Here's part of a message Audra McDonald posted online…
Hi friends! You know that nasty cold that's going around right now? Maybe some of you have it? Sore throat, cough, etc? No fun right? Well that little bugger is racing through the Broadway community right now too including here at Gypsy and including yours truly. So I'm hoping all of you that are coming to shows this holiday week and next can give a little grace to us folks up onstage and backstage as well.
If you bought your tickets through the box office or Telecharge, you're entitled to a refund or an exchange for some other night…and of course, you're outta luck if going to see the show tonight involved travel expenses, a hotel room, etc. Or if you just plain can't go any of those other nights for which you can exchange your tix. If you bought 'em off Stubhub or some other reseller…well, I dunno. It may depend on where those seats came from.
This kind of thing is, of course, unavoidable with live shows. Performers do get sick and there are various Acts o' God that cause performances to be cancelled. There was a lot of that during the main thrust of COVID and COVID may not be over yet. I have nothing clever or informative to say about any of this. I do know that there are people who won't buy tickets to the kind of show you don't want to attend if the S*T*A*R is out. Even if it's only a 2% chance, they don't want to take it.
I have been to shows when the star is out and occasionally seen a real terrific understudy. Audra probably has one — Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster had them for the revival of The Music Man and both went on at times — and I'm wondering if they could have done Gypsy tonight or if just too many cast members were ill. I guess I'm just happy I didn't say to Amber, "Hey, let's fly back to New York and see Audra McDonald do Gypsy two days before Christmas and I'll spend whatever it takes to get good seats!"
My three favorite Christmas TV cartoon specials are — and I don't have a preference among them — A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. In 2014, The Actors Fund staged a one-performance-only benefit concert presentation of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. I wish I'd been there to see it and so do you…but we do have a little montage of snippets from some of the songs and I'm declaring this #3 in our countdown. I'm not 100% sure but I believe that's Douglas Sills as Magoo/Scrooge and Joshua Henry as Bob Cratchit…
Here we have this year's edition of TCM Remembers, scrolling quickly through a list of folks in the movie business who died in the past year. I like these because they cover so many people who weren't actors. I think though sometimes these are a little too artsy-sombre and they get too carried away with graphics that don't have anything to do with the deceased people. Can someone explain to me why visuals of Richard Lewis and Bob Newhart are projected inside a train car?
Actor Barry Gordon was six years old when he recorded "Nuttin' for Christmas" in 1955. It immediately became a million-seller and other artists rushed out their versions of the tune. We'll get to my favorite in a second but first, here's the original…
Now then: My favorite was Stan Freberg's cover. Not that many years ago, it was turned into a very clever video by artist Doug Compton. Stan did the voice of the kid and the voice of the burglar…
Woody Fraser died this morning at the age of 90. He was one of the most prolific TV producers in the business for several decades, specializing in talk and light news shows. A very partial list of his credits would include The Mike Douglas Show, The Dick Cavett Show, The Della Reese Show, The Bill Russell Show, The Virginia Graham Show, one of the many programs called The Steve Allen Show, Good Morning America, America Alive!, That's Incredible!, Those Amazing Animals, The Richard Simmons Show, Nightline, Life's Most Embarrassing Moments, Jimmy Breslin's People, On Trial, The Home Show, What Would You Do? and I don't know how many others.
In some cases, as with Mike Douglas and Richard Simmons, he discovered a talent and built a show around them. In other cases, he was hired to invent a show and a format and then pass it on to others. He "mentored" a staggering number of people who went on to successful careers in broadcasting. One of them was Roger Ailes.
I worked for Woody for several years and he was like the little girl in the rhyme: When he was good, he was very, very good…but he was not always good. He was good to me but not to everyone. It's going to take time to write something about him that celebrates the very good part without condoning or ignoring the other side. I'll get to it but maybe not for a while.
A whole batch o' memories were just seriously jostled loose when I came across the above photo on the 'net. It's of a little place called Santa Claus Lane that used to be along the west side of the 101 freeway between Santa Barbara and Carpinteria. It was kind of like a strip mall before I ever heard anyone use that term. Basically, it was a cluster of several small Santa-themed businesses side-by-side with a nice parking lot out front. If you were driving down the 101, especially when heading south, it was an easy place to pull into, use a bathroom, buy some snacks and/or sodas or mail letters.
Mailing letters was a big thing at Santa Claus Lane because they had a tiny post office and its postmark was "Santa Claus, CA." An awful lot of people would travel there just to mail out their Christmas cards with that stamped on them. It was always Christmas at Santa Claus Lane, 365 days a year, especially with that huge Santa figure you see in the photo setting the tone of the mall.
It's been a good half-century since I was there and I don't recall how many stores there were. In addition to the post office, there was a restaurant called Santa's Kitchen and at some point, it added on a bar called The Reindeer Room where, I guess, you were guaranteed to leave with a shiny nose. There was a pottery shop and toy store and a juice bar. The juice bar specialized in "date shakes" and also sold fruit you might give or send as a gift to someone…but mostly dates.
Somewhere in there, there were places you could purchase snacks and sodas and souvenirs of Santa Claus Lane. They sold a lot of postcards of the place and I found a few online which I'm using to illustrate this series of articles. Here's one now…
There was also a little toy train which a very, very small child (smaller than I) might possibly have been able to ride around on a small track that encircled the property. That was if the train was working, which every time I was there, it was not. And there was also usually some guy on the premises in a shopworn Santa suit, wandering around posing for photos and, you could kinda tell, contemplating the career path that had brought him to that exalted, surely high-paying position.
In the sixties, my parents and I sometimes took vacations to the north…up to Carmel and/or Monterey and/or San Francisco. We passed Santa Claus Lane on the way up and the way back and we'd stop on the way up or the way back or both. We also stopped at Pea Soup Andersen's, a great restaurant that I wrote about back here. Don't hold me to this but I believe it was about fifty miles north of Santa Claus Lane on the 101.
I basically remember us stopping at Santa Claus Lane so I could use the bathroom and…well, from that time period, about all I recall is us stopping and me using the bathroom. I think we bought some snacks or drinks just to legitimize our use of the bathrooms.
But I also remember being there without my parents in the seventies…several times. There was a period when every few months, I would drive up there — often but not always with a carload of friends — to visit at least two of three people, all of whom were supremely talented. One was Dan Spiegle, one was Carl Barks and one was Russell Myers. I'll tell you about those visits in Parts 2, 3 and 4 of all this memory-jogging.
And we'll discuss what became of Santa Claus Lane, which (sadly) ain't there no mo'. The Big Santa, thankfully, has survived and I have a hunch the guy in the ratty Santa costume is still wandering around on the property like a Japanese soldier who was never told the war was over.
Referencing the previous post here, G. Robson wrote me to say…
The religiously-minded would perhaps point out that the scientific discoveries that cured those 10 diseases came about as a result of prayer (and a lot of research and hard work of course).
And that's fine. I personally don't think praying does anything except make the person doing the praying feel better and perhaps pleasing others who have a personal stake in what is being prayed-for occurring. But that's not nothing. And as far as I can tell, no one can or should stop anyone from praying at any time for anything. They can maybe stop you from insisting others pray along with you or they can say, when what was prayed-for comes to pass, that it's not the praying that did that…that it wouldn't have happened without the science.
On the other hand, it's quite possible to impede or even stop science from advancing or being applied. That can be fatal and often is.
And of course, we all remember the great song from the 1966 animated special from the great Dr. Seuss book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It was directed by Chuck Jones and starred the voice of Boris Karloff…but maybe the real star of it was Thurl "Tony the Tiger" Ravenscroft singing this song. The lyrics were written by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel himself and the tune was by Albert Hague, who some of you may recall as the music teacher, Professor Shorofsky, in both the movie and TV series of Fame. Here's how it was sung in the special by Mr. Ravenscroft…
There have been dozens, if not hundreds of cover versions and videos but here are three I like. This first one was done by Voctave, a musical group I often feature on this blog…
And this is by another favorite group, Pentatonix…
And this version is by yet another musical group, Home Free…
Have you got two hours to learn all about Bob Hope? Here's the complete profile of him from the American Masters series on PBS. It's a pretty good history of the man and it isn't too biased in his favor…
It's been a busy week here and way too much of it was spent answering phone calls that turned out to be spam callers trying to send me something I absolutely don't want. A lot of them ask for me by name, then say they're with "Medicare Providers" or some name that sounds kinda official and connected to my actual medical insurance. They actually are in no way affiliated with with Medicare. What they seek in these calls — which I assume they're recording — is to get me to okay them sending me some piece of medical equipment. I usually cut them off pretty quickly but sometimes I play along for a minute or so.
They tell me their records — which allegedly include info from some unnamed doctor I see — say that I have some condition. Usually, when I let them get as far as this part of the call, they say it's back trouble and that this unnamed doctor of mine wants me to receive, at absolutely no cost to me, a back brace. The problem with that: I absolutely do not have back trouble nor would any of my doctors think I do. Still, if I say "Okay" and verify my shipping address, they'll send me this thing and then, I'm pretty sure, bill Medicare some very large sum of money. Sometimes, it's not a back brace. Sometimes, it's a blood sugar monitor or a piece of exercise equipment.
I say no pretty firmly, whereupon they hang up. More often actually, I don't let them get that far. Right off, I say, "You are not with Medicare" and they either hang up or argue a bit and then hang up…or I hang up. So far, no one has shipped me anything but these calls inspired me to carefully study the statements I receive from the genuine Medicare folks. In the last few months, I've reported four different instances where the Medicare statement says I received some sort of medical equipment (which I never got). Or they claim I underwent sort of test (which I never took) from some provider I never heard of and which is usually located far off in another state.
In the most recent statement, Medicare was billed by a medical supply company in North Carolina for a "lumbar-sacral orthosis, sagittal-coronal control, with rigid anterior and posterior frame panels." I don't know what that is but I do know I never got one of them things.
A lumbar-sacral orthosis, sagittal-coronal control, with rigid anterior and posterior frame panels.
Oh, wait. I just thought to Google it and I found the above photo and this definition: "A lumbar-sacral orthosis is a type of back brace designed to support and stabilize the lower spine, specifically from the sacrococcygeal junction to the T-9 vertebra. It features rigid panels and frames that control the movement of the spine in multiple directions, helping to reduce pain and promote healing." Yeah…a back brace.
So that's what it is and like I said, I've never received or needed one. The firm in Norh Carolina allegedly supplied this to me last June and then, according to the statement I received, billed Medicare $1,963.00 for it. This was above the allowable amount for one of these so Medicare paid them $1,089.30.
By the way, I'm pleased that reporting these cases never takes long. I intend to keep doing this even though I have yet to hear the disposition of any of these matters thus far reported. What I'm kinda curious to know is if the outfits that have been paid for bogus claims of goods and services to me are the same folks who call me claiming to be "Medicare Providers" or "Medicare Consultants" or somesuch name. I never authorized any of them to send me anything and they didn't…but maybe they submitted claims anyway.
I'll let you know if I learn anything. In the meantime, speaking of bogus scams, here's this one more time…
Brenda Lee's 1958 recording of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" became a hit all over again last year and I've decided to include this recent video she made of it in this year's countdown…
…and also this recent version cover of the song which is very faithful to Ms. Lee's even though it took two ladies to do what Brenda did all by herself. That's Josh Turner's band and the vocalists are two ladies who call themselves The Ladybugs…
One of the happiest places I've ever been was the workshop of one of the nicest and most talented men it has ever been my honor to know. I'm talking about Daws Butler, the great cartoon voice actor who put words in the mouth of — and I'm doing this from memory — Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Mr. Jinks, Dixie the Mouse, Hokey Wolf, Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looie, Snooper, Blabber, Augie Doggie, Snagglepuss, Elroy Jetson, Wally Gator, Peter Potamus, Bingo (of the Banana Splits), Captain Crunch and probably a few hundred others.
One of the foundations of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio was Daws, not only because he voiced so many of their earlier characters but because he set the standard for voice acting for television animation. Mel Blanc was the guy who showed everyone how to do it for theatrical cartoons with full animation. Daws was the man who loaded his performances with so much personality that it made up for the fact that the characters didn't move so much and when they did, they all moved in pretty much the same way.
And he was a wonderful person. This video is Daws taking someone on tour of his workshop, which was in a guest house in the back of his home in Beverly Hills. There, he taught students, many of whom became very successful in the voiceover field. I was not his student in that sense. I have trouble sounding like me, let alone someone else. But he invited me to sit in on classes occasionally and he and I spent many hours in that studio just talking…and I think I learned something about writing by better understanding the craft of acting.
This video allows you to spend ten minutes with Daws. I'm sorry for your sake you couldn't spend more…
10-year old Gayla Peevey recorded "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" in 1953 and had a decent-sized hit with it. Here she is on some show back then lip-syncing to the recording…
There are about eighty-seven thousand other videos of this song on YouTube but fear not. I've only chosen three to clog your screen. First, we have the Gold Note Chorus from Fresno, California…
Next, we have a jazzy version from Gretchen Wilson…
Lastly, here's Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox featuring Lauren Tyler Scott. If this isn't enough for you, you'll be amazed how many other interpretations you can find online…
This is the most popular thing I've ever posted on this weblog. In fact, it's so popular that proprietors of other sites have thought nothing of just copying the whole thing and posting it on their pages, often with no mention of me and with the implication that they are the "I" in this tale. Please don't do that — to me or anyone. By all means, post a link to it but don't just appropriate it and especially don't let people think it's your work. This is the season for giving, not taking.
Yes, it's true…and I was very happy to learn from two of Mel Tormé's kids that their father had happily told them of the incident. Hearing that was my present…
I want to tell you a story…
The scene is Farmers Market — the famed tourist mecca of Los Angeles. It's located but yards from the facility they call, "CBS Television City in Hollywood"…which, of course, is not in Hollywood but at least is very close.
Farmers Market is a quaint collection of bungalow stores, produce stalls and little stands where one can buy darn near anything edible one wishes to devour. You buy your pizza slice or sandwich or Chinese food or whatever at one of umpteen counters, then carry it on a tray to an open-air table for consumption.
During the Summer or on weekends, the place is full of families and tourists and Japanese tour groups. But this was a winter weekday, not long before Christmas, and the crowd was mostly older folks, dawdling over coffee and danish. For most of them, it's a good place to get a donut or a taco, to sit and read the paper.
For me, it's a good place to get out of the house and grab something to eat. I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed that Mel Tormé was seated at one of the tables.
Mel Tormé. My favorite singer. Just sitting there, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on an English Muffin, reading The New York Times. Mel Tormé.
I had never met Mel Tormé. Alas, I still haven't and now I never will. He looked like he was engrossed in the paper that day so I didn't stop and say, "Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed all your records." I wish I had.
Instead, I continued over to the BBQ place, got myself a chicken sandwich and settled down at a table to consume it. I was about halfway through when four Christmas carolers strolled by, singing "Let It Snow," a cappella.
They were young adults with strong, fine voices and they were all clad in splendid Victorian garb. The Market had hired them (I assume) to stroll about and sing for the diners — a little touch of the holidays.
"Let It Snow" concluded not far from me to polite applause from all within earshot. I waved the leader of the chorale over and directed his attention to Mr. Tormé, seated about twenty yards from me.
"That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?"
The singer was about 25 so it didn't horrify me that he said, "No."
I asked, "Do you know 'The Christmas Song?'"
Again, a "No."
I said, "That's the one that starts, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…'"
"Oh, yes," the caroler chirped. "Is that what it's called? 'The Christmas Song?'"
"That's the name," I explained. "And that man wrote it." The singer thanked me, returned to his group for a brief huddle…and then they strolled down towards Mel Tormé. I ditched the rest of my sandwich and followed, a few steps behind. As they reached their quarry, they began singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…" directly to him.
A big smile formed on Mel Tormé's face — and it wasn't the only one around. Most of those sitting at nearby tables knew who he was and many seemed aware of the significance of singing that song to him. For those who didn't, there was a sudden flurry of whispers: "That's Mel Tormé…he wrote that…"
As the choir reached the last chorus or two of the song, Mel got to his feet and made a little gesture that meant, "Let me sing one chorus solo." The carolers — all still apparently unaware they were in the presence of one of the world's great singers — looked a bit uncomfortable. I'd bet at least a couple were thinking, "Oh, no…the little fat guy wants to sing."
But they stopped and the little fat guy started to sing…and, of course, out came this beautiful, melodic, perfectly-on-pitch voice. The look on the face of the singer I'd briefed was amazed at first…then properly impressed.
On Mr. Tormé's signal, they all joined in on the final lines: "Although it's been said, many times, many ways…Merry Christmas to you…" Big smiles all around.
And not just from them. I looked and at all the tables surrounding the impromptu performance, I saw huge grins of delight…which segued, as the song ended, into a huge burst of applause. The whole tune only lasted about two minutes but I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it.
I have witnessed a number of thrilling "show business" moments — those incidents, far and few between, where all the little hairs on your epidermis snap to attention and tingle with joy. Usually, these occur on a screen or stage. I hadn't expected to experience one next to a falafel stand — but I did.
Tormé thanked the harmonizers for the serenade and one of the women said, "You really wrote that?"
He nodded. "A wonderful songwriter named Bob Wells and I wrote that…and, get this — we did it on the hottest day of the year in July. It was a way to cool down."
Then the gent I'd briefed said, "You know, you're not a bad singer." He actually said that to Mel Tormé.
Mel chuckled. He realized that these four young folks hadn't the velvet-foggiest notion who he was, above and beyond the fact that he'd worked on that classic carol. "Well," he said. "I've actually made a few records in my day…"
"Really?" the other man asked. "How many?"
Tormé smiled and said, "Ninety."
I probably own about half of them on vinyl and/or CD. For some reason, they sound better on vinyl. (My favorite was the album he made with Buddy Rich. Go ahead. Find me a better parlay of singer and drummer. I'll wait.)
Today, as I'm reading obits, I'm reminded of that moment. And I'm impressed to remember that Mel Tormé was also an accomplished author and actor. Mostly though, I'm recalling that pre-Christmas afternoon.
I love people who do something so well that you can't conceive of it being done better. Doesn't even have to be something important: Singing, dancing, plate-spinning, mooning your neighbor's cat, whatever. There is a certain beauty to doing almost anything to perfection.
No recording exists of that chorus that Mel Tormé sang for the other diners at Farmers Market but if you never believe another word I write, trust me on this. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
