Here's a book that oughta have a big SPOILER WARNING on its cover. The Producers: The Book, Lyrics, and Story Behind the Biggest Hit in Broadway History! by Mel Brooks and Tom Meehan contains the complete libretto and lyrics to the hottest show in years, along with tons o' photos and anecdotes and historical notes and stuff. It not only reveals every joke in the show but some very funny ones that didn't get in. The "Making of…" parts are a bit too self-congratulatory but the volume is a great memory piece for anyone who's seen the show. And if you never will — or, at least, never will with Mssrs. Lane and Broderick in the leads — reading this and listening to the cast album is a not-completely-worthless substitute. Click here to buy a copy.
Not seeing Lane and Broderick is becoming increasingly-likely for many as their contract expiration date — mid-March — looms and the show remains sold out for months after. Lane is reported to be still nursing throat problems and committed to play Jackie Gleason (great, if obvious casting) in a movie. Broderick is contracted to play Harold Hill (strange casting) in a TV-movie remake of The Music Man.
The rumor mill says that both are still haggling to return to their roles — individually, if not collectively — at various times in the future. Since so much cash is being made there, the haggling is probably complex and includes a lot of arguing over how much of the show's success is attributable to its leads.
And I have no inside info on this but I can't believe someone hasn't discussed hauling in cameras and taping the proceedings for pay-per-view and eventual video release while the original stars are still ensconced. That would presumably complicate negotiations further…though it could also represent most folks' only shot at seeing Nathan and Matthew together. In the past, the taping of a Broadway show was never considered until it was nearing the end of its New York life…but the producers of The Producers are willing to give everything away in a book like this. Maybe they'd be unafraid to put the thing on TV while it's still at the St. James.
Josie and Dan DeCarlo at an NCS Award Show (Dan won)
Only a handful of men have drawn as many comic books as Dan DeCarlo. He was widely recognized as the supreme Archie artist. Didn't create the character, didn't even invent the broad strokes of the art style. But he did it so well that others were told, "Draw like Dan," and they all tried. He did create Josie (of Josie and the Pussycats) and co-created Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch. At the time of his death — alas, this morning — he was fighting a losing legal battle over those two successful properties. This is a hell of a thing to see happen to a man who drew such sexy girls and funny guys.
Dan was a charming man, impossible to dislike unless, perhaps, he was suing you. But maybe not even then. He lived cartooning and did it so well — and so often with little reward or recognition — that you couldn't help but love the guy.
Actually, in the last few years, he was starting to get some of the recognition he deserved. At comic conventions, the feeling towards him from his fans and fellow professionals was one of genuine love and respect. I'm sorry to see his life end when the recognition he deserved had so recently begun.
Over at the Telecharge website, whereupon one can theoretically, occasionally purchase tickets for The Producers on Broadway, they currently have the following two announcements up:
THE FIRST DATES AVAILABLE FOR ORCHESTRA SEATS ARE IN AUGUST, 2002!
Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick are currently contracted for performances only through March 17, 2002. At this time, the producers do not know if Nathan or Matthew will renew their contracts beyond this date. JUST A REMINDER – All sales are final and there will not be any refunds or exchanges.
When the show first opened, there was rampant speculation as to which Big Stars they'd bring in to replace Nathan and Matthew. Now, I'm wondering: What do they need Big Stars for? If they're sold out 'til next August and not giving refunds no matter who assumes the leads, why spring for someone who's going to expect a piece of the gross? Better to save those folks for whenever they start having empty seats…some time in 2003, maybe later…
This time, I'd like to call your attention to the Spinsanity piece, which finds errors of candor and omission in the above article by Mr. Scheer and the piece I recommended last time by Molly Ivins. Still, all three pieces make some valid points. I suspect Enron is one of those scandals which, like Whitewater, will be kept alive, not out of any thirst for justice but because it's politically useful to some.
Spinsanity is becoming one of my favorite sites — one that often mirrors my own point of view is that most folks on both sides of the political aisle are at least a little full of manure. How many sites besides mine have you seen that will direct your attention to articles by Robert Scheer and William Buckley?
I'm on a deadline and I didn't have anything in particular I wanted to post here, so I thought I'd throw together a quick update. The photo above was selected just because I thought it was kinda neat, and because I somehow neglected to say anything here upon the passing of George Harrison.
I wasn't the only one who took scant notice. Had the events of 9/11 not already plunged a lot of folks into a state of ongoing mourning — and made us thoroughly conscious of our own, meager mortalities — the death of another fourth of The Beatles would have been a major kick in the karma.
As I look at the above photo, I can't help but think what Ed Sullivan must have been thinking as it was taken…something along the lines of, "The people I have to put up with to keep my show high in the ratings." From all reports, America's Master Showman — at least on Sunday nights on CBS — had no special affection for any of the zillions of singers and comedians and jugglers and performing anthropoids who traipsed across the stage where Mr. Letterman now works. Ed just loved the success and the money and especially the fame. When in one famous network match-up, Steve Allen went head-to-head against him on NBC, a lot of TV reporters wagered heavily on Steverino. After all, it was Steve, the man who could do anything — sing, do jokes, play piano, write songs, etc. — against Ed, the man who couldn't even introduce Jack Carter without it coming out "Jack Carson." (My fave of all the reported Sullivan gaffes was the time he described an actress as "currently starving on Broadway.")
Sullivan was an appallingly amateurish host, but that was an indicator of his greatest skill: He was a survivor. When he first started hosting The Toast of the Town — later redubbed The Ed Sullivan Show — just about everyone on TV was appallingly amateurish. Ed just had the tenacity and drive that allowed him to stick around, long after the professionals had encamped. It was almost charming that he never got any better.
But he hung in there. He beat The Steve Allen Show because, I suspect, he had the greater need to succeed. After all, Allen knew that if his show got cancelled, there'd be another Steve Allen Show along, sooner or later — and there was. (There were several, in fact.) Sullivan, it is said, lived with the belief that his show was his one shot at being a famous, well-paid TV star. He believed — probably accurately — that once it went off, he'd be back to being just another sports/Broadway columnist in the increasingly less-lucrative newspaper industry. So he fought like mad, trampling over competitors to book the biggest stars, the hottest acts…which led to the night The Beatles graced his stage.
In the Billy Crystal movie, Mr. Saturday Night, the comedian character he played had the misfortune to be booked that night to precede John, Paul, Ringo and George. This meant facing an audience of hysterical teen-age girls who resented every second anyone not from Liverpool was on stage. Well, that happened…to my friends, Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall, who were the luckless comedy team on that evening's show. Charlie can still wake up in a cold sweat, recalling the worst challenge any comic has ever faced.
But it made them a part of history…for something changed in America that night. When Elvis graced the Sullivan line-up — from the waist up — the change commenced, and when The Fab Four sang "She Loves You" or "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or whatever they performed that night, the transformation was complete. The youth of the day had won, and the world would be all about them from that moment on…with the music of The Beatles often playing in the background.
I have no idea how much George Harrison had to do with this revolution, though I doubt he was carrying pictures of Chairman Mao. Perhaps he was just one of those historical figures who was fortunate enough to be near the epicenter when the Earth moved. Everyone seems to feel that John and Paul were the heart and brains of the band, not necessarily in that order.
Perhaps Mr. Harrison was just a good musician. His solo albums — which I seem to have liked more than a lot of rabid Beatles fans did — would bear that out. But, hey, he financed a couple of the better Monty Python projects and even put in a cameo in The Rutles…and I don't recall anyone ever saying anything bad about him. For that alone, we should weep for the man…that is, when we're not weeping for the sad fact that The Beatles, and therefore a lot of us, are now old men. Physically, at least.
They recently ran over at Salon Magazine a rather clumsily-conducted interview with Kurt Vonnegut that still managed to yield some wonderful quotes. My favorite — and this is one of those lines I'll probably be quoting myself often — is the one at the end of Mr. Vonnegut's reply below:
What is the purpose of life?
Well, I have a son who writes very well. He just wrote one book; it's called "The Eden Express." It's my son Mark, who is a pediatrician and who went crazy and recovered to graduate from Harvard Medical School. But anyway, he says, and I've quoted him in a couple of my books, "We're here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
I believe you need a Salon subscription to access the whole piece. This is another reason why that's well worth it.
My longtime friend Jack Enyart is teaching a course in how to create and pitch animation projects. If you're in L.A. and you want to learn that side of the biz, I can't imagine anyone who could tell you more than Jack. Details can be had over at www.gnomon3d.com.
Another of my best pals is a brilliant cartoonist named Carol Lay, who produces the pithy weekly feature, Story Minute. You can read it online at www.salon.com and at her own website. And if you go to her website, you can see other Carol-created goodies and you can order some Lay Goodies that you will want and love and treasure. So here's a banner ad for Carol's site. Click on it. Go there. Spend money. Laugh.
That's right. We're still waiting for The Game Show Network to rerun the two episodes of Press Your Luck in which an unemployed air conditioning mechanic named Michael Larsen figured out a way to beat the "wheel" for over $110,000. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on TV. We're told that GSN has the episodes and will soon announce when they'll air. They'd better.
Of the above articles, I would most like to direct your attention to Joe Brancatelli's, which well articulates a belief I've had for some time. It is that our nation's airlines are, with the token exception, managed about as badly as humanly possible. A year or three ago, another reporter covering the airline beat said to me, "If you picked anyone at random off the street and installed them as the CEO of American Airlines, they could not do a much worse job."
The amazing thing is that you have airlines that are flying at 90+% capacity and charging fees that most passengers feel are exorbitant…and these companies still are not turning a decent profit. The government bailouts that were arranged after 9/11 were needed before the planes hit the World Trade Center. And a point Joe doesn't make in his excellent article is this: There are people out there still arguing that we should trust the same geniuses who run the airlines to arrange for proper security on their flights. Yeah, sure, that makes sense.
What a wonderful evening. I'm talking about the event last Wednesday night at the Motion Picture Academy. It was a program about Walt Disney — not the company, not the channel, not the corporate entity but the man in the picture above…the man pretending to be finishing a drawing that was probably done by someone else. On the date he would have been 100 years young, fans, co-workers and even a few family members convened to celebrate Walt and to view a perfectly-selected program of films.
Leonard Maltin was the host. We had dinner before the event and he expressed some trepidation that he would handle things properly — and he was, of course, worrying needlessly. He did a superb job of introducing clips, interviewing guests and providing spot-on factual info about Mr. Disney.
The film program consisted of excerpts from a number of Disney-produced movies, plus one whole Mickey Mouse short and couple of curios. One amazing item was the recently-unearthed footage of voice actor Billy Bletcher and Walt recording dialogue for a Mickey cartoon. Seeing Walt's face with Mickey's voice coming out of it provided a fascinating link between a man and his mouse. Later, when Walt's daughter Diane narrated some home movies, one could see an even more pronounced connection.
The real "find" of the night was a 10-minute sales film that was lensed shortly before the Disneyland TV show made its debut. It was made only to be shown to execs and/or perhaps stockholders at one of the companies that was sponsoring the new show — Derby Foods, purveyors of Peter Pan peanut butter. In the film, ABC president Robert Kinter keeps interviewing and praising Walt…who is obviously bored out of his skull by the whole experience and resenting ever second he has been forced to spend making this stupid sales pitch. It resembles that sketch on The Carol Burnett Show wherein Harvey Korman is making a horrendously insipid speech and it's all Tim Conway can do to not doze off. Every time the network biggie is talking, Walt is fidgeting and playing with some drawings on his desk…and you can almost read a thought balloon over his head that says, "Why must I put up with this nonsense? I have important things to do." Perhaps it is reading too much into the film to say it displays The Impatience of Genius. But when it was over, everyone in the audience the other night sure felt like they knew Walt Disney — the private man, not the public spokesman — a wee bit better.
Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas and Ward Kimball
Other insights were provided by some guests — Ilene Woods, who provided the voice of Cinderella; master matte painter Peter Ellenshaw, director Ken Annakin, and actor Robert Stack (who's 82 but looks like he shot The Untouchables a year or two ago). But the real treat was to hear — and for some of us, to meet at the earlier reception — three of the legendary "Nine Old Men" of Disney Animation. Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball appeared, and the love and respect of the crowd for these three legends was, in itself, thrilling. They all spoke affectionately of Walt, as did everyone, and of his amazing willingness to spend whatever it took to achieve the best possible product. (The picture above shows — left to right — Johnston, Thomas and Kimball, chatting with Ms. Woods.)
In fact, the reception and audience were filled with folks who worked with Walt — and, by the way, I don't think anyone referred to him as "Mr. Disney" or even "Disney" the entire evening. He was Walt to everyone, now and forever. His life and times were discussed for almost three hours and, as amazing as what was mentioned was what wasn't. Talk about barely scratching the surface: No one got around to mentioning around 90% of his features and 99% of his shorts. Disneyland (the theme park) was barely mentioned. The comic books, the comic strips, the toys, the technological breakthroughs that are credited to Disney and those he hired…there wasn't time for any of that. Even Goofy didn't get a mention.
Usually, I write these reports as much for myself as for any of you. I figure they'll serve as a diary to remind me of great events, long after they occurred. But this was an evening I won't forget. I don't think anyone who was there will forget it, either.
Chase Craig, who edited as many great comics as anyone who ever lived, passed away last night at the age of 91. He was recuperating from an operation to correct injuries he had suffered in a fall three weeks earlier.
Chase was born in Texas and moved to Los Angeles in the thirties to get into the animation business. His fellow Texan, Tex Avery, gave him a job in the story unit at Warner Brothers, where he worked for some time without — for some reason — ever getting a screen credit. After a few years, he decided to turn his attention to print cartooning and left…only to be quickly tapped by Western Printing and Lithography to write and draw stories for its first Bugs Bunny comics. Chase produced over half of the first issue of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies comics, issued under the Dell label, including the authorship of the Mary Jane & Sniffles strip. (Sniffles the Mouse had been a character in the cartoons but Chase came up with the format for this long-running strip, naming the character of Mary Jane after his then-recent bride.)
Western soon hired him as an editor and, through the mid-seventies, he worked out of their Los Angeles office, editing (at one point) a comic per day, at a time when it was not uncommon for one of their comics to sell over a million copies. He was the editor who kept Carl Barks producing Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories, and Paul Murry doing Mickey Mouse and so many others. He was one of the creators of Magnus, Robot Fighter and worked over the years with an array of talent that included not only the above but also Michael Maltese, Alex Toth, Russ Manning, Dan Spiegle, Warren Tufts, Pete Alvarado, Mike Royer, Gaylord DuBois, Don Glut, Tony Strobl, Phil DeLara and so many more…
…including me. I've always said I had two great teachers in the comic book business — Chase Craig and Jack Kirby. Chase bought the first scripts I ever had published in this country and he taught me an awful lot about how to pace and structure a story. I wish I could remember a tenth of it…
Any Dora Hall fans here? Anyone who knows who Dora Hall even was? Dora Hall was a sweet little woman who, in her seventies, starred in a flurry of syndicated TV specials in the early seventies, surrounded by guest stars. Since I'd never heard of her, I assumed she was a British star whose fame had not previously reached this continent and that these specials were being made for, primarily, overseas consumption. And it turned out I was wrong. Ms. Hall was not a star in England or anywhere. She'd had a very minor performing career in this country and had devoted most of her life to being a good wife to a man named Leo Hulseman. Now, Mr. Hulseman, as it turned out was the President of the Solo Cup Company, maker of plastic and paper cups, and he had so much money that he figured he could buy his spouse a couple of variety shows.
And he did. At a reported cost of $400,000 per show, Mr. Hulseman made his dear wife a TV star. He had previously made her a recording artist. Hundreds of thousands of Dora Hall albums and singles were recorded and given away when one purchased Solo Cups. Now, he surrounded her with mid-range guest stars (Rich Little, Roosevelt Grier, etc.) and allowed her to be a TV star.
I remember seeing the shows and being somewhat baffled by them. Dora was about as talented as a decent piano teacher, but not without a certain twinkle. The guest stars who surrounded and sang with her did a pretty fair job of looking like they were thrilled to appear with her. But I never knew all that much about her past until I came upon a website called Dora Hall TV Heaven. If any of this intrigues you or you recall those bizarre TV outings, you might want to pop by and read up on what they call "The Queen of Vanity Television."
Here are two stories from the Reuters News Service. Compare the Gore quotes and ask yourself how they could have gotten things this far wrong…
Al Gore Says Now Restaurateur in Tennessee
Thursday, November 29 1:51 PM ET
LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuters) – Former Vice President Al Gore told a Nigerian audience on Thursday that he now runs a family restaurant in Tennessee.
Gore narrowly lost the 2000 U.S. presidential election to Republican George W. Bush.
"This has been a time of transition for me and it hasn't been easy," Gore told an audience at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs."
"For example, there are usually a lot of cars on the road. Now it takes a lot longer to get around, and given that I haven't driven for eight years, I'm not sure it's wise (to drive)," said Gore, who was driven in a limousine while he was vice president.
He also told the capacity audience that he had started the new family enterprise in his home state.
"We have started a family restaurant in Tennessee and we are running it ourselves. It is a low-cost restaurant," he said. "I am also a visiting professor or VP for short."
Spokesmen in the United States were not immediately available to provide further details.
That's the first story. Here's the second story…
CORRECTION: Al Gore Restaurateur Story Withdrawn
Friday, November 30 6:23 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Nov. 29 LAGOS, Nigeria, story headlined "Al Gore says now restaurateur in Tennessee" is wrong and is withdrawn. The story was based on an erroneous hearing of Gore's remarks.
According to a transcript provided by a representative for Gore, the former vice president said "…we stopped at a little family restaurant in Tennessee. We were eating there by ourselves. It was a low-cost restaurant called Shoney's."
There will be no substitute story.
This is a pretty good example of how much we can trust the news. And, uh, how come it took more than 24 hours to correct this?
The above links are to articles that the operator of this website believes contribute to the national debate. He does not necessarily agree with all or any of what they say…and you won't, either.
In 1965, my friend and frequent employer Lee Mendelson produced his first animated TV special. Bill Melendez and his crew animated it, based on a script by Charles M. Schulz which was, in turn, based on Schulz's rather popular newspaper strip, Peanuts. The folks at the network hated it and predicted it would bomb… but it wound up being quite popular, winning every award it could possibly win. It catapulted Mr. Schulz's lovely little strip into a merchandising phenomenon, and launched Mendelson-Melendez on a career of producing award-winning animated specials. Several of the songs, expertly crafted by Vince Guaraldi, have become standards.
Over the years, A Charlie Brown Christmas has been rerun more often than any other prime-time TV special. For some folks, Christmas isn't Christmas 'til they see Good Ol' Charlie Brown bring home that ratty Christmas tree and see that weird kid doing that weird dance in the musical sequence. Alas, over the years, the increased number of commercials in a network time slot has forced a few minutes to be trimmed from this classic animated work.
This year, the annual event switches from CBS to ABC and reverts to its original, restored glory. A 17-minute documentary has been prepared on the creation of the special and, by putting all this together and adding in Whoopi Goldberg as host, they can put it all in an hour time slot and not have to cut anything from the original show, save for the plugs for Coca-Cola. It airs Thursday evening, December 6 at 8 PM. Enjoy, enjoy.
