A Thurber Festival

I somehow seem to have written this blog for 23 years, 5 months and 14 days without mentioning the humorist-cartoonist James Thurber very much. I discovered his work when I was about twelve, which was three years after he died and by the time I was sixteen, I think I'd read everything that was then available — which was most of it. It had a significant impact on me, though so many things back then did that I didn't realize it at the time. Years later, when I would occasionally revisit some collection of his work, I'd realize that impact.

Starting as early as the 1942 Henry Fonda film The Male Animal, based on a Broadway play by Thurber and Elliott Nugent, Thurber was on the screen. I suppose the most successful screen adaptation of one of his stories was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) starring Danny Kaye. People loved that movie although Mr. Thurber reportedly did not.

The short story was adapted into radio plays, various stage productions and a 2013 movie starring Ben Stiller. There have been several stage plays and one other movie — the 1972 The War Between Men and Women starring Jack Lemmon and Jason Robards.

And then you have television. In 1960, Orson Bean — who starred in an awful lot of unsold pilots — starred in one called The Secret Life of James Thurber

It went nowhere but then in 1969, a new version of the project became a weekly series on NBC for one year — My World and Welcome To It starring William Windom and written mainly by Mel Shavelson and Danny Arnold. I thought it was a terrific show and so did the critics and it also won Emmy Awards for Best Comedy Series and Best Actor. Here's one entire episode…

…but alas, the public didn't love it in sufficient numbers and it had just the one season. It did lead to that film with Jack Lemmon (written by Shavelson and Arnold, directed by Shavelson) and also to a play in which Mr. Windom toured for years. When he died, I wrote the following here about it…

Around 1974, I was taking some courses at Santa Monica College and it was announced that late one weekday afternoon, he would be doing one performance of a new one-man show he was developing called Thurber. It had an interesting price of admission: You had to promise to stay around after and give him a "brutal critique."

I went. He came out at the beginning and told everyone he wasn't kidding about the "brutal" part. He said, approximately, "This is a show I intend to tour with and to try and take to Broadway. The critics will not be pushovers and the bookers will be even worse. I'd rather hear what's wrong with it from young, smart people like you now than from them then. Just be honest with me. I've been an actor for years. I can take it."

He then did the show, partly from book and partly from memory. It was assembled from the writings of you-know-who and he spoke as the man. For what little my opinion is ever worth, it seemed to me it could be a great show but that he was about 60% of the way there with it. The beginning was a lot funnier than the end and the biography stuff — Thurber talking about his life — kept getting lost in the readings of his stories, some of which were suggested as more autobiographical than they probably were intended by their maker. But Mr. Windom was an absolute pro.

When it came time for Brutal Critiques, they weren't all that brutal. Mine started silly. I got up and said, "I don't like your pants and I think you need to lose ten pounds and grow a mustache." Then I gave my serious view…and this was back when I was writing Road Runner comic books, rather than material for actors to perform. I remember discussing my comments with him and wondering: If and when I did start to write for people instead of comic book characters, would every actor be as rational and mature as William Windom? He was smart, he was introspective and he really, really cared about input. In the TV shows I later worked on, I rarely encountered that kind of give-and-take and candid, constructive suggestion. But then I never got to work with William Windom.

I wish I had and I also wish I'd seen the finished play instead of just a work-in-progress. Because if I haven't made it clear here, I really, really liked James Thurber. Here's a snippet of Windom as the great writer…

Friday Evening

The reason I haven't written anything for this page today is that every time I try to, my fingers want to type about Trump's conviction and my brain tells me, "You have nothing to say that a skillion other people aren't saying." And for once, my brain is right. So if you want to read about the topic, go read what the skillion other people are saying.

I am prepping panels this week for Comic-Con International which, as I post this, is 54 days away. I'll be hosting most of my usual panels including Quick Draw!, which for the third year in a row will be without the mighty pen of Sergio Aragonés. And I have some really amazing folks lined-up for the Cartoon Voices panels and some never-before-done panels you'll enjoy. That's about all I can say right now and I think it's astounding that I could even say that much without mentioning you-know-who.

I'll be back here when I think of something to write about that isn't about…you know.

Today's Video Link

The show may be great but I'm already bothered by the hype…

Thursday Evening

I feel like I should write something here about today's verdict but I'm having a hard time figuring out what. You already know how you feel about it and if you follow this blog, you probably have a pretty good idea how I feel about it. And since every last person with a soapbox on the Internet is writing about it, you have plenty of opinions and conjectures to read. So I think I'll just predict that we will soon look back on this as a very good day for our country.

Nothing will ever convince the kind of Trump Supporter that Jordan Klepper is good at finding at rallies but the doubts have to be building in the minds of a lot of folks who might have voted for Donald in November. They may be doubts about the man's sanity or his honesty or even his competence to win. The thing the Trump supporters I know liked the most about him was his ability to win. And now he's been losing a lot lately and the losses are just getting bigger and bigger.

George Conway, who has become one of my favorite pundits on the subject of Trump — and whose every prediction so far has been proven out — thinks Donald Trump will die in prison. Kevin Drum, who's long been one of my favorite pundits on a wide range of subjects, thinks there's no way Donald winds up behind bars. I have no idea where I think Trump will go except that it will fall under the general heading of "Down."

More Deliberations

I just heard a talking head on TV theorizing how the jury is leaning based on what they're having for lunch.

No, I take that back: He was theorizing based on rumors of what they're having for lunch. In case it tells you anything about how I'm leaning, I'm going to be having a beef dip sandwich on an onion roll and some potato salad.

I'm also going to turn off the TV. I may have to sequester myself until the real jury returns a real verdict. If they order in KFC, that probably means Trump is going to skate.

My Deliberations

I have now been deliberating the Trump Hush Money Case for eight hours and sixteen minutes. In solidarity with the New York jury that is now eating lunch, I'm going to eat lunch.

So far, I have only come to the firm decision that the folks on TV and the web who are speculating on what the members of the jury are thinking have absolutely no idea what the jury is thinking.

Return to Melonville

Martin Scorsese is assembling a documentary on the old SCTV TV show…and hey, when I think of comedy, the first name that comes to mind is Martin Scorsese. But this article is right: That was a great show and the clips of it hold up as so many do not. Looking forward to it.

Today's Video Link

But I am taking time off from deliberating to post the latest Randy Rainbow video…

Still Deliberating…

I don't mean the jury. I'm still deliberating if I think Donald Trump is guilty. It's a tough call because according to him, every single legal scholar in the world says the case is stupid and wrong and should never have been brought in the first place. Hmmm…

Let Me Entertain You

Audra McDonald is going to star in a new production of Gypsy opening just before Christmas this year. That oughta fill the Majestic Theater every night…but then again, if they just had her singing songs on that stage every night, there wouldn't be any empty seats either. I hope some of you watched the Audra concert I linked to yesterday here. She's really an extraordinary performer.

Not that it matters one bit but I dunno how I feel about another revival of Gypsy. Tickets will probably cost an arm, a leg and several other body parts. I get the feeling Broadway has adopted the new basic marketing principle of Las Vegas: "No matter how much we charge, someone will pay it!" One of these days, they'll mount a show starring Audra and Hugh Jackman and it won't matter what it is or how good it is, the ticket price will be a reverse mortgage on your home.

Gypsy is a show I admire from afar. Love the score. Love the book. Loved some off-off-off-off-Broadway productions I've seen of it. Didn't like the movie. Didn't like the one revival of it I've seen on the N.Y. stage, which was the one with Patti LuPone. The production had a cheap feel to me and though we had great seats, Carolyn kept whispering to me to ask what Ms. LuPone had just said.

The best version I've been able to see of the show was the video of the West End production starring Imelda Staunton. There was talk of her doing it in New York but that never happened. Here's a little taste of it. Imagine what Audra will do with this number…

Today's Video Link

This will only take a minute. If you're at all a fan of watching actual court matters on YouTube, you've probably seen the Honorable J. Cedric Simpson, a judge who currently presides over the 14A-1 District Court located at the Washtenaw County Service Center in Washtenaw, Michgan. A lot of Judge Simpson's trials are online and he's always struck me as eminently fair and wise.

Recently and amazingly, this happened…

ASK me: Disappointers

Randall B. wrote to ask…

You have been fortunate to meet and even work with a lot of people whose work you enjoyed when you were younger. I heard you say one time that only a few of them had disappointed you as people. I can understand why you might not want to name them (tho I wouldn't mind) but could you tell how some of them disappointed you? Also, could you name five people who didn't disappoint you in any way?

I could probably name more than fifty who in no way disappointed me but since you asked for five, you get five: Daws Butler, Jack Kirby, Charles Schulz, Dick Van Dyke and Sergio Aragonés.

And you're right that I don't want to name folks who disappointed me but I'll say this: It has usually been a matter of seeing a side of them that I never got to see watching them on TV or reading their comic books or whatever. Some of them might have been on the Non-Disappointment List if I'd spent less time with them. The more contact you have with someone, the more you learn about them and the more you learn about them, the greater the chance of seeing or hearing something you can't unsee or unhear.

Thinking back over some disappointments — there were a few comedians and at least one writer-producer who I'd thought were marvelously funny and inventive. I came to feel that their main skills were in getting credit for the work of others and/or knifing those who stood in the way of their success. A couple of men turned out to be of the "Dirty old…" variety, maybe not quite at Cosby levels but enough to lower my opinions of them. A few just plain did not treat others well, especially others who couldn't fight back.

The list might be even longer than it is but I'd like to think that at some point in my life, I learned to recognize Early Warning Signs. That's when I felt it was time to leave some distance between myself and a person I had reason to admire before it became impossible to overlook the reasons not to. It took a while to develop my personal radar in that area and it still doesn't work all the time.

ASK me

Wednesday Morning

In solidarity with the jury in the Trump Hush Money Trial, I have decided to spend today deliberating all by myself. So far, it's not looking good for Donald.

The Play's the Thing

Here's a pretty interesting article — well, it was interesting to me, at least — about how PBS goes about capturing a stage performance for airing and home viewing. It's mainly about David Horn, a producer and director for Great Performances over more than four decades.

One of the shows he and his crew recorded was the Broadway version of Victor/Victoria starring Julie Andrews. My friend, the lovely Brinke Stevens, and I were in the audience at a performance that was shot with a number of robotic cameras on cranes over our heads. I believe they did this for several performances and then edited them together. This was in the first week of December of 1995, just a few weeks after the show had opened –and I forget how I learned this but it was not going to be shown in this country soon, if ever.

Someone did a lot of swift editing because it debuted on Japanese television just a few weeks later — on 12/23. Bootlegs made their way into this country and then it was finally shown on PBS and released on DVD much, much later. I wish everything on Broadway would get recorded like this.

Mr. Horn's team is still recording shows, including the recently-debuted concert, Audra McDonald at the London Palladium. You can view it on your local PBS station or on this website or directly below this paragraph. Everything this woman does is worth watching and/or hearing.