Lest a certain editor phone to ask, "Why the hell are you posting on your blog instead of finishing that job you're working on for me?", I hereby declare this (and possibly tomorrow) days of light blogging on this site. There will be video links because I have a whole batch of them prepped and ready to go. There may even be a few others. I pray there will be no obits. And I pray I finish my current assignment soon. In the immortal words of Garry Moore, "Be very kind to each other out there."
Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick starred in a Broadway revival of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple for 249 performances from 10/27/05 until 6/4/06.
Brad Garrett played Murray the Policeman and I've seen folks wonder why someone with Mr. Garrett's stardom would accept a supporting role like that. The obvious answer is that the show's producers must have made it worth his while. They needed a heavyweight to cover the part of Oscar if/when Nathan Lane was out, as he occasionally was…and Garrett did play the role for three whole months when Lane was off vacationing or shooting a movie or something.
Our link is to a video press kit for reviewers — excerpts from the show that could be used in TV reviews. I didn't get back to New York while it was running but a friend of mine saw it twice — once early on, once late in the run. He thought Lane and Broderick got better and better in the show…so keep in mind that these clips must have been shot at a preview so they could be distributed by opening night.
They're still pretty darned good. They probably videotaped the entire show when they recorded these moments. It would be nice to think it might someday be released in its entirety. There's a bootleg making the rounds but it looks and sounds like a bootleg.
If you don't have time to watch all of this reel, this link will take you directly to the bit about the spaghetti, followed by the bit about the little notes on Oscar's pillow. Neil Simon thought those were the two biggest laughs he ever got in any play. But here — watch the whole thing, starting with some lingering shots of the marquee…
One of the many, many, many reasons I loved working for Sid & Marty Krofft was Billie Hayes. Billie was a veteran stage and screen performer best known for playing Witchiepoo on H.R. Pufnstuf and Mammy Yokum in the musical of Li'l Abner.
She was the first choice for the role of Mammy when the show first opened on Broadway but she was under the contract to another show at the time. So Charlotte Rae got the role of Dogpatch's reigning matriarch and when Charlotte left the show, Billie was available to step into the role. She was so good in it, she did the movie, too.
And she did other shows and other roles for the Kroffts. She returned as Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo for The Bay City Rollers Show that I wrote about here and here recently and I even posted a couple of photos of Billie in character with the Rollers. In everything she did, she was a ball of energy — the kind of performer who livened up every scene, the kind you couldn't take your eyes off of. I loved working with her. I loved just sitting with her, hearing stories of her long, colorful career.
She was also a fervent activist for animal rights (Donations in her name will be welcomed). She died last Thursday at the age of 96 but the last time I saw her, which was just a few years ago, she still had enough energy to light the entire studio and all the TV sets watching her.
You can read about that long, colorful career in this obit but there's one error I've asked them to correct: Lennie Weinrib was the voice of H.R. Pufnstuf but he was never ever the person inside the costume.
Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is from The Global Uke Companions and it was recommended to me by Scott Edelman…
As I've mentioned here from time to time, I have a secret e-mail address that I use when I have to sign up for a website that I suspect is likely to deluge me with ads 'n' spam 'n' e-mail I don't want. I've used it for some time and it gets a steady stream of communications of all kind, most of them enormously dishonest and full of Bandini.
Some of it is sexual. Some of it is political. The sexual e-mail covers the total span of everything that one or more consenting adults can do to other adults, consenting or not. So does the political e-mail, which seems to me about as accurate as the sexual messages that promise they can enlarge any part of your body to the size where you could cover it with flowers and enter it into the Rose Parade.
Some of the political messaging is Ultra-Liberal and some is Ultra-Conservative but all of it is Ultra-Something because it's all intended to get the recipient so mad and/or terrified that they'll send money, preferably lots of it in recurring donations. All of it says that The Enemy (whoever it is) is only days away from destroying America and everything we love about it.
The Anti-Liberal mail demonizes everyone on the Left but especially Biden (of course), Obama, both their wives, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hillary Clinton. There's a surprising amount of hate directed at Hillary given that she holds no public office, hasn't for some time and isn't loudly attached to any possible legislation. I guess her name is real good for fund-raising.
The Anti-Conservative mail raises its money by warning about Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump and even at times, Donald Trump. It used to speak ill of William Barr but ever since he said the election was fair and some other things Trump didn't like, he's become a wizened authority to be followed.
Apart from the latter never going after women, I don't see a whole lot of difference between the two groups except that all of this kind of mail seems to presume two things. One is that the recipient is pretty friggin' stupid. The other is that to them, a piece of e-mail from God-Knows-Who that tells them what they want to believe is an unimpeachable source whereas any so-called "credible" news agency is part of a well-financed conspiracy to lie.
That e-mail address of mine has been getting these messages for decades. One party that writes many times a week has been telling me for more than three decades that it is in possession of incontrovertible evidence that will have Hillary Clinton on Death Row within the week if only I'll donate $10.00 or more. I thought all of that was nonsense that could be ignored. I never imagined it was a preview of Mainstream American Politics of the last few years.
Tech problems prevented me from getting this up here before Midnight. It's from last night's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and it's about the vaccine, people who refuse to take it and why they're wrong. I have no idea how many people this will convince but convincing any is better than convincing none…
You may be shocked to see it but I have another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is obviously by NelsonTYC performing on the Otamatone and it was suggested to me by Jim Newman…
Since the previous post went up, three separate readers of this site have written to ask, "Why wasn't Don Rickles in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World?" In later years, Stanley Kramer would tell of how when he went to see Rickles perform, the comedian would always insult him several different ways (of course) but would especially ask, "You put every person in show business in that movie except me! Why?"
I don't know that Mr. Kramer ever gave him a direct answer but it's pretty obvious why. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was filmed between April 16, 1962 and December 6, 1962. Before the sixties were out, Mr. Rickles would be a pretty famous comedy star but in 1962, there were probably 300 comedians in the business who were better known than he was.
From Robert Rose…
The subject of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World came up in a Marx Brothers discussion group I participate in. Opinions on the movie varied (the most interesting to me was the fellow who says he loves the film but that it isn't funny; I'm not sure how that works) but of course in that group the burning question was "Why wasn't Groucho in it?" There were various explanations and theories advanced, but rather than list them I thought I'd toss the question your way, as an acknowledged expert on the film who also seems to have come across the occasional stray fact about the Marx Brothers, too.
(I did first try to search through your blog to see if you'd addressed the question before, but eventually gave up, defeated by the sheer number of posts that mention Groucho, some of which even do so without mentioning Frank Ferrante.)
I hope people understand that even an "acknowledged expert on the film" can't know everything for certain and that if you'd asked Stanley Kramer at the time about the movie, there are some things even he wouldn't know. A movie involves a thousand decisions and you can't track and dissect every one of them.
I can tell you that a lot of the casting decisions were last minute "get anyone you can" decisions. On a film like that with so many set-ups and so many players and so many stunts and tech problems, you can never be sure when you'll get to certain scenes. A lot of folks who were not in the film weren't in it because they were shooting another movie or a TV series at the time.
I asked Dick Van Dyke and he said he was never approached. (Carl Reiner was in it but since Carl wasn't in every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, he did a lot of other things while that series was in production. Morey Amsterdam recorded a voiceover for Mad World that was cut from the film but that was a voiceover that might have taken an hour.) Anyway, that's probably why people like Lucille Ball, Danny Thomas and Jackie Gleason weren't in it. Joe Besser was cast as one of the gas station attendants but couldn't get time off from The Joey Bishop Show.
Stan Freberg walked onto the set one day to discuss the commercials he was producing for the film. When Kramer had a break in filming, he instead said to Stan, "What size shirt do you wear?" They needed someone to fill a role they were prepping to shoot an hour or so later.
Howard Morris is nowhere in the film, nor did he ever appear before the cameras. But on two separate occasions, they booked him for a day's work (and paid him) because they thought they might need him to replace someone else, depending on scheduling. He never knew what the role was and the following is just my theory…
I suspect he was engaged in case the schedules on Mad World and The Andy Griffith Show didn't come into proper alignment so Don Knotts was available. If when they needed to shoot the scenes with Don, he couldn't get away from Mayberry, Howie would have been in that part and people would be asking, "Why wasn't Don Knotts in the film?" Or maybe Knotts would have wound up in a different role.
Either of those would have been a shame because he was so perfect in the part he played. Don made such a strong impression in the movie that people think he was in a lot more of it than he was. His total on-screen time totaled exactly 120 seconds.
Mr. Kramer told me that Sterling Holloway's casting as the fireman was one of those "we couldn't find anyone else when we needed someone" moments and that he hoped there'd be an opportunity to reshoot it later with a bigger star — and there wasn't. I theorize the part was written for Ed Wynn…and hey, that might have been a good spot for Groucho. I've heard there do exist script pages for a never-filmed scene where Groucho would have cameoed as a doctor treating all the major male cast members at the end.
It would have given Groucho the last line of the movie and they might have decided that at that point, the focus of the last scene should have been on the stars of the film instead of on an interloper. Or Groucho might not have been available. Or Groucho might have wanted too much money. Or there might have been some reason no one could have imagined.
At some point during the filming, a small role was apparently offered to Jack Carter. Mr. Carter was fiercely competitive with other comedians and he wasn't about to come in and do two lines in a movie starring guys like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar with whom he had what we might call "rivalry issues." He turned the job down saying something like, "Call me when you have a real part." They never did, either because one did not come along or because they just decided not to deal with someone who took that attitude. The one time I got to talk to Stanley Kramer, I asked him about it and he said, "I don't remember. I probably had too many things to think about." That's the way it is with some things.
Today's Doonesbury comic strip is very funny. Go here to see it.
Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is a piano tutorial from the Sheet Music Boss…
What was it like in the jury room for the trial of Derek Chauvin? According to one juror, eleven of the twelve jurors were ready to convict immediately and the twelfth one was unsure. No one ever thought Chauvin was not guilty. Read how it went.
From Greg Butera…
I love when you write up a story which prompts questions and you then give a deeper answer about the inner workings of showbiz. Here's my contribution. Reading your answers today about the Bay City Rollers Show got me wondering about this part: "I worked on several TV shows on Stage 6 there and it was amazing how it could be a dense jungle in there on Tuesday and on Wednesday, they were taping Solid Gold or a game show in there. A lot of the 'magic' of television is made by set designers, the tech crew and super-heroes who are referred to as 'grips.'"
Do you know anything about where all that stuff goes between set tear down and put up? Are set materials tossed into a huge dumpster or reused? Are there huge warehouses on those studio lots where stuff from the Dean Martin variety show still sits? Is there some wunderkind who remembers it all so when he hears "Hey Jim, we need a stuffed llama for a John Oliver segment for HBO next week, we had one of those on the Smothers Brothers episode 6 in back in 1969 is it still in warehouse B"? That kind of detail just fascinates me.
Where sets go has a lot to do with someone — usually someone who deals in budgets — making a decision about how likely a given set is to be needed again. A decision is made before a set is built as to whether this will be or could be a permanent set that will be reused. Your favorite series probably has several rooms or locations that could turn up in every episode or many of them. When they build those sets, they make them extra-sturdy and they figure out where to store them…preferably close by in a warehouse on the studio grounds.
On the other hand, when a set is ordered and it's likely to only be used once for an hour or two and never again, that set might be built to last an hour or two and not much more. Parts of it might then be discarded. Parts of it might be cannibalized for other sets. You can always use living room walls, doorways, windows, etc. In fact, I worked on shows where we'd finish all the scenes on the living room set and then the crew would dismantle it, repaint parts of it and set those pieces up as part of a bedroom in another scene.
And if a set is simple enough and there's no immediate plans for it, that budget guy might decide it would be cheaper to not store the set. He'll consider the cost of warehousing it, the value of its components if it's recycled, the cost of refurbishing it if it's stored and then brought out of storage to be used, the availability of storage space and other factors. He might decide it would be cost-effective to let it be stripped down for its parts and then if it is needed again, rebuilt. The plans are always saved but not always the actual walls, especially if they're not built to last.
One of the responsibilities of a show runner on a series is to repeatedly answer questions like, "Do you think we'll ever have a scene again in Harry's garage?" And when a show is nearing its completion, someone has to decide when and if to preserve its key sets, just in case. I believe there's a story about Fawlty Towers where they'd done the first series and it didn't seem likely there'd be a second. Someone decided to throw away or recycle parts of the sets…and right after half of them were burned and the rest recycled into sets for other shows, contracts were signed to do Season #2.
The sets for The Dean Martin Show are long gone unless someone, as with some of Johnny Carson's sets, put them in a museum for historical purposes. If there was a stuffed llama on a Smothers Brothers show, it was probably rented from a prop house and it went back there after it was no longer needed. If John Oliver's show needs a stuffed llama, they'll go searching prop houses and other facilities for one. It's highly unlikely the same stuffed llama would be rented since the Smothers Brothers did all their shows in Los Angeles and John Oliver shoots in New York. (Well, actually, he shoots in a blank void these days but I know what you mean.)
Back when we did The Bay City Rollers Show, the Kroffts had a building out in the valley that made sets and costumes for all their shows and also for non-Krofft shows. Sets were stored there until (a) they were needed again or (b) someone was reasonably certain they wouldn't be. On some shows I wrote for Sid & Marty, the backs of the sets showed the names of earlier shows I'd written. Set designers are real clever about turning the inside of the mad scientist's lab into a wedding chapel…or whatever.
A whole bunch of Broadway performers — including Lena Hall, Patina Miller, Javier Muñoz, Alex Newell, Jarrod Spector, Erich Bergen and Aaron Tveit — salute New York City…