I didn't write anything when Phil Donahue passed away recently and I should have. He was the most successful of the small (and getting smaller) group of TV talk/interview hosts who have done it with some dignity and a dearth of sensationalism. If you watch the video below, you'll find moments when he talks a little too much and tries to draw unhappy memories from his guests…but he always kept that down to a minimum and tried to ensure that they felt interviewed and not exploited. I wish we had more like him today.

This is an episode of his show from 1990. The original production of A Chorus Line was soon to close on Broadway and members of the original cast — as this interview makes clear — received but a teensy fraction of its financial success for sharing their personal memories in workshops. They co-authored a book on their experiences and their appearance on Donahue was to promote it. I met one of these people at a party once and at least this performer carried a lot of resentment over how little they made off the show. So did Neil Simon who did an uncredited/uncompensated "punch-up" of the script.

If you've been reading this blog for a long time, you may remember this video. It was a link a long time ago here but that link's dead so here's your connection to a much better copy of the program…

Donald Trump, who said just days ago that he would be "great for women and their reproductive rights" now says he'll vote against a Florida initiative which would give women greater reproductive rights. He's said a great many other contradictory things about the abortion issue plus outright lies like that the pro-choice movement is pushing laws that permit executing babies after birth.

I would think any reasonable person would look at all these statements and conclude that Trump has no policy on the matter of abortion; that at any given moment, he'll say whatever he thinks will get him donations and votes, and that he'll say the opposite the following week if it will help him. No one (including Donald Trump) knows what the hell he'd do on abortion-related matters if he gets back into office.

Meanwhile, the man is also — once again — confusing himself with Superman.

Folks like the author of this article are queuing up to watch whatever there is to watch of Jerry Lewis's never-completed, disowned 1972 non-movie, The Day the Clown Cried. Most do not seem eager to see it because they think there is hidden wonderment there. Most seem to expect it to be exquisitely awful and the eagerness to see this exquisite awfulness is odd to me. I understand curiosity about such a thing and we've certainly heard more about this film than…well, almost any other movie Jerry Lewis made including the ones he wanted people to see.

And I understand that in his lifetime, Mr. Lewis was often very arrogant and probably over-praised by many, including himself, as a great performer and filmmaker. There might be some sort of karma to be found in this movie to whatever extent it proves that he was undeserving of most of that praise. I get it, I get it.

I had several encounters with Mr. Lewis in my lifetime.  He was rude to me when I was about eight years old and years later, he was rude to me when he was a guest star on a TV show on which I was Head Writer and I later saw him be rude to others.  Again, I get it, I get it.

At one point, I might have been in that line to see what there is of it…and I know folks who believe their lives will not be complete if they don't. I told this story here some time ago on this blog…

One day back when we all had our video on VHS tapes, I was printing up fancy labels for some of my homemade recordings. The labels came on a sheet of twelve and I had eleven to print…so I was going to waste one label on the page. On a whim, I used the last one, printed THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED on it and slapped it on an old cassette I was otherwise going to toss. I put the tape on my shelf of movies, spine out for all the world to see. I just wanted to see if anyone would notice.

No one did until a few months later. A friend came by and was waiting in my video room while I got ready so we could leave for a restaurant where we were meeting others. Suddenly, he saw the tape. He yanked it off the shelf, thrust it at me and yelled, "PUT THIS ON! I must see this movie!" I started to tell him he didn't but he interrupted and shouted, "NOW! I must see this movie NOW!!!"

Imagine if you will that some evil villain has tricked you into drinking a fast-acting poison. Imagine you're getting dizzy and your knees are buckling. Imagine that your only hope is an antidote and that the only clue as to where and what that antidote is is on a videotape. Imagine how you'd act in that situation, then triple the intensity and you have an approximation of how my friend acted at that moment. He was five seconds from knocking me to the floor and jamming the tape into my VCR himself.

I finally explained to him that it was a joke. He didn't believe me and I had to run a little of the tape to show him it was not what the label said. I thought he was going to cry.

I have never been that eager to see anything in my life; not even a Donald Trump concession speech. I was a modest fan of Jerry's, which I guess means I respect the length and breadth of his career and in some ways, his charitable work…but not most of his output. Last week for no visible reason, a lady friend and I watched You're Never Too Young, which was one of those (dean) and JERRY!!! movies.  I remember enjoying it when I saw it when I was twelve or so.  Not so much last week.

On some of the rare occasions when Jerry discussed the film, he said it was an incomplete mess of which he was ashamed and he didn't want anyone to ever see it.  Then again, he seems to have made provisions such that X number of years after his death, people could…and that X number has passed.  So I guess it's okay, especially if you weren't a fan of the man and want to see him at his worst.  And like I said, I understand all about curiosity.  I know I'm doing a bad job here of explaining why this makes me uncomfortable but it does.

We haven't had one of these Barbershop Quartet Mob videos here for a while so here they are — The Ambassadors of Harmony from 2015. This is the way the Broadway musical of Hairspray should have ended…

Sorry if posting here is a bit erratic. I fixed the problem with posting yesterday but I can't seem to fix the odd sleep patterns I've fallen into lately. I am however awake enough to thank all those who've donated to our little online telethon here. We're not yet to our goal, which is the amount of loot it takes to keep this site online and free-to-all for a year but we're closing in on it. Whatever you can spare will be mightily appreciated.

You can find polls that show Kamala/Walz ahead of Trump/Vance by 2-3 points with a margin of error of 2-3 points. You can find polls that show a closer race. You can even find right-wing polls (like Rasmussen) that will show the right-wing candidate(s) ahead by serious margins…and they'll continue to do that until a few days before the actual election when they'll start acting like real polls so they won't be way off. Polls are never proven wrong until Election Day. A poll today can say that the write-in ticket of you and I — me at the top of the ticket, of course — will sweep the election. They won't be provably wrong unless they keep saying that until there are actual results.

I think it's always safer to assume that your candidate or ticket is even or perhaps a little behind. If you think they're too far ahead, you may get complacent and not do everything you need to win. If you think they're too far behind, you may figure the cause is lost and not bother doing everything you need to win.

My confidence that Trump will lose is not really poll-based. It's based on watching him do things like his recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery…

"Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside," the Army spokesperson said in the statement on Thursday. Section 60 is an area in the cemetery largely reserved for the graves of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it wasn't just that Trump and his Public Relations goons came in with that "The rules never apply to us" attitude that they always have. It's the photo of him standing among the graves of fallen soldiers, grinning and giving "thumbs up" like he just won the lottery. He does one of these clueless attention-getting stunts almost every day and I think they're costing him support. And will continue to do so.

Here are two vintage commercials, the first of which is for a toy that I can't imagine anyone selling today. It's from Mattel's Zero M line which allowed kids to pretend they were secret agents with various items that transformed into cap pistols so you could pretend to shoot your parents and playmates dead. The kid in the commercial would seem to be a very young Kurt Russell.

The second one is for Tootsie Rolls and I'm pretty sure the actor in it is Bill McCutcheon, who did an awful lot of commercials and guest roles on TV shows and was featured for a time on Sesame Street, plus he was in movies as varied as Steel Magnolias and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. He also had a pretty good stage career. He was in the revue New Faces of 1956 and later, among other plays, the eighties revivals on Broadway of The Man Who Came to Dinner, You Can't Take It With You, The Front Page and Anything Goes. He even won a Tony award for the last of these — just one of those actors who spent his entire career working in something without becoming a household name…

A tech problem is preventing me from writing anything new here tonight but I tricked it so I could write this message and post another link asking for money to keep this blog afloat and free. Now I'll post an already-prepped video link and hope things will be more functional in the morning.

In case you're worried about the big auction being staged by Cartoonists for Kamala, fear not. The date is not until September 15 and I'll post info on how to participate well before then.

The Cook Political Report — which analyzes elections and is very careful about saying someone is ahead in a state — has shifted North Carolina from "Leans Republican" to toss-up and has moved Minnesota and New Hampshire to "Likely Democrat." This is still a close, either-person-could-win race. Ed Kilgore has a good article up about how not to read the polls.

And here's Mark A. Caputo with an interesting piece of how Trump is attempting to tiptoe through the minefield that is the Abortion issue. Personally, I think anyone who thinks that Trump has a moral position on the matter — or if elected, will do what he said before the election — is kidding themselves. I think he's a one-issue candidate and that one issue is him getting back into the White House.

So the Trump and Harris campaigns have agreed that the candidates will debate on ABC on September 10th, right? Well, maybe. As Steve Benen explains, that's not as much of a done deal as some news sources are suggesting. It's sounding more and more like Trump is afraid to debate her but doesn't want to be accused of being afraid to debate her. Stay tuned.

Jack Kirby would have been 107 years old today but if he isn't with us, his influence still is. It's not just that characters he created or co-created are continued in comics and expanded into TV shows and movies. It isn't even that darn near everything he wrote and/or drew in comics keeps being reprinted, often in expensive editions which lovers of his work snatch up. It's that everywhere I look — and not just at comic conventions — I see his influence.

For years after he left us in 1994, I would say, "If he wasn't your favorite artist, he was probably your favorite artist's favorite artist." I should probably add another generation in there and say, "He was your favorite artist's favorite artist's favorite artist." And I should probably also point out that the writing was, to Jack, always vastly more important than the drawing. I have never met anyone who had so many ideas, let alone so many good ideas.

You can see how good he was in all those comics, all those reprints. What you may not see — though maybe you can — is what a wonderful human being he was. He was nice to almost everyone, even a few people he probably should have crushed like the bloodsucking mosquitoes they were. Everyone who was fortunate enough to meet him has a story of how approachable he was, how he always made time for others, how if you showed the slightest smidgen of creative ability, he would encourage you.

I love most of the people I've known in comics but Jack was in a class all by himself. That's me in the Red Skull mask in his studio in 1969. I was learning a lot from that man then and I knew it but it was a decade or two later than I began to realize that it was a lot more than I realized at the time.

From Jeremy Hall…

You mentioned the other day that you were once going to write an animated Mr. Magoo feature. Can you tell us anything about it? How did you get the job? I understand that it didn't go forward because the producer died but was anything done on it before that happened?

Taking the last part first: Not really. I wrote up a one-page "pitch" and…well, maybe I should tell the story from the start. I had a friend named Greg Burson who was a terrific cartoon voice actor. He was especially good at reproducing voices done by actors who had passed away. He did the voices of several of Mel Blanc's characters including Bugs Bunny, and several of Daws Butler's characters including Yogi Bear. After Jim Backus passed away, Greg did Magoo for some commercials and a few other projects.

Henry Saperstein, who owned (or at least controlled) Quincy Magoo, told Greg he was looking for an idea for a Magoo feature. As I understand it, he'd involved several writers and whatever they came up with did not enthuse Mr. Saperstein to the point of going forward with any of it. Greg suggested he meet with me.

The three of us had lunch one day at the Smoke House, a fine restaurant in Burbank across the street from the big movie studio sometimes known as Warner Brothers. More importantly, the restaurant was next door to an office building that held the U.P.A. studio — and therefore, Mr. Saperstein's office.

Quick aside: For a long time, whenever they were recording Magoo cartoons, they did it in those offices and it was the job of the voice director, Jerry Hausner, to take Mr. Backus to the bar at the Smoke House and fill him full of alcoholic beverages until Mr. Magoo "arrived." After the second or third drink, Hausner would reportedly ask Backus, "Is Magoo here yet?" And Backus would reportedly say something like, "He'll be here after one more Manhattan."

(Or whatever the drink was. I certainly hope he was drinking Old Fashioneds because, you know, what can happen to an Old Fashioned?)

Anyway: Greg, Mr. Saperstein and I had a non-alcoholic "get acquainted" lunch and then we hiked over to the U.P.A. offices and he showed me some of the things they had in work for the Nearsighted One. Finally, he asked me if I had an idea for a Magoo feature. I said, "Yes. You get the rights to remake Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and then I write a movie, which may or may not follow the original too closely, called Mr. Magoo Goes to Washington."

Mr. Saperstein did a "take" not unlike a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon ogling Red Riding Hood and said, "We'll do it, we'll do it!" Fastest sale I ever made — or it would have been if the project had ever gone forward. As I recall, he spent a few weeks dealing with whoever he had to deal with to get the rights to the Frank Capra movie. He also asked to read something I'd written so my agent sent him a script of mine and he called to say he liked it and would trust me to write the script.

At at one point, he called me to say his lawyers had told him that he might not have to purchase the rights. We could call it what I wanted to call it if we treated it as a parody of the classic movie and didn't use too much of its plot. I have no idea how legally-sound that might have been. His lawyers also talked to my agent and discussed a range of compensation for me which struck me as the low end of Acceptable.

In this business, you often find yourself accepting the low end of Acceptable but I don't think we ever got a written contract. I wrote up that one-page "pitch" for him, which I probably shouldn't have done without a firm deal, but that was all I wrote. There was never a decision as to how much of the plot of the movie I'd be able to use and I never heard what, if anything, he had worked out with whoever owned the original. I'm guessing nothing.

Saperstein called me from time to time to tell me he was working on the deal but the calls got farther and farther apart. It has been my experience — in TV, movies, comic books…just about everything I've ever done — that this often happens: They say yes, "We're definitely doing this" but then no one takes the steps necessary to make it happen. They may keep saying yes. No one may ever say no. But the project just fades away without anyone ever officially declaring it inert.

By the time I read that Mr. Saperstein had died, I had long since stopped thinking Quincy Magoo was ever going to get to Washington. This kind of thing happens so often that I long ago learned to not start celebrating when they say yes. Someone still has to take a firm step, usually one that involves writing a check. Even Magoo should be able to see that.

Matthew Wecksell turned me on to this. It's an episode of Hot Ones, the series where host Sean Evans interviews celebrities while they munch on increasingly-lethal chicken wings slathered in hot sauce. Sean's guest on the latest edition is — and I didn't believe this until I saw it — Donald Duck…

Donald was animated by, the press releases say, the Walt Disney Animation Studios team, led by legendary animator Eric Goldberg. Donald's voice was done by Tony Anselmo while Mickey Mouse (in a brief appearance) was voiced by Bret Iwan. A fine job by all.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz are up a teensy bit more today in most polls. The single exception seems to be the Rasmussen Poll and in March of the last presidential election, I wrote this here…

The Rasmussen Poll usually favors Republicans and it's now saying Trump's popularity is fairly high. No doubt he thinks that's the only one that matters…and will until it tells him something he doesn't like.

There are all these "aggregator pollsters" out there that don't actually poll voters. Instead, they take polls by the folks who do and weight them and average them together to arrive at numbers that are theoretically more on-target than any one of the polls they're aggregating. I think if you were to do an aggregate of all the aggregate pollsters, you'd find that Harris/Walz is around three points ahead of Trump/Vance and is either ahead of Trump or quite competitive in the swing states that will decide this thing.

The Trump campaign is pouring a lot of time and money into those swing states but they're putting the most of those two assets trying to lasso Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes. There are a number of different paths to 270 for Harris/Walz but the likeliest of these require Pennsylvania. I am kinda glad I don't live in a swing state.

Meanwhile, a group called Cartoonists for Kamala is arranging a big fund-raising drive and my partner Sergio Aragonés has done this drawing. I'll let you know where and when you can bid on it and other goodies.

Click on the pic to make it larger.

Finally for now: It intrigues me that they're spending money on ads to run on TV stations viewable in Palm Beach County, Florida — where Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is. Florida might (slight might) become a competitive state but right now, Trump's ad buyers have more urgent places to spend their money. Apparently, these ads are because Trump, when he's in town, wants to be able to see his ads when he turns on the TV and there are also wealthy Trump donors in that area who might be inspired to donate more if they see such ads.

Maybe. I have to wonder how much this had to do with the fact that George Conway's Anti-Psychopath PAC is running commercials in that area saying that Trump is mentally unbalanced. Conway's goal is to drive Trump even further over the edge and you have to wonder if the Trump commercial buy in that market isn't evidence that it's working.

Advice from Jon Stewart…