Mark Evanier's Blog, page 213

On a Brief Hiatus

In case you haven't figured out, this blog is closed for a few days while I tend to matters that need tending-to and would be of no interest to anyone. I am fine. I am just busy and will be back to you before long. There are 31,122 other posts on this website so don't accuse me of goofing-off.

Today's Video Link

Here on newsfromme, we love a cappella singing and one of our favorite groups is VoicePlay. Here are they with a medley from The Little Mermaid…

Dancing in the E.R.

Ridiculously busy today so you get a rerun…in this case, of part of a post from May 4, 2005. Every so often, someone writes me that they remember some post from the past on this site but cannot locate it. In the last year or three, several folks have asked about this story so I'm re-presenting it here.

I posted it the first time after spending a whole night at the Emergency Room at UCLA Medical Center, which is where the paramedics took my mother at 2 AM one morning. My mother went home from the hospital a few days after this and lived for another seven years and five months but the story's not about her…

Very early Thursday morning, I was in the Emergency Room at U.C.L.A. Medical Center with my mother…and I must say, she received superb treatment. Everyone was nice and efficient and, well, if you absolutely have to be in such a place, that's the place.

My mother was on a gurney surrounded by one of those flimsy curtains they have in hospitals. Next to us, there was another gurney with another woman on it, and I could not help but overhear what was transpiring over there. The lady, who was maybe sixty, had been brought in with some sort of balance problem — an inner ear disorder, I believe I heard the doctor say. Whatever it was, she could not stand without falling. She had fallen twenty-four times in as many hours, and was clinging to that gurney for precious life.

The doctor — same one who treated my mother — was a charming, authoritative man. He looked like Pernell Roberts, sans toup and spoke like Ricardo Montalban, sans accent. Having treated her and decreed that the problem was gone, he asked her to stand. She was too scared to do this. "I'll fall over," she said.

He assured her she would not. A male intern came over and the doctor promised that they'd stand on either side of her and prevent her from falling. She refused. He promised her there was no way she could fall. She said no, she couldn't. The doctor told her she couldn't stay there on that gurney forever. She didn't answer. She just clutched the side of the gurney and held on, tight and trembling.

Calmly, and with a disarming friendly manner, he engaged her in conversation. Where was she from? What did she do? Did she have any hobbies? Two minutes into this chat, she happened to mention that she'd once been a champion ballroom dancer.

The doctor brightened. "Oh, it's been so long since I've danced with someone who really knows how. Would you dance with me?"

The woman looked at him (I assume — I was just listening) like he was nuts. "D-dance with you? Here?"

He said, "Why not? Just a few steps. Do it for me…please."

I don't know if it was because he was so charming or because he was a doctor but, sure enough, the woman slowly turned loose of the gurney and allowed him to help her to her feet. Within moments, I could see them dancing around the small amount of open space in the Emergency Room. There was no music, of course, but the doctor hummed and they waltzed about for maybe a minute.

Just as I was about to ask if I could cut in, the doctor stepped lightly away from her, leaving her standing there…on her feet, in full possession of her balance. If you'd seen the expression on this woman's face — tears of joy as she realized she was not falling — you'd have witnessed one big reason why people become doctors.

Wednesday Morning

Whenever Trump-prone acquaintances tried to convince me that there was "massive evidence" that the 2020 election was stolen, they'd cite those two black ladies in Georgia that Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump said had been caught stuffing or altering ballots. Well, Mr. Giuliani just lost a huge defamation suit that those two black ladies filed against him.

Best wishes to all whose lives are being affected by Hurricane Idalia. How many more unprecedented weather disasters do we have to have to convince some people this country needs to do more to combat Climate Change? And that even if we can't change the weather, we need to do more for disaster preparedness?

My piece on Bob Barker brought two e-mails from folks who said, in effect, "He was very nice to me the one time I met him" and a number from folks who worked at CBS who did not like working around him. I was not suggesting that my brief encounter with the man — which lasted well under a minute — was evidence that he was always like that. You should never judge a person by a one or two-minute encounter unless, for example, they use that time to shoot someone.

An anecdote like mine may be just an anecdote and not an overview of an entire, complex human being. I know of prominent folks who I consider treacherous or just plain evil…but they can still be charming and polite for a minute or three, especially if you represent to them a gushing admirer who is in no way a threat to them. Pick whoever you think has to be the worst person who ever lived and insert their name into this sentence: "Even __________ could be a great guy (or gal) for 180 seconds." And of course, the inverse is also true.

I also heard from many who, like me, felt a certain insincerity in Mr. Barker's on-camera persona. That's fairer game for criticism. I just felt he had a little too much delight in himself and a tendency at times to treat contestants like they were fools placed on this Earth for the amusement of others. And I'm probably overreacting because all those folks who won refrigerators and other goodies on The Price is Right when he was hosting probably thought their moments onstage with him were the greatest moments of their lives.

I have writing which must be completed before I sleep tonight. So there may not be much posting here until it's done.

P.S. AFTERTHOUGHT, added after I posted the above: Yes, I understand that Giuliani didn't clearly admit that he had lied about the two ladies in Georgia. He tried at one point to simultaneously admit it and not admit it via some stipulation that the judge decided was gibberish. The point is that he forfeited the case rather than go to trial and defend his remarks. Now back to that deadline…

Today's Video Link

This is Your Life was a popular show broadcast on NBC radio from 1948 to 1952 and then it moved to NBC television where it ran until 1961 with several short-lived revivals here and there thereafter. Ralph Edwards was the host while it was on NBC and the producer of its later incarnations. Each week, the show would "surprise" a theoretically-unsuspecting celebrity and for a half-hour, the host would run down the celebrity's biography and bring out significant people from his or her past.

You may or may not have ever seen an episode of the program but you've probably seen the spoof that was done of it on Your Show of Shows in 1954. Carl Reiner played Ralph Edwards' part, Sid Caesar played the ambushed celebrity and Howard Morris stole the whole damn skit as Uncle Goopy. I've posted this before here and I'll post it again. It really was one of the funniest sketches ever done on television.

At Howie's funeral in 2005 — has it been that long?  I guess it has — they opened the proceedings by showing this sketch.  Everyone in the room was hysterical with laughter and the man seated directly in front of me was laughing so hard he was crying.  The man seated directly in front of me was Carl Reiner…

Not long after this sketch first aired, Your Show of Shows was carved up into a couple of different programs. Sid Caesar went off to do Caesar's Hour from later in '54 until 1957 and Reiner went with him. When that show went off, Carl went over to become head writer and frequent on-camera guest on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. As you will see in the video below, in one episode he joked about how he wanted to be a "principal subject" (as Ralph Edwards called them) on This is Your Life and a week or so after — on March 23, 1960 — that happened when Carl was so surprised…

…except that he wasn't. As you watch the video of that episode, know that Reiner later admitted that he knew in advance about it and only feigned shock and surprise. I've always been skeptical that all those celebrities were really and truly unaware that they were suddenly going to be dragged into an unagreed-to appearance on live television that would include meeting up with folks from their past. Edwards always maintained that with one admitted exception, they never informed the principal subject in advance….and that's probably true.

But I think they counted on the subject's agent and/or family telling the person…at least some of the time. The alleged surprise couldn't have been arranged without their involvement and some celebrities might not wanted to do it at all. In one of the later revivals, Angie Dickinson flatly refused to participate and the whole taping — for which folks in her past had flown to Hollywood — was called off. Since it was a taping, as was by then standard, it could be called-off…but what if that had happened in the fifties when the show was done on live television?

And some of the stars who did want to go through with it might have wanted to make sure certain acquaintances from their past weren't brought on or that certain facts of their lives weren't mentioned. They might have wanted to be prepped and ready for the appearance. Not everyone in this world likes surprises. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that some stars told their agents, "Try to arrange for me to be 'surprised' on This is Your Life" or "If This is Your Life ever wants to do me, you'd better tell me in advance."

I don't remember exactly how Carl Reiner found out…and the bit you'll see of him on Dinah's show the week before sure looks like he was trying to encourage it. But as you watch this if you watch it, keep in mind that he knew. Also: If you're a fan of The Dick Van Dyke Show, you'll notice some names of people and places that later turned up on the Van Dyke program. One of Carl's close friends who appears was named Joe Coogan and a few years later, Laura Petrie had an old boy friend named Joe Coogan who had turned to the priesthood…

From the E-Mailbag: Questions for Jack

Joe Frank sent me this today…

Do you really get comments that too much of your blog is Kirby-oriented? To me, you don't "talk about Jack constantly" enough.

I got to chat with him in his later years but that, while a privilege, has a downside. I wasn't smart enough, when he was around, to inquire how he'd have tied up New Gods, OMAC and The Eternals. I was too laser-focused on the Fantastic Four.

That brings me to my question. You were around him for almost a quarter century. Were their any questions that now, in retrospect, you wish you'd have asked him?

Well, I wasn't around him for quarter of a century. From the time I met him until we lost him was 25 years but in the last decade or so, I saw him a couple times a year. I wish it had been more often because it was always educational and enlightening…and even if Jack got off a conversational journey that didn't interest me at first, it always did before long. I didn't feel this way when I was younger but now that I'm older, I wish we'd talked less about comics and more about his view of the entire world.

A lot of my views came not because I was accepting or rejecting some conclusion Jack had reached but because he asked questions and tossed out possibilities, thereby allowing the listener to make up his or her own mind. He just had ways of looking at people and at circumstances in a unique way…a way that no one else could have come up with. There were also things that Jack said to me that I didn't understand at the time and I think — note the emphasis indicating I'm not 100% certain — I understand now but I'd like to make sure.

That's a very young me sitting next to Jack.

But no, I can't think of anything I wish I'd asked him about comics. And if I'd asked him how he'd have tied up New Gods, OMAC and The Eternals, that might not have told me how any of those would have happened. I'm sure Jack would have given me answers but then when he got around to doing those issues, even if he'd done them the next day, he might have done something altogether different. That was one of the mind-boggling things about the man — the way he created story and art as a single act and was always revising what he did to replace good ideas with better ones.

He had an amazing brain and I'm glad I got to tap into it as much as I did. It would be sheer greed to long for more.

Happy Jack Kirby Day!

Steve Sherman, Jack, Roz and me in the back.

I believe I am the only person alive — and one of the few who ever lived — who worked for both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I liked both of them but I was sometimes disappointed in Stan for, to put it bluntly, taking credit for things that others did. Jack never disappointed me in any way and I believe he was the major creative force behind the Lee-Kirby creations. Even Stan would sometimes admit that, though not in print or anywhere it could be heard by those who might keep him employed or negotiate his future contracts.

Jack, who was born this day in 1917, was the greatest creative force in comic books…or at least the kind of comic books he did. And the kind of comic books he did turned out to be the kind of comic books most people did, following the influence of Jack and working on characters and concepts that began with him. That influence was not just confined to super-heroes. When I walk around a comic book convention these days, I see Kirby everywhere — not just books he started or the way he drew anatomy but his whole approach to design and storytelling and infusing energy into any kind of creative work.

He was also an amazingly nice and ethical man as well as being the hardest worker I've ever known. He could have made way more money in comics if he'd spent less time drawing a page and less time thinking about what could appear on that page that would thrill readers and boost sales for his publishers. He was not always paid or credited for that extra effort but "knocking it out" would not have taken comics to the next level and that's what Jack was all about: Taking things to the next level. When I hear someone say, "Well, I liked the way Someone Else drew the Silver Surfer better," I think, "This person is missing the whole point of Jack Kirby." Jack didn't just draw the Silver Surfer.

If it sounds to some of you like I talk about Jack constantly, that might be because I do. I certainly think about him every day. He had that kind of impact on my life as he did on so many others, including many who never had the honor of meeting him. But the work sure endures. Even comics he did that were proclaimed failures at the time are in their umpteenth printing, often with the kind of fancy reproduction and binding that Jack predicted would happen. He really was an extraordinary man.

Today's Video Link

Simone Biles — doing what she does best…

Today's Video Link

"Don't Kill Your Friends" is a 1943 Navy training film starring Huntz Hall. Not killing your friends can be very good advice depending, of course, on who your friends are.

In 1943, Huntz Hall had stopped appearing in Dead End Kids comedies and had begun appearing in East Side Kids comedies. He was a pretty reliable comedy talent who appeared in an awful lot of films and TV shows during a career that stretched from 1937 to 1993.

The Internet Movie Database and the fellow who uploaded this video to YouTube identify the uncredited narrator of this film as Daws Butler, the great cartoon voice actor and one of the nicest men it was ever my pleasure to know. They're wrong. I dunno who the narrator was but it ain't Daws, who didn't really get started in voiceover until he moved to Hollywood in 1948.

In '43 when this film was made, Daws was in the Navy but like I said, that ain't him. I've had very little luck correcting the IMDB over the years but if some reader of this site is better at it than I am, please let them know…

Good Book Review

Here is the problem I have with so many people who quote The Bible in support of some political cause: They often aren't quoting The Bible. At best, they're finding some phrase they can spin as inarguable support of their beliefs and if you disagree with that spin…why, you're arguing with God, for God's sake!

And sometimes, they just fabricate the line they wish was in The Bible. The book says nothing about abortion and there are no lines that can be quoted to say it's forbidden. That, however, doesn't stop men like Mike Pence from making one up.