In the past, I've raved about the shows down at the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities.  Each year, they do a quartet of fully-staged musical productions for a mere two dozen performances apiece.  This is possible largely because they work with a pool of experienced directors and (usually) cast actors who have done the shows before.  Their staging year before last of Peter Pan, for instance, was basically the long-touring Cathy Rigby production with Cathy Rigby's understudy in lieu of Cathy Rigby.  Ordinarily, shows done with minimal rehearsal for short runs look like…well, like shows done with minimal rehearsal for short runs.  With a few minor exceptions, theirs do not.

They did a superb job with their most recent offering — a production of Ragtime which I'd urge locals to run see but for the fact that the performance I caught last night was the last one.  It's a shame, if only because I think half the audience would have eagerly purchased tickets to see it again.  I would have.  Apart from slightly less fancier sets (though still impressive for a three-week stint), this was a Broadway-quality mounting.  Here's the L.A. Times review which says much the same thing but goes into greater detail.

Ragtime is a lovely show, especially if you can get past the way several disparate storylines wander until they too-conveniently intersect.  It captures something quite beautiful about the aspect of America that promises the chance for immigrant and minorities to better themselves — and it does not idealize that promise beyond reality or suggest that it will always be honored.  Ragtime music underscores much of it, and other quite lovely music underscores the rest.  Indeed, the music almost never stops, creating a symphony of human interaction.

The next show the Civic Light Opera is staging down there is Smokey Joe's Cafe and I have no reason to expect it won't be another first-rate production.  My friends who live in Los Angeles or the Valley might well go, "Redondo Beach?  I don't want to travel that far."  But it's not as distant as it sounds; about ten minutes south of LAX.  It's a very comfortable theater with good parking — two things I can't say for too many theaters in Southern California.  It's kind of disarming to realize that some of the best theater in Los Angeles isn't in Los Angeles.

Many thanks to those of you who sent birthday greetings for yesterday.  I'll get around to sending individual messages as I get the time.  Also, there are a couple of folks who've sent cash donations to this site lately but when I've written to thank them, those messages have come back as undeliverable.  (The money seems to be good; it's the thank-you note that bounces.)  All of this, please be aware, is appreciated.

That's a Jeep — the kind you can own without helping the terrorists.  The Jeep was an occasional pet of Popeye the Sailor and experts disagree as to whether the vehicle was named after the character or not.  I don't want to get into that.  I just wanted to plug a terrific website that I learned about by visiting Jerry Beck's terrific website.  The one I want to plug is the terrific website run by the Calva Brothers, devoted to the early Popeye cartoons produced by Max Fleischer Studios.  Great stuff there, with more to come.

We have several pages on this site about Cartoon Voices and on most of them, I say
something like…

Please do not send me voice demos or requests to hear your samples or to hire you or to refer you to an agent.  I get way too much of this and have had to vow never to hire or refer anyone who approaches me this way.

That's pretty straight-forward but for some reason, I get about six e-mails a week that say something like this actual example…

Hi.  I can do dozens of great voices and have always dreamed of becoming a cartoon voice actor like Mel Blanc.  Can you give me a job or help me to get one?

These messages always leave me a bit puzzled: Did this person read this site?  If I'd always dreamed of doing something like that, I'd search out and devour every available nugget of info I could find.  But perhaps they didn't bother to look.  I get an awful lot of e-mail from people asking me trivia-type questions that they could have answered for themselves with a twenty second visit to any good search engine.  Many people do not seem to realize that the Internet is a tool to do your own research, rather than to merely e-mail someone else to see if they can give you a fast reply.

Or perhaps they did read the articles here and thought, "Hmm…that sounds too hard.  I'll just ignore that and see if there's an easier way.  What have I got to lose?"  That's one of the downsides when a means of communication, like the Internet, becomes too easy.  It doesn't cost anything to send out a zillion e-mails to strangers, asking if they'll send you their bank account numbers.  It doesn't cost anything to write to strangers and ask if they'll make your dream come true.  It's kind of like buying a lottery ticket because it makes you feel better to be "doing something" to change your life — but deep down, if you're at all honest with yourself, you know you're not going to win and that it's not a substitute for taking real steps.

Either way, I've decided to stop taking those e-mails seriously, and to stop presuming that those folks are really serious.  Maybe someday, some of them will be.  Until that time, I'm not going to allow them to bother me, any more that I'm bothered by all those messages from beautiful Russian women who want to marry me.  I figure the success ratio is about the same.

Apologies for a tech problem (not my fault) that made this page difficult for some to reach for two brief periods over the last few days.  And thanks to all those who wrote to alert me to it.  It shouldn't happen again — but then, I thought that after the first time it was fixed.

Goldie Hawn wasn't there but many other folks involved in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In were present last evening as the Museum of Television and Radio honored a breakthrough comedy series of the sixties.  The dais consisted of producers George Schlatter and Ed Friendly, writer Chris Bearde, musical contributors Ian Bernard and Billy Barnes, and performers Dick Martin, Ruth Buzzi, Lily Tomlin, Arte Johnson, Alan Sues, Gary Owens and Joanne Worley.  Ms. Worley allowed others to talk, but not often.  As usual for these events, clips from the show were run and then the panel talked about what it was like to work on the series.  Among the sizzling revelations we heard were that Arte Johnson got in trouble with the Polish Anti-Defamation League for telling a gibberish joke in double-talk Polish (they assumed it was dirty); that Alan Sues once stuck his head up Kate Smith's dress; that Richard Nixon used the "f" word; that the censors gave them a lot of hassle; and that Judy Carne never wore underwear.

I was a big fan of Laugh-In, and I enjoy watching the reruns that air now on the Trio cable channel — or, actually, I did enjoy watching them until I realized they only have about 40 shows that they run over and over and over.  (Someone let me know if they ever get more.)  But then I always enjoyed the show.  In my teen years, when I started writing comic books for Disney, I'd take the bus to Burbank, drop my work off at the lot, then walk over to NBC and talk my way into a Laugh-In taping.  Only a few segments ever had a formal audience but when they were taping short comedy bits, as they always seemed to be, you could sit in the bleachers if you seemed even remotely connected.  So I can verify what they all said last night, which was that their tapings were enormous fun which transferred to the air.  Years later, I worked on a Laugh-In imitation that was taped in the same studio.  Its tapings were not a lot of fun, and I think it showed.

Not much else to report about the evening.  Lily Tomlin is brilliant, but you already know that.  It was nice to see George Schlatter and Dick Martin together, proving that old feuds can be buried.  I was a little bothered that so many folks who worked on the show — in front of and behind the camera — went unmentioned: Not a word about Larry Hovis or Richard Dawson or Johnny Brown or Teresa Graves or Chelsea Brown or Barbara Sharma or Dennis Allen or about three dozen more, plus most of the writers.  But other than that, I had a great time, and so did a whole auditorium of people who remember Laugh-In fondly.

By the way: If you can't get Trio and want to see old episodes of Laugh-In, they're coming out on video.  The initial push — via a Gunthy-Renker website and upcoming infomercials — seems to be towards getting folks to sign up for a subscription.  You know the kind: First one's cheap, then every month or so they send you another volume and bill your credit card at a higher price.  I don't go for those and, if you have a lick of sense, neither do you.  But the tapes and DVDs should be available soon after on a pay-as-you-go basis.  I'll let you know when I see them being sold that way.

Biljo White, who passed away last week, was one of the pioneers of comic book fandom both in terms of history — in 1964, he first published Batmania — and the creation of amateur comics.  He drew many such strips but his most famous was The Eye, a freakish crimefighter with an eyeball for a head, far weirder than any evil-doer he vanquished.  By day, White was a hero in his own right — a fireman in Columbia, MO — and one with a lifelong interest in comics.  He actually purchased Batman #1 off the racks in 1940 and amazingly, his mother didn't throw it out.  In fact, he amassed a truly splendid collection of comics with the emphasis on the Caped Crusader.  The comics also inspired William J. White to take up drawing.

Sadly, in the mid-fifties when he journeyed to New York and sought employment at DC Comics, the experience was discouraging enough to un-inspire him — at least on comics as a profession.  Thereafter, he did them only for fun, and it showed.  I never had the pleasure of meeting the man they called "Cap'n Biljo," but I followed and enjoyed his work.

For more on Biljo White, check out Bill Schelly's excellent article on him done for Alter Ego.

A lot of articles like this one and this one are attempting to discuss why Phil Donahue's MSNBC talk show was cancelled.  They all seem to be analyzing it in terms of whether or not (a) there's a market for liberal viewpoints and/or (b) whether MSNBC was just plain afraid to have an anti-war advocate on the air if and when we start leveling Iraq.

All those points may be valid but no one seems to be noting that all the shows on MSNBC either get cancelled or, like Hardball With Chris Matthews, certainly have the ratings to justify termination.  If Donahue was axed because the audience isn't there for a liberal talk show host, what was the reason for dropping Alan Keyes Is Making Sense, apart from the fact that he so rarely did?

They also seem to be ignoring the simple possibility — which dawned on me, first time I saw it — that Donahue's show wasn't all that good.  I like the guy but I don't like the 9-minute questions which involve attacking the guest's position three times and apologizing twice before allowing him to reply, then cutting him off to go to commercial.  Once in a while, Phil connected — but I always found better things to do than waiting for that to happen.

There may be no market for a liberal political talk show, I don't know.  But there are certainly plenty of other reasons for the failure of Phil Donahue's show, starting with the fact that it was on a channel that no one ever watches.  Perhaps Michael Savage and Jesse Ventura will fare better, but that will have more to do with theatrics than politics.

Just changed a line in the piece below about Mr. Rogers.  I originally wrote he was on TV for 22 years.  Actually, I meant to write that his best-known series was on for 22 years, which is what some obits say — but it turns out that's not accurate, either.  Fred Rogers did his first TV shows around '51 or '52 and did his last episode in 2001 — an amazing achievement.  Thanks to Mark Thorson for keeping me honest.

The one thing I can tell you about Mr. Rogers is that he was the real deal.  Unlike some celebrities who have a wholesome, kindly image on camera and then go home and slap their offspring, Fred Rogers was the same gentle, soft-spoken man on and off.  I never found his show particularly watchable but, of course, it wasn't meant for me — or you, if you were older than about six.  Obviously, since he was on TV for some 50 years, he managed to connect with his intended audience, and that longevity is all the more impressive when you consider how it was done: Without lights and explosions and special effects or anything of the sort.  He did it without ever altering his act…because it wasn't an act.

I met him once, very briefly, but it was long enough to see this and I wrote about it back here. This was at one year's Licensing Show in New York. He was there, I was with someone who knew him and they asked, "Would you like to meet him?" and of course I would…

Introductions were made…and I was instantly struck by how Mr. Rogers was exactly the same in person as he was on-screen. Exactly. He talked the same, he smiled the same, he acted the same — which meant that on TV, he wasn't acting at all. I should have known better but, trying to get a chuckle out of him, I said, "It's an honor to meet you even though you beat me out for an Emmy Award."

Big mistake, Mark. Mr. Rogers suddenly acted like I was in need of medium-level grief counseling. He said, oh so kindly, "Now, young man, you shouldn't feel bad about such things. Awards are not the measure of what we do. I'm sure you did something of great value if it was nominated and the pride in that work should be your reward…"

"Well, I was just kidding. Actually, I thought it was great that you won and —"

"Because if you feel good about yourself, that's all that should ever matter. The approval of others is nice to have, of course, but it should never be a necessity in your life."

"It isn't," I said — and at that moment, all sorts of smartass quips, most of them self-deprecating, were racing through my mind. They were drowned-out by some part of my brain shouting at me, "Don't try to be funny! He takes things literally!"

So I said to him, "I'm sorry. I gave you a wrong impression. I was just trying to say it really was an honor to meet you."

And so help me, he grinned and said something that to him at that second I'm sure was absolutely true. He said, "Well, it's an honor to meet you, too!" And then he turned to some people near us and introduced me to them as his new friend. Even remembered my name and pronounced it properly, which I don't always do.

Mr. Rogers was not humorless but you could tell he treated everyone and everything they said with utter and literal reverence.  Moments later, I watched as he met some children and spoke to them with the same total commitment of dignity and attention he was giving to the adults around him.  Some of those adults — this was at a seminar of broadcasting executives — could have meant a lot to his career and bank account, but that didn't matter.  Everyone got treated the same, which is to say with respect and importance.  He said to everyone, "It's a pleasure to meet you," and he seemed to really feel that way.

Like I said, I never warmed to his show.  But I sure like the fact that someone like that could have a show — and that he could succeed for so long, just being himself.

We've been experiencing some technical difficulties with this site — not my fault, but I apologize to those of you who had trouble getting in here over the last twelve hours.  It's being fixed.

I'm swamped, but here's a link to a new column by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame.

Over at the website for Turner Classic Movies, they're always posting some great clip that you can view online.  Right this moment — it will change soon — they're offering us "So You Want To Be A Gambler," a Joe McDoakes short starring George O'Hanlon (whose name they insist on spelling wrong).  Depending on which browser you're using and whether I've figured out how to bypass a network of JavaScript pop-ups, this link may take you to it.  But if not, go to their main page and look around.  For that matter, there are a lot of great clips on their multimedia page and on their trailers page.  (If those links don't work, go to their main page and use the drop-down menus at the top.)

On the latter page, there are many treasures including a trailer for the real movie of The Music Man with Robert Preston delivering some special promotional lyrics to the opening of "76 Trombones."  I believe there was a longer version in the original trailer but even this much is a fine treat.  Here's a link that may work or you may have to root about.  It's great to see Mr. Preston in his signature role.  If you saw the Matthew Broderick version and would like to catch The Music Man as God intended it to be seen — filmed in America with people who fit the roles — Turner Classic Movies is running the movie March 3, or you can order the DVD by clicking here.  Preston is wonderful and mesmerizing, Shirley Jones is wonderful and pregnant, and everyone else is just plain wonderful.

The latest thing the TV schedulers are doing to screw with those of us who TiVo:  The NBC network broadcasts of Saturday Night Live are now officially 91 minutes long — from 11:30 PM to 1:01 AM.  This was done deliberately to foul up my Season Pass for the To Tell the Truth reruns on Game Show Network that start (in my time zone) at 1:00 AM.