Happy New Year!

Little Tich
NOTE: No relation to Tich of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich
Not connected with NYU Tich School of the Arts
Thanks, Boot Sale Sounds

Late Late Show with Tom Snyder and Harlan Ellison

Tom Snyder always seemed to get a kick out of Harlan Ellison, who here looks amazingly good for a guy only seven weeks past open-heart surgery in April 1996. Ellison has always been as outspoken as he is talented... and he's very talented, which makes him an ideal talk show guest.

His lawsuits are written with the same gusto that infuses his books - a recent one described Ellison as "...a famous author, screenwriter, commentator and public speaker. He is the winner of countless literary awards..." and described the person he was suing as "...a scheming pathological liar and little more than an obsessively vindictive and petty man trying to be a mover and shaker."

If you ever need to sue someone, try to get Harlan and his team on retainer. (He usually wins).

Alas, the Edgeworks series promoted in this appearance, which promised to be for Ellison what the Atlantic Edition is for H.G. Wells, ceased publication after only four volumes. But here is the highly entertaining Late Late Show appearance (30m), smacked and cracked into three bite-sized chunks.

Part 1 is above Part 2 is below

Part 2 is above Part 3 is below

Fred Allen and Robert Benchley, Part 2

Did you ever hear of the movie Fickle Fortune?

The original treatment was co-authored by Alfred Hitchcock's wife. The screenplay was written (in part) by the man who wrote A Night At The Opera for the Marx Brothers. The producer was a former rabbi whose first credit was an 30's exploitation film, The Birth Of A Baby, and whose final film was an industrial starring Buster Keaton that had been commissioned by an Arizona real estate developer. Fickle Fortune (later remade by Mel Brooks as The Twelve Chairs) was released under the title It's In The Bag in 1945 except in the UK, where it was known as The Fifth Chair, since a film titled It's In The Bag had been released there in 1944.

Fred Allen and Robert Benchley played together in this film, which was once available on VHS. I can't imagine any old time radio fan who wouldn't love to have a copy. The main Allen/Benchley scene appears below. It is preceded by the film's main titles, which are not to be missed.

Fred Allen's quip about Mr. Skirball's name occurring twice in the credits is even funnier when you learn that Mr. Skirball, through the Skirball Foundation, has had his name placed on:

• NYU's Skirball Center For The Performing Arts
• The Jack. H. Skirball Health Center in Woodland Hills, CA
• The Jack. H. Skirball Center for Chemical Biology and Proteomics at the Salk Institute
• The Jack. H. Skirball Fund for the Center for Jewish Studies at CUNY
• The Jack. H. Skirball Chair for Opthamology Research
• The Skirball Institute on American Values

From the New York Times, November 16, 1997:
(Part of a dialogue between Marty Scorsese and Woody Allen)

Scorsese: We... met a couple of times, I think, inadvertently.

Allen: I remember years ago meeting you at a video store on Broadway.

Scorsese: That was very funny. I was behind the counter looking for ''It's in the Bag'' -- Jack Benny and Fred Allen.

Allen: I remember that. Why were you looking for ''It's in the Bag''?

Scorsese: Oh, I love that film. I like Fred Allen a lot. And, of course, Jack Benny.

Allen: But it was not a successful movie, I don't think.

Scorsese: No, no.

Allen: It was a chance to see Jack Benny and Fred Allen.

Isn't Life Terrible's coverage of vintage comedy is not yet supported by an underwriting grant from The Skirball Foundation.

In The White Suit On The Treadmill To Oblivion

This post started out as a Bob and Ray video clip.

It's an entertaining segment in which Messrs. Elliott and Goulding have a chat with Dick Cavett about two comedy heroes shared by all three men - Robert Benchley (in the white suit) and Fred Allen. The discussion is followed by a terrific Wally Ballou interview with one of Bob and Ray's lesser-known characters, Mr. Wwqlcw.

Watching this clip sent me back to my Benchley books. My White Suit is a piece collected in My Ten Years In A Quandary And How They Grew (1936). I also pulled Fred Allen's Treadmill to Oblivion (1956) off the shelf and started reading bits and pieces at random. This led me to change my mind about... well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. First, enjoy the clip:

Benchley's short film That Inferior Feeling (1940) is all about feeling ill at ease in situations where there are no real reasons to feel ill at ease. And despite the promises of the ask-your-doctor ads, no amount of Paxil or Prozac will alter the clothing-purchase experience for those who find it painful.

There are still many men who experience great relief each time they exit a store without being detained for shoplifting. Not because they have actually committed that heinous act, but rather because they sense in themselves an inability to appear nonchalant or non-suspicious looking as they meander toward the egress.

Those of us who admire entertainers of yesteryear often have a tendency to drift along with the undercurrent of melancholy that is the wake of the public's fickleness in its never-ending search for new amusements. Younger fans who missed the heydays of their idols often make substantial efforts to seek out the portion of the work that survives, then use it to proselytize on behalf of their hero. They shake their heads sadly when few join them in their celebration of those who reached incredible heights of popularity in their own day... only to arrive at a near-total indifference and anonymity in ours.

Ray Goulding can't understand why they don't show Benchley's short films on TV. Dick Cavett correctly believes that Benchley will be "...virtually unknown to the younger listener or viewer," and suggests a trip to the library. Cavett's bittersweet story about Fred Allen's "fan club" portrays the radio star as an under-appreciated, nearly forgotten man at the end of his life.

Hero worship can be equal parts adulation and sympathy. Adulation and sympathy not just for the hero, whose greatness was once - but is not currently - recognized; but also adulation and sympathy for one's self, as a person both blessed and cursed with the capability to perceive and champion criminally overlooked genius.

Yet Allen, for one, expected his fate. He finishes his 1954 book Treadmill To Oblivion with these words:

Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion. When a radio comedian's program is finally finished it slinks down Memory Lane into the limbo of yesteryear's happy hours. All the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.

Like Benchley's man in a white suit who can't help feeling ill at ease in non-threatening situations... like the law-abiding citizen worried about the security guard's suspicions... there's no good reason to feel bad for comedians and other successful entertainers who connected strongly with the audience of their day but are now largely forgotten. Neither should we feel sorry for those who can't, today, appreciate an old Fred Allen radio show or Robert Benchley short. Few can. And we should never, under any circumstances, make it our mission to convert the heathens who will not acknowledge, let alone bow down before, the old gods some of us still worship.

Because truth be told, the treadmill never actually reaches oblivion. As in Zeno's paradox, there's always another halfway point ahead, a halfway point where fewer remember, fewer enjoy, fewer care.

Between 1932 and 1949, Fred Allen built up an average speed on that treadmill. As soon as he got off, that average speed started to decline. But it never quite reaches zero.

Casting Tragedies

Tom Snyder Radio Shows With Norman Lear And Bonnie Hunt

Here's why I like Tom Snyder, right here.

The hour he spends with Bonnie Hunt.

Tom Snyder falls head over heels in love with Bonnie Hunt right on the air. You can hear it happen. It can't be anything else.

And, of course, why not? Bonnie's beautiful, funny, talented, easy-going... and Tom means no harm; he just lets himself fall completely under her spell, and it's lovely. Tom and Bonnie recall their respective strict Catholic upbringings, and Tom makes a couple of remarkably intimate and revealing statements about his life and philosophy.

First up is a segment with Norman Lear, followed by some "open phones" calls. The Lear show is from May 29, 1991 and the Hunt show is from April 19, 1992. And no, we never do get to hear how Norman Lear got through to Danny Thomas.

Two shows, both a little incomplete (The Lear segment is joined in progress, as is the Bonnie Hunt interview), but still a treat. Just under an hour and a half in total; commercials have been painstakingly removed. This program will stream in Box.net's audio player, or you can download it.

Link

Fred Woodworth's "The Mystery & Adventure Series Review"

He won't accept your check.

He was the victim of a Y2K error at his bank that moved a decimal point and made a $2,000.00 check into a $20.00 check. The mistake was so difficult to correct that he vowed to never touch a check again. "Checks will be silently ignored."

He doesn't have a computer.

He does the typesetting work for his magazine, The Mystery and Adventure Series Review, himself. "No computer equipment is ever used here for any purpose whatsoever."

You can't buy a subscription, anyway.

If you have a sincere interest in series books (Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Rick Brant, Tom Quest, et al) he'll send you his magazine without charge, trusting that if you like it, you'll send him a contribution.

Can't find that Tom Quest you remember so fondly?

He'll loan you a copy from the magazine's own Tom Quest lending library.

On a tight budget?

The M&A bookstore has copies of series books they'll give away.

Have you sold series books to other collectors at inflated prices?

You can't ever get a copy of M&A Review. Ever. You're already banned for life.

"He" is Fred Woodworth, and the arrival of an issue of his irregularly published, gorgeous hand-produced magazine, is always an event.

Fred writes about his eclectic interests: series books, of course, but also typography. And in the current issue, perpetual calendars, libraries that discard old books, found photographs, and the Antikythera Mechanism. He is iconoclastic and inspirational. Here's a quote from the current issue:

I believe that the topics we concern ourselves with here, though usually ignored or at best smiled at by today's cultural arbiters, deserve no less than these high aims. While I have to admit that on top of declining interest in old series-type books, the internet is rapidly removing readers from the world of the small magazine (and postal policies seem deliberately aimed at stopping small publications), I myself remain committed to supplying - as long as there are any readers at all - a product that reaches for the highest possible level.

This past summer, on a recommendation from The M&A Review, I picked up The Rocket's Shadow, a Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story. I had more fun reading that old series book than I could ever have imagined.

If you have an interest in connecting or re-connecting with the world of series books, write a letter to Fred Woodworth, Post Office Box 3012, Tucson, Arizona 85702. He might just send you a copy of The Review, so if you want to send him some cash and/or stamps up front, do so.

Just don't send a check. You'll be silently ignored.

Marble Meditation Video In 9.8 Wet-Mint Condition

Let me share just a bit of a favorite video with you... one that features "extraordinary, fantastic, stunning, colorful, rare and beautiful little gems" floating in an icy limbo.

Dannny Turner describes his lots in a honeyed voice soothing and smooth as wet-mint glass. Nine is 'nahn,' bright is 'braht,' wild is 'wahlled,' white is 'waht.' When the spheres spin and reveal imperfections, there is comfort in knowing they are 'as made.' The evocative language is not one you and I speak, since it describes worlds we do not know - worlds of tri-color flames, cyclones and rapid twists, and divided Laticcino ribbon core swirls.

Danny's finger moves marbles as if they were living. It's the hand of God exploring new and unknown worlds, strange planets with ground pontils.

And it's always summer for Danny's marbles. Crickets and tree frogs, even birds, for lower-number lots, provide subtle accompaniment for the presentation.

Mesmerizing videos. I've never seen their equal.

Link to modern latticinos.

J. Gadsby and J. Gatsby

The Great Gatsby isn't just the great American novel; it's a cottage industry. There's no lack of odd and unusual editions and companion volumes out there.

There's the original first printing, published on April Tenth of 1925, identifiable by errors such as the one on page 205, lines 5 and 6 - "sick in tired" instead of Fitzgerald's preferred "sickantired."


Thank goodness the printers screwed up, otherwise how would we be able to recognize a first edition of the first printing? In addition to the in famous "sick in tired," you can also check for:

• Page 60, line 16: "chatter." In the second printing, the word is changed to "echolalia."
  
• Page 119, line 22, "northern." In the second edition, it's "southern."
  
• Page 165, line 16: "it's" instead of "its"
  
• Page 211, lines 7-8; "Union Street station" instead of "Union Station"

There's also a facsimile of the original first edition, with facsimile dust jacket. It's quite a deal at 30 bucks, since the original with wrapper goes for ten thousand dollars and up. The facsimile dutifully reprints all the errors of the true first edition.



There's also an edition that contains a facsimile of the entire original manuscript in Fitzgerald's hand:


My favorite book related to Gatsby is I'm Sorry About The Clock, which details how the narrative's timeline is all screwed up.


The author of I'm Sorry... got a calendar for 1922 (the year in which the events of the book take place), started checking and found that, for example, a party in Chapter 2 that must take place on July 2 must logically occur two weeks after the mid-June party that takes place in Chapter 3, and yet it's clear that chronologically, the events of Chapter 3 are meant to follow the events of Chapter 2.

I love the conclusion of I'm Sorry About The Clock, which begins by asking why nobody else had ever noticed all the "temporal incoherencies" in Gatsby. Answer? They just had assumed it was right (and they didn't have a 1922 calendar handy).

One step weirder is a graphic novel (that would be "comic book") in which Gatsby is a seahorse and Daisy is a dandelion with a worm growing out of her head.


You can't buy this one in the United States... some sort of a problem with copyright, but it has gotten amazingly good reviews.

The longest book in the Gatsby library is a boxed edition of the original galleys. Each galley is six inches wide and two feet long. When the galleys were printed, the title was still Trimalchio. Note the hand-written change on the first galley which misspells "Gatsby" as "Gadsby."


Intriguingly, there is a book called Gadsby. The title character is even a J. Gadsby. It's a very, very odd book, written by Ernest Vincent Wright and published by him through a vanity press in 1939. Here's the first paragraph:

If youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run across folks today who claim that “a child don’t know anything.” A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport.

Anything about that paragraph strike you as odd? How about the final paragraph:

A glorious full moon sails across a sky without a cloud. A crisp night air has folks turning up coat collars and kids hopping up and down for warmth. And that giant star, Sirius, winking slyly, knows that soon, now, that light up in His Honor’s room window will go out. Fttt! It is out! So, as Sirius and Luna hold an all-night vigil, I’ll say a soft “Good-night” to all our happy bunch, and to John Gadsby — Youth’s Champion.

I don't have a hard copy of Gadsby, but it is not only available in the United States, it is available for free download as a .pdf.

The book isn't remembered for its similarities to Fitzgerald. It's famous because over the course of 50,000 words, the author never once uses the letter 'e.' (Go back and look!)

"As the vowel E is used more than five times oftener than any other letter, this story was written, not through any attempt to attain literary merit, but due to a somewhat balky nature, caused by hearing it so constantly claimed that 'it can’t be done; for you cannot say anything at all without using E, and make smooth continuity, with perfectly grammatical construction—' so ‘twas said."

- Ernest Vincent Wright

Disneyland Home Movie Excerpts

A brief clip (about 30 seconds) from some home movies shot at Disneyland.

Of interest because Walt is accompanying Hayley Mills on a tour of the park, taking her for a spin in the teacups and a ride on a Matterhorn bobsled.

Give Them A Taste Of Their Own Dry Cleaning Fluid

Tough stain on a piece of clothing. I take it to a dry cleaner. After a couple of days, I go pick the item up, and the stain is still there, but they've attached the cute little tag seen above. They want me to know that they didn't forget what I asked them to do... just that they couldn't do it.

They do, however, send an invoice.

No problem. I respond in kind.

What Your Government Hopes You Never Find Out

On second thought, maybe I'll post this another time.

Good Humor, Part 4

Now, why would a lovely teenage girl with a delicious Good Humor be staring angrily at her friendly Good Humor Man?

I don't know. I'm just putting the question out there.

The two of them look like they want to punch each other. And surely fistfights were a rare thing in proximity to Good Humor trucks.

That's not a movie still. It's some kind of news or promotional photo. If only we had a caption; something like "Even Juvenile Delinquents love Good Humors" would explain things.

Of course, if this was Glasgow instead of suburban America, and it was the 1980's instead of the 1940's, we'd know that the Glasgow Ice Cream Truck Turf Wars were to blame. But this probably does not represent a drug deal gone bad.

More likely, the teen-ager is simply fed up with all the damn advice the Good Humor Man is dispensing with his ice cream.

I'm guessing that The Good Humor Safety Club, which issued the pinbacks at right, was created in response to ice cream truck-related injuries and deaths. It's a battle that's still being fought: there's a vocal group of anti-ice cream truck people out there who want to banish this already-vanishing summer tradition.

And not all of them are concerned about the potential for accidents. Some of them just hate the music, like the grouches in Vancouver, who don't seem to realize that "...the chimes are the only way we have of knowing that the the [sic] ice cream man is in the neighbourhood."

The petition suggests that the silent majority have no objection to the chimes and that the bylaw changes suggested by the city council would "...put us out of business!"

Doubtless they are supported in this assertion by industry rags like The National Dipper, the magazine for frozen dessert retailers, and the "strong united voice" of The International Association of Ice Cream Vendors.

But I beg to differ.

Good Humor once provided, to any customer who made a request, a giant placard sporting a huge letter "G."

All you'd have to do would be to place the placard in the window of your home, and your friendly local Good Humor man would know to stop and stock your home freezer. (Few of these placards have survived, which explains why the IAICV is ignorant of this alternate business model... and why the example shown here looks kinda grungy).

But wait. If we put the industry back on the placard business model, we would lose those lovely chimes!

No.

In fact, if you want to hear ice cream music, you have other options. You can listen to ice cream music 24/7, if that's your desire, thanks to a couple of CD's that push the musical genre beyond its traditional limits.

Songs for Ice Cream Trucks is a CD released this year - that would be 2007 - by a very talented guy named Michael Hearst. Here's the solution for all of those disgruntled people in Vancouver: buy this CD, and then... don't play it.

I love this CD and highly recommend it, but then again, I've been writing about ice cream trucks for four days. But there's at least one person out there as interested as I am. Check out the trailer for the documentary! (Thanks, MH!)

Actually, make that two, because we've also got the incredible music of John Charles Alder, who has released Ice Cream Truckin', another CD of tunes (many of them using toy piano) that would sound just great anywhere. Even in Vancouver. His band is called Twink, and I also recommend checking out Broken Record, another Twink CD that samples old kiddie records in wonderful and hilarious ways.

You can listen to samples from each CD at the respective sites linked above.

If you want to watch ice cream trucks, rather than just listen, you have to hope that The Good Humor Man is released to DVD sometime soon. It's a wild live-action cartoon from Frank Tashlin, the man who first won our hearts with his fabulous Porky Pig shorts of the late 1930's.

Are Good Humor trucks dangerous places? Watch what happens to Jack Carson.

Good Humor, Part 3

In case you thought product placement was a relatively new phenomenon, check out this Fawcett comic.

In a movie that is itself an eighty-minute paean to Dubl-stix, Humorettes, I-sticks, Regular cups, Large cups, and Sundaes, another sponsor bought in to the proceedings - Fawcett Comics, home of The Big Red Cheese (Captain Marvel to those of you who haven't had the good sense to follow his adventures).

DC comics had filed a lawsuit against Fawcett in 1941 claiming that Captain Marvel was nothing but a crass rip-off of Superman. This took two tons of chutzpah, because Superman was himself a blatant rip-off of the pulps' Doc Savage, whose "Man of Bronze" had been transformed into the "Man of Steel." Savage also had something called a Fortress of Solitude in the arctic, and oh, by the way, Doc's real first name was Clark. DC eventually prevailed, however, shutting Captain Marvel down in 1953. One can only imagine the collective wail that went up when the Captain suddenly disappeared. (If anybody should have sued Captain Marvel, it was Fred MacMurray, whose face had been appropriated by the Fawcett artists and given to Captain Marvel).

Given the fact that Captain Marvel and Superman were locked in a battle to the death for newsstand survival, some of you may well be aware of perhaps the greatest irony in the history of the cinema, which takes place when when we meet Mr. Nagel, the villain of The Good Humor Man (and the rival for girlfriend Margie's affections). He's introduced to us in his office at the Peerless Insurance Company...

The Good Humor Man is so interesting for so many reasons.

For instance, the use of the Three Stooges sound effect library (Good Humor Man was a Columbia picture).

I'm having too much fun to stop... Part Four tomorrow.

Good Humor, Part 2: Oh, Those Bells!

First, watch the clip... the opening scene from The Good Humor Man (1950).

The unusual sound was created by Sonovox, a device invented in January 1939 by Gilbert Wright, an engineer and radio operator. Wright hadn't shaved that particular day and was idly scratching the coarse stubble around his adam's apple. He noticed that the sound of this action traveled through his neck and emerged from his mouth as a buzzing. Intrigued, he tried silently forming words with his mouth, lips, and tongue... and was surprised and amused to find that the words were intelligible using this odd alternate source of sound.

Ultimately, the Sonovox (essentially a set of small speakers which pumped a tone into the the neck) became a medical device. It served as an artificial larynx that restored speech to people who had undergone laryngectomies. Since the Sonovox created no variation in pitch, the resulting speech emerged in a somewhat robotic-sounding monotone. Today, there are artificial larynges small enough to be hidden in dental work which can vary pitch in response to user movements, creating much more natural-sounding speech.

All that came later, though. Initially, the Sonovox was used as a gimmick for the movies. Because you could send anything through those speakers, vocal shaping could now create words "inside" music, sound effects... you name it.

Disney, whose exclusive deal with Technicolor had served him well just six years earlier, made an offer for exclusive cartoon rights to Sonovox. The first feature to use the device was Dumbo, released in October of 1941, but a demonstration of Sonovox is part of Robert Benchley's tour of the Disney Studio, released as The Reluctant Dragon in June of that same year (Sonovox creates Casey Junior's "I think I can/I thought I could" dialog, in the finished film).

By 1950, Sonovox was pretty much "old hat," but Frank Tashlin, who moved into live-action features after directing cartoons for Warner Brothers, found a very clever and appropriate use for it to open The Good Humor Man.

More about Tashlin, more about Good Humor, and more about a very funny picture titled The Good Humor Man... in Part 3.

Link to a "Kiddie Record" that uses Sonovox.
Link to a YouTube video of the Kay Kaiser Band showing the Sonovox in use.

Good Humor Ice Cream, Part 1

Consider the old Good Humor logo. It's perfect.

The bite out of the bar. The little square cutouts that not only draw your eye to the bar, but also present the opportunity for additional, strategically-placed icicles. The white reflections on the bar suggest it's shown actual size. A happy, open, simple upper- and lower-case font presents the company name; a company name that doesn't mind at all if the stick and the bar partially obscure it; they are that easy-going. Then... the all-caps "brick" of ice cream at the bottom. I'm not a designer, but is this not brilliant?

And the sheer brilliance of the name itself, suggesting that no problem exists that cannot be solved by a little ice cream and a smile. From Unilver, who now owns the brand:

In 1920, Harry Burt, a Youngstown, Ohio candy maker, created a special treat called the Jolly Boy Sucker - a lollypop on a stick. The same year, while working at his ice cream parlor, Burt created a smooth chocolate coating that was compatible with ice cream. It tasted great, but the new combination was too messy to eat. So, Burt’s son Harry Jr. suggested freezing the wooden sticks that were used for Jolly Boy Suckers into the ice cream. Burt called his creation the Good Humor Bar, capitalizing on the then widely held belief that a person’s "humor," or temperament, was related to the humor of the palate (the sense of taste).

Times have changed. If somebody told you they had a special treat for you called the Jolly Boy Sucker... you'd call the cops. And, of course, they made a teeny little revision to the Good Humor logo in recent years:



Oh, this works, right? Designed by the same people who created the beloved biohazard logo, Good Humor picked this new logo up on the cheap at a garage sale held by The American Heart Association, who a) remind you to substitute fat-free milk and nonfat or low-fat frozen yogurt for whole milk, cream and ice cream, and b) rejected this as the AHA logo because it was 'too clinical.'

Consider the Good Humor Truck.


Friendly, right? Clean, open, driven by the friendly man who sells Good Humors, who is outfitted in an all-white uniform and who takes this ice cream business very, very seriously.

You don't see that guy driving one of these great old trucks on the road much any more. What you see instead is some variation on this:

Oh, my God. This panel van contains stuff in it that people actually purchase and eat? This is not the friendly man who sells Good Humors.

This is the man afraid to leave the truck, the man currently cowering behind the steel mesh teller's cage, waiting anxiously for the installation of his new "Good Humor Drawer."

More Good Humor coming this weekend.

Shameless Hucksterism And Misinformation Hosted By Davy Jones Of "The Monkees"

Watch the following 11 second video clip, and pay no attention to what Davy Jones says. Focus on the fine print.

This program is a recreation of an awards presentation.

It is no such thing. This program is a fictional, simulated, meaningless, mindless travesty of an awards presentation. And I am sorry to say it was my idea.

No, I'm not making this up. I wish I were. Together with an unnamed colleague (whose legions of fans would be shocked and saddened to learn of his participation) I wrote the script for this... this.. infomercial.

There. I've said it.

Not that the producers actually used the script. It was thoroughly and completely cut, gutted and rewritten until each sentence, each utterance, had achieved the grammatical and logical perfection of, for example, "I know you want to be a part of it... we all were."

I would suggest this enigmatic phrase serve as epitaph on Davy Jones's tombstone, beneath which I'm sure he wished he were when this thing aired... we all were.

How would you define "dancing?" Could we agree that, generally speaking, it is the movement of the body in time with, and in response to, music? OK, then, under what circumstances would you slow down the movements of a dancer, or a group of dancers, thus severing any and all ties between the motion and the music? I heard someone in the back of the class say it... "only when there were no ties between the motion and the music to begin with." Exactly correct.

Good for you. I'm keeping these clips as short as possible, but I must warn you that the next one lasts 26 seconds.

You have just seen a mock award announced with infinitesimal excitement... and received with poorly feigned surprise. All those poor people from The Monkees Fan Club in rented tuxedos and prom dresses locked into a Philadelphia theater at 4 AM cheering the bogus award as it is bestowed yet again in take 6 - and it's my fault. My slip of the tongue. My everlasting shame.

All I said was, "Infomercials are fake TV shows. Fake cooking shows; fake talk shows. The goal is to sell old Don Kirshner music; why not create a fake "awards show" where every song included in the set is "nominated" for "an award?"

Previous half-hour music infomercials had relied on black and white stock footage, stock photos and graphics, and a gaggle of sincere amateur dancers. Why not make this one different? Why not make this one classy? "The Don Kirshner Rock Awards." WARNING: Next clip about one minute. You sure you don't want that novocaine?

As the script devolved, all of the old tried-and-true elements worked their way back in - the dreary smeary stock footage (some of which is clearly from the 50's), the mind-numbing graphics, the clumsy dancers. The "classy" opening, as shot, features a dazzling sign so glamorous that it had been previously been used to announce bake sales and tractor pulls. One limousine goes round and round the block, picking up rock n' roll superstars at the back of the building and dropping them off in front of the fifteen people who symbolize an adoring crowd at the front entrance.

My unidentified co-conspirator and I were proactive in preventing screen credit for ourselves. We were invited to the taping but escaped with our lives - if not out honor - intact.

Mr. Kirshner, Mr. Jones, Mr. Derringer, Mr. Maestro, Mr. Siegel, Mr. Cavaliere, Mr. Dante - this is the public apology for which you've waited decades. I'm sorry. We all were.

The Washington Post reported in 2004 that Don Kirshner, Upsala College's most famous graduate, currently resides in a gated community. No word regarding which of two possible functions they had in mind when they separated Kirshner from the rest of the world with that gate.

Pinewood Dialogues

Chuck Jones:

At Warner Brothers, we were very fortunate in that we had terrible men we worked for... Leon Schlesinger and Eddie Selzer were two of the most abysmal human beings that I could possibly get, outside of a decadent zoo. We had an advantage of Leon because Leon... he was lazy. And that's really what got us starting doing good pictures.

For on-line listening or MP3 downloading:

Interviews not only with with Chuck Jones, but also Brad Bird, Buck Henry, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Michael Powell, Marty Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker and quite a few others.

The latest - with Laura Linney, Tamara Jenkins, and Philip Bosco - was taped a few weeks ago. The earliest - with Sidney Poitier - dates from March of 1989.

Link.

"Dear Beau Hunks: I Just Wanted To Let You Know How Much I Enjoy Your Music On The Planet Earth

...and equally how enjoyable it is while floating weightless in space.

I have always been a fan of The Little Rascals & Laurel and Hardy, and have always searched for recordings of their music, but never came across any until a few years ago, when my brother told me about the Beau Hunks.

The level of work and concentration aboard the space shuttle are pretty intense during the flights. So the relaxation of listening to music during short breaks or before sleep are priceless. I listened to The Beau Hunks on many occasions during [April 1997 and July 1997] flights, usually during an hour break when I was able to float in front of a window and watch the world go by."

- NASA Astroanaut Don Thomas, who sent his shuttle-flown Beau Hunks CD ("still in good shape after traveling over 11 million kilometers") to the Beau Hunks in July 1998.

I've posted this link before, but neglected to mention the great Beau Hunks DVD, a live, pro-shot concert performance that includes a complete showing of Laurel and Hardy's Their Purple Moment with live BH accompaniment.

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That's The House Up There, Right On Top Of The Stoop

NPR ran a piece on Weekend Edition about Laurel and Hardy's Music Box steps that answers the question, "What does NPR do when they have an extra couple of minutes to fill and they can't come up with an idea?" 3m, with Kiefer Sutherland as Ollie, Dame Helen Mirren as Stan, and Scott Simon as the rear portion of Susie.

Link

Model Toy Misfires: How Do You Follow "The Visible Woman?"

Continuing our series on poorly conceptualized toys:

Revell was quite successful with its model kits "Visible Man" and "Visible Woman." As I recall, "The Visible Woman" (below) had a snap-on pregnancy accessory kit which confused an entire generation of impressionable boys about the mechanics of reproduction.

Far less successful was "The Visible Popeye," since, traditionally, all Fleischer characters were drawn without internal organs.

Donald Duck And His Crappy Cars

For all the progress we've made, there are still unsolvable challenges:

• What is the biological basis of consciousness?
  
• Can the laws of physics ever be unified?
  
• Can no one design a toy car driven by Donald Duck that doesn't look completely stupid?

Car not cartoonish; large head makes windshield pointless


Impractical wheel-bearing unit load ratio uses singular-row angular-contact ball bearings


Beret-wearing duck strains credulity

Not Disney authorized; Duck seems severely injured from previous rollover

Horizontal steering wheel; Duck still recovering from serious sawmill accident

Insufficient budget/expertise: paint


Duck appears to be bathing in pool of red liquid; Driver unidentified

Macrocephaly, Inexplicable cricket; Duck poised for Isadora Duncan-like death

At Last! The Avengers Original Soundtrack Music!

I'm an optimist.

Back when there used to be LP stores... back when there used to be CD stores... I would dutifully head to the soundtrack section on every visit and look for certain LP's and later, CD's.

I knew I wouldn't find them, because I knew they didn't exist. But I kept looking.

Music from the Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy movies? Nah. Wouldn't ever happen.

The OST from The Time Machine? How many would they sell, maybe three?

And, of course, The Avengers.

For my money, the best TV soundtrack music of all time.

Laurie Johnson had written some of the most memorable "generic" production music, as I found out by accident when "scoring" a corporate video from production LP's. (It was Laurie Johnson who wrote the wonderful piece Happy Go Lively, heard in John K.'s Ren and Stimpy over and over again). Lo and behold, even the Theme From The Avengers was originally written for use as production music, as I discovered when checking the cuts on an old disc. (It was originally titled The Shake.)

It took decades. Since the original Hal Roach recordings had disappeared, it took an incredible amount of work to piece together complete versions of the songs, but my friend Piet Schreuders did it. And then it took dedicated musicians playing period instruments - The Beau Hunks - to record note-perfect recreations of the LeRoy Shield Tunes.

After a false start - a re-recording of Russ Garcia's score for The Time Machine - the real thing emerged, just a few years ago.

The new three-CD set of Laurie Johnson music has one disc devoted to The Avengers, with 70 minutes of original music score. I just ordered my copy from Buy Soundtrax.

Now, if someone would only find the original Larry Adler/Muir Matheson soundtrack to Genevieve, I could stop looking for the one album that would never exist that, for some reason, still doesn't exist.

And Then I Woke Up

Bang A Gong

Because I maintain the Genevieve website, I get a small but steady stream of interesting e-mails. Never, prior to an hour ago, have I received this one:

Hi there, wondering if you could help, who is the man banging the gong before the start of [the J. Arthur Rank film] Genevieve? Appreciate if your able to help!

I was, of course, immediately tempted to write back and suggest Marc Bolan. I didn't, but I did learn that people are almost evenly divided about the meaning of "Bang A Gong," with slightly less than half believing the phrase refers to drugs, slightly less than half who think it is a reference to sexual activity, and the remaining fraction who responded either "don't know" or "couldn't care less."

But I realized that I had no idea who banged the J. Arthur Rank gong.

I didn't know that the gong was a complete and total fake, made out of papier-mâché, and that if the mystery man had actually hit the thing, not only would it not have made a sound, but also the beater (and I didn't know that the thing that hits the gong is called a beater) would have gone right through it.

So, who is the greasy gentleman above? No, not Bolan, the guy banging a gong.

Well, the greasy gentleman above is - I think - Ken Richmond. In actuality, J. Arthur Rank employed four gong beaters, and hardly anyone notices the difference, a situation sociologists refer to as "Ronald McDonald Syndrome."

The 6' 5" Carl Dane started banging in 1932 and kept banging until 1948. Dane was the first man to pull a London bus with his teeth and the first man to open a J. Arthur Rank film.

He was succeeded by Bombardier Billy Wells, a professional boxer who is the only beater to have a beer named after him.

Then there was Phil Nieman, who was only able to bang for a short time, considered by many to be a master beater.

And finally Ken Richmond, also 6' 5". He was a Jehovah's Witness wrestler, and by that I do not mean that he wrestled the odd Jehovah's Witness now and again. He was himself a Jehovah's Witness, and when his gong-banging days were over, he started banging on doors and passing out copies of The Watchtower.

Ken being a 6'5" 265 lb. pro wrestler, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most people said yes, they'd be very happy to have a copy of The Watchtower.

The beater was last applied to the gong in 1980, when the Rank Studios closed; Mr. Richman's own beater gave out at his home in August of 2006, when he was 80 years old.

Educational Cigarettes Teach Film Production - Part 2

The Lime Grove Studio (also called the Shepherd's Bush Studio) started out making silent films and ended up as a TV production center for the BBC. Some of the stages illustrated on these cigarette cards were used in both Alfred Hitchcock's best-known British sound films, including The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) ...as well as the first Dr. Who episodes starring William Hartnell.


They put quotations around the film title "Rome Express," but could have put them around "In the Station" as well. Lime Grove was a huge place, according to British writer-comedian Frank Muir, quoted in the Radio Times: "My prevailing memory of it was getting lost. You would keep meeting the same people every few minutes in the corridor, all looking for different rooms. No matter what time you arrived, you only reached the studio in the nick of time."

Let's hope these two stagehands stayed above their snowstorm. Naphtha, cited as an ingredient in "studio snow" on the reverse of this card, was later found to be a carcinogen.

The fact that they also used soap flakes to impersonate snow provides sweet vindication for a friend of mine who put on puppet shows in his youth. One memorable show had a soap-flake blizzard scene unexpectedly interrupted by fits of soap-flake inspired uncontrollable sneezing that left the puppets speechless for quite some time.


"If you are working in the studios, you usually labor all day in an ill-ventilated, dusty studio," according to director Ken Annakin, who worked at Shepherd's Bush early in his career. And no one is safe from the fray. "Supported by my very expert crew," Annakin says of one of his pictures, "the studio shooting went smoothly, apart from the Swimming Pool set, which developed a leak and soaked all our costumes stored in a room below." Maybe that's what the "needlewoman" at her sewing machine is worried about.


Ah, optical sound being captured. And what wonderful optical sound it must have been: it's The Good Companions, a 1933 musical featuring Jessie Matthews teamed with John Gielgud (appearing in his first film). A reviewer on IMdb attempts to summarize the plot, saying "Four separate people in provincial Britain are on the tramp to somewhere..." which made me think about another film made the same year - "Hallelujah I'm a Bum," an Al Jolson musical. Well, of course, in the UK, "bum" means "butt," and who wants to see a movie called "Hallelujah, I'm an Ass." So for the UK release, the Jolson feature was retitled "Hallelujah, I'm a Tramp." Which would suggest something quite different to an American audience, of course.



Leave it to those movie guys. Who would have thought that they simulated rain by using water?


How many otherwise great movies have been ruined by inserted scenes using back projection? The jarring note of artificiality absolutely kills the comedy in a couple of Laurel and Hardy movies (County Hospital, for one). I guess contemporary audiences didn't notice, but the frequently washed-out look of the background practically screams "they're on a set!"

"Shewing?" That's archaic British usage. As a matter of fact, by the time they printed the other side of Card 17, nobody was saying "shewing" anymore. The more contemporary "showing" was used instead.


British Film Studios - An Illustrated History, by Patricia Warren, covers over 90 filmmaking establishments, some of which lasted just a year or two, while others, like Lime Grove in Shepherd's Bush, spanned decades. Some studios were converted or repurposed when they outlived their usefulness; others went up in flames; and at least one (Teddington) was bombed out of business during World War II. But only temporarily: Teddington was rebuilt and occupies a warm spot in the hearts of those who have spent their life savings buying the complete Avengers TV series, which was shot in and around Teddington.



Alas, after serving as a TV studio for many years, Lime Grove was decommissioned in 1991. It was torn down and replaced with residential housing. The advent of "virtual sets" means there's less and less need for huge studio spaces. Models and props are also likely to be "built" using computer software. They don't make 'em like they used to.



Frank Capra shot the final scenes for "Meet John Doe" in a refrigerated warehouse so that the breath of his actors could be seen; James Cameron digitally added visible breaths, one at a time, to Titanic during post-production. There are easier ways to do nearly everything today, and my guess is that the befogged figures of card 20 would have been happier without those smoke-pots just out of camera range. It so damn foggy, in fact, that I'm not quite sure whether there are two or three actors in there.

The man responsible for the demise of Lime Grove as a film studio was John Davis, an argumentative accountant who somehow managed to sneak his way up to become head of the J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Decommissioning was his specialty; when he married Dinah Sheridan, he ordered her to give up her acting career, even turning down offers on her behalf. (It would have been Dinah Sheridan rather than Glynis Johns as the princess in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester, had Davis not intervened). Only after they were married did "J.D.," as he was known, admit to Dinah that she wasn't actually his third wife... but rather his fifth.


According to Dinah, " When [Davis] came [home] he would go upstairs to bathe and change his clothes. He would lie in the bath and through the house we would hear an absolute satanic chortle. “What is Daddy laughing about?” The children would ask. “I don’t know,” I told them, but I did. I had learned what made John chuckle like that. I was quite sure that he was remembering some ghastly thing he had done to somebody or a plan he was working on to make someone either physically or mentally uncomfortable."


To rectify the situation at Lime Grove, Davis decided to "slash budgets and sell off everything that did not immediately affect the survival of Rank's Pinewood Studio," according to Patricia Warren. He also fired scores of long-time employees, which must have given him many bathtub chuckles.

Didn't realize I'd be writing about Dinah rather than the clapper boy, but so be it.

When Dinah asked J.D. for a divorce, he told her that his organization couldn't stand the bad publicity such an event would create. "The solution is for you to sign a contract to remain a housewife, mother and hostess - no longer considering yourself my wife. I will get the contract drawn up. Go to Ronnie Leach (the Rank Organization's financial brains) and he'll tell you the name of a solicitor. We have to do this properly."

Dinah finally got her divorce from Davis, but it was a battle. She immediately returned to acting and to the London stage, and much of her best work (including her favorite film, The Railway Children) was still ahead of her.

Having been a celebrated film studio, Lime Grove also went on to greater things in its subsequent incarnation as a BBC Television studio. In fact, Lime Grove logged more years as a TV studio than it did as a film studio.


There are some great pictures of the original silent studio here. Lime Grove looked more like a greenhouse than anything else - most studios did in the early days. A complete history of the BBC's use of the facility for TV can also be found at the link above. There's a great little 8mm 'behind the scenes' film shot by a TV crew member here.

The show being taped when the 'home movie' was shot included a performance by the Temperance Seven. Remember them? Well, then, I'll send you off with my favorite Temperance Seven song, which appropriately blends two distinct musical eras.

Educational Cigarettes Teach Film Production

British cigarette cards are colorful, interesting, plentiful, and reasonably priced. How so many of them survived is anybody's guess, but you've got to be glad they did. This set, How Films Are Made, is especially interesting, taking us behind the scenes at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation Ltd.


There's only so much room on the back of a card 1 and 3/8th inches wide by 2 and 9/16th inches long, so a little additional information about Gaumont-British is in order. The facility illustrated on the cards is the Lime Grove Studio in Shepherd's Bush (later also known as the Gainsborough Studio), as it appeared in the mid-1930's. A film mentioned on Card 10, Rome Express (1932), was the first big production shot at Lime Grove and may account for the fact that many of these cards feature railroad scenes.


In the early days of cinema, 1898, to be precise, Leon Gaumont hired two men - the Bromhead brothers - to function as the English distributors for the films Gaumont made in France. The brothers did well with Gaumont's films, but soon realized that the real money was in production.

So the Bromheads started producing animated cartoons and, in 1910, began the Gaumont Graphic, one of the earliest British newsreels. Thanks to their connections with Gaumont, the brothers were were able to film some of their subjects in sound and/or color (Gaumont's Chronophone and Chronochrome processes).

Slowly, the brothers' film distribution office in Shepherd's Bush added production capabilities, and by 1915, they had built a true studio, named it Lime Grove, and moved into feature film production.


No, they're not shooting a cowboy movie in England; that's a tri-corner, not a Stetson.


Between 1915 and 1926, Gaumont-British made some well-received films at the Lime Grove studio: they adapted Gaumont's wildly successful French Fantomas franchise into a British version.

Can't resist a slight detour to consider the Fantomas books, which are a precursor to both E.C. Comics and Al-Qaeda. You won't find anything involving nuns that's nearly as unusual as the the shoot-out over an empty coffin in Le Cercueil Vide... at least until Peter Cook invented the Order of the Leaping Beryllians, placing nuns on trampolines in the mid-sixties.

According to the Fantomas Lives website, Fantomas is "...the Lord of Terror, the Genius of Evil, the arch-criminal anti-hero of a series of 32 pre-WWI French thrillers written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. He carries out the most appalling crimes: substituting sulfuric acid in the perfume dispensers at a Parisian department store, releasing plague-infested rats on an ocean liner, or forcing a victim to witness his own execution by placing him face-up in a guillotine. A rebellious henchman is hung in a huge bell as a human clapper, smashing from side to side and raining blood, sapphires and diamonds onto the street below. Masked bandits brandishing revolvers crash a city bus through the walls of a bank, sending money flying everywhere. Under grey Parisian skies, a horse-drawn cab gallops down the road, a wide-eyed corpse as its coachman. "


Gaumont-British made a four-part serial titled Ultus: The Man From The Dead (1916), which is the only silent British 'chapter play' that survives (and it's not complete). Also filmed were Ultus and the Secret of the Night (1916), Ultus and the Grey Lady (1916) and Ultus and the Three Button Mystery (1917).



Note that the Gaumont-British Continuity Girl seems quite unhappy. This is because she knows what results when she fails to perform her job well: Bad Continuity.

And speaking of continuity, we'll finish the remaining 15 cards of our Gaumont-British Lime Grove Studio tour - and the rest of the of the G-B story - in our next post.

Fact: Most Magicians Use Dogs In Vanishing Pony Trick

I'm reading... make that listening to... Born Standing Up, the new book by Steve Martin. You can listen to free excerpts from the audio book at Simon and Schuster.

If you've never seen "The Absent-Minded Waiter," the short film that opened his live shows at college campuses around the country some 25-30 years ago, it's well worth a look.

Charley Rose has three interviews with Steve.

Martin used to read and re-read magic catalogs when he wasn't reading Uncle Scrooge or Little Lulu. It's easy to spend hours with the magic catalogs; every page is jammed with small type. These days, you can buy your tricks online, and see them performed first in online videos.

Here's a trick from Vick Lawston's 1963 catalog. It packs flat, it's light-weight, it's easy to carry, and it costs only 50 cents. Pony Not Included; User assembly required.