me to always win." When they lose, that's apparently because God is not in control which cannot be because God is always in control…or something. William Saletan dismembers Moore's current argument which is so incoherent, it reads like Trump wrote it for him.

And through it all, no one gives a shit about a part of America known as Puerto Rico.

Another damned obit, folks. This one's for TV producer and performer Danny Breen, a giant in the world of improv comedy. If you know his face, it's probably from his on-camera work on HBO's Not Necessarily the News or from his many guest appearances on situation comedies. Behind the scenes, he worked on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, The Wayne Brady Show, Ellen: The Ellen DeGeneres Show and many others.

A proud graduate from Chicago's Second City show/training grounds, Danny was well-liked and well-respected and a lot of folks are saddened that he lost his long struggle with cancer at the age of 67. I only knew him casually but you could instantly tell he was a friendly, funny guy. We could use a lot more of those.

On January 12, 2006, I posted the following on this website. Considering a number of e-mails I've received recently asking the same question, I think it's time to post it again…

This e-mail came to me the other day and I get one very much like it about once a week lately. I thought I'd answer this one in public…

I'm a screenwriter and I've been developing a new science-fiction idea that has comic book overtones. Given that Hollywood seems interested in comic books these days, I thought what I ought to do is to sell my idea as a comic book first. That might make it more appealing to the studios and it would also enable me to copyright the material in my name before entering into negotiations with them, which would give me a more favorable position. Can you recommend any artists or publishers that I can contact to make a comic book come about? And does this sound like a good way to go about marketing my idea?

No, but bad ways sometimes succeed, too. By that I mean that Show Biz is full of flukes and unlikely turns — I call it the Conan O'Brien Rule — and it's possible to go about things via the illogical, unprecedented way and have it turn out well. It's also possible to strike oil if you go out in your back yard in spiked shoes and jump around but it might not be the best investment of your time and energy.

What's wrong with your plan? Well, first off, getting into comic books is not easy. There are a lot of good folks who are interested in doing comics not as loss leaders for movies but because they actually wish to make their careers in that field, and they haven't been able to swing it. For a novice, "breaking in" can be a heckuva lot of work. I'm not sure you want to expend that much effort to establish yourself in a field that you don't really want to be in for very long if you can help it.

Second point: Publishers these days are well aware of the financial benefits of selling a comic book to the movies — that's the only reason some of them are publishing at all — so you probably won't be able to get a deal where you totally control the movie rights. Most likely, getting your idea issued as a comic book will mean taking the publisher on as a partner, and some will not be content to be silent partners. Some, in fact, will insist on controlling those movie rights. That could wind up working for you but it doesn't seem to be what you're after here.

There are two possible exceptions to the above Second Point. One is if you walk into the publisher's office with fabulous credits and contacts in Hollywood. I mean, if Kevin Smith wanted to make the kind of deal you're talking about — and was willing to cut the publisher in on the potential bonanza in films and video games and such — he could swing it. His name would help sell the comic and his clout would help sell the movie. I'm assuming you don't have the rep of a Kevin Smith.

The other possibility is if you're willing and able to deliver a finished comic to the publisher with a very low advance and to take your main compensation as royalties and profits. Assuming the material seemed promising, some company might see a buck to be made (or at least, not lost) in just publishing with maybe a small share of any ancillary income. The problem with this option is that not only would you have to produce the comic for very little up front, you'd have to find an artist who would, too. Probably, you'd need more than one artist: A penciller, an inker, a letterer, a colorist, etc. The profits from most comics these days, if you're not a superstar creator or working on a superstar character, are not huge so it's tough to make the math work for everyone involved. It's doubtful you could offer your collaborators a high enough share to make their gamble seem worth it; not without working some sort of Max Bialystock scam.

All that said, there is something to your idea. A comic book can be a very good sales tool for a movie or TV project. Jack Kirby used to insist that any comic he'd done was a blueprint for a movie, and it's much easier to sell an idea when you can hand someone a blueprint. The trouble is that it's tough to get a good blueprint without being able to pay decent money for an architect.

I'm the guest this week on Maltin on Movies, the popular podcast chaired by the popular maven of motion pictures, Leonard Maltin. It's the two of us sitting around for an hour talking about Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy — two men we both adore. When Stan and Ollie were at their best, there was no one better. You can hear us explain why over on this page.

Thanks to a flurry of e-mails, I'm learning more about census forms from early in the previous century. The 1925 one in question was dated June 1 of that year and it asked the age of each occupant at the time of their last birthday. Rose Marie Mazzetta's (that was her birth name) was given as 1. Since she was born in August, that meant she was one year old in August of 1924, which would mean she was born in 1923 which is the date commonly given.

I am at a loss to say why she made references to being born two years earlier than that except to note, as several folks pointed out to me, that census forms and birth certificates back then were sometimes inaccurate. Indeed, my own father who seems to have been born in 1910 wasn't entirely sure he was born in 1910, He did know he'd been born in October but wasn't sure of the precise date. Make of this what you will.

Also: As I mentioned, Rose apparently made her film debut in a short musical called Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder, which debuted on June 12, 1929. Some websites (including this one at one time) and other sources have said that short preceded The Jazz Singer, the famous Al Jolson movie hailed as "the first talkie," on the night it first opened and changed the motion picture industry forever. That would be impressive but The Jazz Singer had its premiere on October 6, 1927. Rose's short was not on the bill that night and she was not in The Jazz Singer, as has sometimes been reported.

I spoke with Leonard Maltin earlier this evening and he theorized that her first short could have played somewhere on a bill with Jolson's third talkie, Say It With Songs, which opened in America on August 6, 1929. More likely, all the confusion on this flows from Rose telling stories of appearing on a stage with Jolson at least once.

Hey, here's a photo with her that I don't think I've ever run on this site. The gent at the upper left is Larry Mazzeo, who under the name Larry Matthews played Ritchie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. The lady between Larry and me is Shelly Goldstein, the fine comedy writer-performer who is the fourth runner-up for the title of Person Most Mentioned On Mark's Blog, right behind Jack Kirby, Donald Trump and Frank Ferrante. Then there's me…and you can probably recognize Rob Petrie and Sally Rogers.

I'm not sure we're ever going to get a definitive answer on this but Rose Marie's official bio says she was born on August 15, 1923. That would make her 94 years, 4 months and 13 days old today.

However, things she said caused a number of her friends — myself included — to think she might have been two years older than that. That would peg the date of her birth as 1921.

Meanwhile, I just got an e-mail from Rene Thompson, whom I know. She writes…

As a life-long genealogist, I decided to do some digging. I found Rose in the 1925 New York State census living with her mother, Stevaniah aka Stella and her maternal grandparents at 616 E. 17th St. in New York. She was listed as a year old.

So that would be 1924, which would make her 93 today. Her first movie seems to have been the short musical film, Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder, which debuted on June 12, 1929. Some of the publicity for that film said she was five and some said she was six. So I don't know what to think…

It's not a shock to hear that the great performer Rose Marie has died at the age of 94. She'd been in and out of hospitals constantly the last few years and friends kept telling me, "She may not last the week." I started writing an obit for her three or four years ago and never finished it. I'm writing this one from scratch because I decided what I wanted to say about her and it wasn't what I set out to write back then.

But before I get to it, two points…one being that I don't think she was 94. I think she was 96. A number of her friends think that, too. Rose started out as a child star — a very big, stellar child star with a singing voice that was amazing for her age. A lot of us think that age was fudged by a year or two back then to make her seem younger and therefore more remarkable. We had a little birthday dinner for her four years ago and during it, she said some things that led me to conclude she was two years older than the public record showed.

Secondly: As all the obits are saying or will say, she probably had the longest performing career in the history of show business…and you know what her last paying job was? I hired her to voice a witch on The Garfield Show in 2012.

Like a lot of you, I first became aware of Rose from her appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was great on that program…and while no one thought this way at the time, that was an important role in the history of on-screen females. She wasn't there to play somebody's wife or somebody's mother or somebody's girl friend. She was a full-fledged working woman with a career and an income and a job that was equivalent to a man's. I mean, you just know Sally Rogers got the same money as Buddy Sorrell. Name me another character on TV before her who got equal pay as a guy…or as many good lines. She scored with every one of them.

I could fill this blog listing all the jobs this woman had…playing Vegas for Bugsy Siegel, playing Broadway with Phil Silvers, Hollywood Squares, The Doris Day Show and so many more. For a few decades there, if a show needed a comedienne who could hold her own on stage against a Milton Berle or Danny Thomas, she was at the top of a very short list.

The last decade or two though, she didn't work much. As she once said, "I think I outlived my career." Some of that was health-related. She'd put on weight and was confined to a wheel chair, plus there were all those hospital stays. Another person might have retired but all Rose did her whole life was work. I don't think she knew how not to work and it drove her crazy that she wasn't able to perform.

A few years ago, Rose told us (her friends) that a filmmaker named Jason Wise was making a documentary about her life. That was good news if only because of how it energized her and gave her hope that the ol' career still had some applause left in it. In the months that followed though, it started to feel like it might turn into bad news. The film seemed to be taking a long time and some of us had a very real, understandable fear that she would not live to see it completed.

Well, she did.

Last August, Amber and I went to the big premiere of it out in Santa Monica. I had two strong reactions that night. One was how good it was. All the time they spent to make it was evident on the screen with every second presented in loving precision. The other reaction was how happy Rose was. I'll bet it was one of the three best nights of her life…and how amazing to have one of those when you're her age.

Rose always had great timing and I think this proves it. The film is out now. It's called Wait For Your Laugh and I highly recommend that you seek it out and watch it. It will tell you more about this woman than I or anyone could tell you and you'll certainly understand why it was an honor to know her.

A week or so ago, the Motion Picture Academy announced which documentaries will be considered for Academy Awards for 2017. They do this each year, whittling down all the submissions to a list of fifteen finalists from which the winner will be selected. Wait For Your Laugh did not make the cut. If it had, I suspect Rose would have stuck around until the ceremony next year on March 4th and then left us. In a very long, successful life, she never missed a chance to be where she was born to be: On stage.

Here we have a magical interlude from my friend Jon Armstrong, who's one of the best in his biz. Stay with him 'til the ending because you won't see it coming…

2017 was a year of record weather-related disasters. Gee, I wonder what could be causing so many of them.

Daniel Larison on the Trump administration's belief that we can bully other nations into doing what we want. The motto seems to be something like "Diplomacy is for pussies."

Trump claims he made good on his promise to repeal Obamacare and a lot of his supporters believe he has. But as Jordan Weissmann notes, it lives on.

Conservative writer Rod Dreher is dismayed (and for some reason, surprised) that right-wing news source Brietbart thinks it's right to slant its coverage in ways that help Donald Trump.

Kevin Drum notes that some staunch Republicans are getting real uncomfy as it becomes more and more undeniable that the current modus operandi of their party involves appealing to (and exacerbating) the worst racist tendencies in their base.

Donald Trump used to criticize Barack Obama for playing too much golf. Donald Trump promised that if elected president, he would not go out and play golf a lot. Donald Trump now plays way more golf than Obama ever did…and on courses that cost taxpayers a lot more money. And as Kevin Drum also notes, Donald Trump now plays golf and tries to stop us from finding out he's playing golf. The maddening thing about all that, of course, is that his supporters see nothing wrong with any of this. Their guy can do whatever he wants.

Speaking of "fake news" as we all must do these days, it's interesting to me how fact-checking sites like Politifact are now debunking different kinds of reports. They used to just do stories where someone got a statistic wrong or took a true story and spun it to mean something else…and there are still plenty of stories like that. But there are now a lot of stories like "Sasha Obama just crashed her expensive new car into a lake" or "Roy Moore takes the military vote, pulls ahead by 5,000 votes" where someone, probably to get clicks on a website, just made up something from the whole cloth. It's becoming very profitable in today's world to knowingly lie.

Finally: As I write this, an Alabama Judge has just rejected a court filing by Alabama Judge Roy Moore to stay the certification of the election he lost. Moore's insistence on embracing every nutcase theory that he didn't really lose shows why it's a good thing he lost his Senate bid. His judicial career before that was a shameful display of "the law is whatever I want it to be" masked in claims he was doing God's work. The head of Doug Jones' campaign that beat him thinks Moore would have lost — maybe by an even wider margin — if all that stuff about him dating and molesting teenagers had not surfaced. I'd like to think that's so.

Baby penguins are cuter than you. Unless you're a baby panda…

Early this AM around 2:15, I was in my friendly neighborhood 24-hour CVS Pharmacy waiting for the pharmacist to fill a prescription that a text message had informed me was filled and ready for pick-up. I found myself sitting next to a gentleman who was waiting for a refill on a medication he seems to need desperately. Without it, he said, he has wild mood swings and rages and, as he put it, "If I don't have that, you wouldn't want to come within six blocks of me." We then had a little conversation about where each of us lives because, I said, I want to make sure we're at least seven blocks apart.

He told me he is not out of this medication. He actually has a few months' supply stashed away at home but he was eligible for another refill and he wanted to not wait until after the first of the year. He has no idea, he told me, what happens to his insurance or his deductibles after 1/1/18. "I may be fine," he said. "But it's so damn confusing, I can't be sure."

His fears are short-range and long: He doesn't understand how his current plan, which he got under Obamacare, may be changing. He also doesn't know how it may be changing in the future. The uncertainty, he said, is bad for his health. "The problem," he said, "is not what will the Republicans do or what will the Democrats do? It's that it's so f'ing partisan that all they want to do is undo what the other did. We're living in a world where every time someone wins an election by five votes, my health care changes, my taxes change, all sorts of laws change…"

I told him I didn't think it was as bad as all that and he replied, "Well, it's sure heading in that direction" and I agreed and then my prescription was ready and I got up to get it and we said a friendly good-bye and I left and that was the end of it except that I sure hope he has a supply of those pills he needs because he might live within six blocks of me.

Since then, I've been thinking about uncertainty. A week or two ago, I heard an economist guy express an interesting view on the Republican tax cut for corporations and wealthy folks. He's for it but he thinks it would have a better effect on the economy if it were much smaller. This is me trying to reconstruct what he said: "A tax cut can spur investment in new businesses and new jobs but only if it's permanent. This one is so lopsided that you just know it's going to get whittled down and rolled-back somewhat just as soon as the Democrats get back into power. Ergo, less long-term investment."

That makes a certain amount of sense to me. So does the concern my friend in the drugstore has about too much instability in his life. I'd like to see the uncertainty end but I'm uncertain as to how and when that might happen.

It's time someone did an exposé on Left-Wing Billionaire George Soros…