From my e-mail, I gather that many of you are as engrossed as I am in finding out what the hell happened with the voting in Florida last November.  A new "must read" is today's article in The Washington Post — a follow-up to the one I recommended the other day.  Here's the link…and for those of you who don't have time to click on it, here's a summary…

Boy, darn near everyone involved in running the election and counting the ballots screwed up royally, and almost all the screw-ups worked against Al Gore.

Programming notes: If you set your VCR or TiVo to record An Evening With Mel Brooks — aka The Tony Awards — this Sunday, don't forget that the two hour ceremony on CBS is preceded by an hour show on PBS.  (One thing I often find interesting about the Tony telecast is that it's just about the only live award show that is utterly forbidden to run over its allotted time.  It gets cut off at the end of the two hours, no matter what's happening or what awards remain to be handed out.  Some years, the presenters in the last half-hour sound like John Moschitta, Jr. on a sugar rush.)

Also note that, the following weekend, TV Land is running all 158 episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show in sequence.  On my DSS satellite, the festivities commence at 3:00 AM, early the morning of June 9…however, if you ever watch that station, you should be aware of the following.  At some point in June — they don't seem to be announcing just when — TV Land will begin offering both an East Coast feed and a West Coast feed.  Right now, they just have one, so the show that runs at 6:00 AM on the eastern seaboard is on at 3:00 AM out here.  Once they have the two feeds, many cable companies not on the East Coast will switch to the West Coast feed, probably without much advance notice to viewers.  So you may wake up one morn and find the whole channel time-shifted on your TV.

Interesting article in The Washington Post today about all the Floridians — mainly folks likely to vote Democratic — who were wrongly denied the right to vote last November.  No one has yet charged that this was planned and deliberate but I suspect it's just a matter of time before someone does.  Here's the link.

The website selling Johnny Carson videos (www.johnnycarson.com) has added a database of guest appearances on The Tonight Show, which — if you're as big a fan of the show as I am — makes for fun browsing.  From it, I learned that the Rod Hull/Richard Pryor encounter, which I discussed in this column, took place on 6/9/83.  But there are a few caveats to using this wonderful trivia tool.  One is that it only lists the episodes for which a videotape still exists in the Carson vaults.  Ergo, almost nothing before 1970 is in it, and some since are absent.  Also, it appears to be based on the available contract info in some cases — which means that bit players in sketches or pre-taped bits — are listed, but in others, only "billboarded" guests are itemized.  Also, they've included a number of episodes which had guest hosts…but they don't mention the guest hosts.

One other thing: On the history page of the website, they refer to Ernie Kovacs as Steve Allen's "regular sidekick."  That's really wrong.  If anyone was Steve Allen's "regular sidekick," it was Gene Rayburn.  Ernie Kovacs was Allen's frequent guest host…and eventually, Kovacs hosted the show regularly for two nights a week.  If he was ever on with Steverino, it was only as a guest.

If you're interested in comic book history, you shouldn't miss a single issue of Roy Thomas's fine Alter Ego (or, for that matter, of almost anything from TwoMorrows Publishing).  Roy's latest issue — his eighth, seen at left — is a split book.  One half spotlights Joe Kubert and contains the regular features about Fawcett Comics; the other half is primarily about Wally Wood, whose life and career are way overdue for more attention.  In fact, the only negative thing I can say about this magazine is that I wish it (and Comic Book Artist from the same publisher) had come out decades ago, when more of the greats were alive to be interviewed and to see their recognition.  Every issue so far is highly recommended and I'm sure going to try to make the time to write a few things for it.  A most splendid publication.

Marvel Comics, which exists in a state of spiraling bankruptcy, is about to move its offices.  To raise a few bucks, they're currently auctioning the etched glass doors to their conference room on eBay, with a minimum bid of $15,000.  The link will expire shortly but, as long as it's still there, click here to see how the bidding's going.

Are you thirsty? Would you like a soda?  Click here to get one from the Virtual Soda Machine.

They haven't even arrested anybody and I'm already sick of the Robert Blake story.

I have a favor to ask of those who browse and enjoy this site.  In transferring my old columns from Microsoft Word to the HTML format of a website, occasional mistakes have snuck in, often resulting in dropped text.  If you notice some, please let me know.

On his fine site, TV Barn, my pal Aaron Barnhart is currently recommending and linking my 3-parter on Jay Leno.  This prompted me to re-read them and I discovered, to my horror, that a few paragraphs made less sense than is usual for me, owing to missing words.  I've fixed those but I'm sure there are others.  So if you're reading anything here and it feels like something's absent, please drop me a line and tell me.  I promise not to take umbrage if it turns out I actually wrote it that way.  (And, by the way, I added a column that I wrote about Writer's Block.  You can read it by clicking here.)

It was back in 1889 that Cleveland-based artist Terwilliger Ryan created the first animated cartoon character, Elmo Aardvark. Skeptics have wondered how such a thing was possible since animated film hadn't even been invented then…and the answer is that the innovative Ryan drew his cartoons as flipbooks which were then distributed with Sunday editions of the Cleveland Star and The Intelligencer. You wouldn't believe how much an original Elmo flipbook goes for on those rare occasions when one surfaces at the Sotheby's or Christie's auction galleries.

Later, as we all know, Elmo turned up in some of the first silent cartoons ever made and now, incredibly, he's in the forefront of another form — animated cartoons for the Internet. Terwilliger's great-great-grandsomething, Will Ryan, not only supervises the new films but supplies the voice of the ukulele-playing earth pig. You can find a more detailed history of Elmo by clicking here and you can view one of his spiffy on-line cartoons by clicking over here.

Another mediocrity programming note: On Saturday morning, 5/26, Turner Classic Movies is running a film that always fascinated me — Ensign Pulver.  This is not to say that this sequel to Mister Roberts is a good movie.  It isn't.  In fact, evaluated as a successor-in-interest, it's kind of a train wreck.  But as a standalone effort, it's fun in a silly sort of way, if only for the rather amazing number of actors in it who later became very well known.  Their ranks include Walter Matthau, Jack Nicholson (who has about three lines), James Coco, Larry Hagman, George Lindsey in his pre-Goober days, and Peter "Hollywood Squares" Marshall.  Matter of fact, almost everyone in this predictable romp became famous except the guy playing the title role.  A gent named Robert Walker became Pulver when Jack Lemmon, showing a wisdom few actors ever possess, declined to re-enlist.  Still, you might enjoy it, if only for Burl Ives and his scenery-devouring performance.

Received a nice e-mail from Roger Simon (see this news item here) assuring me that he has only one new book and it's entitled Divided We Stand: How Al Gore Beat George Bush and Lost The Presidency.  Actually, I'd already received and read my copy from Amazon-dot-com.  Since we're all under oath when we post on the Internet, I must admit that I did not enjoy it as much as his previous books.  He is still a perceptive, witty writer but in this case, he's largely covering events that have been covered by other reporters…and often in greater detail and/or with a greater sense of overview and context.  He covers a bit about the Clinton scandals, a lot about the election and a fair amount on the recount, but doesn't delve enough into any of these areas to suit me.  I still like his work though, and enthusiastically endorse his previous books, Road Show and Show Time.

When Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy left the Hal Roach Studios and began making movies at 20th Century Fox, they thought they'd enjoy the lavish production values of a major motion picture producer.  As Stan said in one of their earlier, better films, "For the first time, I'm wrong again."  Their post-Roach efforts were all disappointments — some better than others but none of them up to previous standards.  L&H buffs are given to violent argument as to why this was.  Some said it was all the fault of know-nothing studio execs who picked inept writers and then refused to let Stan and Ollie deviate from the scripts or improvise on the set.  Others say that the boys were getting old; that because their style of comedy seemed shopworn to audiences of the day, they were trying to do different things and, in so doing, were abandoning that which they did better than anyone.  Still others fault the ways of Fox — where few seemed to know how to make comedies, with or without Laurel and Hardy — and/or the absence of the fine Roach supporting players, gag men and technicians.  There is probably some truth to each of these factors.

In the wee small hours of Friday morn, May 25, (shortly after Midnight on my satellite dish), American Movie Classics is running Jitterbugs, which was probably the best of their later features.  Admittedly, this is a little like picking highlights from XFL games but even poor Laurel and Hardy is still head 'n' shoulders above other things you could be watching.  This particular film ain't readily available on home video and doesn't come around all that often so you might want to set the TiVo or VCR.

I'm too upset — and occupied, writing a lengthy obit for Comics Buyer's Guide — to post the usual recommended links 'n' gossip here.  But I did want to call everyone's attention to Joe Conason's excellent article on George W. Bush in this week's New York Observer.  Here's the link.  Even if you like George W., you might want to read it.  With control of the Senate edging away from the G.O.P., a lot of Republican senators are going to be hard-pressed to explain why it was necessary to investigate every rumor about the Clintons making a dollar but we needn't look twice at The Friends of Bush-Cheney making billions off oil and electricity shortages.  (Here's the joke you'll be sick of receiving in your e-mail by this time next week: "The balance of power is shifting in Washington.  The Democrats control the Senate, the Republicans control the House, and the Oil Companies control the Oval Office.")

What a shock to hear that Rich Morrissey died yesterday afternoon of a heart attack at age 47.  I was going to write, "My pal, Rich Morrissey," but that's insufficient.  Rich was a friend of everyone who loved comic books, especially vintage comics.  He was a frequent contributor to fanzines, comic book history projects and even to newsgroups and message boards.  A lawyer by schooling — though he preferred not to practice law — he was one of the people DC often called upon to identify writers and artists in work for which they did not have credits. A lot of history is known today — and a lot of veteran writers and artists received credit and reprint fees — because of Richard Morrissey.

And among his many other contributions to our heritage was that, in '98, he arranged for veteran DC writer John Broome to attend his one-and-only San Diego Comic Convention.  Rich not only set it all up, he paid a large chunk of the travel expense, just because he wanted to pay Broome back for all the joy his work had given to the world of comic art.  (You can read a partial transcript of the wonderful panel that took place that year by clicking here.)  Rich did it, not for personal gain, but because he just believed it oughta be done.  He was a true super-hero.

That's the proprietor of this website, surrounded by two heroes: Steve Allen and Stan Freberg.  This photo, which I'm titling, "Me and the first two people I ever plagiarized" was taken by Leonard Maltin, last July when a star was dedicated for June Foray on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Leonard, by the way, could have a respectable career ahead of him if he'd just ditch that silly "film historian" nonsense and become a full-time paparazzi.  (Tech note: His camera had a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second, during which Steve Allen wrote eight songs and three books.)

Steverino is, sadly, no longer with us…but Stan is hale and healthy (and about to get married again) and he was the first of the speakers or performers at last night's tribute to Steve Allen at the Alex Theater in Glendale.  Freberg was followed — in roughly this order — by Sid Caesar, George Bugatti, Pete Barbutti, Louis Nye, Tom Poston, Don Knotts, Rich Little, Mickey Rooney, Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr., Norm Crosby and Jonathan Winters, all introduced by m.c. Art Linkletter.  There were also clips of Mr. Allen's work, as well as music by "The Steve Allen Big Band," an assemblage of musicians who played with Steve.  As an evening of entertainment, it was a smash.  I thought Barbutti stole the show but everyone was terrific, and no one minded that what was announced as an intermissionless 90 minute show ran an hour over.

As a tribute…well, maybe it's just me but I would have liked certain performers to talk a little less about their own careers and a little more about Steve Allen's.  I kept thinking of Jayne Meadows, seated with her family down in the front row, enduring some pretty long stretches where her late husband seemed irrelevant to the proceedings.  And Mr. Linkletter — though a surprisingly-amusing host — kept trying to top the deceased, reminding folks of his own achievements in the world of television.

This has become a matter that bothers me a lot more than it seems to bother others.  I've attended a number of Hollywood funerals in the last few years where someone would be speaking and I'd want to hold up a big cue card that said, "This event is not about you!  Talk about the dead guy!"  Stan and a few others did speak long and lovingly about the dead guy…but otherwise, it was just a helluva good show.  Since Steve Allen was a helluva good showman, I suppose that alone is tribute in a way.

P.S. Mr. Freberg recently invited me to his upcoming, June wedding.  I told him I'd love to be there but, alas, I have tickets to see The Producers in New York that week.  He said that if he had tickets to see The Producers that week, he wouldn't be at the wedding, either.

To Roger Simon, Chief Political Correspondent of U.S. News & World Report…

Dear Mr. Simon —

As a staunch fan of your work — especially Road Show and Show Time — I should be elated that Amazon-dot-com says that your new book, Divided We Stand, is being released today by Times Books.  And if by some fluke, this turns out to be true, I probably will be elated.  I have always enjoyed your witty insights into the political process, your up close/personal views of the participants and your willingness to spare no one and to show good and bad on all sides.  I even enjoy your constant use of short, punchy sentence fragments as paragraphs.

Like this one.

However, I am understandably (I hope) dubious that such a book exists.  This is because I have now spent months scanning the Internet, hoping that my favorite political correspondent would publish a volume that made some sense of the 2001 presidential election.  This means that I have endured a lot of bizarre, conflicting misinformation, much of which is still represented as truth.

I know you have never encountered such a thing in the world of politics.  But, amazingly, one occasionally finds "facts" on the Internet that may not be entirely accurate.

For example, for months now, an on-line merchant called www.bookvariety.com has been assuring me that the new Roger Simon book is Public Affair: Bill Clinton's Allies and Enemies and the Price They Paid and that it will be published in January of 2001 by Times Books.  They have recently begun listing it as "cancelled" but that's okay, because another on-line bookseller, Greenbooks, is currently telling me that if I send them $21.49, they will ship it to me within 2-3 days.  (They have it down with a publication date of 5/01/01 from Crown Books)

Better still, A1books.com says they will ship it to me in 24 hours for $17.75 and I can also purchase it from www.nowalking.com and The Green Giant.  In the meantime, in what is obviously part of some vast right (or maybe left) wing conspiracy, Varsitybooks.com tells me that Public Affair came out in January of 2000 from Random House and is now out of print.

As if that's not all confusing enough, www.alldirect.com will ship me the new Roger Simon book in 24 hours for $15.00 — except they say it's called High Horses on a Low Road: The Race for the White House in 2000.  Wordsworth.com also has High Horses on a Low Road listed but they charge $21.45 and they've illustrated their listing with a copy of Divided We Stand.

Wait.  It gets worse.  The shopping division of www.yahoo.com will allow me to order A Public Affair for twenty bucks and they tell me it "usually ships in 1 day."  However, if I click on the button that orders a copy, I suddenly find myself at www.barnesandnoble.com and I've mysteriously placed an order for Divided We Stand.  All of this is beside the fact that most online booksellers don't know the difference between you and Roger L. Simon, who writes the Moses Wine mysteries.  Half of the above vendors treat you as one author.  No wonder all these "dot-coms" are going bankrupt.

So I'd really love to order your new book(s), whatever it or they may be called.  I may order a couple of titles from a couple of places and hope I get something.

I just think it's amazing that in this country in this century, we can split the atom, cure certain non-controversial diseases and send people who have enough money into space.  We can even convict Robert Blake of murdering his wife before the police have finished collecting the evidence.

We just can't seem to count ballots or sell books.

Yours truly,
Mark Evanier

My buddy Lou Mougin recently e-mailed me an excerpt from an old Dobie Gillis comic book that included a Hollywood gossip page.  On it was the copy above left, which announced Hanna-Barbera commencing production on its first full-length feature, then called Whistle Your Way Back Home.  By the time it came out, it was named Hey There, It's Yogi Bear, though it did contain a song called "Whistle Your Way Back Home."  The list of folks who were working on the film is interesting…or, rather, it's interesting who isn't in this press release.  Two of the main layout artists — Willie Ito and Jerry Eisenberg — aren't there, though they were responsible for many key sequences, including a musical number, "Go-go, St. Louis," which is easily the best thing in the picture.

Also absent (and uncredited on the finished film) are voice actors Howard Morris and Allan Melvin, who are heard in several roles near the end of the movie.  The film was obviously recorded in three sections with Daws Butler (Yogi), Don Messick (Boo Boo and the Ranger) and Julie Bennett (Cindy Bear) working in all three.  Hal Smith does the extra voices in the first third; Mel Blanc, J. Pat O'Malley and Jean Vander Pyl do extra voices in the second third; Morris and Melvin do extras in the final third.  Three other performers — who, to my knowledge, have never been identified — provided the singing voices of Yogi, Boo Boo and Cindy, which I always thought was a huge mistake.  Even at age 12, seeing this movie at the old Pickwood Theater near Pico and Westwood, I could tell those weren't the real voices of Yogi and his friends singing.

Also, the above press handout credits Joe Barbera and Warren Foster with the script, whereas the finished film credited the two of them plus Bill Hanna.  And the movie also credits Marty Paich for songs, including the title song and one sung by James Darren (!) who also isn't mentioned in the above, presumably because they then hadn't thought of adding that song and hiring him.  (Darren was then under contract to Columbia, which released the movie, so he probably didn't cost much.)

But the most interesting name that's not in the article — and I hadn't expected to see it — is that of Friz Freleng.  'Tis a little known fact that he was originally going to direct this particular movie and that he spent several months drawing and supervising the drawing of its storyboard.  In 1963, when Warner Brothers began closing down its animation studio, Friz was looking for a place to go.  Less than a year later, he and David DePatie would launch their own studio, DePatie-Freleng Productions.  But in-between, Friz started working on the feature for Bill and Joe.  This was kept secret at first because he was still on the WB payroll and perhaps violating some terms of his contract.  Then, before it could be announced, he and DePatie got their operation up and running, so he left and, probably by mutual agreement, it was decided he would not receive credit on the picture.

Around 1980, DePatie-Freleng morphed into Marvel's animation studio, with Marvel acquiring some of its assets, including its building which soon burned to the ground.  Shortly after that fire left him sans office, Friz briefly returned to Hanna-Barbera.  He worked there for a week or three…or, at least, they assigned him an office and also gave one to John Dunn, who had been his main writer/storyman over the years.  I'm not sure if they ever settled on any project for Friz to do there, or if they just talked for a few weeks before deciding it wouldn't fly.  One day, suddenly, he and Dunn were gone, and that was that.

The one instance where I ever got to spend any quality time with Friz was his second or third day at H-B during that stopover.  I was writing something for the studio at the time — Richie Rich, probably — and Barbera introduced me to Friz, hoping we'd hit it off and could work together on something.  They got on the topic of Hey There, It's Yogi Bear and that's how I heard, from the two of them jointly, the story of his involvement.  Friz kept saying how it would have been a better film — he may even have said, "a good film" — if he'd stayed on it.  Joe, eager to humor an old friend, kept agreeing and joking about Friz abandoning them in their hour of need.  I said I thought the end-product was a pretty good movie and Joe smiled at me, while Friz turned into Yosemite Sam and bellowed, only half in jest, that I didn't know what I was talking about.  This, of course, is often so…but I don't think it was with regard to that movie.  I think it's a pretty good film…except for when Yogi and Boo Boo sing.

If you were enthralled by the Harpo voice clip I posted the other day, you oughta pay a visit to www.marx-brothers.org, one of the better Marxian websites out there.  Matter of fact, the clip apparently originated there, and they have another Harpo audio file, along with plenty of info on the Brothers Marx.  My apologies to the proprietor of that site if he feels I usurped his file but it was e-mailed to me from someone who got it from someone else who got it from someone else, etc.  (You've all gotten those e-mails…)

And speaking of those funny boys named Marx, I recently came across a letter that was sent to me in 1972 by Alan Jay Lerner, who was best known for writing the book and lyrics for My Fair Lady, Camelot, Gigi and even a few shows that weren't classics.  Here is an excerpt from that letter.  The reference to Coco Chanel relates to Coco, a Broadway musical that Lerner had penned about the life of the great designer, the show Arthur Laurents wrote was Gypsy, and the show about the brothers' life was, of course, Minnie's Boys, which debuted in 1970 and didn't last long.

Groucho approached me about becoming involved in the show about his family but I declined, respectfully but with a silent note of terror.  Having endured the angst of Coco Chanel approving my version of her life, I had no stomach for the interference he would surely bring to his project.  He summoned me to his table one evening in Chasen's, told me that his show was floundering and that only I could salvage it.  He also insisted on telling me the plot, which was not wholly flattering to his mother, at least as he described it.  To this I replied that Arthur Laurents had just done a perfectly fine musical about a pushy stage mother and vaudeville, so why did the world need another?  Groucho's reply was to the effect that the Marx Brothers were important and were loved, whereas Gypsy Rose Lee was a nobody.  I did not suggest that the theatre-going public might have more interest in strippers than in vaudeville comedians.

Lerner was also probably the wrong person for Minnie's Boys because of the subject matter…though odder matches have occurred.  He came very close to doing the Broadway musical of Li'l Abner, as described here.

ABC, has, as predicted here, announced they'll be replacing Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect with a talk show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.  (Apparently, that time slot can only go to a comedian who is known for making degrading remarks about women.)

On tonight's edition of his show, Maher started talking about failings of our current president and remarked, "If I had a longer show — and I hope to, soon…"  He said it off-handedly but I suspect it was a calculated way of saying to his audience, "I can't say anything yet but we're in negotiations to do an hour-long show on another channel."

Maher's contract with ABC runs to the end of the year and it will probably be some time before the Kimmel show is ready to debut.  If a deal for Bill Maher to move to HBO or Fox or even back to Comedy Central is announced in the next week or two, will ABC keep him on for seven more months?  Especially if he no longer cares about pissing off that network?  This could get interesting…