This is short but oh so sweet. It's William Daniels and most (probably) of the original Broadway cast of 1776 performing on The Ed Sullivan Show for October 4, 1970. 1776 opened at the 46th Street Theater (which is now the Richard Rodgers, which is where Hamilton is playing) on March 16, 1969. So it had been running a year and a half before its producers decided to let it be seen on TV. Back then, that probably meant the box office needed a boost.

But it seems to have worked. Soon after this performance, the show moved to the St. James Theater to make room for No, No, Nanette and later, it moved to the Majestic. It played there until it closed on February 13, 1972 after 1,217 performances…which was and still is a pretty good run.

It was playing there when I went to New York in 1970 and I still don't know why the hell I didn't go see it. I did a lot of stupid things when I was young — not to be confused with all the stupid things I've done since I became not young…

Today's Trump Trial Takeaway is by Steve Benen, who says "Donald Trump's criminal conviction is historic, but it's not a crisis — unless Republicans decide to turn it into one."

And we have a bonus link, not about the trial: Bill Pruitt worked on The Apprentice, the show that convinced much of America that Donald Trump was a great businessman and manager.  His non-disclosure agreement has expired so Mr. Pruitt is free to tell what a sham that all was.  But you were probably wise enough to know that at the time, right?

My Roku TV gets a seemingly-infinite number of channels, an annoying percentage of which are running the same shows. There's one I like where, on-demand 24 hours a day, I can select any episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show to watch. This is in addition to the five or six other channels which will show me episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, though on those channels, I can't pick and choose which ones I want to watch and when. For some reason, no matter when I turn to one of them, they're usually airing "Who and Where Was Antonio Stradivarius?" — not one of my favorite episodes.

And it's also in addition to the several different complete sets of The Dick Van Dyke Show that I own on DVD. I am more likely to run out of food, water and/or oxygen than I am to not be able to watch reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Which is not a bad thing because that's almost a necessity in my life.

A lot of TV shows I watched way-back-when hold little interest for me today and some I look at and wonder, "Why in the name of Bob Denver did I ever like this?" But some hold up, the list including Sgt. Bilko, Car 54, The Bob Newhart Show and a few others. I tried watching a My Favorite Martian recently and it was exactly as I remembered except for the part where I enjoyed it. The Van Dyke shows, if anything, get better.

Lately, I've even been watching some of the ones I didn't care for and I find moments in them that are wonderful. (The ones I don't like mostly have to do with jealousy. A chorus girl kisses Rob causing Laura to fear the marriage is over…or an old boy friend of Laura's pops up and Rob thinks the marriage is over. That marriage seemed way too stable for it to get shaky over a problem so small that it could be introduced, played out and solved within 24 minutes.)

I especially like watching Dick Van Dyke doing…well, just about anything that involved him moving around. Lots of people on TV could be funny using their faces and/or mouths. Dick was also funny using the rest of himself.

Watching these shows today is a little different for me since I met Rose Marie in the later years of her life. I spent a good amount of time with that lady and even gave her a meaty voice role — and directed her! — on an episode of The Garfield Show. It turned out to be her last performance.

Rose was a fascinating and wonderful lady but decades after she'd done The Dick Van Dyke Show, she was still always complaining about how many episodes she wasn't on at all (more than I thought) and how little she had to do in some episodes she was on. The show had so many talented, funny people on it that it couldn't service them all each week. There are shows she's barely in and as I watch them now, I can't help but think, "Boy, she must have been really pissed the week they filmed this."

This is something I witnessed/learned being around older performers of that generation. Most of them wanted to work until their dying day and had trouble coping with the periods when there was no demand for their services.  Once, I was dining at an outdoor restaurant with an older comedian who was still working but not nearly often enough to satisfy him.  A young kid with a handheld camcorder came up and asked him to say a few words for the camera.  I'm not sure the lad had recognized my dining companion.  I think his parents standing nearby had done the recognizing and had sent the boy to get the equivalent of a video autograph.

My companion was not only delighted to comply, he let his lunch get cold while he delivered a ten-minute monologue and then asked the kid to interview him.  I wound up jumping in with a few questions because the boy couldn't come up with any…which is what made me think he had no idea who the man he was videoing was.  He finally staggered back to his folks with a 15-20 minute tour de force.

This yearning to perform was not generally because of a yearning or even a need to make money and it often wasn't just a matter of ego. It was usually a matter of wanting to be wanted; of not being allowed to do what you'd done all your life. Some performers settle comfortably into retirement or semi-retirement. Others yell at the TV and ask God and their agents, "How come they didn't have me in for that?"

One older actor I knew got angry at me every time he heard that I was directing a cartoon show and didn't hire him. It was as if a friend of his was throwing a party and deliberately hadn't invited him. Rose was even a bit annoyed with me that after that one episode of The Garfield Show she did, I never had another part I could have given her.

If you ever catch the end credits of one of those Garfield Show episodes, you'll notice that the names of the voice actors are impossible to read. They're on for way too long in way too small a font. I was powerless to stop this…as I explained to Rose when she phoned to complain to me that she couldn't see her name. I remember saying to her, "Hey, my name's on the same card as Voice Director and I can't read mine, either."

If she had seen her name, she would have seen it said "Rose Marie Guy" and would probably have been annoyed that it didn't properly identify her as the performer who was billed simply as "Rose Marie." But that was her legal name — the one the producers made the check out to — and they didn't see a memo I sent telling them the proper way to bill her.

She became Rose Marie Guy when he married a musician named Bobby Guy in 1946. He died in 1964 while she was working on The Dick Van Dyke Show and she was understandably devastated by the loss. In fact, she didn't feel she could go on working and she announced she was quitting. Others involved with the program — mostly director John Rich — convinced her that it would not only be bad for the show if she left but also bad for her. She stayed and was glad she did.

She worked almost her entire time on this planet — from when she was three and billed as "Baby Rose Marie" until the last decade or so of a life that lasted to age 94. Performing was as much a part of her existence as breathing and she didn't cope well with the periods between jobs. When I watch those shows now, I am amazed how good she was and how she scored with every single line they gave her. And I can kinda hear her bitching to Carl Reiner and Sheldon Leonard that they didn't give her more of them.

Since I have nothing to say about the Trump matter that others aren't saying — and saying better — I think I'll just link you to what others are saying. We'll call this feature "T.T.T.T." and it stands for "Today's Trump Trial Takeaway."

Here's today's: Heather Digby Parton has written a piece about Trump's management style and how it's been dooming him in all his recent legal entanglements. It sounds quite on-point to me.

I somehow seem to have written this blog for 23 years, 5 months and 14 days without mentioning the humorist-cartoonist James Thurber very much. I discovered his work when I was about twelve, which was three years after he died and by the time I was sixteen, I think I'd read everything that was then available — which was most of it. It had a significant impact on me, though so many things back then did that I didn't realize it at the time. Years later, when I would occasionally revisit some collection of his work, I'd realize that impact.

Starting as early as the 1942 Henry Fonda film The Male Animal, based on a Broadway play by Thurber and Elliott Nugent, Thurber was on the screen. I suppose the most successful screen adaptation of one of his stories was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) starring Danny Kaye. People loved that movie although Mr. Thurber reportedly did not.

The short story was adapted into radio plays, various stage productions and a 2013 movie starring Ben Stiller. There have been several stage plays and one other movie — the 1972 The War Between Men and Women starring Jack Lemmon and Jason Robards.

And then you have television. In 1960, Orson Bean — who starred in an awful lot of unsold pilots — starred in one called The Secret Life of James Thurber…

It went nowhere but then in 1969, a new version of the project became a weekly series on NBC for one year — My World and Welcome To It starring William Windom and written mainly by Mel Shavelson and Danny Arnold. I thought it was a terrific show and so did the critics and it also won Emmy Awards for Best Comedy Series and Best Actor. Here's one entire episode…

…but alas, the public didn't love it in sufficient numbers and it had just the one season. It did lead to that film with Jack Lemmon (written by Shavelson and Arnold, directed by Shavelson) and also to a play in which Mr. Windom toured for years. When he died, I wrote the following here about it…

Around 1974, I was taking some courses at Santa Monica College and it was announced that late one weekday afternoon, he would be doing one performance of a new one-man show he was developing called Thurber. It had an interesting price of admission: You had to promise to stay around after and give him a "brutal critique."

I went. He came out at the beginning and told everyone he wasn't kidding about the "brutal" part. He said, approximately, "This is a show I intend to tour with and to try and take to Broadway. The critics will not be pushovers and the bookers will be even worse. I'd rather hear what's wrong with it from young, smart people like you now than from them then. Just be honest with me. I've been an actor for years. I can take it."

He then did the show, partly from book and partly from memory. It was assembled from the writings of you-know-who and he spoke as the man. For what little my opinion is ever worth, it seemed to me it could be a great show but that he was about 60% of the way there with it. The beginning was a lot funnier than the end and the biography stuff — Thurber talking about his life — kept getting lost in the readings of his stories, some of which were suggested as more autobiographical than they probably were intended by their maker. But Mr. Windom was an absolute pro.

When it came time for Brutal Critiques, they weren't all that brutal. Mine started silly. I got up and said, "I don't like your pants and I think you need to lose ten pounds and grow a mustache." Then I gave my serious view…and this was back when I was writing Road Runner comic books, rather than material for actors to perform. I remember discussing my comments with him and wondering: If and when I did start to write for people instead of comic book characters, would every actor be as rational and mature as William Windom? He was smart, he was introspective and he really, really cared about input. In the TV shows I later worked on, I rarely encountered that kind of give-and-take and candid, constructive suggestion. But then I never got to work with William Windom.

I wish I had and I also wish I'd seen the finished play instead of just a work-in-progress. Because if I haven't made it clear here, I really, really liked James Thurber. Here's a snippet of Windom as the great writer…

The reason I haven't written anything for this page today is that every time I try to, my fingers want to type about Trump's conviction and my brain tells me, "You have nothing to say that a skillion other people aren't saying." And for once, my brain is right. So if you want to read about the topic, go read what the skillion other people are saying.

I am prepping panels this week for Comic-Con International which, as I post this, is 54 days away. I'll be hosting most of my usual panels including Quick Draw!, which for the third year in a row will be without the mighty pen of Sergio Aragonés. And I have some really amazing folks lined-up for the Cartoon Voices panels and some never-before-done panels you'll enjoy. That's about all I can say right now and I think it's astounding that I could even say that much without mentioning you-know-who.

I'll be back here when I think of something to write about that isn't about…you know.

The show may be great but I'm already bothered by the hype…

I feel like I should write something here about today's verdict but I'm having a hard time figuring out what. You already know how you feel about it and if you follow this blog, you probably have a pretty good idea how I feel about it. And since every last person with a soapbox on the Internet is writing about it, you have plenty of opinions and conjectures to read. So I think I'll just predict that we will soon look back on this as a very good day for our country.

Nothing will ever convince the kind of Trump Supporter that Jordan Klepper is good at finding at rallies but the doubts have to be building in the minds of a lot of folks who might have voted for Donald in November. They may be doubts about the man's sanity or his honesty or even his competence to win. The thing the Trump supporters I know liked the most about him was his ability to win. And now he's been losing a lot lately and the losses are just getting bigger and bigger.

George Conway, who has become one of my favorite pundits on the subject of Trump — and whose every prediction so far has been proven out — thinks Donald Trump will die in prison. Kevin Drum, who's long been one of my favorite pundits on a wide range of subjects, thinks there's no way Donald winds up behind bars. I have no idea where I think Trump will go except that it will fall under the general heading of "Down."

Well, there you are.

I just heard a talking head on TV theorizing how the jury is leaning based on what they're having for lunch.

No, I take that back: He was theorizing based on rumors of what they're having for lunch. In case it tells you anything about how I'm leaning, I'm going to be having a beef dip sandwich on an onion roll and some potato salad.

I'm also going to turn off the TV. I may have to sequester myself until the real jury returns a real verdict. If they order in KFC, that probably means Trump is going to skate.

I have now been deliberating the Trump Hush Money Case for eight hours and sixteen minutes. In solidarity with the New York jury that is now eating lunch, I'm going to eat lunch.

So far, I have only come to the firm decision that the folks on TV and the web who are speculating on what the members of the jury are thinking have absolutely no idea what the jury is thinking.

Martin Scorsese is assembling a documentary on the old SCTV TV show…and hey, when I think of comedy, the first name that comes to mind is Martin Scorsese. But this article is right: That was a great show and the clips of it hold up as so many do not. Looking forward to it.

But I am taking time off from deliberating to post the latest Randy Rainbow video…

I don't mean the jury. I'm still deliberating if I think Donald Trump is guilty. It's a tough call because according to him, every single legal scholar in the world says the case is stupid and wrong and should never have been brought in the first place. Hmmm…

Audra McDonald is going to star in a new production of Gypsy opening just before Christmas this year. That oughta fill the Majestic Theater every night…but then again, if they just had her singing songs on that stage every night, there wouldn't be any empty seats either. I hope some of you watched the Audra concert I linked to yesterday here. She's really an extraordinary performer.

Not that it matters one bit but I dunno how I feel about another revival of Gypsy. Tickets will probably cost an arm, a leg and several other body parts. I get the feeling Broadway has adopted the new basic marketing principle of Las Vegas: "No matter how much we charge, someone will pay it!" One of these days, they'll mount a show starring Audra and Hugh Jackman and it won't matter what it is or how good it is, the ticket price will be a reverse mortgage on your home.

Gypsy is a show I admire from afar. Love the score. Love the book. Loved some off-off-off-off-Broadway productions I've seen of it. Didn't like the movie. Didn't like the one revival of it I've seen on the N.Y. stage, which was the one with Patti LuPone. The production had a cheap feel to me and though we had great seats, Carolyn kept whispering to me to ask what Ms. LuPone had just said.

The best version I've been able to see of the show was the video of the West End production starring Imelda Staunton. There was talk of her doing it in New York but that never happened. Here's a little taste of it. Imagine what Audra will do with this number…