Search Results for: Roy Stuart

Roy Stuart, R.I.P.

Posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 at 12:19 AM

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It apparently hasn't hit the wire services yet but character actor Roy Stuart passed away on Christmas Day at the age of 70. Stuart was one of those guys who popped up at one time or another on every TV show shot in Hollywood beginning around 1964. He usually played some nervous clerk or official. The photo above at left is from one of the few recurring roles he had — that of Corporal Boyle on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., the soldier who was always trying to talk sense between Sgt. Carter and Private Pyle. Stuart's rubbery face also turned up in hundreds of commercials over the years. He was one of those actors who made a decent living in Hollywood but every day, someone would stop him in a public place and say, "I think I know you from somewhere." You may be looking at the above photos right now and going, "Oh, yeah…that guy."

I have a special affection for Mr. Stuart's skills as an actor. Around 1967, I saw The Odd Couple for the first time. It was at a production in the Ivar Theater in Hollywood, he was playing Felix and Jesse White was playing Oscar. If I had to list the ten evenings in my life when I laughed the most, that would certainly be among them. It was truly a wonderful production and Stuart was very proud of it. Over the years, I ran into him at parties and a few times at the Hollywood Collector Shows. Every time, I reminded him I'd seen him in the role and every time, he'd turn to someone else, point to me and say, "He saw me do The Odd Couple." He did a lot of stage work in L.A., mostly with the Theatre West group on Cahuenga, and I think I saw him there in several other plays. But he will always be my first Felix Unger…and trust me. He was as good as Lemmon or Randall or any of them.

The Ivar – Part 1

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2023 at 9:58 PM

I have occasionally mentioned the Ivar Theater in Hollywood on this site. It's an unremarkable little theater that at various times has seated between 250 and 350 and has gone through many changes.

It was built in 1951 by a gent named Yegishe Harout who owned various restaurants in the area and for twenty years, it featured plays that online sources tell me included The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Pajama Game. I believe Billy Barnes had one of his famous revues at the Ivar in the early sixties.

Bill Bixby played there in The Fantasticks and later in Under the Yum-Yum Tree. Stop the World, I Want To Get Off played there, as you can see in the above photo. And I know of two other plays that graced its stage. I know because I saw them — one of them twice.

In the late sixties, my parents took me there to see a production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. Jesse White starred as Oscar, Roy Stuart played Felix and it was directed by Neil's brother Danny Simon, who was in some ways the inspiration for Felix. I've written about it a few times here (here, for instance) and guessed then it was in 1967. I also reproduced this ad…

It later dawned on me that the ad gave me a clue as to when I saw the play. It says, as you can see unless the image is missing, that the play opened on Thursday, August 24.  In the late sixties, August 24 only fell on a Thursday in 1967…so I was right.  We saw it not long after it opened and it was a wonderful production. A lot of my love of live theater and that play and its playwright came from that evening at the Ivar.

The musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown played there from March 12, 1968 to November 9, 1969, which was one of the longer runs a play ever had at the Ivar.  This is the one I saw twice.  I no longer have or can find my Playbill from either visit but I found online this list of the cast members: Gary Burghoff, Judy Kaye, Russ Caldwell, Hal James Pederson, Nicole Jaffe and Robert Towers. I have no idea if that's the cast from opening night or closing night or if any roles changed hands in-between. Probably, some did.

And yes, playing Charlie Brown was the same Gary Burghoff who played Radar in the movie and the TV series, M*A*S*H. According to IMDB, the movie filmed from April 19, 1969 to June 22, 1969…so Mr. Burghoff either took time off from the play or was working two jobs for a while. I'm about 80% certain he was in it when I saw it the second time, which I'm 100% certain was its next-to-last performance on Saturday evening, November 8.

The first time, I went with my parents. The second time, I took a girl named Lynne on a first date. It was my third first date and while I would never claim I ever got real good at first dates — or second or third, etc. — I was a lot worse when I was 17 than I was later. And before your imagination runs away with you: No, nothing happened that would have riled the Comics Code had it happened in an issue of Archie.

Still, I had a great time and I made a mental note to keep an eye on what was playing at the Ivar for future dating purposes. Alas, I never took another date there. Two years after Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy departed, naked women and porn queens took the stage at the Ivar and it turned into…well, certainly not the kind of place your parents would take you or you'd take a first date or any date. And now that I have your attention, I'll tell you that this is a two-part story and the conclusion should appear here in the next few days. Maybe.

CLICK THIS TO BE WHISKED OVER TO PART 2

Collectors' Items

Posted on Saturday, June 29, 2002 at 12:47 AM

Had a lovely time this afternoon at the Hollywood Collectors Show at the Beverly Garland Hotel in Studio City.  (The event continues tomorrow.  If you want to attend, further details can be located here.)

If you've never been to one of these, it's basically a ballroom full of celebrities selling autographed pictures, autobiographies and other collectible items — a wonderful chance for them to make some bucks and for their fans to meet them.  I got to see some old friends — Teresa Ganzel, Susan Silo, Greg Berg, Bob Bergen and others — and say hello to some folks I'd met only briefly.  For instance, the only other time I ever chatted with Warren Berlinger, it was on the set of a short-lived TV show he did in 1971 called The Funny Side.  (Anyone else remember that?  Gene Kelly was the host and I used to sneak into NBC to watch them tape and to pester Mr. Kelly with questions when he wasn't busy on the set.)  Last week, I saw Berlinger playing the party host in the production of Follies I mentioned then, so I got to tell him how good it (and he) was.

That's Warren Berlinger on the left, Roy Stuart on the right.

Also told Roy Stuart how good he was in a play in which I saw him.  Roy is probably best known for playing Corporal Boyle on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (that's a shot of him at left on the show) but I recall a wonderful production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple I saw back in the late sixties at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood.  Stuart played Felix, Jesse White was Oscar and the two of them managed to wring every possible laugh out of a very funny play.  I never got to see the original combo of Walter Matthau and Art Carney on stage but I can't believe it's humanly possible to laugh harder than we laughed that night at White and Stuart.

The production was directed by Neil's brother, Danny, upon whom the character of Felix was somewhat based.  Roy told me that, throughout rehearsal, Danny kept saying to him, "That's not how I'd do that," and he [Roy] had to keep reminding him, "I'm not playing you, Danny. I'm playing Felix."

Across the room, Bruce Kimmel was doing a brisk business selling copies of his novel, Benjamin Kritzer, and the newly-released DVD of a wonderful little film he directed wrote and starred in, The First Nudie Musical.  In recent years, Bruce has turned his talents more often to producing some of the best Broadway-type CDs and he also has an unnatural relationship with Guy Haines, a camera-shy vocalist who appears on some of them.  Matter of fact, Bruce writes a daily journal over at Guy Haines's website and it's full of fun info about show biz and the theater.  While you're over there, order the novel and or the DVD.

The biggest line at the entire show was for Barbara Eden, about whom every male in the place and most of the women remarked, "God, she still looks great."  She does.  She was there all day, signing pictures and I Dream of Jeannie memorabilia (one guy brought a crate of toys) and feigning laughter at all the ha-ha hilarious remarks about her navel.  Nearby, Jamie Farr was hearing other fans ask, ad nauseam, "Where's your dress?"  I wonder if folks will ever realize that, when you meet a celebrity who's known for something special, it's nearly impossible to make a wisecrack they haven't heard 3,000 times before, often from the guy just before you.

As always, the "celebs" with the shortest lines were some of the most interesting and the ones who weren't selling anything, who were roaming about to see friends, were especially fascinating.  Chuck McCann was there and he introduced me to one of the great impressionists of all time, Will Jordan, who was telling stories in the aisles.  Every time I'm around comedians like that, I realize someone could do a helluva great low-budget TV show by just pointing a camera at guys like McCann and Jordan and having them tell show biz anecdotes.  You could probably do a solid 26 weeks just on tales of Milton Berle's penis.

Felix 'n' Oscar

Posted on Saturday, March 30, 2002 at 12:32 PM

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My favorite non-musical play — and almost the first one I saw live in a theater — is/was The Odd Couple by Neil Simon.  Alas, I did not have the thrill, and I'm sure it was one, of seeing Walter Matthau and Art Carney in the leads.  The first time I saw The Odd Couple was at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood around 1967 and it starred Jesse White as Oscar and Roy Stuart (the skinny lieutenant on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.) as Felix.  I laughed so hard that, the next day, I had to run out and purchase a copy of the play so I could read the lines I'd missed.

Since then, I've seen more than a dozen incarnations of The Odd Couple, not counting the wonderful movie and the highly-variable situation comedy.  The worst was probably a touring company starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman — bad, not because of them but because a feeble sound system rendered half the lines inaudible and hissy.  (This was before Mr. Klugman's vocal problems.  He sounds now like did on that stage.)  It wasn't so terrible for me since I knew every line by heart but at intermission, my date had to ask if we could leave…and we did, along with much of the audience.

Or maybe the worst was the "female" version with Rita Moreno as Olive and Sally Struthers as Florence.  This was a rewrite Mr. Simon did in '86 and not, I'm afraid, a successful one.  Among the problems was that the gender switch was not fully reflexive.  In the original, Felix began acting somewhat like Oscar's wife, cooking for him and complaining about how unappreciated he was when Oscar came home late for dinner.  In the distaff version, however, Florence did not become Olive's husband or vice-versa, and it was hard to see what all the screaming was about.  The best moments, as I recall, came from the wholly-new material and involved two male Hispanic flight attendants — Manolo and Jesus Costazuela — who displaced Gwen and Cecily Pigeon.

No, I thought, it didn't work.  The Odd Couple is just about the perfect comedy and it should remain just as Mr. Simon wrote it.  Maybe.

Much to my amazement and probably yours, Neil Simon has rewritten The Odd Couple.  A new, "updated" version will have a tryout at the Geffen Theater in Westwood, beginning June 19.  The plot, Simon says, is the same but 70% of the dialogue has been altered to make the jokes less dated.  I assume this means more than the removal of the automat line and the one about the Magic Chef.  Word is that the Pigeon Sisters are now the Costazuela Sisters.

This strikes me as such a terrible idea that it may be a good idea.  I mean that.  If someone you know who's very smart and rational suddenly said to you, "I'm going to rub cream cheese in my hair," you'd think, "Hmm…that guy's always been very smart and rational in the past.  He can't be as wrong as it seems.  He may not be right about this cream cheese thing but it's at least possible he knows something I don't."  Neil Simon has had some failures lately but his lifetime batting average is still way ahead of almost anyone else's.  He must know what he's doing, right?  Okay, I'm skeptical, too.

We'll find out in June and, yes, I'm going.  I dunno who's in it yet but I have to see what was wrong with the old version and how Simon thinks he's fixed it.  He's the most successful playwright of the last century and — who knows?  Maybe he'll wind up with an even better version of the funniest comedy ever written.  Either that or a head covered in cream cheese.

TeeVee Talk

Posted on Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 9:42 PM

I haven't mentioned this project lately for your own good…because if you start watching, you'll never do anything else with your life. But there's thing called the Archive of American Television, which is compiling a series of oral histories of the TV business. They've quizzed hundreds of performers, producers, directors, writers…even Bob Hope's cue card guy, and these are in-depth interviews, many of which run three or four hours.

If you'd like to view these videos, it's not difficult. You just have to fly out here to Los Angeles, make an appointment and go into the Academy headquarters where a nice lady will escort you to a private listening room and allow you to watch and take notes…and the first part of this paragraph is a lie. That would be worth the effort but as it happens, you can watch them on your home computer from the comfort of whatever chair you're sitting in at this moment. They don't have them all online yet but they have enough to keep you occupied for months. Wanna watch four hours of Bill Melendez telling the history of his career and how they made all them Charlie Brown specials? You're one click away from it.

If you're not interested in Bill, you can watch an interview with Andy Ackerman, Berle Adams, Edie Adams, Robert Adler, Alan Alda, Kay Alden, Steve Allen, Charlie Andrews, Army Archerd, James Arness, Beatrice Arthur, Edward Asner, Larry Auerbach, Rick Baker, Bob Banner, Joseph Barbera, Paris Barclay, Bob Barker, Cliff Barrows, William Bell, Ted Bergmann, Milton Berle, Rick Berman, Walter Bernstein, Lewis Bernstein, Barbara Billingsley, Wade Bingham, William Blinn, Lucille Bliss, Steven Bochco, Paul Bogart, Haskell Boggs, Mili Lerner Bonsignori, Ernest Borgnine, Tom Bosley, Peter Boyle, Ed Bradley, Bernie Brillstein, David Brinkley, James L. Brooks, Kirk Browning, Frances Buss Buch, Allan Burns, Ken Burns, James Burrows, LeVar Burton, Robert Butler, Sid Caesar, Dann Cahn, Stephen J. Cannell, George Carlin, Diahann Carroll, Leo Chaloukian, Marge Champion, Cyd Charisse, Glen Charles, Les Charles, Julia Child, Roy Christopher, Dick Clark, Kevin Clash, Tim Conway, Joan Ganz Cooney, Hal Cooper, Barbara Corday, Fred De Cordova, Bob Costas, Alexander Courage, Richard Crenna, Walter Cronkite, Robert Culp, Bill Daily, Bill Dana, Michael Dann, Bob Carroll Jr., Ossie Davis, Ann B. Davis, Madelyn Pugh Davis, Ruby Dee, Sam Denoff, Phyllis Diller, Walter Dishell, Roy E. Disney, Elinor Donahue, Phil Donahue, Sam Donaldson, Richard Donner, David Dortort, Mike Douglas, Hugh Downs, Charles Dubin, Betty Cole Dukert, Dick Van Dyke, Roger Ebert, Barbara Eden, Michael Eisner, Ruth Engelhardt, Nanette Fabray, Jerry Falwell, Elma Farnsworth, Barbara Feldon, Norman Felton, Mike Fenton, Dorothy Fontana, Tom Fontana, June Foray, John Forsythe, Michael J. Fox, Charles Fox, Fred Foy, John Frankenheimer, Dennis Franz, Albert Freedman, Chuck Fries, James Garner, Betty Garrett, Tony Geiss, Larry Gelbart, Marla Gibbs, Sharon Gless, Leonard H. Goldenson, Jerry Goldsmith, Andy Griffith, Robert Guillaume, Earle Hagen, Larry Hagman, Monty Hall, Valerie Harper, Patricia Heaton, Dwight Hemion, Sherman Hemsley, Florence Henderson, Paul Henning, Don Hewitt, Ron Howard, Russell Johnson, Quincy Jones, Shirley Jones, Chuck Jones, Earl Hamner Jr., Hal Kanter, Bob Keeshan, Lynwood King, William Klages, Jack Klugman, Don Knotts, Harvey Korman, Marty Krofft, Mort Lachman, Perry Lafferty, Angela Lansbury, Jack Larson, Norman Lear, Jack Lemmon, Sheldon Leonard, Jerry Lewis, Frank Liberman, William Link, Art Linkletter, Charles Lisanby, Sidney Lumet, Bob Mackie, Gavin MacLeod, Robert MacNeil, Martin Manulis, Sonia Manzano, Rose Marie, Bob Markell, Garry Marshall, E.G. Marshall, Richard Matheson, Rue McClanahan, Bob McGrath, Jim McKay, Ed McMahon, Barney McNulty, Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, Burt Metcalfe, Newton N. Minow, Don Mischer, Vic Mizzy, John Moffitt, Ricardo Montalban, Leslie Moonves, Mary Tyler Moore, Rita Moreno, Harry Morgan, Pat Morita, Sheila Nevins, Bob Newhart, Leonard Nimoy, Agnes Nixon, Carroll O'Connor, Hugh O'Brian, Don Pardo, Fess Parker, Regis Philbin, Suzanne Pleshette, Abraham Polonsky, Mike Post, Tom Poston, David Pressman, Tony Randall, Joyce Randolph, Phylicia Rashad, Frances Reid, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Del Reisman, Gene Reynolds, Rita Riggs, Pat Robertson, Cliff Robertson, Fred Rogers, Phil Roman, Andy Rooney, Meta Rosenberg, Marion Ross, Aaron Ruben, Tim Russert, Thomas Del Ruth, Morley Safer, Soupy Sales, Jay Sandrich, Isabel Sanford, Thomas W. Sarnoff, Bob Schiller, Arthur Schneider, Sherwood Schwartz, Jan Scott, William Self, William Shatner, Sidney Sheldon, James Sheldon, Fred Silverman, Doris Singleton, Erika Slezak, Bob Smith, Dick Smith, The Smothers Brothers, John Soh, Aaron Spelling, Carroll Spinney, Daniel Petrie Sr., Lesley Stahl, Jean Stapleton, Herbert Stempel, Leonard Stern, Bob Stewart, Dick Stiles, Jerry Stiller, Gale Storm, Maxine Stuart, George Takei, Noel Taylor, Studs Terkel, Grant Tinker, Mel Tolkin, Daniel J. Travanti, Ted Turner, Ret Turner, James Wall, Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, Joseph A. Wapner, Ruth Warrick, Dennis Weaver, Bob Weiskopf, Joseph Wershba, Betty White, Joseph M. Wilcots, Andy Williams, Ethel Winant, Henry Winkler, Jonathan Winters, Dick Wolf, Ben Wolf, David Wolper, Jane Wyatt or Alan Young. And there are more to come.

See anyone there you're interested in? Go to this page…but before you do, say goodbye to your friends and loved ones. Because they'll never see you again.

More About Vince Colletta

Posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 10:24 AM
The white paint denotes where touch-ups were done after inking.

Stuart Immonen, a fine comic book illustrator, defends our old pal Vince Colletta and offers up an example of an unpublished romance comic page pencilled by Jack Kirby and inked by Vince. Stuart notes that almost every face on the page was redrawn by Colletta and says, "Whether this was an editorial request or Colletta's own pursuit is a question I can't answer." Well, I can answer it so I'll tell you all the story…

Among the projects Jack wanted to do when he went to DC in 1970 was to take comics into a magazine format. What he had in mind was something that would have resembled the then-popular National Lampoon with full color and advertising and a glorious budget along with more "adult" (but not necessarily sexy) subject matters. DC wasn't in a position to do that and he wound up assembling a couple of cheaply-produced black-and-white magazines, instead. Some weren't printed and the ones that were got cancelled before the first issues had even registered any sales figures. One of the ones that wasn't printed was the book Stuart's page was from…a book that would either have been called Soul Love or Soul Romance, had it been published.

The idea, which was not Kirby's, was to do a romance comic all about black folks. Jack felt that a white, Jewish guy in his fifties was the wrong person to be editing, writing and drawing such a book but he gave it his all. He used copies of Ebony as reference when he drew the people and I thought he did a great job. All but one of the stories was given to Vince Colletta for inking and at some point, the work in progress was shown to a magazine distributor who was said to have special expertise in product for the intended market. He said that the people Jack was drawing were too "realistically black" (I believe that was the phrase) and that the potential buyers would be turned off by this. On the advice of this alleged expert, Colletta was instructed to redo all the faces and — this is a quote — "Make the men all look like Sidney Poitier and the women all look like Diahann Carroll."

The retouchings Stuart shows on his page are what was done for that reason. Frankly, I think they look awful and not particularly like Sidney and Diahann, even. They're especially devoid of humanity and expression. He's right though that it's very tough to white out a face on an inked drawing and then to do a new drawing on top of that white paint. It also destroys the drawing underneath so if the retouch is badly done, there's no going back. The art is pretty much gone forever. (Also, I should mention that I believe some of the retouching was done by members of DC's Production Department.)

The book was to include a pull-out poster and someone decided it should be of singer Roberta Flack, who was popular at the time. More importantly, she was recording for a company that had corporate ties to DC Comics. Ms. Flack's publicist wanted to see the comic book in question before permission would be given for the poster so stats were sent. I'm not sure if what was sent was before or after Colletta's retouchings but reportedly either Flack or her flack (i.e., publicist) hated the whole comic. That opinion prompted DC, which was already losing its taste for the whole project, to simply give up on it.

Lastly, based on my mail and a few comments on websites, I guess I didn't make it clear: Kirby, as editor of his DC books, fired Colletta as the inker because (a) Colletta was a security leak, showing the work around the Marvel offices, (b) Colletta was leaving things out and taking too many shortcuts for Jack and (c) Colletta basically told Jack that for what he was being paid, he would not put more effort into the work. And I guess there was also (d) — Jack wanted an inker who would take direction from him instead of those in the New York office. Mike Royer, who replaced Vinnie, was everything Jack wanted.

Not me on the radio

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:50 AM

Hey, lemme suggest something you should listen today if you're anywhere near your computer and Internet Access. My pal Stuart Shostak is interviewing Dwayne Hickman on Stu's Show, a two-hour program heard on Shokus Internet Radio. You probably know Dwayne best as the star of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which was just about the smartest, cleverest classic sitcom that isn't yet out on DVD. It and Car 54, Where Are You?

Dwayne is a very nice guy and one of the smartest people I've ever chatted with about the TV business. Actually, I knew him for a time when he was a programming executive over at CBS and it was always fascinating to hear him talk about television because he knew it from all angles: In front of the camera, behind the camera and way behind the camera, over at the network. He'd been a child star and worked with all the biggies.

So let's see: He's an actor and a writer and a production exec…oh, and did I mention he's an artist? In addition to everything else, he's a pretty good painter. There was a period of his life — I don't know if Stu will get to cover it with him — when he worked in Las Vegas for Howard Hughes. If he doesn't, I may call in and ask Dwayne to talk about that. Or if I want to get him mad, I may ask him about a dreadful Dobie Gillis revival special that was done by a company I was working for at the time. (I am a witness. The stories Dwayne tells about how a wonderful script was destroyed by the show's producer are all absolutely true.)

Do yourself a favor and tune in. It starts at 4PM Pacific time, which would be 7PM back East. Go to the website for Shokus Internet Radio and select an audio browser. That's all there is to it. (Note, by the way, that if you're tuned in when the show begins, you might get booted off and have log in again. That's a technical glitch that sometimes happens, but only at the start of some programs.)

If you've never tried listening to Internet Radio, you're in for a treat because there's some wonderful programming available for free and with great sound quality if you have any sort of decent web connection. Do what I do: Connect to the station of your choice, then minimize that window and go on with answering e-mail or writing something or playing Minesweeper while you listen. It's one more thing your computer can do for you.

Mile-High Producers

Posted on Wednesday, January 21, 2004 at 7:50 PM

David McLallen went to see The Producers and here's what he sent me…

Saw the current touring cast in Denver last night and I must say I was surprised & impressed. Not so much by Lewis Stadlen, although he was really good. I expected that. He is, after all, an old Broadway hand. But "Max" had the show stolen right out from under him…by Leo. Alan Ruck, who for so many years played the slimy, smarmy Stuart on Spin City, can sing! His voice, his acting, made him a perfect Leo Bloom! I was pleasantly stunned!

Ths show, of course, was precisely what one would expect — hilarious, side-splitting, laugh-out loud funny. But hey, it's Mel Brooks, the man who turned farting into an art form in Blazing Saddles. Charley Izabella King was a really good Ulla, (the tour's former Ulla moved to the Broadway company) although there were a few times when her "Swedish" accent got so thick that she was hard to understand. Lee Roy Reams as Roger, and especially Josh Prince as Carmen Ghia were fantastic. I know Reams is no kid, but he more than kept up with a very demanding role. (His bio on imdb indicates that he's actually 61!)

I came away with a stomach ache from laughing so hard, and the very appreciative audience awarded the show an instant standing "o" the moment that Ruck & Stadlen appeared in the curtain call. What a great show!

It is, and I wish I could see it with Lewis J. Stadlen, who is one of my favorite Broadway performers. If you ever get to see the DVD of the recent production of The Man Who Came to Dinner with Nathan Lane, watch for Stadlen. He doesn't show up until the third act but when he does, he proceeds to walk off with the entire play and most of the scenery.

And I wonder how many folks know that Stadlen is the son of Allen Swift, the great cartoon voice actor I mentioned in the previous posting. Swift was a New York kids' show host and also the voice of many a character on Howdy Doody. Anyway, thanks, David! Wish I could have been there.