Search Results for: Garfield

Versatility is a great thing. I always like (and, truth be known, envy) people who can do at least a little of a lot of different things. I guess I first knew Frank Buxton as a TV host. He presided over a game show for ABC called Get The Message and, even better, hosted an afternoon kids' show called Discovery, which managed to be both educational and entertaining at the same time…no easy feat. He was a frequent guest on a number of New York-based talk and game shows and even did cartoon voices now and then. He was, for example, the voice of Batfink, star of a wonderfully silly animated show of the same name. That's a picture of Batfink above at right, posing in all his heroic glory.

And Frank Buxton was even one of the writer-performers who worked with Woody Allen to redub the legendary What's Up, Tiger Lily? with highly amusing new dialogue. So all that made for a pretty impressive list of achievements right there. All of these things were done out of New York.

Later on, I became aware of another guy named Frank Buxton. This one was based in Los Angeles and he was a writer, producer and director of TV shows, including many done for Paramount. He worked on Love, American Style and The Odd Couple, to name two. Later on, he directed Mork and Mindy during the years that Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams were co-starring and, according to the rumor mill, occasionally actually doing lines from the script.

I kept seeing the name "Frank Buxton" turning up on TV shows that I liked. One was a Saturday morning show called Hot Dog which ran on NBC from 1970 to 1971. It was the most entertaining "educational" show I'd seen since…well, since Discovery. The premise was that they'd ask a question about how something was made or manufactured — like, "How is spaghetti made?" or "How is money printed?" and then three "experts" would each give their theories. The experts were Jo Anne Worley, Jonathan Winters and — incredibly — Woody Allen. That's right: Woody Allen was a regular on a Saturday morning kids' show. He, Jo Anne and Jonathan would give their funny answers and then the show would present the right answer, with film shot in a spaghetti company or at the Mint or wherever.

I was a little puzzled as to whether the Frank Buxton who did this show was the West Coast producer-writer who also did The Odd Couple or the East Coast performer who'd hosted Discovery and played Batfink. It could have been the former, since I knew he was a producer, or the latter since he had the connection to Woody Allen. And to really make it baffling, there was also a wonderful, almost definitive book on old-time radio called The Big Broadcast (published in '73 and still in-print) co-authored by one of those Frank Buxtons…or maybe it was a third guy. I wasn't sure.

As I eventually learned, these were all the same Frank Buxton: Author, actor, producer, writer, director, historian, voiceover specialist, etc. I just had lunch with him today at my favorite Chinese restaurant and I was half-expecting him to go in the back, cook our meals, then go out to the parking lot and replace the spark plugs in my car. Talk about your multi-talented individuals. We met briefly when he did a voice on the Garfield and Friends cartoon show, but I didn't get to tell him how much I admired Discovery and Hot Dog, among his other achievements. And we didn't get to swap anecdotes and discover the rather stunning list of mutual acquaintances we share. A lot of you who read this website got mentioned this afternoon over the Cashew Chicken.

What's he working on these days? Well, he just finished a run playing Sheridan Whiteside in a production I wish I'd seen of The Man Who Came to Dinner. And among other activities, he's working to get the old episodes of Hot Dog released on DVD, which I think would do very well. I'd sure like to see that happen and if you remember the show, so do you. I'll report here on any progress he makes but I wanted to mention what a great time I had lunching with all those Frank Buxtons today. Even though he didn't tune-up my engine.

Jesse White was a very funny man and a great stage performer (I saw him playing Oscar in The Odd Couple and Mushnick in Little Shop of Horrors, and he was great in both.) As with many character actors, he did his best work in parts that paid little and went largely unnoticed, then made his fame and fortune in an odd, non-challenging role. He was the Maytag Repairman for 21 years in what was apparently a very successful advertising campaign…so much so that it was an actual news story when he "retired" in 1988. I put "retired" in quotes because Jesse told everyone he met that it was not a voluntary retirement; that those [expletive deleted] ad agency guys had decided he was too old. He was only 69 which doesn't seem that old when you consider that his replacement, Gordon Jump, was 56 when he assumed the role. As good an actor as Jesse was, I think Gordon was even better. He just seemed somehow…lonelier.

The Maytag folks obviously worried about Gordon getting too old for the job so over the years, they tried to establish another actor in the spots as the Repairman's son or nephew. That would put a younger spin on the commercials and when Jump died or retired, the younger man could take over. I guess it never worked out. Last June, they announced that Jump was "retiring" and that an actor named Hardy Rawls would soon assume the role, but I don't think Mr. Rawls was introduced the way they once wanted to phase in the new guy.

In early 1989, I booked Jesse White to do a voice on the Garfield cartoon show. I had an idea to have a recurring Bilko-like con-man and I thought Jesse would be good in the role…and he would have been, had we done the show ten years earlier. But Jesse was having health problems. His performance was not up to this old standard, and I could understand why he was no longer doing the Maytag spots.

He apparently could not. The Gordon Jump commercials had just started appearing and someone asked Jesse an insensitive question about his absence. Jesse exploded in anger, railing against know-nothing advertising people who are prejudiced against older people. He was absolutely right that there is rampant ageism in the business, though perhaps that was not the problem in his case. I later worked with Jesse on what I believe was his last job — a small part on the comedy album/CD, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume 2. Jesse had been the co-star of the first album, which was recorded in 1961. When Stan did the sequel in '96, he wanted to include everyone who'd been on the first one and was still around…but Jesse was only up to a small, non-singing part and even that took a great many takes. He died before the album was even released.

The day we had him on Garfield was a very gloomy day because this had once been one of the sharpest, funniest actors around and we were all a little depressed by the struggle he had to give even a passable performance. After Jesse left, I found Lorenzo Music, who did the voice of Garfield, sitting out in the lounge area, wiping his eyes. I sat down next to him and said, "I know…it's sad to see someone in that condition."

Lorenzo looked up at me and said, "Yes, but that's not why I'm crying. Jesse told me how much he got for doing those Maytag commercials."

I gasped. "You mean…?"

"Yeah," Lorenzo moaned. "They only hired Gordon Jump because I turned it down."

I get about three e-mails a week asking me where one can see Garfield and Friends, a TV series I wrote for much of a decade. Some folks also want to know if and when the last 48 episodes, which have never been in syndication, will be in syndication. I don't know about that last part but the first 73 continue to be syndicated to some cities and not others, and they'll be running on Toon Disney starting some time next month. Last I heard, they had us scheduled for 3:00 in the morning which means our main competition is Jeffersons reruns, the commercial for the Scooter Shop, and an informercial for blemish creme. I think we can take them.

The other day, I recommended that if you wanted to squander at least a half-hour of your life, you could go over to the Garfield website and play a walkaround adventure game. It's called Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt and it's very clever but not so involved that you'll spend the rest of your life glued to the keyboard trying to solve it. (Anyone here remember a computer game called Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time? Several comic books I wrote would have had a few more issues had it not been for that game.)

Anyway, the Garfield game is winnable and it isn't a bad way to introduce kids to the concept of computer gaming. But I'm also aware that sometimes even the most brilliant of us can get trapped in these things, unable to figure out how to win but also unable to stop thinking about it until we do. So I've written out the solution — a "walkthrough" that will tell you what you have to do to win so you can get on with your life. If you need a copy, drop me an e-mail.

Have you got about a half-hour of your life that you want to throw away? I don't, but I got hooked on this anyway. Over on the Garfield website, you can wander around a haunted house and try to conquer Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt. But don't even click on that link unless you have the time to spare. You have been warned.

My old friend Garfield may be getting his own line of slot machines in Las Vegas. Guess I'll have to get in line behind Bill Bennett to play them.

I had great fun writing the Garfield TV cartoons for many years.  Here's your chance to write the Garfield comic strip.  Over at the cat's website, they've installed Garfield's Comic Creator, an online tool that allows you to put together your own Garfield strip.  Mix and match characters and backgrounds and props, and type in your own dialogue.  (And to answer an oft-asked question: No, I don't know when any of the Garfield cartoons will be issued on DVD in this country.  The producer seems to be in a state of perpetual negotiation for this to happen.)

I agree completely with this article by Roger Ebert on the Pledge of Allegiance.

2003 is the 25th anniversary of Jim Davis's ravenous cat, and there are some nice freebees over on the Garfield website.  There's a screen saver that shows how the feline has evolved over the years.  You can download it or just view it online at this address.  I would recommend doing at least the latter, as it's kind of jazzy and fun.  There are also Garfield answering machine messages which you can download (or just listen to, online) available over here.  Yes, that's the voice of the late, lovely Lorenzo Music and, yes, we still miss him.

About 30% of the hits this site receives each day come to us via search engines — about half from Google, another chunk from Yahoo! and the rest from the rest.  You might be interested in what folks were searching for that brought them here.  This is the top 20 for the past week…and except for that last search term, it's fairly typical…

• nude scenes
• mel blanc
• garfield and friends
• sam kinison
• rod hull
• jack kirby
• soupy sales
• how to make a comic book business
• nude movie scenes
• lorenzo music
• povonline
• mark evanier
• paul winchell
• bob kane
• nude actresses
• beatles
• free stuff in las vegas
• famous nude scenes
• warner bros
• milton berle's penis

"Nude scenes" has been at the top of the list every week since I put up the one article I have here on the subject.  This means that an awful lot of web surfers have been very disappointed to arrive here and find a lot of stuff about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and almost nothing about nude scenes.  Still, it's a good lesson on how to increase Internet traffic.  And if the ongoing restoration of Mad World ever turns up racy footage of Milton Berle and Ethel Merman, I'll be able to appease most of my visitors at the same time.

An earlier item brought a few e-mails from folks who were surprised to hear that Charles Lane is alive.  He's 97 years old but, happily, he's reportedly still with us.  If you're a fan of incredible careers, click here to jump over to the Internet Movie Database and peruse the exhaustive list of motion pictures and a partial (quite incomplete) list of TV programs this man appeared in.  It includes It's A Wonderful Life, 42nd Street, You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Music Man, films with the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, Abbott and Costello… well, as you can see, it just goes on and on.  He only had one or two lines in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but then that's more than some people.

More Shemp on the web.  Two of Shemp Howard's granddaughters have a site devoted to Grandpa over at www.shempcompany.com.  I'm grateful to Randal May for the referral because, after all, you can never get too much Shemp.

An alley in Muncie, Indiana has been named in honor of David Letterman.  But the dedication ceremony was marred by a protest by fans of Garfield the Cat.  This actually happened.  Here's a link to a press account.

Johnny Hart still claims (as debunked in this column) that he is the most widely-syndicated cartoonist in the world.  And Jim Davis's one strip is still in more newspapers than Hart's two put together.  Jim's strip — the one about the lazy and gluttonous cat — is also the subject of a fancy new hardcover book celebrating its 25th year of life.  In Dog Years I'd Be Dead will tell you loads of things about Garfield — how it's done, the impact it has had, how it's evolved, etc., all nicely illustrated with rare art and pictures.  You can order a copy of this handsome volume from Amazon by clicking here.  [Caution: Book contains photos of me.  Approach with caution.]

The photo above shows you what our old pal Garfield the Cat's been up to, lately.  He's been lounging on the beach at Cannes, tanning his stripes and waiting for lasagna to wash up on shore.  I guess when you have that kind of money, you can take it easy.  If he's waiting for Edy Williams though, he's going to have a long wait.  She doesn't turn up at Cannes any more.

Actually, this picture appeared on the front page of today's Hollywood Reporter with the following caption:

Comic strip star 'Garfield' poses for photographers for the launch of a television special Garfield 25th Anniversary, an animated series Garfield & Friends and Garfield primetime specials, during the MIPCOM 2002 (International Film and Programme market for TV, video, cable and satellite), Monday Oct. 7, 2002, in Cannes, southeastern France.

This has prompted a whole mess of e-mailed questions to me.  The answers to these questions are (a) yes, I'm involved with these new projects and (b) it's way too early to talk about when they'll appear or who else will be involved.  The minute either of these things changes, I'll post something here.

Several folks in e-mail are assuming that Jim Davis — with whom I have worked for more than ten years — had me in mind when he came up with a name in today's Garfield strip.  I'm assuming that, too.