It's been a few weeks since I took the difficult (emotionally) step of canceling Spectrum TV, retiring my beloved TiVos and switching my TV service over to streaming. I researched and experimented and got a load of help 'n' advice from friends including Marc Wielage, Rod Woodcock and Stu Shostak. I finally settled on (for now) the YouTubeTV app, which is not the same thing as the YouTube website you probably visit often.
That's my main way of viewing the stations I watch most often plus I also got a subscription to HBO Max and to Apple TV. I bought a year of Apple TV just before I heard that Jon Stewart is not doing his show for them any longer. I would not have subscribed if I'd known that.
How do I like what I have now? It's mostly a "yes" but let's take it one step at a time…
PICTURE QUALITY/DEPENDABILITY: Pretty darn good. That may have something to do with the high-speed Internet connection I have which currently gives me at least 800 Mbps downloads and often as high as 950. Even with that though, the picture occasionally freezes up for a second or two…but then that happened, albeit a bit less often, with my TiVos. And I'm not sure if it's the software or the web connection or the TCL-brand Roku TV but at least one of those doesn't like me fast-forwarding too far. If I try to leap from the beginning of a show to the end, the signal often freezes up and I have to close out the app and start over.
AVAILABLE CHANNELS: With YouTubeTV and my two add-ons, I have pretty much everything I want. If I want something that isn't on one of those three, it's a pretty simple matter to add more.
COSTS: Better than I was paying before.
OTHER ADVANTAGES: Not being on the phone either waiting forever on hold for Spectrum Technical Support, trying to explain things to Spectrum Technical Support or talking for twenty minutes to someone at Spectrum Technical Support and then having them drop the call so I have to call back, wait forever on hold for Spectrum Technical Support and when I do get someone, start all over with them.
OTHER DISADVANTAGES: My fingers grew so very accustomed to my TiVo remote control that they're having trouble learning that the buttons are in all different places on the Roku remote control.
LASTLY, A QUESTION I HAVE: I now own and watch TV on Roku TV sets in two different rooms. Each has a USB port to which one can connect a flash drive or external hard drive…and one can play or view video files and images (in some formats) on one's TV using an app called Roku Media Player. This is an enormous convenience but when I try to use Roku Media Player, I get a message that says this…
So is this telling me that if I use Roxu Media Player on my TV to, say, watch my old home movies, HBO Max gets access to films of the birthday party I had when I was six? It gives me the option to select "Allow" or "Do Not Allow" but if I Do Not Allow, it closes the media player…so I have to grant access in order to use it. I'm sure we could all mount a very good argument as to how that's Invasion of Privacy and surrender of intellectual property, not that there was anything intellectual about that birthday party of mine.
Can someone explain this to me? Or tell me how to use Roku Media Player without letting Apple TV spy on what I choose to watch on my own TV?
…for a word from a lovely friend of mine who's involved in kind of an online beauty/charm pageant competition…
Do me a favor and go to this link and vote for Gabriella Muttone. You can make a donation to a worthy charity as you do but you can also vote for her for free if they can verify you're a person…like if you have a Facebook account. And if you voted for her before, vote again. You can cast a free vote for her every day until this competition is over. She is living proof that there's Loveliness After 40.
Some time ago in this post, I wrote about how for Christmas of 1963 — when I was 11 years, 9 months and 23 days old — I scoured used bookstores in Los Angeles to find one book in particular to be part of a holiday gift for my mother. I finally found what I was looking for (sort of) in a large, scary, cluttered shop down on Western Avenue called Yesterday's Books.
When I wrote that article, I didn't have a photo of Yesterday's Books and didn't imagine that one existed — or if one did exist that I would ever find it. Well, it just goes to show you: A year or two ago, I came across this one…
I have no idea when the place went outta business but I suspect this shot is from not long before they closed forever. When I was there in '63 and a few times after that, there was no any-book-a-buck banner. This looks like a going-outta-business offer. Also, the "Books will turn you on" banner suggests the rhetoric of late sixties or early seventies.
Inside, it was three stories of books piled in crates or shelved in no discernible sorting order. A major tremor could have shaken the place like a James Bond martini and what you were seeking would have been no more difficult to find. Every time you shopped there, it was a major scavenger hunt. I hate to think what it took to clean out the place when they moved out…but they did. I seem to remember driving by and seeing other businesses in the building after that. Here's what's there now…
Not only do we no longer have Yesterday's Books in Los Angeles, we no longer have very many second-hand bookstores at all. Once I discovered online book search engines and eBay, I was able to easily find all the books on a little list of "wants" I carried around in my wallet for years. So I didn't particularly regret the slow extinction of used book stores. Still every so often, I remember how much fun it was to browse in them and I recall the joy of finding one on my list…or maybe one I'd never known existed. And then maybe I miss them a little.
I'm heartbroken over the loss of my baby brother.
I really know that all of you meant the world to him.
It's YOU that made this all happen.
Thank you for being there with us all these years.
Love, Sid
As I type this, there are 964 comments and 5,197 likes…almost all of them comments from folks who loved various Krofft shows and therefore the men behind them. If you want to take a look, here's a link but I don't think Instagram keeps these messages available for very long. I wish we could have kept Marty around indefinitely too.
This one's tough. I worked for Sid and Marty Krofft off and on from early 1978 until…well, I wrote and sometimes produced shows for the company that got on the air until 1985 or '86 but after that, there were a number of developments and pilot scripts that never went anyplace. Every so often after that, I'd see Marty and he'd always have a new project…and the Kroffts ran the kind of operation that worked like this: If the first time you worked with them, things didn't go great, that was the last time you worked for them. If things went well, you were adopted into the family and they tried to bring you on board on every new project.
Two months ago on September 21, I took a lady friend to the Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood for her birthday. The host seated us at our table…and at the next table, seated with some of his associates, was Marty. We hugged. We talked. He insisted I come to his office soon after where we discussed upcoming projects. Marty always had upcoming projects. And his assistant told me that Marty had tried to pay for our dinners that evening at Musso & Frank's but I'd unknowingly beaten him to the check.
Marty died earlier today due to kidney failure. He was 86. This obit is about as good an overview of his amazing career as you're going to find.
What I think I'd like you to know this evening and forever is that Marty was the kind of guy I wish every producer in show business was. He was fierce about doing a good show and doing right by his people. The Kroffts paid me well…or if they didn't on one project, they made it up on the next. Money was sometimes tight because they didn't hesitate to spend it if it would make a show better. From where I could see, Sid had the wildest, most creative ideas but it was Marty who had to deal with the network, deal with the budgets, deal with the schedules.
Marty on the left, Sid on the right, me in the middle Photo by Bruce Guthrie
Marty had a great life. He knew everyone in show business and they knew him. He was married to one of the most beautiful women in the world and they had equally-beautiful daughters. And he and his brother became a lot more famous than the kind of producers who produce the kinds of things they produced.
I have an awful lot of stories about the two of them but here's the one that feels like a good ending for this piece. This happened in 1973, several years before I went to work with them and was subsequently adopted. They were doing the TV show, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and it was shot partly on the beach and partly on soundstages at Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood. Most of the sets on that stage were underground caverns because that's where Sigmund and his friends lived.
Something electrical sparked. Something some of the sets were made of caught fire. Pretty soon, the stage was ablaze.
Like I said, I wasn't around then but an Associate Producer I worked with later for the Kroffts was. I asked him once about that day. As the fire engulfed a large portion of Goldwyn Studios, this A.P. ran up to near where Marty was and yelled, "We may be able to save some of the sets!" Marty, he told me, instantly yelled, "Fuck the sets! Make sure nobody gets hurt!" And nobody got hurt.
If I was ever in charge in a situation like that, I hope that would be the first thing out of my mouth. I've worked for some producers who would have had different priorities.
For those who are interested, here's the link to read or download a PDF of the new SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical agreement. By using this link, you promise not to try to discuss this contract with me or ask me questions about it.
It's not a comic strip…but then neither is the daily Dennis the Menace, which is a panel Monday through Saturdays. Also, the puzzle panel Jumble competes for space with comic panels and is often featured with them on the funnies pages in newspapers. Jumble, which challenges you to unscramble words to arrive at the punch line of a cartoon, has been running in papers since 1954…only two years less than I've been running.
It was created by Martin Naydel, who also sometimes signed his other work "Martin Nadle" and "Martin Dell." His brother was Larry Nadle (née Naydel), a longtime comic book (and strip) writer and editor who also worked under different names. Larry was an editor for All-American Comics around 1943 and stayed on when that firm was absorbed a few years later by National Comics to form the company we now know as DC. Larry specialized in funny comics, romance comics and comics which featured movie stars like Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis.
Martin did a little work on super-hero comics. He ghosted for artist E.E. Hibbard on early Flash stories in the forties and was among those who ghosted the Slam Bradley feature in Detective Comics after its creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, went full-time on their other creation, Superman. For a time, Martin did a cartoony feature for All-American called "McSnurtle the Turtle," which was basically, "What if The Flash was a turtle?" I recommend it to any of you who might have been wondering about that.
There were other such strips but eventually Martin did most of his work for DC on puzzle pages and cartoon fillers. He is often confused with Martin Nodell, the co-creator of Green Lantern. On a panel I hosted once at Comic-Con, someone asked Mr. Nodell how he created Jumble.
As mentioned, Martin Naydel did that. It was originally called Scramble in '54 and he produced the panel until 1960 when it was taken over by Henry Arnold and Bob Lee. There is no record of Martin doing anything in comics after '60 and it's assumed he died — he would have been 49 years old — but I also can't find a source for his date of death. In any case, Arnold and Lee produced Jumble for a long, long time. and it's now the work of writer David L. Hoyt and artist Jeff Knurek who do very good work.
It's available in many different formats — I play it on my iPad — and yesterday, it guest-starred longtime MAD art director Sam Viviano and longer-time MAD cartoonist Sergio Aragonés. The answer (I figured it out) is "That's the last draw!" Thanks to "Gary from Buffalo" who alerted me to my partner's cameo.
So let's discuss why the Ritz Brothers aren't as well known as, say, the Marx Brothers. For one thing, the funniest Ritz Brother (inarguably Harry) never had a hit TV show and all those appearances on popular TV shows like the funniest Marx Brother (more arguably, Groucho). For another, the Ritz Brothers didn't star in as many classic movies as the Marxes. The best screen performances of the Ritz boys were as comedy relief in the kind of movie where if you watched it at all, you'd want to fast-forward through all the scenes they weren't in.
For yet another, we all know which Marx Brother was Groucho, which one was Chico, which one was Harpo and, when Zeppo was present, which one was Zeppo. It's much harder to keep track of which Ritz Brother was Harry, which one was Al and which one was Jimmy. At times, it seems like even they weren't sure.
And we can probably think of other reasons but none of that means the Ritzes weren't very funny and very popular. If you'd like to know a little more about them, here's a short documentary that can serve as kind of an introduction. And by the way, in the last black-and-white clip as they're cavorting on the stage of a TV show, I believe the fellow playing the stage manager is Peter Leeds…
The 2024 Comic-Con International in San Diego officially sold out last weekend. There may be a few opportunities in the coming months to score badges but for the most part, the con is sold out.
The two biggest complaints I hear about Comic-Con are probably "It's impossible to get tickets" and "It's too crowded." Those kind of cancel each other out. If they made more tickets available, it would be even more crowded. Or if it was less crowded, it would be even harder to get tickets. Some folks don't seem to grasp that buildings have capacities and fire laws.
A friend I know asked me, "Wouldn't it be great if they could somehow double the size of that convention center?" Well, maybe. But they'd also have to double — preferably, more than double — the number of available hotel rooms and parking spaces and places to eat and also widen the roads in and around that area and get the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner to put on about twenty more train cars and airline tickets to San Diego that weekend are already hard to get just before the con…
…and there would still be people who couldn't score badges and the prices would probably be even pricier. It's just a basic fact o' life: Disneyland is always crowded and always expensive. You may not be able to get a ticket to the Super Bowl and if you can, it'll cost you a bloody fortune. Times Square is packed on New Year's Eve. Some stores have long lines on Black Friday. Las Vegas just had its big Formula One Grand Prix race in November and you don't want to know what a mess that was.
And way more people will always want to attend Comic-Con than that convention center can hold.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
Which brings me to the third complaint: "There isn't enough at Comic-Con about comic books." I think there's always a lot of it and some people just don't notice it or don't like that there's nothing about the particular comics that interest them. Before I delve more deeply into this topic, I want to quote something I wrote here after the 2009 Comic-Con…
One [guy] actually came up to me on Sunday and started bitching about all the focus on the movies and the Hollywood celebs and such. Now, my attitude about the Comic-Con (oft-stated) is that the con is really a dozen or more cons rolled into one. There's an anime con in that building, an animation art con, a small press con, a Golden Age comics con, a gaming con, etc. Some of them don't interest me in the slightest so I sidestep those aisles and find the con I want to attend. I always seem to be able to find it. Unless you're dying to attend a sparsely-attended gathering, the one you seek is in there somewhere. Don't let all those other conventions annoy you or distract you.
But this guy was upset that so much of the Comic-Con wasn't about comics and he felt, I guess, that I'd concur and would rush off to do something about it…maybe throw Robert Downey Jr out of the hall or something. Instead, I told him about that great panel we did on the Golden Age of Batman with Jerry Robinson, Sheldon Moldoff and Lew Schwartz. If you're interested in the history of comics, it doesn't get any more historical than that. I then said to this fellow who was complaining about the con not being about that kind of thing, "I didn't see you there."
And so help me, he replied, "I couldn't be there. I had to get in line to see the 24 panel with Kiefer Sutherland."
For those who don't know: Moldoff, Robinson and Schwartz were the three main artists who ghosted for Bob Kane from Batman's inception until the mid-sixties.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
For many years at Comic-Con, I interviewed folks like that either individually or on the annual Golden Age Panel. At one point, I renamed it The Golden and Silver Age Panel because we were running out of folks who qualified under the old name. Eventually, we stopped the panel altogether because there were simply not enough folks to put on it. Most had passed away and the few who remained were unwilling, or maybe just unable to travel to the con.
This year, I had the pleasure — and it really was one — to interview Barbara Friedlander, who worked on DC's romance comics from around 1964 until 1970. I suspect that of the 130,000+ human beings who were in that convention hall that weekend, she had the oldest credits in mainstream comic books. If there was anyone else, I can't think of who it could have been.
The scary thought is to wonder who was in second place: Name the person who attended that con who had the oldest credits in mainstream comic books after Barbara. I have the chilling feeling it may have been me. I got in in 1970.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
Now, of course, it's possible to do panels about comics before 1970 by having scholars and folks who grew up on those comics talk about them. There are such panels, some very interesting…but they rarely draw huge crowds. A bunch of guys like me talking about Will Eisner is not the same as the panels we used to do with the real Will Eisner.
And, yes: We do draw a pretty large audience each year for the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. But there aren't many people in comic book history who attract that kind of attention without being present. Steve Ditko is probably on that list…but even if you'd staged a panel about Mr. Ditko's work when he was alive, he wouldn't have been there.
So you might say, "Well, how about panels with folks who wrote and drew comics in the seventies and eighties?" A fine question…and I have to tell you that for several recent cons, I tried to put together panels for the seventies and I've given up. I didn't even attempt it for this last con but during those four days, I'm pretty sure I didn't run into enough with the right work experience to fill out a seventies panel.
There actually are some reasons for that. Right now, a lot of such folks are making some good money by attending for-profit conventions. Comic-Con International is a non-profit affair. They pay absolutely no one an appearance fee to attend. They only pay for transportation and lodging for a very small number of invited guests each year. They do not give lots of famous people lots of free exhibit space to sell autographs and photos. Some cons even guarantee their celebrity-type guests will make X dollars in sales. Comic-Con doesn't do that.
I'm not knocking either kind of con one bit. I like that friends of mine have the source of income and attention they get at most other cons. But most other cons need celebrity guests to draw attendees. Comic-Con International sells out instantly each year before they've announced a single guest. In fact, their invited guests are selected mainly because the con wants to honor and promote those people, not because any of them has a hit movie or a top-selling comic book. It's a different game altogether.
Still, there will always be plenty of people at the con who do comics and next year, there will be more actors and movie stars because there won't be a strike. Because it's Comic-Con International. Some of us just plain want to be there even if there's no money in it. It's that kind of experience.
I'm taking this Thanksgiving Day off by encoring what I posted here on Thanksgiving Day of 2017, reflecting on Thanksgiving Day of 2016…
I spent Thanksgiving of last year with my dear friend Carolyn, well aware that it would be her last Thanksgiving. Suffering with Stage 4 cancer, she knew it too but she was still hoping for a miracle of indeterminate origin. It was like a game we all play in some form: Once you admit bad news out loud or even to yourself, you feel like you're closing off all possibility of that miracle.
She spent the last ten months of her life in a building that was part Skilled Nursing Facility and part Assisted Living Home. It was very nice for what it was but the meals were not good and they were not in alignment with the diet Carolyn felt she should eat. Either I or my assistant John would bring her food, or sometimes I could arrange to have a restaurant deliver. I bought her a little refrigerator for her room so she could store leftovers and food which did not require heating.
Now and then, she felt well enough that I could take her out to a restaurant. Last Thanksgiving Day, we planned to do just that. I made a reservation at a very nice cafe for 4 PM but by 1:30 or so in the afternoon, it was obvious Carolyn was in no shape to leave the place where she was living. I made a dozen phone calls and finally found a restaurant that was willing to make up two turkey dinners "to go" that were configured for her dietary requirements and my food allergies. When I got to the Assisted Living Home with them, the nurses were clearing away the last of the meal they'd served the residents and patients there. It was obviously better chow than what I'd brought and it would have been fine for both Carolyn and me.
Most of the residents there were effectively alone in the world. They had each other, sort of, but there weren't a lot of relatives around. More than a few of them told Carolyn that they envied her having me visiting her several times a week and seeing how John would bring her whatever she needed. She was probably the youngest resident in her part of the complex and when she was well enough to leave her room and walk (or be wheelchaired) around, the sunniest and cheeriest.
Carolyn at the Tam O'Shanter Restaurant. Thanksgiving Day, 2012. Photo by me.
Carolyn was simply the kind of person it was impossible not to love, even if all she'd done to deserve it was to smile in your direction. During her final weeks when she never left her bed, let alone her room, the others there would stop me in the hall and ask with true concern, "Is she any better?" The answer was always no. In her last week or so, it got around the building that the wonderful lady in room 305 wouldn't be living there or anywhere much longer. When they saw me in the halls then, they didn't inquire. They just nodded in sympathy.
I was lying in bed this morning thinking how last Thanksgiving was, to use an overused phrase, the Beginning of the End. It was around then that Carolyn dying became something that could happen shortly instead of off in some indeterminate and fuzzy future. Her very wise Palliative Care Doctor told me she would probably be unable to walk by the beginning of February and unable to talk by the beginning of March. The end, he said, would come in mid-March. If you added two weeks to every projection, he was right on target.
Every time he told me something like that, I couldn't help but think of the joke about the doctor who told a man he had six months to live and then, when the man couldn't pay his bill, the doctor gave him another six months. My thoughts shifted, as I'm told thoughts usually do in these situations, from "I don't want to lose her" to "I hope for her sake it's over soon." I was not unaware that her passing, sooner rather than later, would be for my sake, as well. You try not to connect your comparatively-mild problem with what the sick person is going through but since you suffer together over the same thing, it's silly to deny the link.
From Thanksgiving of 2016 until it was over are easily the saddest four months of my life. I hope they always will be because I'd hate to think I have four sadder months in my future.
Today, I am thankful that I had her in my life for almost twenty years. I am also thankful that her death was not much, much worse for her because it certainly could have been — and again, for me as well as her. But overwhelmingly, of course, for her.
All this talk about Albert Brooks movies and my mention of Writers Guild strikes caused several of you (well, two) to suggest that I encore this story I posted here back in 2006…
When Lost in America opened, I took a date to see it at the first matinee on opening day in Westwood. We both enjoyed it up until the scene where Julie Hagerty goes on a gambling binge in Las Vegas and loses most of the money they have in the world. It's a funny scene but when I looked over at my lady friend, she was trembling and crying.
As she later explained to me, someone in her family had destroyed many lives by doing pretty much the same thing and it was just too painful a memory for her. "I'll wait out in the lobby," she said as she got up from her seat. Since I didn't know what the problem was at the moment, I got up to go with her, much to the annoyance of all the people we had to climb over to get out of our row.
As we headed out into the lobby, I caught a glimpse of a man sitting in the aisle seat in the last row. It was Albert Brooks and he looked like we'd struck him over the skull with a Louisville Slugger. Here it was: The first day his new movie was open and two people were walking out on it. I felt bad about his pained expression for days.
This was in 1985. Three years later, the Writers Guild was on strike and I was working the tables at a mass picketing of one of the studios. Everyone whose last name started with A-G had to check in with me. I remember I logged in Michael Blodgett, star of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and then the next two people in line were Albert Brooks and James L. Brooks, who had apparently arrived together.
I thanked them for showing up in alphabetical order, which made it easier to find their names in my paperwork. Then I said to Albert, "Listen, I have to apologize to you for something…" I told him the story of our walkout and why it had occurred and I assured him that I went back on my own a few days later and thoroughly enjoyed the whole movie. I said, "Now, I know you don't remember this but —"
And he interrupted and said, "Remember that? I had nightmares about you two. I thought you were the leaders and your walkout would give everyone else the idea and they'd all go, 'Hey, those people are right. This sucks! Let's get out of here!'" Then he grinned and said, "No, I don't remember that at all."
I hope he really didn't and that he just wasn't being nice about that last part. I've always really enjoyed his work and I wouldn't want to cause the man one sleepless moment. So just in case, when I go see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, I'm telling Carolyn we're staying to the end, no matter what.
We were talking here about the shooting locations for Albert Brooks' 1991 film, Defending Your Life. And lo and behold, I receive this from Jason Roberts…
I wanted to chime in about your posts on Albert Brooks and Defending Your Life. I have a unique perspective on the subject as I worked on the movie as a Production Assistant. I also was in the movie twice but got cut out of one of the sequences. I attached a photo of the cut scene below (I'm the one sitting next to Albert). My remaining part was that of the hands that buckle Albert into his tram at the end of the movie.
I remember specifically one notable inside trivia location, where all of his workplace scenes were shot at Albert's brother Cliff Einstein's advertising offices at Dailey and Associates, where he was the CEO at the time. Also the sushi restaurant was shot at a place on Ventura Blvd. in Encino that Albert used to frequent as he lived in the area at the time.
The fountain scene where he has "brain envy" was shot by city hall in downtown L.A. at the Grand Park outdoor mall area. I am sure if I watched the movie again I could recall more of the places we filmed at.
Thanks for sharing all of your thoughts on the movie. That and the documentary brought up a lot of memories.
Thanks for sharing those memories, Jason. I'm not quite sure why but the movie struck a special chord with me, moreso than Mr. Brooks' other films, most of which I also liked a lot. I recall seeing it at a Writers Guild screening during one of those rare moments when we weren't all out on strike.
Afterwards, everyone was outside on the sidewalk — not picketing but discussing the movie with great enthusiasm. I think the "you can eat all you want" aspect of it registered big with some folks but it did get some of us talking about times in our lives when we felt shamed to be as cowardly as we'd been. It also seemed to inspire a few people to want to go get sushi but I think Brooks would have been pleased with either reaction.
I very much enjoyed your recent article about seeing Don Rickles. I laughed so much. I could almost imagine sitting at the table with you guys experiencing that and processing it all as it was going down!
But it reminds me of something I've always wondered about Vegas shows: who chooses the opening act? Is it the casino/hotel or is it the headliner? Did Don Rickles really pick that less-than-stellar singer? If so, does he have to pay her out of his profits? How does that work? It would seem to me that some headliners would not want someone too spectacular because they might overshadow them. But if they pick someone who is kind of a dog, then their entire show suffers — so does the Casino/Hotel arrange that and therefore the headliner can wash his and/or her hands of whole opening act if it is a disaster?
The answer is that it works all different ways. Sometimes, the headliner picks his or her opening act. Sometimes, the hotel does. Sometimes, a headliner has a long-term relationship with an opening act and when the hotel books the headliner, it's understood the opening act comes along with them. Sometimes, the headliner might be touring with an opening act. I don't know if he still does but Johnny Mathis toured for years with the very fine comedian Gary Muledeer.
The hotel might sign an opening act to play X number of weeks a year and then try to pair them up with a headliner. Sometimes, an agent or manager will put together a package of opening act and headliner, then sell it/them to the hotel as a duo. After The Golddiggers became part of Dean Martin's TV show and Dean played the MGM Grand or Bally's (same hotel with a name change), some version of the Golddiggers troupe opened for Dean.
But most of this is past-tense because headliners rarely have opening acts these days…or if they do, it's often that the headliner is booked and the headliner chooses (or even pays directly) the opening act. And sometimes, it isn't the hotel in any of the above arrangements; it's some company that is "four-walling" the showroom, which means that they make a deal with the hotel to program the showroom. Two or three times — none of which reached fruition — I was asked to write a show for Vegas. I was not asked by someone who worked for the hotel. I was asked by someone who was putting together a package to try and sell to a hotel.
Elsewhere on this site (here) I linked to a video of comedian Pat Cooper who used to go on talk shows and complain about not being hired or treated well as an opening act. I don't think his rants made a lot of sense. No matter what he said he was bitching about, what he was really bitching about was that a lot of hotels in Vegas didn't want to hire Pat Cooper or a lot of stars didn't want him opening for them.
But the short answer to your question is that it works (or works) all different ways.
Steve Young was one of the reasons David Letterman was on the air as long as he was. Steve was a writer for Dave's show on NBC and then at CBS, coming up with clever bits from 1990 to 2015. Occasionally, he was even on the show as seen in the clip below. One of Steve's overwhelming interests was and is the subject of Industrial Musicals — shows, often of Broadway caliber and sometimes produced with Broadway pros — performed at trade shows and employee conventions.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch this clip of Steve guesting on Dave's show to promote a book he authored on the subject…
The book was followed by a film called Bathtubs Over Broadway which I recommended to you back in this post. And what's Steve doing now? Well, he's still a much-in-demand writer but he also tours with a live show about his passion and if you're in or near Los Angeles, you can see it on Sunday night, December 3 at Dynasty Typewriter, which is a trendy theater on Wilshire near downtown L.A. A lot of top comedians have been playing there lately.
Tickets, if they aren't already sold out, are available here. And if Los Angeles is just too far for you, Steve will soon be appearing with his show in San Francisco, Hartford and other cities. Keep an eye out on this page to see when he's coming your way. (He's in Asheville, North Carolina next Sunday!)
