L. Sikorski wrote to ask…

What was the first Broadway show you saw? I think you may have written about this at some point so if so, what was the second?  And what was the last thing you saw back there?

If you mean the first Broadway musical I saw not necessarily on Broadway, that would be the touring company of My Fair Lady, I saw it in 1961 at the Biltmore Theater (a lovely place which exists no longer) here in Los Angeles (an also-lovely place which may exist no longer if Trump wins).  I wrote about that experience here.

The next one I remember was, again in Los Angeles, at the outdoor Greek Theater located here in Griffith Park. A national touring company of How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying played there from June 24, 1965 until July 10.  For years after, I thought I'd seen Robert Morse and some or all of the original Broadway cast but the only performer in it who'd been in it when it debuted was Maureen Arthur, who originated the role of Hedy LaRue on Broadway.  She was playing…well, Hedy LaRue, of course.

Many, many years later at a reunion of folks who'd worked on Your Show of Shows and other shows starring Sid Caesar, my date and I were seated at a table with Ms. Arthur and her husband, Aaron Ruben.  They were there because Mr. Ruben was one of the many writers who wrote for Caesar and later went on to other things — in his case, Sgt. Bilko, The Andy Griffith Show and others, including Gomer Pyle, USMC.  I told Ms. Arthur I'd seen her as Hedy at the Greek Theater and she was delighted that I remembered here.  (How could I not?  I was 13, she was gorgeous and in one scene, she was only wearing a towel.)

Before I could say something foolish like, "And it was great seeing Robert Morse in the role," she said something about being the only member of the original cast on that tour so I didn't embarrass myself as much as I could have and usually do.  Online research has yielded the info that that tour starred Ronnie Welsh as J. Pierrepont Finch, Jeff DeBenning as J.B. Biggley and Suzanne Menke as Rosemary Pillkington.

I saw a number of other touring companies of shows in Los Angeles, many of them starring performers that you and I have heard of. In 1971 for instance, I saw Jack Weston in Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers at the old Huntington Hartford Theater in Hollywood.  He was quite wonderful.

That same year, I saw Art Carney and Barbara Barrie in the national touring company of another Simon play, Prisoner of Second Avenue down at the Ahmanson Theater.  They were even wonderful-er and I wrote about that evening here.

But the best thing I saw in '71 — maybe the best thing I've ever seen on any stage anywhere — was the pre-Broadway staging of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker, also at the Ahmanson.  I've written about it many times on this blog but this might be the longest post about it.

The first Broadway show I saw in New York was on or about February 10, 1983 and it was 42nd Street at the Majestic Theater.

The Majestic is kind of a fascinating theater. It opened in 1927 and has housed dozens of shows you've heard of including, for all or part of their original Broadway runs, The Music Man, Camelot, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Funny Girl, Fiddler on the Roof and 1776. 42nd Street opened at the Winter Garden in 1980, then moved to the Majestic in 1981. It played there until 1987 when it had to move again because a new show was coming in. The management of the place was probably sad to lose it because, you know, that new show might be a flop. But as it turned out, that new show was Phantom of the Opera and it played the Majestic from 1988 until 2023 — the longest run in Broadway history.

In 1983, I was in New York on a job. I was hired to develop and write a daytime drama (i.e., "soap opera") for NBC that was somewhat in the vein of Dark Shadows, filled with vampires and romance and things that go to bed together in the night. The project started out as a development for NBC's Saturday morning schedule — live-action, not animated — but someone there said, "This is too adult for kids" and it was reoptioned for afternoon viewing as a possible replacement for I-forget-which daytime drama NBC was then looking to replace.

Eventually, someone else at NBC said, "This is too childish for adults. It belongs on Saturday morning" and that was the end of that. But at the time, that's why I was in Manhattan and, of course, I spent time hanging around comic book company offices and seeing friends. In the unlikely event you're trying to chart my career from these blog posts, this was the visit to New York that I mentioned in this post about working on the Blackhawk comic book for DC.

On what I believe was Thursday night, 2/10/83, my pals Len Wein and Marv Wolfman — then both living in New York — and I went out to dine and see a Broadway show. We went to the TKTS discount ticket booth at 47th and Broadway, scanned the list of available shows and decided on 42nd Street at the Majestic. Tickets in hand, we then went to dinner at a Beefsteak Charlie's — a chain restaurant that was all over New York and adjoining states then and which no longer exists. Then it was off to the show.

I remember enjoying it a lot and that since the original cast had long since moved on, I didn't recognize a single performer's name in the Playbill.  And that's all I remember about it. The next night, I was supposed to fly home to Los Angeles but a snowstorm closed the airport and then it turned into a blizzard that kept all the airports closed and me in New York for two more nights.

So Friday evening, when it was still just a snowstorm, the folks I was working with on the soap opera project took me to dinner at the Russian Tea Room. We then trudged through a light snow to the 46th Street Theatre to see the musical Nine — not my choice but then I wasn't paying.

The 46th Street Theatre has since been renamed the Richard Rodgers and it's where I later saw How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (with Matthew Broderick) and Laughter on the 23rd Floor (with Nathan Lane, as recently discussed on this blog). It's currently housing some show called Hamilton which I've never heard of but it sounds like a sure-fire flop to me.

What I remember about Nine is that I didn't particularly like it and that when we exited the theater, the light snowstorm had escalated into that blizzard and we had a helluva time walking back to our hotel.  Walking was the only option because the streets were buried in snow and the subway wasn't running.  In hindsight, I had a respect for the actors for being there and giving a full-out performance that evening when they probably knew what an ordeal it would be for them to get home after the show.

I decided on that trip that I wanted to see more shows on Broadway instead of waiting to see them in L.A.  From that point on, I made it a point to pre-order theater tix for as many shows as I could see each time I went back to New York.  It was more fun to take someone so if I was traveling alone, I invited — in some cases, badgered — folks I knew in New York to accompany me.  I don't know why I didn't do that on a few previous trips to that city.

The last two trips I took there with Amber, she and I got to see The Play That Goes Wrong, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the "small, immersive" revival of Sweeney Todd, Prince of Broadway, Newsical, the revival of My Fair Lady, one of the infinite revivals of Avenue Q and the revival of Hello Dolly! with Bernadette Peters.  I didn't take her to see Hamilton there because I took her to see it in L.A.  Yes, I know it was not a flop.  That was a joke.

Here's a short clip of Jon Stewart answering the question, "What was the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?" His answer is a lesson I learned early in my days in the comic book business and I learned it from Jack Kirby. Later, when I started working in television, I learned it again from one of my agents. I have passed a version of it on to readers of this blog from time to time…

As I've suggested here, I'm skeptical of "analysis" of the current trial from folks who have never (a) set foot in that courtroom a lot and/or (b) passed the bar. So be skeptical of this post since I qualify in neither category.

So right now, we're kind of in the middle of the cross-examination of Michael Cohen and the Defense has probably convinced at least some members of the jury — or will soon convince them — that Michael Cohen is a man for whom "The Truth" is whatever statement Michael Cohen thinks will benefit Michael Cohen at the moment. Someone in that jury box might well be thinking, "Okay, that guy lied a lot and often because that was a job requirement of working for Trump, and maybe now he's learned his lesson and is coming clean." But I don't think anyone — juror or not — thinks Mr. Cohen is a pillar of honesty.

That may or may not matter. Most of what he has to say of substance has already been substantiated by others whose credibility is not so fragile. Then again, there was that jury in the first O.J. Simpson trial.

Much of what makes me think Trump will be found guilty is in the writings and interviews of George Conway, who is usually identified as a "conservative lawyer" to remind you that he is not reflexively on Trump's side and used to be a big Trump supporter married to the biggest Trump supporter. He's been putting out a newsletter that could be subtitled "Why Trump Is Heading For The Slammer" and you can read the latest installment of it here and sign up to have future ones sent to your e-mailbox.

And in the interest of hearing another view, here's a link to a column by attorney Stacy Schneider who once thought Trump would be found guilty but has now changed her mind. We link, you decide.

At the recent TCM Film Fest in Hollywood, Mel Brooks appeared to warm up an audience for a screening of Spaceballs. Before the film, he did an interview with Ben Mankiewicz and here it is…

Flipping the dial — as we used to say when TVs had dials — I caught a snippet of Rudy Giuliani complaining his First Amendment Rights are being trampled. Who did this trampling? Why, the rich ultra-right-wing guy who owns ultra-right-wing radio station WABC in New York and hired Rudy in the first place, that's who. That man canceled Rudy's radio program because, despite being ordered not to, America's ex-Mayor insisted on rehashing over and over, his insistence that the last presidential election was rigged, miscounted, hijacked, whatever.

And as you can see below, that's a clear-as-day violation of the First Amendment. That's why the Founding Fathers included that passage about every American citizen's right to have a lucrative job broadcasting on a radio station. If they'd known in 1791 about Roku, they'd probably have included something about everyone's right to their own streaming channel.

Turning off Sarcasm Mode, I continue to be mesmerized by this man's ability to make his life worse and worse through some odd mix of incompetence and misplaced defiance. Here's the latest in a long series of self-induced embarrassments…

As of Wednesday, Arizona officials were having a hard time locating Rudy Giuliani to serve him notice of his indictment for his alleged interference efforts in the 2020 election, and the cat and mouse — on Giuliani's end — seems to have been intentional.

In a since deleted post on social media, Giuliani all but said, "Catch me if you can," writing, "If Arizona authorities can't find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can't count votes." But catch him they did.

"The final defendant was served moments ago. @RudyGiuliani, nobody is above the law," AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes wrote in a post of her own on Friday, after her office tracked down the former NYC mayor as he was hosting a birthday party in Palm Beach, Florida attended by nearly 75 guests.

"The mayor was unphased by the decision to try and embarrass him during his 80th birthday party. He enjoyed an incredible evening with hundreds of people who love him — from all walks of life — and we look forward to full vindication soon," Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman said in a statement to The Hill.

Per reporting by The Independent, just prior to being served, Giuliani was filmed "belting out" Frank Sinatra's classic "New York, New York" to cheers from guests.

He should have done "My Way." It would have been so perfect if they served him as he finished singing "My Way."

Here's Mel Blanc on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for May 26, 1983.  Mel did a lot of interviews over the years in which he told not-quite-accurate stories about how the voices of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and others in that mob came to be.  They weren't exactly lies.  They were just stories that had been reconfigured to be shorter and funnier because that's what interviewers usually wanted.  And for a long time, there were no scholars of animation history to stand up and say, "No, that's not how that happened" or "No, Mel was not the first voice of Porky Pig."

But eventually, there were such scholars and Mel began to "true up" his anecdotes and what he says in this appearance is basically true…though obviously the part where Johnny asks him to do a Nazi Pig was planned and not improvised on the spot. And one of the best parts of this video is seeing Mel walk out under his own power. As you all know, he was in a near-death auto accident in 1961 — the kind where it was amazing he survived, let alone was able to walk again.

I met him on several occasions and even — and I can hardly believe this — directed him for a TV special in 1984, about thirteen months after this appearance with Johnny. He walked with a cane then at a very cautious, slow speed but he was a great enough showman to not appear on Carson's show that way. Johnny, of course, had zillions of people in his guest chair over the years. I suspect there will come a day on this planet where the only one of them whose work will still be enjoyed by whatever life form inhabits Earth will be Mel Blanc…

Gee, I get more done in a day when the trial of Donald J. Trump does not convene.

Anthony Escartin sent me the following about a cartoon series called The Wuzzles which was part of the CBS Saturday morning schedule for one year commencing in September of 1985. We'll do this in two parts…

While you've been sharing a lot of your thoughts on the creation process and creator credits on the blog lately, may I please pick your brain on The Wuzzles, the cartoon you worked on in the 80's for Disney? Among the few articles on the blog that you've written about the show, you write that you "developed" it. I'd love to hear more details about that process. Was it a daily writer's room thing? How was the rest of the crew who developed it?

I don't know who worked on it before I was called in but I wrote the bible and the pilot by myself. CBS was not happy with whatever had been done up to that point and "suggested" they hire me. I put that word in quotes because while I don't know precisely what they told the folks at Disney, it was obvious that the subtext of what they said was "…or we won't buy the show."

I was handed a bunch of character sketches and a few notes but no actual storylines as I recall. Some of the drawings were done by Disney artists and some by folks at Hasbro Toys. I did a lot of simplifying and rearranging and inventing personalities for characters who up to that point just existed as drawings and prototypes of plush toys.  I was also loaned "for inspiration" — under penalty of death if I did not return them, which I of course did — a few of those prototype toys.

The premise of the show was said to have begun with an idea from Disney Head Honcho Michael Eisner.  It was about an island someplace where every creature was an amalgam of two different animals familiar to us. Bumblelion, for instance, was half-lion, half-bumblebee. Butterbear was half-butterfly, half-bear.

They also had in the regular cast, Eleroo (elephant/kangaroo), Moosel (moose/seal), Rhinokey (rhinoceros/monkey), Hoppopotamus (hippo/rabbit) and some villainous Wuzzles. Every episode would have some other mash-ups. In the pilot script, I had a Brahman Bullfinch — half-bull, half-finch.

It was one of the more challenging "developments" I did, in part because of what seemed to be an unofficial rule at Disney at the time. Or least it felt that way on several projects I wrote for various TV divisions there in the eighties. I am told it's no longer like this but here's how it went, at least with me…

A lot of different people at Disney would read what you handed in and critique it. There seemed to be an infinite supply of them and each time I took a meeting there, there would be some of the same folks but also some new people I'd never seen before and would never see again, all acting like I was reporting to them. Over at CBS, there were only two executives I had to please to get the network to buy the show. They liked what I wrote and bought the series.

But on the Disney lot, I had to please about two dozen transient bosses, some even after CBS had given The Wuzzles the green light. As was occasionally the case over at Hanna-Barbera, I felt that what I should do was to agree to write the script for nothing but to charge them for each person who gave me notes on it and insisted I change things their way. And I should charge double when, as was often the case, the notes one person gave me were the exact opposite of the notes someone else there had given me the day before. Here were just two of the many battles we had about the show — one that I lost and one that I won…

AN EXAMPLE OF ONE I LOST: All of the main Wuzzles had wings. I said, "Okay, I understand that a character who is half-bee or half-butterfly might have wings. But Eleroo is half-elephant, half-kangaroo. Did he get his wings from his elephant side or his kangaroo side?" Same with Hoppopotamus, Moosel and Rhinokey. That kind of goes against the premise here. And also, you want these characters to get in danger in every episode. If they have wings, the viewers are going to presume they can all fly and it's real hard to put a character in danger if they can just fly away."

HOW I LOST THAT ONE: I was told, "Hasbro did test-marketing and decided the toys would sell better if the characters had wings. End of discussion."  And that, by God, was that.

AN EXAMPLE OF ONE I WON: I wanted to insert a narrator into the show. The guy in charge at that moment then said with a kind of "I have the final say" swagger, "Narrators are old-fashioned. They slow down the action. Kids hate narrators. The narrator is out."

HOW I WON THAT ONE: I said, "Okay…these adventures take place on an island where every single creature is half one-thing and half-another. Let's say in one episode, we want to have a Mockingbirddog. Who's going to explain to the viewers that a Mockingbirddog is half-mockingbird, half-dog? Or that a Brahman Bullfinch is half-bull, half-finch? The characters in this world can't say that. They live in a world with no mockingbirds, dogs, bulls or finches."  He didn't have an answer for that so my narrator stayed in.

Here's the rest of Anthony's e-mail…

I like that the voice cast of the show reads like a list of all the performers you admired as a young person. I'm pretty sure you had a big hand in casting them. Was finding the voice talent part of the job description? Did you attend the recording sessions? A cursory glance on the internet says the show was created by Fred Wolf, and you wrote three episodes. I was wondering, should you have had a "developed by" credit to your name? Or are you happy with the way things are?

I did not attend recording sessions. I did make suggestions for voices, some of which were followed — Stan Freberg as The Narrator, Henry Gibson as Eleroo, Joanne Worley as Hoppopotamus. I suggested a certain voice of Bill Scott's for Rhinokey but while he was in auditioning for that role, they also had him read for Moosel and he got that part instead. Alan Oppenheimer became Rhinokey, Brian Cummings played Bumblelion and Kathleen Helppie-Shipley was Butterbear.  (Freberg, by the way, was very happy with his job as The Narrator but pissed that Hasbro never put out a Narrator doll.)

Actually, I left the show after the pilot. CBS wanted me to story-edit the series and write episodes but my agent quoted Disney my established price for those duties and they offered a lot less on a "take it or leave it" basis.  We left it so I went and did other things and they went through a couple of different story editors and tossed out a couple of scripts they paid for and production hit a major logjam. Finally though, they hired two very bright gents named Ken Koonce and David Weimers to story-edit.

Ken and David made the show work quite well, I thought, but everything was dangerously behind schedule before they signed on. To get on schedule, a Disney exec called me one Monday and said they'd pay my price for two scripts if I could write one of them by Wednesday and the other by the following Monday. I did and that's how I wrote two more of the thirteen episodes that CBS ordered.

Later, when there was talk of picking up the show for a second season, I was called into a meeting at CBS about revamping the series a bit and maybe being the showrunner. I heard a couple of different reasons why there ultimately wasn't a Year Two but apparently it was a joint decision by CBS and Disney and maybe Hasbro.

Disney refused to give me a "Developed for television by…" credit for that first season claiming it was against some company policy. I was not happy about that but sometimes in life you take a deal you aren't completely happy with.

I never heard of Fred Wolf being considered the creator of the series but I'm not saying he might not deserve that. Fred produced and often directed the show but we had little contact and like I said, I have no idea who did what before I was hired and very little sense of who did what after I declined the staff position. I dealt mainly with two wise men, Gary Krisel and Michael Webster, who seemed to be very much in charge but whose names appeared nowhere in the show's credits.

And that's all I remember and way more than you wanted to know. It didn't come out quite the way I wanted but I thought it was still a fun show and it was a tremendous hit in many countries. Alas, it was not in this one but I think it could have been if Disney had assigned about nineteen fewer people to think they were in charge of it. I later took my name off another Disney show I worked on that suffered from overexecutiving and I'm happy (and envious) when I hear that it ain't like that there these days.

I've recently been watching a lot of episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on a 24/7 Dick Van Dyke Show channel on Roku. In the next few days, I'll be writing something here — I'm not sure what or when — with some new thoughts about my favorite TV series. In the meantime, here's a blooper reel from the show. I think these are all from first season episodes and a few seconds from an I'm Dickens, He's Fenster seems to have snuck in as did a photo of a naked woman…

From Bruce Bennett…

I like to watch old sitcoms, especially the well-written ones, and after seeing a particularly good episode of The Bob Newhart Show, I noticed Lorenzo Music happened to write it. I also remember that Steve Martin mentioned him in an interview about the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he wrote a lot for Pat Paulsen, which was some of my favorite stuff from that wonderful series.

So my question is, did Lorenzo Music stop writing comedy after becoming such a successful voice actor playing "Carlton, Your Doorman" on Rhoda, and then Garfield the Cat? You wrote Garfield. Did he ever make suggestions for storylines or dialogue with you? Or was he satisfied to be just a voice artist?

Lorenzo was a much-praised, very successful writer-producer before transitioning into (mostly) a much-praised, very successful voice actor. He didn't stop writing completely but a lot of his later writing was the kind he described as "for myself." He was a co-writer on one of the prime-time Garfield specials before I got involved with The Cat but he never suggested any storylines to me.

As for dialogue, yes. He didn't do it often but sometimes, he would ask me if he could rephrase a line to make it funnier and I probably said yes every time. Most good voice actors do at least a little of that. Lorenzo was very sharp and he'd had years of fine-tuning dialogue for comedy shows so as to wring all possible mirth out of a speech.

I should explain that on many cartoon shows — including all the ones I've voice-directed — the actors do not get the scripts in advance. On Garfield and Friends, I spent every possible moment writing and rewriting. I even sometimes rewrote during a session after I'd heard the lines read.

There are other ways to do it but the way we found worked best would be that we'd hand the actors a script for a cartoon and I'd assign the roles of non-recurring characters. In addition to playing Odie, Gregg Berger might also do the voice of a policeman or an alley cat. The scripts merely had the dialogue — no description of what the characters were doing in each scene — so I'd walk the actors through the script: "On line 22, you're falling down a flight of stairs…on line 23, you crash into a live goat…"

Then we would start recording. There was no point in rehearsing since we'd just do it over and over until we all thought it was as good as it was ever going to get. If a script was ten pages, we might do the first three until we were happy and then do the next three and so on. Our cast was amazing and a lot of what made it onto the air was the first time we did it. Some of the seven-minute cartoons were recorded in under fifteen minutes. As I explained back in this post, a guest star might occasionally be stunned by how short a time they were there.

So Lorenzo didn't have a lot of time to study the script and think of ways to improve it. From the moment my assistant handed him a script to the moment the engineer said "This is Take One" was about five minutes. But he was very fast and very funny and that was more than enough. And since I'm talking about Lorenzo — and because I miss the guy — here's a photo I've run here before of the two of having lunch at one of his favorite (but now defunct) restaurants…

Lorenzo is on the left, of course. And the reason I have that odd look on my face is because, I suspect, I just realized that the restaurant served nothing but cole slaw. No wonder it went out of business.

The latest from Randy Rainbow…

Not long ago, the legendary "CBS Television City in Hollywood," which was not really in Hollywood, was sold and largely shut down. I hear there are still some tapings (which are not really on tape) there but most or all of the offices have been vacated, most of the studios are like ghost towns, The Price is Right is being done at an old warehouse out in Glendale, etc. It's just a matter of time before the entirety of what was CBS Television City is displaced by a new, gigantic complex that will combine offices, television studios and retail outlets.

Folks who live nearby (Full Disclosure: I am one) are concerned that what's planned is waaaay too big for that piece of real estate, especially given that traffic is already bad with what's there now. The plans of the developer, Hackman Capital Partners, have been scaled down a bit due to the objections of locals but there is currently a crusade to get them to scale back more…a lot more.

No one, as far as I can see, is objecting to them redeveloping and expanding the facility. I'm not sure in this town, anyone could. There seems to be an understanding that the needs of everyday citizens must never get in the way of someone making a movie or a TV show. If someone wants to shoot a film on your street, there will be only minor controls placed on how many roads they can close, how much noise they can make, how much they can complicate your access to your property. A year or two ago, just a few blocks from me, some movie was setting off explosives in the street.

The film/TV production company will always get most of what it wants because, you know, they're good for the economy. Never mind that you can't get to work.

I have no doubt Hackman Capital Partners will get all or most of what they want and I strongly suspect the original proposals for all developments of large scope are drawn up to include sacrifices. They want what they're building to be the size of Mars so they announce it'll be the size of Venus. Locals will protest, the company will agree to cut their plans down to the size of Mars and the protesters can be satisfied with that seeming "win." You know how that works.

According to the protesting group in this matter — The Neighbors for Responsible TVC Development — the plans for the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard where TV City is/was currently call for a facility of 1,724 million square feet. The protesters are calling for Hackman to eliminate — this is how the group describes it — "a whopping 550,000 square feet of office space unrelated to studio operations." There will be a public hearing tomorrow about this.

I'd go and try to say something if I could but as you know, I'm kinda confined to my home at the moment. I'm going to "attend" instead via Zoom and if you want to learn more about all this, this is the website of the group.

They believe as I do that the current plans are just too friggin' big for an area where traffic ground to a standstill just with James Corden and some actors running out into the intersections to do snippets of his Crosswalk Musicals. I hate to think what adding thousands of drivers trying to get to work there every day will do. If it was all built now, I might not be the only person in the area physically unable to leave his home.

Hey, here's a clip from the last season of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In when our friend Frank Welker was briefly a cast member. Frank was then still an on-camera comedian who was occasionally doing voices for cartoons. He would soon go almost-full-time into the voice world and become the most-hired-and-heard guy ever in that profession…

Jim Held wrote…

Fun to see you posting some of the early Bob Hope stuff. Too many people only know him from the wax dummy that was trundled out to reel off unfunny one liners in front of his TV specials.

Seeing him dancing with Cagney and doing comedy from that period and earlier reminds me of the strong virile and funny Bob Hope of the fifties and sixties and of the classic comedy movies. Great physical comedy and good comedy writing. Dick Cavett and others were always in awe of his comic timing. He seems to have survived later reports of his horn-doggery around women and his well-hidden dislike of Bing Crosby.

Carson reportedly said of the older Bob Hope: "If I ever get that old, shoot me." But Hope is his prime was pretty amazing — a Star. I for one am grateful. Thanks for the (Good) memories.

Hope would never have attained his stature and longevity without delivering the goods earlier in his career. I really am kind of baffled as to how much he should be respected because for the last few decades, he was kind of regarded as a major star in spite of his performances. He was hardly the only comedian of his generation whose later years somewhat canceled out his earlier years.

There are a lot of online articles that say Johnny hated Bob Hope. I don't think it was hate so much as a discomfort that he kept having to have him on to promote those specials…and to use Johnny's studio audience. Bob would "borrow" Johnny's studio audience to record his monologue and closing a day or so before the air date of a special, the rest of which had been recorded a week or three earlier, sans live audience.

I perhaps should not write this but I suspect that if Hope had been born a decade or so later and behaved as he did, he'd have been indicted by the "Me Too" movement and his career would have had a somewhat disgraceful ending. As it was, he sure left a lingering bad impression with some just for what he did in public.

I've recently had conversations with a couple of different friends about performers who keep performing well past their prime. On the one hand, it's sad that they leave such bad impressions behind. On the other, some of them really seem to need that reason to get up in the morning and to try to stay healthy and to get some love from audiences and/or still being famous. I have seen older comedians get way older because no one seemed to want them, no one seemed to remember them.

Mr. Carson, having witnessed the senior years of Hope, Berle, Groucho, Benny and others seems to have valued leaving his legacy relatively intact over hearing applause to his dying day. Carson's longtime producer Fred DeCordova told me that Johnny was very conflicted when a Berle or Benny (especially Benny) would call him personally and say "Hey, you haven't had me on your show for a while. How about next Tuesday?" He felt he wasn't doing them any favors by having them on as a favor. In a few cases, he had them on and regretted it.

I asked DeCordova, "Did he ever turn one of them down and regret it?" Fred said, "Yes, it was kind of a no-win situation." He declined to elaborate.