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Every few months, the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters group stages a luncheon to honor someone who has made a vital and lasting contribution to the art of broadcasting.  Yesterday afternoon, it was the long-overdue salute to the First Lady of Voice Work, June Foray.  The place was packed to hear a dais that included Hal Kanter, Arthur Hiller, Tom Hatten, Fay Kanin, Milt Larsen, Leonard Maltin, Charles Solomon, Roger Mayer, Gary Owens and Yours Truly.  Stan Freberg was to have been among the speakers but a touch of bronchitis forced him to stay home and fax in a letter which Gary read.  Even without Freberg, it was a great afternoon with a lot of love and respect for a lady who has done the best-possible work in her field for more than a half-century.  (For a piece about an earlier tribute to June I attended, click here.)

I spent the last few days running around to meetings, putting the finishing touches on Mad Art (a book coming your way shortly from Watson-Guptill), lunching with Stan Lee (he says hi back), prepping my speech for tomorrow's luncheon in honor of June Foray and, most of all, setting up my new computer.  It's a Pentium-4 with 512 Meg RDRAM, two 120 gig harddisks, a DVD-Rom drive, a 40X CD-RW, a 250 mb Zip drive, an automatic ice maker, a built-in toaster oven, a set of wind chimes, five golden rings, four calling birds…

Okay, I'm lying about those last few.  But it's a helluva computer and I would like to again plug/recommend Bill Goldstein to anyone in the L.A. area who's in the market for anything that computes.  I couldn't have asked for wiser or better service.  You can visit his website at www.wdgoldstein.com.  Even if you don't buy anything there, he has a good repository of virus removal tools, as well as a terrific on-line video of a segment he did for the local news.  It's about how people donate old computers to charity or sell them, thinking wrongly they've purged the hard drive of personal info.  Bill and a reporter went to a thrift store, picked out some donated computers and Bill was able to restore the donor's files…including credit card numbers, personal data and probably a lot of downloaded porn.  A good, cautionary tale.

Things will be back to normal here as soon as things are back to normal here, if you know what I mean.  Our web counter will be topping a quarter of a million hits any day now and we'll celebrate by putting up a few new (old) columns.  Or something.

There has been no funnier actor in the business than the late, great Hans Conried.  I only had the pleasure of meeting him twice.  Once was at a Tribute to Jay Ward.  Hans was there, of course, because of his memorable voice work as Snidely Whiplash in the Dudley Do-Right cartoons, and as Uncle Waldo on Hoppity Hooper, as well as his on-camera hosting of Fractured Flickers.  He was rightfully mobbed and when June Foray introduced us, I had just enough time to say, "It's an honor to meet one of my fav-" before someone dragged him off to be interviewed by a TV news crew.

I had a somewhat better allotment of quality time when I visited a writer-friend on the set of the TV show, Alice, and found that Mr. Conried was the guest star.  While the rest of the cast rehearsed a scene he was not in, I got to finish my sentence, and Hans launched into wonderful anecdotes about working with Jay, playing Captain Hook for Mr. Disney, portraying Danny Thomas's Uncle Tonoose, etc.  It was one of those "wish I'd had a tape recorder" moments.

At www.hansconried.com, a fan of this fine actor has set up a site full of photos and biographical material.  It's just getting started but it's already worth a visit.  If I can manage to recall some of the stories he told me, I'll try to post them here and offer them to that site, as well.

Several times a year, a group called the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters pays an always-well-deserved tribute to some legend of early television and radio.  On Friday, September 27, they're having a luncheon to honor the incomparable June Foray and the dais will consist of a lot of people who belong in front of microphones, plus me.  I will probably have to follow folks like Stan Freberg and Gary Owens, and will feel like the guy who has to putt after Tiger Woods.  Nevertheless, I'll post a full report here.

I've written a number of articles about great cartoon voice actors like Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, June Foray and Don Messick.  Often, e-mails ask where the heck is the in-depth article about the late, great Paul Frees?  Surely, he ranks with the others.  And he sure does.  Trouble is, apart from one brief phone call, I never met Paul Frees.  Never had the honor.  And while I could rattle off a list of roles and parrot some third-hand anecdotes, I don't know enough to craft the kind of article he deserves.  He was an amazing performer, much admired by his co-stars and incessantly coveted by casting directors.

Some others did more famous characters…though Frees's Boris Badenov is one of the great performances ever in animation.  (I especially love when Boris would adopt, say, an Irish accent…thereby requiring Frees to do a Russian guy talking with a brogue.  June Foray says these things never threw him, not even for a second.  The only other comparable feat I can recall was the WB cartoon — I think it was Rabbit Seasoning — in which Mel B. had to do Bugs imitating Daffy, then do Daffy imitating Bugs.)

During his career, Frees occasionally had his agent assemble a demo tape of his work.  Every voice actor has one — some have several — and their creation is an art unto itself.  The Paul Frees demos are duped and circulated throughout the voice biz and widely considered the best ever.  Most of them run 6-7 minutes and one of the top voice agents once said to me, "I am torn on the subject of handing copies of these out to people.  On the one hand, I want them to see how wonderful a voice demo can be.  On the other hand, Paul Frees was maybe the only human being ever in the field who could sustain a 7-minute demo tape.  And I mean that.  Mel Blanc in his prime probably couldn't have kept you listening for seven minutes.  If one of my clients today brought in a 7-minute demo, I'd kick him out into the street."

So I suppose you're eager to hear one of these legendary demo tapes, right?  Well, here's a link to a site that has one you can hear on-line via RealPlayer.  I have a couple of other tapes and I'll post them here if there's enough interest.

I have lots of talented friends.  I can't do much more than write silly stuff and cook turkeys in my George Foreman rotisserie oven.  But I have friends who can sing, dance, juggle…even sound like other people.  One who can do all those except maybe the juggling is the incomparable Christine Pedi, who is oft-referred to as "Christine Pedi of Forbidden Broadway."  She no longer performs in that show but when she did, she won raves for her uncanny carbons and burlesques of celebs like Ethel Merman, Liza Minnelli and Elaine Stritch.  (I saw her do Liza at least a dozen times over the years and watched the impression get broader and broader.  It's had to, since Liza is now doing an increasingly-broad imitation of herself and Christine has to stay ahead of the real thing.)

You can read a nice article about her that ran in The New York Times by clicking here and another piece on TheatreMania by clicking here.  And you can see Christine on your very own TV.  She's scheduled to do a number this coming Tuesday (January 22) on The Rosie O'Donnell Show.

Funny story how I met Christine: She was appearing in a production of Forbidden Broadway that was appearing at the Tiffany Theater here in Hollywood — an excellent company that included Brad Oscar, who is now on Broadway, playing Franz Liebkind in The Producers.  (That is, when he isn't filling in for Nathan Lane as Bialystock.)  I took a group of friends to the Tiffany to see the show — a group that included Stan Freberg and June Foray.  After the performance, which we all loved, Stan wanted to meet the cast and, of course, they all wanted to meet one of America's great satirists.  So we all massed in the lobby and when Christine met Stan, somehow the subject of his career doing cartoon voices came up.  She said she wanted to get into the field and Stan pointed to me and said, "That's Mark Evanier.  He does the Garfield cartoon show and he can tell you all about the business."

So she came over to me, introduced herself, told me that she was fascinated by the business and asked me what June Foray was like.  I pointed to the lady standing next to me and said, "She's exactly like that woman."  (I felt like Woody Allen: "I just happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here…")

Someone — are you reading this, Leonard? — oughta write a book called something like Flawed Masterpieces, all about films that came thisclose to being great.  As good an example as any was a movie I found myself watching on satellite-via-TiVo this AM — The Comic, a 1969 comedy/tragedy written by Aaron Ruben and Carl Reiner and directed by the latter.  In it, Dick Van Dyke plays an arrogant, unsympathetic silent comedian named Billy Bright, whose story combines elements from the lives of Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton, with a wee bit of Harry Langdon tossed in.  Mickey Rooney plays his sidekick and some of the scenes from Billy's later life (like the talk show appearance depicted above) actually play out like Mr. Rooney's last few decades.  Wouldn't surprise me at all if Mssrs. Van Dyke, Reiner and Ruben were well aware they were basing scenes on Rooney while he performed in the film, oblivious to this.

The film has a stellar cast that included Michele Lee, Cornel Wilde, Pert Kelton and Nina Wayne, among others.  The best joke belonged to a character actor named Ed Peck who managed to turn up at one time or another in every situation comedy of the sixties, and quite a few movies.  He usually played some serious authority figure — a general or a cop — who turns out to be a cross-dresser or who gets a pie in the face.  In The Comic, it was a pie.  (One memorable exception: On an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, he played Buddy Sorrell's rabbi…but in another episode, he played a serious Army Captain who revealed that, deep down, he wanted to be a choreographer.  That was the typical Ed Peck role.)  He passed away in '92 and since then, Hollywood has lacked a good actor who can play an intense, all-business FBI agent who later turns up in drag.

Those of you who are into Cartoon Voices or Industrial-Strength Trivia take note of the following: Paul Frees can be heard dubbing at least four parts in the film, and June Foray dubs one or two lines for the little boy playing Billy Bright's son.  Also, the venerable Silent Movie Theater (subject of this article) is the backdrop for one poignant scene.

That The Comic was not a hit, I can well understand.  I seem to recall it playing less than one week in the first-run theaters of Westwood.  I think I saw it on a Friday, recommended it to a friend on Saturday and when he tried to go the following Tuesday, it had been replaced by something else.  The hero is unlikable in many of the wrong ways and the narrative places him pretty much in free-fall with few surprises en route to his inevitable end.  Van Dyke is superb in the comedy scenes; not quite as wonderful when made-up, at times unconvincingly, as an old man.  Still, enough treasures abound to make it all well worth an occasional viewing.

Dave Mackey operates a terrific website filled with info about great cartoons, over at www.davemackey.com.  One thing he currently has up is a guide to the year-by-year color schemes that were used on those concentric circles that opened and closed all the great Warner Brothers cartoons.  I never realized it but they were color-coded and Dave explains how.  He also just e-mailed me with his solution to the mystery (put forth here) about how, in the MGM cartoon, House of Tomorrow, the narrator briefly changes from Frank Graham to Don Messick and back again…

Don Messick's narration was during the pressure-cooker gag.  The narration makes mention of a specific year: 2050.  Joe Adamson's book , Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, notes that the cartoon described the House of Tomorrow – "Tomorrow" in the original cartoon being noted as 1975. This was the only scene in the whole picture with a hard date reference.

I have a feeling that MGM's sound engineer, Lovell Norman, had the dialogue replaced when the cartoon was packaged as part of CBS's The Tom And Jerry Show in the mid-1960's, thinking that the cartoon's date reference would soon be outdated.  Norman may have had access to enough original sound elements to be able to do a nice, neat patch job, albeit without Frank Graham.  Another less likely possibility was that the line was changed when the cartoon went into local TV syndication in 1977.

That all sounds possible to me but, at least in the print on the Cartoon Network, the editing was not a nice, neat patch job.  It was a pretty sloppy edit, out of style with the other ins-and-outs, which were done via fades.  (The animation in the Messick-narrated segment also seemed a little out-of-style, as if it had been animated by others, but that may just be my imagination.)

But you're probably right that it was done when the show went on CBS (1965, I believe).  And wasn't that the same time that they re-animated and revoiced the episodes that featured the black, stereotyped maid to give her June Foray's Irish accent?

You are gazing on the rarely-seen face of writer-actor Lorenzo Music, who passed away ten days ago, and who was — as I and many others have noted — a wonderful creative force and friend.  This photo is fairly recent and it was on a handout at the memorial service held last night at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills.  A rather spectacular assemblage of talented folks were present and, while it may seem odd for someone to say they had a great time at a memorial service for a pal…well, let's just say that Lorenzo, who had given us so many entertaining shows during his life, was responsible for yet another last evening.  Everyone always wants to know who was at these things so here's a brief rundown of just some of those who were in attendance and whose names may be familiar to you…

The speakers included Bob Newhart, Jack Riley, Ed Asner, Beverly Sanders, Alan Barzman, Patti Deutsch, Marcia Wallace and several others, including Yours Truly and a pretty funny rabbi.  In the audience, one could spot Peter Bonerz, Gary Owens, Avery Schreiber, James L. Brooks, Stan Freberg, June Foray, Thom Sharp, Rosanna Arquette, David Arquette, Julie Kavner, Maurice La Marche, Tress MacNeille, Gregg Berger, Laura Summer, Danny Mann, Mary Gross, Edie McClurg, Dan Castellenetta, Julie Payne…and I'm probably leaving out at least fifty other names of popular actors, both on-camera and voice, to say nothing of the non-SAG friends and family that packed the Writers Guild Theater.  A rousing gospel choir closed the formal event which was followed by a party that Lorenzo would also have loved.

Some of those folks knew him from his days as a writer and story editor on the now-legendary sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  He was also usually responsible for the show's warm-up, greeting the audience and getting them all in the proper mood to laugh at Mary and Ted and Murray and Mr. Grant.  His warm-ups were also legendary, at least within the business, for Lorenzo was superb at holding an audience in rapt interest, and just listening to him made people smile.

We all smiled a lot at the memorial service.  And laughed.  And there were even a few tears, but not that many.  I think we've all moved past that, as you have to in life, and we were there to share stories of our friend, to embrace his wonderful family and to indulge in one big group hug.

Lorenzo…I don't know if they have Internet connections where you are but, assuming they do and the hook-up's fast enough to read this page, I want to say the following to you: I hope you heard all the warm, loving and funny tales that were related last evening.  I hope you know how terrific everyone thought your wife and kids are and that we meant all those nice things we said about you to them.  And when I go, I hope I have at least a fourth as many wonderful and fascinating friends turn out to say good-bye to me.  I only wish you could be one of them.

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.