We have confirmed that Art Carney did at least one production of The Odd Couple in the role of Oscar. Intriguingly, Felix in that production was played by Don Knotts. Wouldn't you have loved to have seen that? The fine artist Drew Friedman has a whole page of ads and playbills and photos from various mountings of The Odd Couple — including Carney/Knotts — and a lot of them sound like fun. Ernest Borgnine as Oscar and Don Rickles as Felix? Tom Poston as Oscar and Tim Conway as Felix?

I have a lot of e-mails about that. I also have way too many about the Groo animation project that was announced Friday — some asking me what channel it will be airing on; others, wanting to work on the show or do the voice of Groo or something. Please. If this happens, it won't happen for a while.

I love looking at old Las Vegas. This video is black-and-white footage that has been restored and colorized…so the colors are just someone's recent guesses. But hey, wouldn't you have liked to go to the Sands to see a double bill of Alan King and Mel Tormé? And Louis Prima appears to have been performing elsewhere on the premises.

The video is labelled to say it's in the seventies but the marquee for the Stardust has "Lido '67" on it and the one for Caesars Palace offers the afternoon show, "Bottoms Up '67" produced by and starring Breck Wall. I wrote about Mr. Wall and my one encounter with him in this post.

At the Desert Inn, you could have seen a touring company of Hello, Dolly! with either Dorothy Lamour or Ginger Rogers. Their names are both on the marquee and they took turns. On eBay and elsewhere online, you can find all sorts of photos and souvenirs from that engagement — like the postcard above — and they all say it was 1967. As a point of interest, Hello, Dolly! didn't close on Broadway until December of 1970.

All of this leads me to the fearless conclusion that all or most of this footage was shot, not in the seventies, but in 1967. And hey, Don Rickles was playing at the Sahara. That might have been welcome news if you were in town then and eager to sit in the front row and be called a hockey puck…

This is the first part of a piece that ran in yesterday's Hollywood Reporter…

'Groo the Wanderer' Eyed for Animation Adaptation

Entrepreneur Josh Jones has acquired the animated film and television rights to the long-running comedic comic from legendary Spanish cartoonist Sergio Aragonés.

Groo the Wanderer, the long-running comedic comic from legendary Spanish cartoonist Sergio Aragonés, is on its way to animation.

Entrepreneur Josh Jones, who counts businesses in venture capitalism, cryptocurrency and airlines among his portfolio, has acquired the animated film and television rights to Groo, with the intent of producing the character's first-ever animated adaptation via his film company, Did I Err Productions.

Jones and his Did I Err partner Scott Nocas will serve as executive producers on the possible projects along with Aragonés and Groo writer Mark Evanier.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE

Our pal Greg Ehrbar has written a long, fine history of Will that covers a lot of things I didn't mention about him. You can read it over on the Cartoon Research website.

As far as I know, no plans have been made for any sort of memorial gathering. I've spoken to a lot of Will's friends (and Will had a lot of friends) and they all seem to want one. That's an indicator of how much we don't want to let him out of our lives.

Actress Katie Leigh, who worked closely with Will, says he was 72 years old. Sounds about right to me.

How I hated typing that subject line. My friend — everybody's friend, actually — Will Ryan died a few hours ago. The cause was Cancer. His Wikipedia page says he was born in 1939 which would make him 82 but I don't know anyone who knew Will who believes he was anywhere near that old. He was so full of energy and talent and he sure didn't look 82. He was also one of the nicest people you could ever want to meet.

He was an actor, a historian, a voiceover specialist, a songwriter, a singer…in fact, he was a singing cowboy. There aren't many openings these days for singing cowboys but one day, Will decided he wanted to be one and danged if he didn't become one. He and his posse — the Cactus County Cowboys — could often be found at local theaters and nightclubs playing songs that sounded like they could have been from the days of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry but which were freshly written by Will.

Will hailed from Cleveland where he and a pal, Phil Baron, formed a comedy music act called Willio and Phillio. They played local venues and recorded some songs that Dr. Demento played on his radio show in the sixties. When Will relocated to Los Angeles, he began writing funny songs for the Disney company and performing on Disney records and eventually in films. He voiced the seahorse in The Little Mermaid and Willie the Giant in Mickey's Christmas Carol. He voice-matched a lot of classic Disney voices, especially for various Winnie the Pooh projects. And he was heard in a lot of non-Disney shows like G.I. Joe, Family Guy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, and so many others.

I had him on Garfield and Friends several times. Once, we had an episode about a very bad, evil ghost and a very timid, meek one. Will voiced the meek one and his performance was a perfect contrast to the bad, evil ghost who was voiced by James Earl Jones. He was also heard in hundreds of episodes of the radio drama, Adventures in Odyssey.

And he played ace straight man Sam Shooster in the Biffle & Shooster comedy shorts…

The producer/director/writer of those shorts, Michael Schlesinger, sent me this…

Everyone knows Will from his remarkable musicianship and his incredible voice work, but not enough is said about what a splendid comedy actor he was. The chemistry between him and Nick [Santa Maria, who played Biffle] was something to see. They reacted to each other in real time, almost as if they could read each other's thought process, and remained in character even when something went wrong. I soon learned not to yell "Cut!" at the end of a scene, because they often just kept going, ad-libbing on the spot. They could have played these characters full-time if they'd wanted.

There's so much more I could write about Will but since he touched so many lives — and always for the better — I'm sure others will say what I can't. They'll all talk about what a great, talented man he was; how he always seemed to be doing eleven things at once and all of them well.

So condolences to his splendid wife/partner Nancy. In fact, condolences to all of us who knew the amazing Will Ryan. We were so fortunate.

This, obviously, is the perfect day to get attention for a press release that you'd like someone to read. There's one that should be on the Hollywood Reporter website after Noon that may be of interest to fans of Groo the Wanderer.

• And one day soon, someone of a different political view and/or race will do what Kyle Rittenhouse did and all the folks cheering today's verdict will be screaming,"Rule of law!"

The American Dance Machine is attempting to re-create some of the best-remembered dance numbers from past Broadway shows — and to do it while folks who knew and maybe performed the original choreography are around to participate. This is the "Favorite Son" number from The Will Rogers Follies, which had a Broadway run from 1991 to 1993 and has lived on in other venues.

Keith Carradine originally played Mr. Rogers and Cady Huffman played a showgirl referred to as "Ziegfeld's Favorite." Here, Ms. Huffman steps into the role of Will Rogers and performs along with a line of dancers, some of whom were in the show way back when. Tommy Tune did the original staging…

Sorry to hear about the passing of songwriter Dave Frishberg, who was also an accomplished jazz pianist and performer. Here's an obit in The New York Times.

Never met the man but I've long admired the sheer cleverness of his work. The song of his you probably know the best would be "I'm Just a Bill," one of several that he wrote for the Schoolhouse Rock TV spots on ABC Saturday morning. My favorite would be "My Attorney Bernie." Here's Mr. Frishberg singing it once on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show…and charmingly forgetting his own lyrics at the end…

We're still talking Odd Couple here, people. Richard Gersh writes…

I agree that seeing the original Broadway cast of The Odd Couple must have been great. Have you heard the story that Matthau wanted to switch roles with Carney at some point into their run, to keep things interesting? I think I recall hearing Matthau say such a thing on a talk show many years ago.

I did see The female Odd Couple when it premiered on Broadway, and for me the highlight was Lewis J. Stadlen and Tony Shalhoub as the Costazuela brothers. I envy the Canadians who saw — according to Wikipedia — a 1970 production with Martin Short as Felix, Eugene Levy as Oscar, and Dave Thomas as Murray.

Here is what I understand: When Neil Simon approached Walter Matthau about appearing in the play, Matthau said he wanted to play Felix and to invest in the play. He was allowed to invest but not to play Felix. There are people who claim that they saw a performance where Matthau and Carney switched roles. Simon said that never happened.

The Odd Couple opened on Broadway on March 10, 1965. Carney left in October and Matthau left a few weeks later…so the period of time when you could see the two of them together was about seven months and in the last month or so Carney was in the show, he is said to have missed many performances. Paul Dooley, who was playing Speed in the show, was Carney's understudy. Eddie Bracken took over as Felix in late October.

So there really wasn't time for Matthau and Carney to get so bored that might have switched roles. And Matthau, who said a lot of things that weren't true in an impish kind of way, may have been kidding.

It's been said that Carney did play Oscar in one or more regional productions years later…but though I've seen dozens and dozens of program books and posters for different mountings of the play with interesting leads, I've never seen one for Carney without Matthau. I'm not saying I don't believe it but I'll believe it when I see it.

I saw the female Odd Couple when it was in tryouts at the Ahmanson here in Los Angeles in 1985. Rita Moreno played the sloppy one, Sally Struthers played the neat one and I thought the gender swap was pointless and the play didn't work. I agree with you that the Costazuela Brothers were the best thing in the show.

I also saw Simon's 2002 rewrite of the original male version which played here in L.A. with John Larroquette (Oscar) and Joe Regalbuto (Felix) and I thought it was very weak. I'm not sure it ever played anywhere else. The Costazuela Brothers became the Costazuela Sisters and, again, they were the best thing in it.

I love coming across and sharing videos of old, largely-forgotten comedians. James Edmondson, Sr. was an old vaudevillian whose act long outlived vaudeville. In it, he portrayed a silly scholar named Professor Backwards and throughout the fifties and sixties, he was very busy on the State Fair circuit and appeared on all the major variety and talk programs. He is said to have been the most frequent guest on The Mike Douglas Show.

Often, a performance would include a demonstration of his ability to write and talk backwards; ergo, his stage name. But you won't see those skills demonstrated in this clip, which is from The Ed Sullivan Show for October 25, 1959.

Edmonson's life came to a tragic end when he was murdered in January of 1976. Shortly after, on NBC's then-new Saturday Night series (later retitled Saturday Night Live), Chevy Chase read a joke about the murder in the Weekend Update segment. Reportedly written by writer Michael O'Donoghue, it went…

Well, the popular TV personality known as Professor Backwards was slain in Atlanta yesterday, by three masked gunmen. According to reports, neighbors ignored the Professor's cries of "Pleh! Pleh!"

That kind of joke later became more commonplace on television but at the time, it was an example of the outrageousness of the new late night show. It drew so many complaints that Mr. Chase, when asked about it, would swear he didn't know there was a real person named Professor Backwards. But some of us knew who he was. He was this guy…

• Why is Chris Christie wasting his time trying to distance himself from Donald Trump? The politician Chris Christie needs to distance himself from is Chris Christie.

John Trumbull sent me the following in response to this post, which was a follow-up on this post…

Just thought I'd write to mention that November 13th is only Felix Unger Day in the TV version of The Odd Couple. The original 1965 play by Neil Simon (and the 1968 movie version directed by Gene Saks) begins on "a warm summer night" in July. Oscar Madison's air conditioner is out and his refrigerator has been broken for two weeks, prompting lots of complaining from Murray, Speed, and the other poker players. As someone who's been in two productions of the play (once as Vinnie and once as Felix), the November 13th date has long sounded "wrong" to me.

This was one of a number of small changes the TV version made, along with changing Felix from a news writer for CBS to a photographer and altering the spelling of his last name from "Ungar" to "Unger." So, obviously, Art Carney and Jack Lemmon were playing the Earth-Two Felix Unger, while Tony Randall was playing the Earth-One Felix Ungar. Really, it's the only possible explanation.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go finish my Crisis on Infinite Ungars pitch for DC Comics. Ron Glass and Thomas Lennon are traveling to Earth-Three, where Oscar's the neat one and Felix is the slob.

That is, of course, all true…and there are Earths where Oscar and Felix are female and named Olive and Florence, and one where they're a neat cat and a sloppy dog.

I have a friendly disagreement with my pal Ken Levine, who likes the Randall/Klugman Odd Couple more than I do, whereas I prefer Lemmon/Matthau. I think we decided that it didn't matter which we preferred because if we could see the original with Walter Matthau and Art Carney, that would be the definitive version forever to us. The few lucky people I know who saw the show when it debuted on Broadway certainly felt like that.

Someone told me there is a professionally-shot video of the revival with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, not to be confused with the various bootleg, shot-on-iPhone-from-the-balcony bootlegs around. If this is so, I wonder why CBS/Paramount hasn't broadcast or marketed it.

This is something that occurred in 2010, back when I used to occasionally commute to Indiana to work on Garfield cartoons.  It was reported here on 9/24/10.  Much has changed since then including the fact that I no longer have business in Indiana…and neither does B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue, the chain where I stopped for lunch that day.  Their seventeen locations are now situated in Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan…but no longer in Indiana.

On the other appendage, when this happened, Costco had two locations in the Hoosier State and now they have eight.  Also, I no longer buy crates of Friskies Cat Food to feed feral pussycats — and an array of other species — in my backyard. But nothing else has changed…including, I assume, the way Southwest Airlines handles luggage. Here then is another of my…

A few weeks ago, I found myself driving from Indianapolis, Indiana to Muncie, Indiana in a car the Hertz people rented me. Did I say "car?" "Moving van" would be more like it. It was way more vehicle than I wanted or like to drive but it was the only thing they had available that had a GPS in it. I have unerring directional capabilities on my home turf but when I'm a stranger in a strange land, I can't find my way from the toilet in my hotel room to the sink. The Hertz folks put me in it for the price they'd quoted for a mid-sized sedan so I took it for the duration of my stay in Indiana. I figured that if I had some extra time, I could pay for the trip by moving some pianos.

En route to Muncie, I lunched at a B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue — a favored chain they have back there but not out here — and while chowing down thought, "Gee, I oughta stop off somewhere and buy a new suitcase." Southwest Airlines had rendered my old one unrollable and it was fracturing up one side. I consulted the Yellow Pages app of my iPhone and found a nearby store that from its name seemed like it might have what I wanted. It didn't. Neither did another luggage shop. Both had plenty of bags but not the kind I had in mind.

As I got back into my oversized rental, its excessive bulk made me think of Costco and I realized I'd seen the perfect suitcase a few months earlier at a Costco in Los Angeles. I consulted the app again and it turned out there was a Costco less than two miles from where I was at that moment. This struck me then as unremarkable. After all, there must be Costcos all over Indiana, right? Not right. I later learned that there are only two in the entire state. I just happened to be near one of them…the one in Castleton, Indiana. Minutes later, I was pulling into its parking lot.

It looked just like the ones in Southern California which, in turn, all look like each other. I've been to five different Costcos around here. They vary a bit in whether they have certain add-ons like a tire store or a gas station but they pretty much all look the same on the outside. Within, they look pretty much the same as well, though some are mirror-imaged. As you face the rear of the warehouse, sometimes the groceries are on this side and the tools and appliance-type stuff is on that side.

Sometimes, it's the other way around. It's one of those left brain/right brain things. One of the nice aspects of Costcos, comforting in a way, is their conformity. First time I walked into the one in Burbank, I knew right where everything was. It was in the exact same place as in the Costco I've been known to frequent in Marina Del Rey.

At first glance, the Costco in Castleton was laid out just like both of them and like the one in Los Feliz and the one in Inglewood…but as I moved through it, I noticed subtle and then some not-so-subtle differences. Not everything was in its proper place. The computer software, which should have been over here, was over there. The display of batteries, where you can buy one package containing enough AAAs to power everything you will ever own that takes that size, was not where it was supposed to be, either.

I do not generally have any trace of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but I seem to get it at Costco. I found myself wanting to grab employees and tell them, "No, no! The contour pillows go at the end of the aisle!" If everything or even most items had been in different spots, I could have coped easily…but you know how it is when just one venetian blind slat is twisted and you just have to correct it? It was like that for me at the Indiana Costco. 95% of its layout seemed correct but I couldn't stop wishing the 5% would conform.

Remembering the purpose of my visit, I took myself to the aisle where the luggage was supposed to be. It wasn't there, which I found doubly unsettling. Never mind that my needs were not being met…it was just plain wrong. There should have been luggage there, not just for me but for everyone.

I wandered the entire store to see where they'd recklessly put it and couldn't find suitcases anywhere. I was just thinking that maybe they didn't carry them when a friendly Costco employee, spotting bewilderment on my brow, asked if she could help me locate anything. We were near the spot where I could point and say, making clear I didn't think this was her fault, "Why aren't there suitcases in that aisle there? There are supposed to be suitcases there."

With a forced smile, she pointed halfway across the warehouse and said, "Luggage is right there, sir. Next to the down comforters." And indeed it was…maddeningly in the wrong place. Believe me, it was not comforting to find it near the comforters. I got back some of my bearings though when I happily discovered they did at least have exactly the suitcase I'd coveted in Los Angeles. Costco had not let me down and I have to tell you, it was a good, reassuring feeling.

Once I had my attention off the baggage crisis, I could browse the store with wider eyes. I free-sampled some new kind of potato chip that I enjoyed…and would later learn is not available, at least not yet, at the Inglewood Costco. I watched the guy preparing the hot rotisserie chickens for purchase and I was consoled to see it was the exact same guy who prepares them for purchase in any Southern California Costco.  Costco acquires everything in bulk, including that guy.

Only one other thing unnerved me. I kept spotting items I needed back home and would momentarily forget it was stupid to purchase them there. Like, I noticed the crates of Friskies I buy, two or three at a time in L.A. to feed my backyard kitty committee. For a half-second, I thought, "Hey, this would be a good time to…" before realizing I didn't really want to pack sixty pounds of canned cat food into my new suitcase and haul it back to California.

So it felt a bit odd to be checking out of a Costco with but one item. Everyone else had a cart that looked like the carts I usually push through checkout, loaded down with enough paper towels to blot up the entire B.P. oil slick. I didn't even have a cart…just one suitcase which rolled quite nicely, by the way. A friendly crew member saw me waiting behind a dozen such carts and suggested I avail myself of the self-service checkout counter. I've never seen one of those in any Costco out here but I steeled myself for something else different and did as he advised.

As I was swiping my credit card — and wondering as I always do why we use that confusing verb for that action — yet another cheery Costco crew member approached to inquire, "Did you find everything you wanted, sir?" I told him yes but added, "I'm from Los Angeles and out there, our Costcos are laid out a little differently." He smiled even more and said, "Well, we do things a little different here in Indiana." Indeed, they do…and I'm not saying any of it's wrong. In fact, in time I could even get used to the crates of yardsticks being next to the nine-packs of Kirkland-brand paprika. But it would take a lot of time.