Mark Evanier's Blog, page 87

Monday Morning

A new week…a new Randy Rainbow video…Mark busy on a script. But we'll be starting our annual countdown of great Christmas videos later today. Stay tuned…

Mark's 93/KHJ 1972 MixTape #47

The beginning of this series can be read here.

Here's another one that fits into the "novelty" category. "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" was recorded in 1966 by Jerry Samuels, a man of many occupations including songwriter. At the time, he was working as a recording engineer so he had access to all the studio equipment he needed to make this strange record. It was released under his other identity of "Napoleon XIV"..and talk about a "one-hit wonder." The flip side of this single was the exact same track played backwards and it was called, "!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT." On this side, the artist was identified as ""VIX noelopaN."

This is a promotional video that Samuels made for his record company. It is suitably as bizarre as the "song" itself…

Mr. Samuels recorded other pieces as Napoleon XIV, mostly having to do with the topic of insanity. This one wasn't on KHJ radio or my mixtape but I thought I'd throw it in here. This is "Split-Level Head" from his album…

Mushroom Soup Sunday

This feels like a good day to try to finish some things. Don't expect a lot of content here today.

Today's Video Link

Just to show you that not everything Dick Van Dyke ever did was wonderful, let's flash back to October of 1958. Thanks to "Orange Apple" for sending me this link but I wish you folks would all sign real names…

Friars Tucked

There used to be this organization called the Friars Club which was basically a social club for comedians. There was a branch in New York and one in Los Angeles and while they put on shows (usually for good causes) in each, their main function was to be a place where members could hang out, dine, play cards and sometimes enjoy a gymnasium. The L.A. club was rocked in the sixties by a scandal when it turned out that the card games — which since they involved gambling, were probably illegal in the first place — turned out to have often been rigged.

The L.A. branch closed down in 2008 and the building that housed it was demolished a few years later. I wrote about it here. The New York branch closed down in 2022 after its own money-related scandal but it was on the way out anyway. Members kept dying off and there simply weren't enough new ones to sustain such an expensive-to-run organization.

Just recently, the lovely old building that housed the club in New York was sold to a creditor for $17.2 million. Here's a news story about that. Because the building has landmark status, it'll be difficult for its new owners to tear it down but they don't seem quite certain what they can do with it. They seem to want to resurrect the Friars Club or something similar.

I visited both Friars Clubs a number of times and the Manhattan one had more history, more character and — when I was there — a daily round table of old Jewish comedians usually headed up by Henny Youngman. It will be hard to replicate that table.

My first time there — this would have been in the eighties — I was back in New York on business and one of my meetings involved a lunch at the Friars Club. During this trip, I was also trying to connect with a wonderful comedian lady I knew (and know) named Louise Duart. I was supposed to call her when I got into town and she was waiting for my call…but somehow, the phone number I had for her was wrong and I couldn't find a correct one.

So one very rainy day, I took a cab to the Friars Club at 57 East 55th Street, between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue for this scheduled luncheon with a TV producer. As I headed in, there was a lady struggling with a rolling suitcase that wouldn't roll, trying to get it up the front steps. I went over to help her and it turned out to be Louise…another of the incredible coincidences in which my life has abounded.

We got in and she invited me to join her and her friends at their lunch table. I told her thanks but I was there to meet someone, then I told the Maître d' who I was there to meet. He then told me the producer had called and said he'd be about a half-hour late due to an emergency…so I happily joined Louise's table. Seated around it I found not only Mr. Youngman but also Corbett Monica, Mal Z. Lawrence, Freddie Roman, Dick Capri and Jackie Gayle. I said almost nothing…just sat there listening to these folks swap jokes and anecdotes, hoping my producer date would never show up.

Alas, he did. We had a nice lunch and then after he departed, I wandered around the club a bit until Freddie Roman spotted me and offered to give me the grand tour. There was a great story about every piece of furniture, every wall ornament, every doorway, every pay phone…even every stain on the carpet. It was one of the most fascinating and funny afternoons I ever spent. I sure hope that place survives in something resembling the way it was then. Unfortunately, Freddie Roman died two years ago and there may be no one else alive who could tell all those stories with any sense of authority. I sure couldn't.

Today's Video Link

I haven't seen the movie Wicked yet. I'm still largely confined to my home and even if they send me a link to watch it online (so I might vote for it to receive some award), this feels like a film that oughta be seen in a big screen with a big audience in a big theater.

It does seem to be — to use the name of one of its songs — popular — with some bad reviews but not many. And I see people singing its tunes everywhere online, even in synagogues…

This Just In…

Donald Trump has announced he wants to end Daylight Saving Time. That's not a bad idea. I'll set my clocks back to half-past the Obama administration.

Today's Bonus Dick Van Dyke Video Links

In 1976, Dick Van Dyke had a weekly variety show on NBC that not nearly enough people watched. It went on the air on September 20 and the last of its eleven episodes aired on December 30. I wrote about it in this post earlier this year but I'll save you the trouble of clicking your way to that page. Here's the relevant part of it…

It was produced by the team of Bob Einstein and Allan Blye and it got generally good reviews but I don't think the network gave it much of a chance, plus it was in a rough time slot. It aired at 8 PM on Thursday evenings opposite The Waltons on CBS and Welcome Back, Kotter on ABC at the peak of those two shows' popularity.

I was working on Kotter at the time and everyone on our show liked Van Dyke and Company. We'd sometimes take a break during Thursday night rewrite meetings — which could last into the wee hours of the morning — to watch not our show but Mr. Van Dyke's. His show won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Series that year…unfortunately, after it was yanked off the air. It's only barely remembered and when it is, that's usually because Andy Kaufman was a semi-regular — his first real presence in prime-time.

A few years later with its ratings at a disastrous low, NBC hired the famed programmer Fred Silverman away from ABC to try and reprogram the network and raise its viewership. A month or three into his command, I was in a meeting with Silverman and he was rattling off some of the reasons why NBC had dug itself into such a deep hole. There were quite a few reasons but a big one was, he felt, that his predecessors had been too quick to cancel certain shows. These were good shows, he said…and if they'd been given more time, he believed they'd have found viewers (or vice-versa). I remember him saying, "They certainly would have done better than whatever the guys before me replaced them with."

He named four shows which, he said, should not have been canceled. I remember the names of three of them: Baa Baa Black Sheep, Sirota's Court…and Van Dyke and Company. His predecessors, he insisted, were too cowardly — the descriptor he used was "chickenshit" — and panicked. And there was some talk about shows which networks almost canceled when the early ratings were disappointing — M*A*S*H being the textbook example — but which turned out to be huge hits.

I should also mention one other thing that I thought hurt Mr. Van Dyke's show. It was mostly or wholly taped without a live audience and then they dubbed in the worst "canned laughter" I've ever heard on a TV program. I honestly believe that if they'd given the series a better time slot, stuck with it for a while and it had had more of a "live" feel, it would have run a long time. Much of the material was very clever and Dick was superb on it.

Here's a little less than a half-hour of clips from the show featuring Dick dancing a lot and interacting with guest stars like Mary Tyler Moore, John Denver and Tom Smothers. There are also bits in there with Andy Kaufman and Bob Einstein, and that's Chuck McCann playing Oliver Hardy…

And here's another of my favorite episodes of my favorite TV show…

Sam Sung Blue

Thanks to all the folks who wrote but I've decided to just forget about watching David Letterman on the Samsung TV Plus channel. I am less enthused than I was before I learned that they're running selected excerpts, not whole shows. There are oodles of old Letterman clips on YouTube that I haven't gotten around to watching. It also seems difficult — not impossible but not worth the hassle — to access this channel unless you own a Samsung Smart TV made after 2023, a Galaxy phone or tablet, one of their Family Hub refrigerators and so forth. I own none of those items and I'm not about to go out and buy one just so I can see Dave having his stage crew throw things off the roof.

Here's one those "How dumb can I be?" moments: I've been discussing this with friends on the phone and on the 'net for a few days now and I kept telling them, "I don't own any Samsung products." Then I finally realized I do. My computer monitor — the one I stare at all day and am staring at as I write this — is a Samsung. In fact, it's a great monitor that has served me well for at least fifteen years now so I'm not about to chuck it even though it's too old to get Samsung Plus TV.

It turns out that there were ways to just access the Samsung channel on a PC — which is why I read on the 'net that there were. But Samsung has closed them off — which is why I couldn't find one. It does seem possible to do it but the methods folks sent me involve some hacking and downloading software of dubious pedigree so I've decided to just give up on this. Maybe one of these days they'll come out with an app for my iPad or I'll be able to add it on my Roku TV. For now, I'll just watch some of the YouTube Letterman clips like this recently-posted one…

Today's Brief Kinda-Political Comment

I do not want to suggest even in the slightest way that it was a good thing that someone — presumably, the guy they've arrested and have a ton of evidence against including some near-confessions — gunned down that health care CEO. Awful, wrong, illegal, prosecute him to the max. But I do think it's about time that someone began talking about how much money insurance companies are making for not providing some of the services that people think they're getting when they sign up.

Many interesting articles suddenly abound. Kevin Drum has an important post about it here and another one here. This is a very important matter that has to be solved and it's comforting to know that our president-elect has some vague ideas that may at some point turn into a concept as to how to fix this kind of thing one of these days.

For the record: Being well into Medicare age, I have Medicare and it pays for almost everything I need. The few things it doesn't cover are almost all handled by my supplemental health insurance from the Writers Guild. This would be a much better world to live in if everyone had something like that.