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E! True Hollywood Story: "Charles In Charge."

You heard me. "Charles in Charge."

E! now reveals the Story left untold. Learn what almost left the sexy Nicole Eggert paralyzed for good, and go inside Josie Davis' struggle to grow up on TV and in real life. And what about the long list of Hollywood babes who wanted Charles to be in charge of their hearts?

What, indeed?

More C.L.O.-isms

I haven't done a music post in a while, but I can't think of much to write about, so I'll let someone else do the talking: here are a few good but randomly-selected quotes from the greatest living opera critic, Conrad L. Osborne. These all come from the 1967 edition of High Fidelity's Records in Review.

On the young Verdi (in the opera Nabucco):

He had nerve -- as much, in his way, as Wagner had in his. He was obviously persuaded that his musical vision of a scene would simply sweep away the need for radionality or consistency. His idea of an effective overture at this stage of his career is a case in point: one starts with a rather awful (but direct) melodic idea, very simply -- even crudely -- set forth; one repeats it, one alternates it with one or two contrasting ideas, not bothering with any real development; then one repeats it again, faster and louder, and works up to a conclusion. For some reason, the ideas no longer seem so awful, nor their presentation so rough; through pure determination and persistence, he makes you fight on his ground, where he always wins.

On Franco Corelli as Calaf in Puccini's Turandot:

It is a prodigious piece of vocalism. Here is a role in which command of a ringing top, the ability to sustain long, arching lines, and the art of maintaining a reasonable legato while giving or withdrawing volume add up to nearly everything; and when we add the exmplary clarity of Corelli's enunciation, the generosity of his temperament, andt he sheer virility and vitality of his tone, there is really not much left to talk about. One is fortunate if in a lifetime one encounters a tenor capable of singing through the whole thing with freshness and volume, and without embarrassment at any point. When such a one is found under the same roof with a similar Turandot [Birgit Nilsson], a sort of operatic millennium has arrived. Yes, he uses the scoop [attacking a note from below instead of hitting it directly], eleven or twelve times -- or rather a sort of gulp in attacking a high note that swallows up part of its value. A number of Italian tenors use the trick, presumably to make sure the throat is open, and it can be annoying, particularly on repeated high notes, as in "Nessun Dorma." In Signor Corelli's case, there seems no reason why he could not hit the note on the button if he made up his mind to; but of course the thing is actually of supreme unimportance. Musically, he is on excellent behavior, unless one chooses to be upset over a high A natural which he holds for several pages while striking the gong, as in the house. I like it -- provided it sounds like this.

On the traditional cuts to Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor (it used to be customary to perform this opera with whole scenes chopped out and little bits of music cut here and there for no particular reason):

As in the case with so many nineteenth-century Italian operas (Trovatore is another example), there are also, traditionally, brief cuts made apparently for musical reasons, but with no basis except in pedantry of the pickiest sort -- one sees four bars out here, a line there. (I have a mental picture of an aging Kapellmeister in charge of such matters back in the Damrosch/Grau era, irascibly scratching out bars of Italian trash -- bad enough that Mme. Smbrich insists on singing the thing at all.) An instance is a two-line excision made in Enrico's first long solo in the scene with Lucia (lines two to four, p. 67 of the Schirmer vocal score), a perfectly solid bit of development with some interesting off-beat accents and a fine chance for the voice to open out on the ascent to the E natural. There is simply no reason to cut it; yet the only times I have heard the music are in the London and Victor recordings, and when one asks a conductor why it is cut, one will get "Oh, that's never done" for an answer. A poor reason.

Paul Brownstein Speaks

Here's an interview with Paul Brownstein, who is the leading producer/assembler of DVD sets for older television shows, particularly the "Dick Van Dyke Show" DVD sets. He talks about the process of finding good master material for these shows and tracking down the kind of stuff that makes for good extras: in-character commercials, award-show clips, kinescopes of live TV broadcasts (for the "Phil Silvers" best-of set, he included the cast performing an excerpt from the then-new sitcom on "The Ed Sullivan Show"), and so on. He also hints that he may be working on extras for the upcoming DVD releases of "Get Smart" and "The Odd Couple," two of the more prominent gaps in the TV-on-DVD catalogue.

"Jimmy Stewart for President, Ronald Reagan For Best Friend"

Perhaps keeping in mind Jack Warner's famous line, Warner Home Video will simultaneously release a Jimmy Stewart collection and a Ronald Reagan collection.

I don't think I'll be buying all the films, but I'll definitely be picking up Kings Row, still the best of the over-the-top Freud-besotted Hollywood soaps (unfortunately the DVD won't have a music-only track for the Erich Korngold score), and where several under-utilized WB contract players got their best chance to show what they could do, including Reagan and Ann Sheridan. And from the Stewart collection, the individual title most worth getting is Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur; there's also Billy Wilder's Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis, but I haven't seen that yet.

Margie (1946)

Of all the great movies that aren't out on DVD yet, I think the movie that tops my wish list is 1946's Margie, directed by Henry King and starring Jeanne Crain. The description of the film doesn't sound like anything much: Crain plays a smart but shy high school girl in the '20s who loses her bloomers at inopportune times, wins one for the debate team, and has a crush on her handsome teacher (who, rather creepily, she eventually winds up marrying). Yet the description can't do it justice: as directed by the underrated King and played by the equally underrated Crain, it's one of the most beautiful movies of the '40s and very touching and even a little thought-provoking.

Like many, many, '40s movies, Margie is told in flashback (Citizen Kane made flashbacks into the device of choice for screenwriters and directors for a decade or more). King starts with a spectacular uninterrupted tracking shot from outside a house, through the open window and into the attic, where a middle-aged Margie and her teenage daughter are cleaning out some old things that remind Margie of her youth. She tells her daughter the story of what things were like for her in 1928, when she was a teenager.

It turns out that the teenaged Margie has a somewhat unusual living arrangement. Her father (Hobart Cavanaugh), an undertaker, is a widower who doesn't feel that he's capable of raising a daughter on his own, so Margie lives with her maternal grandmother (Esther Dale) and doesn't see her father very often. Margie is smart but introverted and nervous; she's also sexually frustrated and a little jealous of her trampy friend Marybelle (Barbara Lawrence) and her boyfriend Johnny (Conrad Janis, best known as Mindy's dad on "Mork and Mindy"). The film doesn't have much of a plot; it's a series of sequences in which Margie starts to come into her own as a person, with little triumphs like getting her father to come see her debate, or getting a date for the school dance. At the end, we return to middle-aged Margie with her husband and daughter, and the camera tracks back out of the attic and into the street.

King, the star director at Fox, was a veteran of the silent days with a style similar to John Ford's: he liked long takes, often with the camera placed at a low angle so you can see the ceilings; he didn't move the camera much unless the characters were moving with it; and he was very careful with his framing, making each shot look like a painting. Margie of course has the spectacular Fox Technicolor, but King doesn't over-light the film the way many directors did when working in Technicolor; instead he keeps a lot of scenes quite dark, calling attention to the things or people who really matter in the scene. Here (in not-so-great quality from my taped-from-TV copy) is one such scene in Margie, where Marybelle and Johnny dance to "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You" while Margie is in her room preparing for her debate. What I love best about King's direction of this movie is that he's not afraid of slowing down: there are moments where Margie does absolutely nothing except sit there and think, and you feel, in those moments, like you're watching a real person, not a character in a movie who always needs to be keeping busy.



The "thought-provoking" part of the film is that, like a lot of post-WWII movies, it's at least in part about the question of what a woman's role should be in a postwar world. The movie takes place in 1928, and it begins in 1946, but the proverbial elephant in the room is the period we don't see in the picture, the period of 1929 to 1945. Margie is exactly the kind of woman who could have done, and perhaps did do, great things in that period; she's intelligent, industrious and idealistic, and the sense of every character in the movie is that she has something great to offer if she'd only be confident enough to show it. Her grandmother is a feminist who tells visitors about her days fighting for the right to vote, and proudly predicts that Margie will be the first female President (Margie berates her grandmother for this, telling her that it scares boys off when she talks like that). Her debate speech inspires her father to become politically active and, in 1946, to become an Ambassador.

But Margie herself winds up as a typical housewife, and we never know for sure how she feels about it: Crain plays the present-day scenes a little wistfully, as though she's not entirely sure this is all she wanted. If film noir is often about fear of independent women in a post-War world, Margie is about the lost promise of women in that same world: after Margie had so much potential for greatness in her, is it really a happy ending for her to wind up standing by while men do the "important" work? Can we ask Margie to settle for that? Should we? The movie doesn't answer these questions one way or the other, but they're there, and that creates a bittersweet, even sad feeling in a movie that could have been nothing but another nostalgic trifle.

Here's one of the key scenes in the movie, the debate where Margie argues the "yes" position on the question "Should the U.S. take the Marines out of Nicaragua?" (The is a reference to the Marines' unsuccessful efforts against the Nicaraguan guerilla leader Sandino.) The clunky debater for the "no" position argues that prosperity is here to stay, the cost of military ventures is negligible, and the U.S. presence in South America will bring prosperity to that country. Margie wins the debate -- and more importantly, wins over her father -- by arguing that liberty is more important than prosperity, and a nation that values liberty cannot go around occupying other countries. The debate intentionally foreshadows all kinds of issues that were central in the world from 1929 through 1946, but more importantly, it's a chance to see Margie at her full potential: clumsy, awkward, a little pretentious, but passionate and idealistic and moving -- the sort of person who has a hint of greatness in her, even if that hint of greatness is mixed with hints of the ridiculous.

Crain, who is wonderful throughout the movie, is especially wonderful here: she has the tough task of showing Margie winning the debate, while simultaneously showing that Margie is relying on gestures and line inflections she learned by rote. Her mechanical gestures and intentionally stiff line readings are funny, and yet she leaves no doubt of why Margie is winning the debate or why her father is so moved to see the potential of his daughter. It's a beautiful performance in a beautiful movie.



Notes: the film was written by F. Hugh Herbert (yes, he printed his name that way because of the way it sounds when you say "F. Hugh"), best known as the writer of The Moon is Blue, and based on a story by "My Sister Eileen" writer Ruth McKinney and her husband Richard Bransten.

Gettin' Frisky

In the '40s and early '50s, Chuck Jones (and writer Mike Maltese) came up with an exceptional string of new cartoon characters, all of them unique and funny: Hubie and Bertie the mice; Charlie Dog (partly based on a character from an earlier Bob Clampett cartoon); Inki and the Mynah Bird; the Three Bears; Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot. Unfortunately, Jones retired nearly all of these characters around 1952 and concentrated on the most formulaic of the characters he'd created: Pepe Le Pew and the Road Runner and Coyote. The "second-tier" Jones characters often starred in cartoons that were too quirky for the characters to catch on with audiences (Jones said he retired the Three Bears because theatre exhibitors told Warner Brothers to stop sending them these cartoons), but they represent some of his very best work.

Here are two cartoons featuring another one of Jones's short-lived characters: Frisky Puppy, the cute little dog who constantly (and unwittingly) defeats the evil Claude Cat by running up behind him and barking loudly. There were only three of these cartoons, and they all have the same joke over and over again: Claude is looking for Frisky, Frisky appears behind him, Frisky barks, and Claude jumps up to the ceiling. That the cartoons work so well is a tribute to the power of great comedy timing -- even if you know something's going to happen, it's funny because you don't know exactly when it's going to happen -- and the ability of Maltese to come up with clever variations on the same gag.

The first Frisky cartoon was "Two's a Crowd" (1950), with Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet providing the voices of Frisky and Claude's owners:



The main title music, incidentally, is "Put 'Em in a Box, Tie 'Em with a Ribbon and Throw 'Em in the Deep Blue Sea," which Doris Day had introduced in a Warner Brothers movie a year or so earlier.

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The second was "Terrier-Stricken" (1952), which is more of the same but with even more sadistic violence being visited on Claude:

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The third and last cartoon, "No Barking" (which takes the characters out of the house and into an outdoor urban setting), is available on the third Looney Tunes Golden Collection. "No Barking" was animated entirely by Ken Harris, and he handles a lot of the animation in the two earlier cartoons.

Happy Blog-eversary to Me

Two years ago today I started posting;
I'm only stating facts, of course, not boasting.
An anniversary should call for roasting,
Though preferably not with Colbert hosting.
Though you may say I currently am coasting
On Youtube'd clips, your angry words have no sting.
And so, if you will join me, we'll be toasting
My blog... I think I'm out of rhymes for "posting."

More Lubitsch

Sorry I haven't been posting much in the way of original material lately; while I'm trying to put something together, here are some more snippets from Ernst Lubitsch films:

1. "Beyond the Blue Horizon" from Monte Carlo (1930) -- this is one of the most influential musical numbers ever filmed (Frank Tashlin drew on it for that Hollywood or Bust number I posted earlier), an early example of how a film musical could go beyond a filmed record of a performer delivering a song, and actually achieve things that a stage musical could not -- in this case, the whimsical and fanciful effect of having people wave to Jeanette MacDonald from outside the train. The weakness of the number is Lubitsch's usual weakness as a director of musicals: he seemed to have very little interest in letting a song make a big impact in and of itself, so the song gets two brief refrains and then, without any real buildup or climax, it's over. Still, this is movie-musical history being made here.



2. The title song from One Hour With You -- Lubitsch didn't actually direct all of this musical remake of his film The Marriage Circle (George Cukor started the film, but Lubitsch finished it), but he produced it and supervised Samson Raphaelson's script, and it's a Lubitsch film in every way, though not quite up to the standard of Lubitsch's other Maurice Chevalier musicals (or Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight). This number is one of the best parts of the film, a fine example of how Lubitsch never liked to let the plot get lost even during a musical number: here the plot keeps moving forward, as we have a series of complications -- MacDonald thinks Chevalier is interested in another woman at the party, not realizing that her best friend (Genevieve Tobin) is the one who's actually pursuing Chevalier -- that are advanced in the middle of all the music and dancing, as well as in Leo Robin's lyrics.



3. And finally, a short clip from One Hour With You involving Adolph (Charlie Ruggles) and his valet, who delivers the line that gets the biggest laugh in the entire movie:

The Greatest Pundit of them All

I promise to stop posting WKRP clips after this (at least for a while), but I just wanted to post some reminders of why Les Nessman absolutely needs to have his own pundit show.

Les Nessman's interview technique (with actress Colleen Camp):

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Les Nessman on the Middle East, in a moment that (as I mentioned earlier) anticipates another piece of punditry by 25 years:

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Les Nessman's no-holds-barred personal commentary:

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Is there a single news channel that Les couldn't walk into today, no questions asked?

Son Confuso E Stupefatto

The record companies haven't quite given up on audio-only opera recordings yet -- though they're getting there -- and there's a new release that looks like it might be good: Haydn's Orlando Paladino, conducted by Nicolaus Harnoncourt.

As I explained some time ago, Haydn was not a great opera composer: he never had nor developed the ability to create specific characterizations in music, which is the one thing any good opera compoer needs to be able to do. He was brilliant at conveying emotion in music, but the emotions of characters in Haydn operas are generic, unrelated to character or situation: there's the rage aria, the song of joy, or jealousy, or love; but nothing that can really convey the reaction of a specific person to a specific situation. Mozart could do that, and so could Handel, and so could composers who weren't anywhere near as proficient as Haydn -- Gluck, for example. Haydn's operas aren't dramas; they're just a collection of musical moments.

However, many of those musical moments are tuneful or clever or ingenious in some way, and Orlando Paladino has some of his best work in the field -- it's kind of a spoof of heroic operas, a mix of comedy and drama that anticipates Don Giovanni without being anywhere near as good. Harnoncourt has already done one worthwhile recording of a Haydn opera, his Armida with Cecilia Bartoli, so this new recording should be worth getting.

More WKRP Clips

Here are some more "WKRP in Cincinnati" clips, of scenes that I particularly like. Warning: if you don't like "WKRP in Cincinnati," or the cast, or Hugh Wilson, well, there will be other, non-WKRP posts. But I wanted to post about it a few times, because I think of "WKRP" as the most underrated of the great '70s sitcoms.

"WKRP" has never really had a reputation on a par with "Taxi" or "Mary Tyler Moore" or "Barney Miller" or "M*A*S*H," but I think it was actually the best sitcom of its era when it came to the most important thing a sitcom can do: create memorable, distinctive characters and create comedy from those characters, instead of a lot of extraneous jokes. The characters on "WKRP" were all so well-defined that seeing them act out of character, even slightly out of character, could be inherently funny, and the characters all had different and well-defined relationships to each other, so you could put any two characters together in a scene and get a different type of comedy out of it.

The other thing Wilson did with the show was give it more variety than most sitcoms: it's not just that they'd do an occasional "very special episode," like the one about the Who concert in Cincinnati where kids were trampled to death; they would actually change the style and tone from week to week depending on what the story was about. So one week it would be a farce, another week a dramedy, still another week a traditional sitcom story and still another week an extended comedy sketch (there is one episode, "Hotel Oceanview," that is literally an adaptation of a Toronto Second City sketch by the same writer). "Mary Tyler Moore" and other MTM and MTM-style shows valued consistency in style and tone; "WKRP" fluctuated and experimented more, which may explain why it was treated as the red-headed stepchild at MTM ("I wouldn't watch it" -- Mary Tyler Moore).

So, anyway, here are today's clips for your delectation:

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One of the most famous moments of the series, the "Ferryman" jingle from the episode "A Commercial Break" (co-written by Richard Sanders, the actor who played Les Nessman; he wrote five episodes of the series, most of them very good). The premise of the episode, that the radio station's new advertising client is a funeral home that wants to advertise to young people (to get them to make their funeral arrangements early) is the kind of dark/absurd premise that, in the words of commenter "John", was "doing humor in prime-time that up until that point had been limited to the "Saturday Night Live" skits on NBC."

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For a good example of the strength of the characters and how they can be funny without any one-liners or obvious "jokes," here's a clip from the episode "Frog Story," where Herb has accidentally killed Greenpeace, his daughter's pet frog. Each character has his or her own reaction to the totally absurd death ("NewsRadio" would do a similar story about the death of a rat), and the scene is funny even though there's hardly a line in it that sounds like a setup or punchline.

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An excerpt from the second-season opener, "For Love Or Money," which shows the way "WKRP" sometimes incorporated influences from sketch/improv comedy; I've mentioned before that there were a number of writers from Second City, but this particular episode was more a tribute to the comedy troupe The Committee: with Howard Hesseman joined as guest star by fellow Committee member Julie Payne, they reportedly started improvising on set, to the point that showrunner Hugh Wilson decided to incorporate the improvisation and expand their scenes together -- to the point that what was planned as a single episode wound up being rewritten, on the set, into a two-parter. In this scene, Johnny takes his ex-girlfriend Buffy (Payne) to Jennifer's apartment, hoping to rekindle their old affair, only to discover what his fond memories of Buffy had blocked out: she's a nut, and she's planning on suing him. My favourite bit in the scene, which is clearly an improvised bit: "I've learned to deal with materialism by really getting into it, so really I'm free of it."

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This next clip is from the episode "Changes" (season 4), another episode written by Toronto Second City's own Peter Torokvei. The episode uses two parallel plots that intersect: Venus, learning he's going to be interviewed by a militant black magazine, tries to dress and act in a way that's more in touch with what he thinks of as modern black culture; while Jennifer offers to turn Herb's career around by teaching him to dress and act tastefully. The way it all plays out goes beyond the usual "just be yourself" sitcom episode. This scene, from near the beginning of act 2, brings the two stories together for the first time and also incorporates a topical political joke.

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The episode "Baby, It's Cold Inside" (the heat conks out in the station and various characters start drinking to warm themselves up) is a 25-minute character study of the station owner, Mama Carlson; it does a really exceptional job of taking a character who hadn't appeared very often up to that point and not only filling us in on her backstory, but giving her a specific way of interacting with every regular character on the show. By the end of the episode, we know all kinds of things about a character we barely knew before, and we can also infer some things about the regular characters (like Jennifer's own similarity to Mama Carlson). In this scene near the end, Mama Carlson blackmails Johnny into playing Gershwin's "Someone To Watch Over Me," giving the wonderful musical-theatre performer Carol Bruce a chance to show off her great throaty voice. Herb mouthing the lyrics as she sings is a nice humanizing touch for that character.

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From the episode "Venus and the Man" (season 3), written by Hugh Wilson, a great little self-contained scene for Les Nessman where he explains the history of music and the influences that created it (warning: high volume level):



Also, this is a little very-special-episode-ish, but I'll post it because it's hard to bring up "Venus and the Man" without mentioning it, and because ten zillion physics teachers have used this clip in class -- the scene where Venus explains the structure of the atom:

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And finally, a famous example of the way the show used popular music: some excerpts from scenes in "For Love Or Money" that make use of the song "After the Love is Gone" by Earth, Wind and Fire.

The Smiling Lieutenant

Update: To make the post more manageable I've replaced the embedded YouTube links with links to the clips.

My favourite film director -- my idol, I might say, if it didn't sound so... idolatrous -- is Ernst Lubitsch, and one of my favourite among his films is his 1931 semi-musical The Smiling Lieutenant. Since the film isn't available on DVD or even VHS, I thought I'd write a little bit about it and post some clips to give an idea of what it's like. If you ever get a chance to see this movie in a theatre, jump at that chance: I've seen it three times with three different audiences and the whole audience always laughs through the whole thing and bursts into applause at the end. It's one of the great crowd-pleasers among vintage movies.

The Smiling Lieutenant is based on Oscar Straus's Viennese operetta "A Waltz Dream", though Lubitsch relegated all the operetta's songs to background music and had Straus write a few new songs in a more modern style. As he usually did when adapting a play or an operetta, Lubitsch kept the basic outline of the story but changed everything else. The basic idea is that Niki (Maurice Chevalier), a Viennese lieutenant, is forced into marriage with Anna (Miriam Hopkins), princess of the tiny kingdom of Flausenthurm, and -- what's worse -- forced to leave his beloved Vienna and live in musty old Flausenthurm. Niki's real love is Franzi (Claudette Colbert), leader of a Viennese all-girl orchestra, who represents everything that's hip and up-to-date about Viennese fashion and music. In the end, Franzi takes pity on Anna and shows her how to attract Niki by switching to modern music and clothes.

What Lubitsch does with this material is to make a film about the intersection of music and sex, and the various ways in which music can be a metaphor for sexual intercourse. The script, by Lubitsch's great collaborator Samson Raphaelson, is full of suggestive music/sex jokes:

NIKI: You said she plays the violin?
MAX (Charlie Ruggles): Yes.
NIKI: I play the piano.

FRANZI: Maybe someday we can have a duet.
NIKI: I love chamber music.

ANNA: Tell me, father, girls like [Franzi] -- do they all play the violin?
KING: Not necessarily, but I'll tell you one thing -- they play!

Characters in the film often make music together before having sex; after Niki and Franzi's first meeting, we dissolve to them in his room -- playing a piano/violin duet. Making music is the prelude to sexual intercourse, and the better you are at making music, in this film, the sexier you are. Franzi saves Anna and Niki's marriage in the end by passing on to Anna the fact that pleasing someone sexually means pleasing him musically, so Anna first becomes attractive to Niki when he sees her at the piano playing jazz. It's a wonderful, funny, dirty-minded film -- probably the most risqué film even Lubitsch ever made.

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The first clip is the opening scene of the film. Like many scenes, it's done like a silent movie: no sound equipment was used, and there's no dialogue, just visuals, sound effects and music. It sums up the essence of the way Lubitsch liked to use short, simple visual hooks to explain what was going on without directly explaining it. We see a sex scene play out with nothing more than a door, a lamp, and a time lapse; we haven't even seen Chevalier yet and already we know, from this scene, that he's sort of a wastrel (doesn't pay his bills) and that he's a rake.

Most of the music in this scene is from the first song in "A Waltz Dream," "Ein Mädchen, das so lieb und brav."

Click here to view the clip.

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And another mostly-silent scene, which sets the plot in motion: Niki, standing on guard duty, winks at Franzi just as Princess Anna drive by, and Anna mistakenly thinks that Niki is laughing at her. There's not much I can say about this scene except that it's an example of Lubitsch's ability to convey a ton of plot information in very little time and with very few shots and gestures; it would take most moviemakers ten minutes to set up all of this.

Click here to view the clip.

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Niki gets out of trouble with the Princess by claiming that he was really winking at her; he is appointed to act as the Princess's guide while she is in Vienna. But the Princess is now falling in love with Niki, and, believing that he likes her, plans to get him for a husband. This next clip has Niki returning to Franzi, and he carries her up the stairs and into her room -- to dance with her; music and dancing are inseparable from sex in this film, and Lubitsch makes a lot of teasing us with the fact that we never know if characters are preparing to make love or just to make music. The scene intercuts Niki and Franzi singing their song -- full of sexual innuendos -- with Princess Anna's pure-and-demure song about how she sees Niki. And no, Colbert and Hopkins can't sing particularly well, but they manage.

Click here to view the clip.

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Anna asks her father for permission to marry Niki, and before Niki knows it, he's been named as Anna's chosen husband by both the King of Flausenthurm and the Emperor of Austria. In this scene, Franzi sits in Niki's apartment, waiting for him to come back, surrounded by all kinds of congratulatory gifts and flowers that have been delivered to Niki on the announcement of his engagement. When Franzi sees Niki, she realizes that he hasn't been able to get out of the engagement; so she leaves without letting him see her, and walks off into the night. This is another silent scene, with beautiful acting by Colbert and a favourite Lubitsch/Raphaelson device: having a woman give a man her garter as a token of her esteem.

Click here to view the clip.

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This scene, on Niki and Anna's wedding night, starts by showing what a musty, old-fashioned place Flausenthurm is by showing that the wedding night can't begin until it's officially pronounced to be "fitting and proper." Then we get the scene with Anna and Niki, who (as in the operetta) refuses to consummate the marriage. Lubitsch pulls off one of his funniest (yet kind of sad) door gags, involving the King emerging from behind the door with something that really can't satisfy his daughter in her current predicament.

Click here to view the clip.

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When Franzi and her band show up in Flausenthurm, Niki rekindles his affair with her. In the climactic scene of the movie, Anna tricks Franzi into coming to the palace, and confronts her. But just as it looks like they're going to fight, they break down crying instead, because they're both miserable for different reasons: Anna because Niki doesn't love her, and Franzi because Niki can never really be hers. The two commisserate, and Franzi decides to help Anna attract Niki. In assessing what's wrong with Anna, she once again makes the connection between music and sex: unexciting tastes in music are an indicator of an unexciting approach to sex. And in the song "Jazz Up Your Lingerie," Franzi teaches Anna that sexy clothes are music: "Choose snappy music to wear." As Anna gets "hotter" in her musical tastes, she also gets "hotter" in her taste in clothes and everything else, and by the end of the montage (a trick Lubitsch used often: show a change in someone's life by dissolving from her wardrobe "before" to her wardrobe "after") she is a changed woman.


Click here to view the clip.

(Personal trivia time: I once wrote a screenplay based on Richard Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier (it never got any further than an honourable-mention list at Scriptapalooza, and didn't deserve to), and because Lubitsch wanted to make that opera into a non-musical movie, I tried write it in the style of Lubitsch and Raphaelson. And for a scene between the two female leads, I drew on this scene as the inspiration, including a somewhat similar slapping scene. Somebody who does it better than me really ought to do Rosenkavalier as a non-musical comedy and do it as the Lubitsch movie Lubitsch never got around to making.)

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And in the closing scene, Niki (having just learned that Franzi has left Flausenthurm) sits alone drinking, when he hears hot-jazz music coming from Anna's room. Again, there's almost no dialogue here, and what makes it great, apart from the very funny gags (like Niki running all the way across the palace just to check whether there's anything wrong with what he's been drinking -- and then later on running back to drink more of it, because he likes what he's been seeing), is that it's not a sexist scene where the woman just gets the man by acting and dressing the way he likes: by becoming more free and frank in her sexuality, Anna gains power, going from Niki's demure doormat to the one who calls the shots in their relationship. And in keeping with Lubitsch's love of quick visual hooks and running gags, this scene brings back the checker board from Anna and Niki's disastrous wedding night, except now she's using it to turn the tables on her husband.

Click here to view the clip.

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The only commercial release for The Smiling Lieutenant was on a briefly-available laserdisc set, The Lubitsch Touch. It may come on television occasionally, and Lubitsch retrospectives (at film societies and such) often include this film. Again, if you can see it, see it; you won't be disappointed. Except maybe with the quality of Colbert's and Hopkins's singing, but their performances are so good in this film (Hopkins would go on to give two more fantastic performances for Lubitsch, in Trouble and Paradise and Design For Living), what does it matter that they can't sing?

Bilko!!!

Here are the episodes that are going to be on the Best of the Phil Silvers Show (Sgt. Bilko) Collection, which will be released this Tuesday.

Episodes from Season 1

- "New Recruits" (pilot episode: Bilko gets cleaned out in a poker game and has to find a way to get money to get back into the game)
- The WAC (WAC Sergeant Joan Horgan beats out Bilko for a jeep)
- "The Horse" (Bilko loses money on a horse, then buys the horse hoping to turn it into a winner)
- "The Eating Contest" (Bilko backs a new recruit for an eating contest, but finds that the guy can only eat when he's unhappy)
- "Bivouac" (the Colonel tries to outwit Bilko when he once again attempts to fake sick to get out of maneuvers)
- "The Twitch" (Bilko takes bets on how many times the Colonel's wife will do a nervous twitch)
- "The Investigation" (a Congressional Committee visits the camp)
- "The Revolutionary War" (Bilko tries to get a promotion on the basis that his ancestor may have been a hero of the Revolutionary war)
- "The Court Martial" (a monkey is accidentally inducted into the Army -- as "Private Harry Speakup" -- and the only way to get him out is to court-martial him)
- "The Con Men" (Bilko tries to con the con artists who swindled Private Doberman out of his money)

Episodes From Season 2

- "A Mess Sergeant Can't Win" (Bilko tries to keep Mess Sergeant Ritzik from leaving the Army)
- "Doberman's Sister" (Bilko fixes up Zimmerman with Doberman's sister)
- "Bilko's Tax Trouble" (Bilko gets audited)
- "The Big Scandal" (Bilko accidentally hypnotizes Doberman, and in his trance, Doberman confesses to the Colonel's wife that he's in love with her)

Episodes From Season 3

- "Hillbilly Whiz" (Bilko finds a hick who turns out to be the best pitcher the platoon's baseball team has ever had; guest star Dick Van Dyke)
- "Bilko the Art Lover" (Bilko stays in New York with an old friend who wants to be an artist; guest star Alan Alda)

Episodes From Season 4

- "Bilko Joins the Navy" (Bilko... uh... joins the Navy)
- "Weekend Colonel" (the final episode of the show: Bilko finds someone to pose as Colonel Hall)

As you can see, the vast majority of the episodes in the set are from the first two seasons; after that, the creator/showrunner Nat Hiken left the show, and the quality dipped significantly.

OT: Parallels and Predictions

In an earlier post, I explained why the results of U.S. Presidential elections since 1980 closely parallel the results of the elections from 1932 through the '60s. Based on those parallels, I was wondering whether they say anything about midterm elections -- and, come to think of it, there are some parallels here too.

For example, I mentioned in my earlier post that not only are Eisenhower and Clinton similar Presidents, but their first mid-term elections had similar results (Eisenhower's party lost both houses of Congress in 1954, as did Clinton's in 1994). And there's a strong parallel between the 1962 midterms, during Kennedy's Presidency, and the 2002 midterms, during Bush II. In both cases, you had a President who had gotten into office by a very slim margin, and a Congress that seemed to be potentially in play for the opposition party. Under normal circumstances, the President's own party might have been expected to lose in the midterms.

Instead, the Democrats in 1962 picked up several Senate seats and only lost two House seats (astonishingly few at the time; in the '30s, '40s and '50s the President's party usually lost 20+ seats in a midterm), while the Republicans in 2002 gained a few seats in both Houses. There were various reasons for these results, some of them a bit unsavory (quite a few scandals of today are linked to stuff Abramoff, DeLay et al. did in 2002 to help win the midterms), but the main reason was that the President and his party had been given a boost by a crisis that had emerged the previous year -- the building of the Berlin Wall for Kennedy; 9/11 for Bush -- and had a big foreign-policy issue to take directly into the midterms: Kennedy had the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, while Bush had Iraq and the impending war. This produced, not a big win, but a disappointing result for the other party that solidified the President's party's control over the Congress.

The 1966 midterms were a different story, and not just because there was a different President: there was widespread discontent with the President's domestic agenda, with the war abroad, and with the President's party in general. This led to a big win for the Republicans in the midterms: they didn't manage to take back either house of Congress, but they won a large number of seats in both Houses, effectively crippling Johnson's ability to get anything passed. Now, the parallels are never perfect, of course. A lot of discontent with Johnson's domestic policy revolved around the best things he'd done, like his anti-segregation policies. The discontent with the current administration, on the other hand, is more akin to what happened during the Carter administration: the perception that the President can't get anything worthwhile done even though his party controls Congress. Still, the parallels are there. And while discontent with the war hadn't reached the boiling point in 1966, it was certainly there, to the extent that HUAC opened an investigation into anti-war protesters in the summer of 1966.

So if the parallel holds, and I'm not saying it definitely will, the Republicans would be expected to sustain losses in both Houses while not losing control altogether. That seems like a reasonable prediction, and close to what the professional forecasters are forecasting. The one thing to note is that the margins of control are slimmer now than they were in the '60s, so a relatively small swing of seats (by historical standards) could swing control; however, large swings of seats are relatively uncommon now.

I will add again that if the parallel holds this year, I'm going to be betting real money an Al Gore presidency for 2009.

Tashlin Mania!

It's a good time to be a Frank Tashlin fan. Fox is finally releasing, in August, The Jayne Mansfield Collection, which will feature the DVD debuts of Tashlin's two best-known movies, The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? These movies were the ones where Tashlin had the greatest freedom to do what he wanted -- he said that Buddy Adler, the executive producer at Fox at the time, gave him total freedom on Rock Hunter, with the result that it was his only film where there was "no compromise" -- and they have everything that makes Tashlin great: cartoony gags (the famous wild takes from various men when Mansfield makes her entrance in Girl Can't Help It), censor-baiting humour (in Rock Hunter Joan Blondell recalls that she once had a crush on a milkman, but he found another girl who "liked his brand of cream"), fourth wall breaking. Most of all they show off his total irreverence toward every aspect of '50s culture: rock music, advertising, big corporations and breast fixations. At a time when out-and-out satire wasn't all that popular, Tashlin created, in Rock Hunter, one of the best satirical movies ever made.

The Tashlin DVD-ography was also improved last year with the release of several of his cartoons on the third Looney Tunes Golden Collection (including the cartoon that's arguably his masterpiece in the animation field, "Porky Pig's Feat"). But there's still a lot of Tashlin that needs to be dusted off and released to an unsuspecting public. Here are a couple of examples of Tashlin at his best, one animated, one live-action.

The animated cartoon is "Plane Daffy" (1944), one of the great cartoons from Tashlin's brief but memorable return to Warner Brothers in the early '40s. It shows off the angular, magazine-cartoon style of drawing he was using by this time, as well as the cynical edge of his humour: few "wartime" cartoons would dare to portray fighting men as a bunch of horndogs who would sell out their missions to party with a sexy Nazi spy ("Hata Mari"). Daffy's line after he emerges from the icebox is second only to the previously-quoted line from "Little Rural Riding Hood" as a guaranteed bring-down-the-house-er in a theatre. As to who animated what, I'll have to leave that to Thad; I'm never too sure of how to identify Tashlin's animators, perhaps because he cultivated a slightly different animation style than the other directors -- with the result that even distinctive animators like Art Davis seem to do things a little differently with Tashlin. Anyway, here's the cartoon:

(Clip removed due to copyright issues -- the cartoon will be available on the next Looney Tunes Golden Collection this year)

And the live-action excerpt is from Hollywood or Bust (1956), the second of Tashlin's two films with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. In this musical number, "A Day in the Country," the two drive down a country road (a real road; no rear-projection here) while waving to passers-by. It's Tashlin's tribute to Ernst Lubitsch and the "Beyond the Blue Horizon" number in Monte Carlo (where Jeanette MacDonald waves to passers-by from a train, and they wave back), except that every person Martin and Lewis wave to is a sexy woman in a skimpy outfit. Tashlin had something of an obsession with women's legs, and in this scene he gets to indulge it to his heart's content. But he also creates one of the few "outdoor" musical numbers that actually work; most musicals falter when they go out of the studio and into a natural setting, but because Tashlin's use of the outdoor setting is so insane (a countryside populated entirely by beautiful women in glamour poses), it doesn't feel incongruous to have people singing in this setting; it's just exhilarating and fun.



And just to further illustrate Tashlin's penchant for wholesome fetishism, here's a scene from his other Martin/Lewis movie, Artists and Models (1955). The scene has the two female leads, Dorothy Malone and Shirley MacLaine, and follows the Tashlin credo when dealing with female characters: no matter what the situation, always find an excuse to have them strike glamour-magazine poses. Among "mainstream" '50s directors, only Tashlin would have a character play a scene in a towel and high heels. Also, this movie cast Shirley MacLaine as a character obsessed with the Zodiac, long before she became associated with such things in real life.



Please forgive the video/audio quality of these clips, but I thought it was better to make them available in this form than not at all. Hopefully there'll be a DVD soon.

WKRP, Round 2

(My first "WKRP in Cincinnati" post, about the episode "Real Families," can be found below this one.)

Now, of course I wouldn't be a true "WKRP in Cincinnati" fan if I didn't bring you the most famous scene in any of the show's 90 episodes: the turkey drop from "Turkeys Away" (season 1). Here's the whole scene, right up until Mr. Carlson's famous closing line.



And here are a few other brief excerpts from the first season:

A commercial for Red Wigglers (The Cadillac of Worms):

(Link not available)

Les tries on a new wig to the tune of "Hot Blooded" by Foreigner (Hugh Wilson got the idea for the scene after hearing "Hot Blooded" on the radio):



Johnny plays "That Old Time Rock n' Roll" but is interrupted by an invasion of elderly people who object to the station's new rock n' roll format:

Han Shoots First, Yada Yada

The original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD, by which USA Today means the original original trilogy, before George Lucas did whatever it is George Lucas does to his movies.

Every other post and comments thread I've seen about this makes two points:

a) This is a scam, since they'll just come out with yet another version in another format a year later;
b) Everyone will buy it anyway.

Sounds about right.

WKRP in Cincinnati - "Real Families"

Though "WKRP in Cincinnati" will probably never be on DVD (music rights, music rights, and music rights are the three reasons why), I have a lot of episodes on tape, so I thought I'd occasionally post some clips from the show, just to remind us all what we're missing.

In this post, I've Youtub'd some clips from probably the best episode of the series, "Real Families," which aired in November 1980. It was written (with the usual rewrites by creator/showrunner Hugh Wilson) by Peter Torokvei. Torokvei had come to WKRP from Toronto Second City, where he, Steve Kampmann (another future WKRP writer), Robin Duke and Martin Short were part of a cast that Second City producer Andrew Alexander called "One of the funniest stage casts I have had the pleasure of producing." Torokvei's material for WKRP has that Second City style to it sometimes: absurd in a deadpan sort of way, and at once fascinated and repelled by the effects of pop culture on the way we live our lives.

The idea of "Real Families" is that the sleazy sales manager Herb (Frank Bonner) is profiled on a reality show that picks one "average" person every week and finds out whether they're really as average as they claim to be. Herb is determined to make a great impression on the show, and the hosts of the show (Peter Marshall and Daphne Maxwell) are just as determined to embarrass him. The entire episode is shot as an episode of "Real Families," with no audience or laugh track, and a semi-improvised feel -- though most of the material was in fact scripted.

In this clip, the hosts show up when Herb isn't expecting them, and Herb, caught off guard, tries to prove he's a clean-living man by taking his family to church -- even though it soon becomes apparent that he has no idea where to find a church. This is followed by a clip of Herb trying to do all kinds of "average American" things for the camera and failing at each one of them: barbecuing, throwing the football around with his son, making small talk. The clip ends with a funny-grim scene of Herb's family spaced out in front of the television, and has Herb's wife Lucille (Edie McClurg) taking a little dig at the show "Little House on the Prairie," which was killing WKRP in the ratings at the time.



The next clip has the hosts going to all Herb's colleagues at WKRP, asking them to say what they think of Herb. Every one of them robotically recites the famous line "He's a hard worker, a loyal husband, and an all-around fine person." Though Bailey (Jan Smithers) has some trouble getting it right.



In the next clip, after a couple of fun bits for Jennifer (Loni Anderson) and Johnny (Howard Hesseman), the hosts go to work exposing Herb in front of the TV audience, discovering that he doesn't actually do his job, and when he does, it usually ends in disaster. The "dancing ducks" promotion is based on a disastrous promotion that actually happened at a radio station Hugh Wilson worked with in Atlanta.



And here are the last few minutes of the episode, where both Lucille and Herb turn on the hosts, especially Herb, who kicks the camera crew out with an impassioned Howard Beale-ish rant about television in general ("Nothing on the tube is real! Not even in the news!"). But it doesn't end there; there's a bitter little tag scene that reminds us that people will subject to any humiliation and like it, as long as they can get on television.



And then, after a brief "I Love Lucy" reference, the famous gibberish closing theme song, and the MTM Kitten, the episode is over.

Obviously this isn't a typical "WKRP" episode, but it does demonstrate how strong the characters were: they're so distinctive that even in their very brief bits reciting the same line ("hard worker, loyal husband..."), each one does it in a different way that is appropriate for his or her character: Les (Richard Sanders) tosses it off and goes right back to talking about the only thing that matters, his brilliant work as a newsman; Jennifer just tosses it off dismissively; Bailey stammers and gets nervous. And the episode is great both as a satire of television and its effect on everyday life, and as a character study of the slimy but pathetic and kind of likable-in-spite-of-everything Herb.

Most of all, I love the fact that Wilson usually kept "WKRP" relatively free of easy setup-punchline jokes, or extraneous jokes; the characters never sound like they're clever joke machines, but rather they sound like people and the humour comes from the characters and the way they react to particular situations. Hesseman recalled that if you suggested a joke to Wilson, he'd often say: "That's a good joke, but it's off-story," and reject it for that reason.

Steele-O-Vision

Well, finally, an '80s series will have every episode available on DVD: Fox has announced the last volume of "Remington Steele", which has the 22-episode fourth season and the disastrous fifth season. That season, most famous because it prevented Pierce Brosnan from becoming James Bond for another ten years (NBC wouldn't let him out of his contract) and prevented Stephanie Zimbalist from being the female lead in Robocop (same reason), consisted of three mediocre two-hour episodes, and on one of the season 2 commentaries, creator/showrunner Michael Gleason says he "didn't even come down to the set" during that season.

The special features are being produced by the same people who did the "Moonlighting" special features, and, like that show, the new set will have a special feature on the loyal fan base of "Steele." It's good to see the show getting the kind of recognition it's getting from these DVD releases, because it holds up very well and the character of Laura Holt still puts most TV heroines to shame when it comes to creating a female lead who is independent, strong and smart without a hint of Mary-Sue-ishness. I had much more about the show in this post from last year.

Those Weren't The Good Old Days

One of the things about being an old-movie buff is that you can fall into the trap of talking as though all movie genres were done better in the Good Old Days. (Abbreviation: the "GOD". Well, it makes more sense than that awful "MSM" abbreviation.) I definitely don't think that, but I do think that there were some genres that were, on the whole, better served in the early days of movies than they have been in the modern era. I date the "modern era" rather arbitrarily from the collapse of the studio system in the mid-'50s; some would put it later.

So I thought I would take a minute to ask myself, what kinds of movies do I think have been better off in the post-GOD (unlike the genres the GOD dominates, such as comedies and musicals)? I would answer as follows:

Gangster movies. By saying that I prefer more recent gangster movies, I'm by no means putting down the gangster films of the GOD; the definitive gangster movie star of that era, James Cagney, is somewhere near my favorite movie actor of the GOD. But I think that even the best gangster movies of the '30s and '40s were somewhat hobbled by the limitations on what could be done or said. Even in the "Pre-Code" era, a movie couldn't come close to portraying the full measure of real-life brutality or profanity. And that matters because a gangster movie is, by its nature, a realistic movie; it gets its special kick from the fact that it portrays a very real part of society that both repels and fascinates us. Something like a film noir, which is a crime movie but a stylized, almost dreamlike kind of crime movie, doesn't need realism to be effective; but something like The Roaring Twenties, which presents itself as a semi-documentary portrayal of a historical phenomenon, would be more effective if it could come closer to portraying the reality it purports to bring us.

Westerns. - The collapse of the studio system arguably began with a Western -- Jimmy Stewart's profit-sharing deal for Winchester '73, which signalled that stars and their agents would have much more deal-making power from now on -- so it's fitting that Westerns improved a great deal after that collapse. Among the very greatest Westerns, I can think of hardly any that were old-school studio-system contract-player products; My Darling Clementine, a Fox production, is just about the only one that comes to mind. In the late '40s and early '50s, when the studio system was crumbling, most of the best "A" Westerns were made by independent companies like John Ford and Merian C. Cooper's Argosy Productions. And the more the studio system crumbled away, the more interesting big-budget Westerns became.

Biopics. - I'm not saying the biopic has ever been a fertile source of great movie material, but to the extent that there is such a thing as a good biopic, there were fewer of them in the studio-system era. Censorship restrictions and studio timidity meant that every biopic had to drain all the "dark" stuff out of a historical or entertainment-industry figure and leave out anything even vaguely controversial, as for example the way The Life of Emile Zola had to leave out the issue of anti-Semitism. I can think of at least one great studio-system biopic -- John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln -- but in general I think today's biopics, like Walk the Line, do a better job than those of the studio-system era.

Come Back, Ted

Cartoon Brew has had a number of posts on Cartoon Network's insane decision to show old live-action movies and TV shows (because, after all, where else can you go to see "Saved By the Bell?"). The collapse of Cartoon Network reminds me a lot of the slow implosion of the American Movie Classics channel, which started out showing uncut, commercial-free old movies -- then, gradually but inexorably, added commercials, newer movies, and other things that turned it into a channel with no real identity at all. That's what's happened to the Cartoon Network: by phasing out most of the cartoons they'd been showing -- classic cartoons, Hanna-Barbera cartoons that don't contain the word "Scooby" -- they sort of guaranteed that they'd eventually wind up catering to an audience that doesn't even like cartoons.

I should add that it seems to me that Cartoon Network and CNN both seemed to jump the shark around the time Ted Turner stopped being involved with them. (Though Turner Classic Movies seems to have retained its identity, at least for now.) Turner has his eccentricities, and he did give us that "Captain Planet" thing, but he does seem to like good cartoons -- he was the one who had the Cartoon Network buy the rights to broadcast Freakazoid!

In Canada, by the way, we've never had to suffer through a cartoon channel going down the tubes like this, because our cartoon channel, Teletoon, was mediocre right from the beginning. Teletoon would never show a cartoon made before the '80s, and when they finally gave in and purchased the rights to some Looney Tunes cartoons, they bought the "Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show" package that ABC used to show -- meaning that they were showing edited-for-Saturday-morning cartoons in prime time.

One More Avery Cartoon

"Little Rural Riding Hood" (1949) is sort of the end of an era for Avery: it was his last cartoon with "Red," the sexy red-haired dancing girl he'd introduced in 1943's "Red Hot Riding Hood." In fact, the animation of Red in this cartoon is all recycled from an earlier cartoon, "Swing Shift Cinderella" (not available online), as Red's animator, Preston Blair, had left the studio the year before and no one else could animate the character the way Blair did. You can see, in the cartoon, a bit of a clash between Blair's Disney-trained style and the more streamlined, minimalist animation style of some of Avery's younger animators -- we're seeing a transition here from the rich, fluid animation of the '40s to the less elaborate '50s style.

"Little Rural Riding Hood" contains the single funniest line in any Avery cartoon, which occurs after the country wolf accidentally kisses a cow. (I don't know why it's funny; no analysis will help; but I do know that it brings down the house every time the cartoon is shown.) It also has a gag, involving the country wolf and a blanket, where he demonstrates that he is not "master of his domain"; this was also sort of the end of an era for Avery, who would tone down the sexual humour a bit in the '50s.

"That's My Purse! I Don't Know You!"

Season 6 of "King of the Hill" comes out on DVD tomorrow.

I have mixed feelings about this season. This is the season where "King of the Hill" got silly -- not "Simpsons" silly, let alone "Family Guy" silly, but definitely sillier than we'd expect from a show noted for its low-key realism. The showrunners for this season were Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger (Harvard Lampoon guys who'd been with the show from the beginning), and they seemed to favour stories that were wackier than usual for KotH:

- Bill, suspecting that the army performed experiments on him that caused him to become fat and bald, steals a tank from the army base and drives it through the neighborhood.
- Peggy pretends to be a nun in order to get a teaching job at a Catholic school.
- Connie, Kahn's child-prodigy daughter, discovers that she prefers playing bluegrass on her violin, so she joins up with Hank to form a bluegrass act and they go to perform in Branson, Missouri.
- The Hills go to Japan and discover that Hank has a long-lost Japanese half-brother.

To show you how much crazier the show got this season, one episode, "Fun With Jane and Jane," had a premise that was very similar to an earlier episode of "Family Guy." When KotH is similar to "Family Guy," it's kind of strayed from its roots.

However, while the show did throw realism out the window this season, it was also pretty dang funny, and in some ways Hank Hill's uptightness is even funnier when he's surrounded by total surreal insanity -- no matter what happens, his reaction is always to look awkward and rub the back of his neck with his hand.

After this season, which reportedly didn't please creator Mike Judge, the show regrouped and adopted a more realistic tone; now almost every episode is based on some real-life thing that the writers have observed (case in point: a recent episode was based on the Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shops that try to create an incessantly "fun" atmosphere). I respect that, and the job the new showrunners have done, but I sometimes miss the somewhat nuttier humour of the first six seasons, when the show was run by New Yorkers and Harvard Lampoon guys: it was a nice mix of inside-baseball Harvard humour and observational Texas humour.

One strike against season 6 is that it was the season when my favourite supporting character on the show, Luanne (Brittany Murphy) basically became a non-presence on the show, absent from most episodes. She's increased her presence on the show a little bit since then, but not enough for my taste -- to my mind that character has the same kind of loopy quality of Pamela Tiffin in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, the sense that she's not so much dumb as very strange.

Oh, and the subject quote comes from the most famous episode from this season (actually a holdover from season 5), "Bobby Goes Nuts," where Bobby (Pamela Adlon) takes a woman's self-defence course and learns to defend himself against bullies by kicking them in the testicles.

Other random lines from season 6 of "King of the Hill":

DALE: I should have known it was too good to be true. Fourteen years I've been running that ad, and not one call. Then, suddenly -- one call.

HANK: How about I buy you an ornament?
COTTON: "Peace?" You would like that, you draft-dodger! Sure you can't find one with a flag-burning on it?
HANK: It's Jesus peace, not hippie peace.

BILL: I want to hear "Puff the Magic Dragon." Play that song, I like it, play it. "Puff the magic dragon..."
HANK: Bill, do you have any idea what that song is about? It's about a dragon! We're grown men.

NANCY: Why is God punishing me? (to God) Why, sug?

LUANNE: She's not coming back, honey.
BOBBY: 'Course she is. She's Mr. Boomhauer's girlfriend.
LUANNE: Let's see, how can I explain this...? You know how you can be happy eating vanilla ice cream day after day after day? Well, Mr. Boomhauer isn't just like that. See, he likes to try different flavors.
BOBBY: But he can have a new flavor every day! He's dating the ice cream lady!
LUANNE: Mr. Boomhauer had grown-up sex with the ice cream lady, and now he's dumped her. You're never gonna have ice cream again, Bobby.

Watch Your Back, S.C.

US News and World Report: "Skewering comedy skit angers Bush and aides."

Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert's biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished.

"Colbert crossed the line," said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.

"I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry]," said a former top aide. "He's got that look that he's ready to blow."

I can't add much to what is becoming a miniature web phenomenon -- Colbert's speech, which received almost no coverage in the news, has become the most viral of viral videos and has become the blog topic du jour -- but I do want to note one thing: there was an interesting contrast between President Bush's routine, which pleased the assembled reporters, and Colbert's routine, which most certainly didn't.

The President's funny routine basically portrayed the relationship of the press and the President as adversarial: he doesn't much like them, and they embarrass him by "not editing what I say." Everybody in the room can enjoy that, because that's what the relationship of the press and the government is supposed to be, at least in theory. The routine portrayed things as they should be.

Colbert's routine, while it's been described as a Bush-bashing routine, actually wasn't that hard on the President. It was, however, a stinging attack on the press, and it attacked them, over and over, for having a non-adversarial relationship to the government. Most of the jokes were built around the theme that the media is neutered and uncritical of the Bush administration: the joke about how the press hasn't been reporting critically on the issues that matter; the reference to the media's standard hackneyed descriptions of politicians ("John McCain, what a maverick"), the references to staged photo-ops. And the overlong videotaped segment with Helen Thomas was premised on the idea that most reporters don't ask questions that matter (so that Press Secretary Colbert reacts with shock and horror when Thomas asks him why they invaded Iraq). Colbert's routine essentially consisted of telling reporters, to their faces, that they've failed in their duty to be adversarial. That's a common belief among many people nowadays -- there's even a whole book about it -- but reporters, still worried about "liberal bias" complaints, haven't noticed the paradigm shift. Colbert forced them to notice, and they didn't like it at all.

"Little Archie On Mars"

Having done way too many posts about the greatness of cartoonist-writer Bob Bolling and his "Little Archie" comics, I thought I'd actually scan and post one of his stories so Bolling newcomers could get an idea of what makes his work so special.

This is "Little Archie on Mars," a 1961 story; it's included as the first story in the Little Archie Collection, which I highly recommend you get. This is Bolling in his high-adventure mode, a pure and perfect expression of a kid's wildest fantasies: everything in the story seems exactly the way a kid would imagine it. It's not a stuffy grown-up science-fiction story, it's a story for the imaginative child in all of us. Even the dialogue sounds like it comes from a child's vocabulary, without ever feeling in the least dumbed-down. And Bolling's artwork was always wonderful at finding the right angle or pose to suggest an important action. Check out the effect in the very last panel, with Little Archie bathed in the light of the TV that, as he says, has been watching him.

It's a 14 page story -- unlike the "regular" Archie artists, who tended to be limited to five or six pages for most stories, Bolling got a lot more leeway to make a story as long or short as he needed, and also unlike the other artists, he got to sign his name. Indeed, Bolling seems to have had a lot more freedom in terms of variety of subject matter, character development, and so on than many a "grown-up" comic book artist. And his work is still some of the best ever done for comic books, of the grown-up or kiddie type.

Lyrics By John LaTouche

Some more lyrics from that most fascinating of all flop musicals The Golden Apple, by the great John LaTouche. How many musical-theatre lyricists could write both "Windflowers," a ballad that's sort of half torch song and half poetry, and "Goona-Goona," an utterly ridiculous, goofy song for a Hawaiian-themed brothel? (This being an updated version of "The Odyssey," the sarong-clad hookers are supposed to stand in for the sirens, while "Windflowers" is given to Penelope, lamenting the passage of time since the departure of Ulysses.)

"Windflowers"

He brought me windflowers that grow among the rocks
And picked me wild berries bitter to the tongue.
He taught me to tell time by the dandelion clocks
When we were young,
When we were young.
He caught me a mockingbird and wove a willow cage,
A cage from the willow where we kissed and clung,
He fought me fierce dragons, we were princess and the page
When we were young,
When we were young.
Then we stood up in chuch and we whispered vows
And he took me to a mountain peak and built me a house.
The berries and the flowers and the dandelions fade,
The songbird is silent, shivering in the cold.
The dragons come creeping, and they tell me I'm afraid
That I'll grow old,
That I'll grow old.
And I lie in the house as the stars grow dim,
And I think of how his body was so warm and slim,
And I know there ain't no growing old for me and for him,
No, never, never, not for me and him.

"Goona-Goona"

By a goona, goona-goona,
By a goona, goona-goona lagoon,
We will croon a, croon a, croon a,
We will croon a, croon a real jungle tune.
Upon that golden shore, kids,
We'll lie on bedds of orchids,
And then later, by the crater
Of an old volcano,
We can promise we won't say "No
A-no-a," let's-a go-a,
Let's-a go-a, go-a go-away soon,
Where breezes blow-a, blow-a, blow-a,
Breezes blow-a like a big, big bassoon.
Snug as two baboons in a bamboo tree,
I'll bamboozle you and you'll bamboozle me,
By a goona, goona-goona,
By a goona, goona-goona lagoon.

By a goona, goona-goona,
By a goona, goona-goona lagoon,
We will swoon-a, swoon-a, swoon-a,
We will swoon-a, swoon-a beneath the moon.
Those hula-dancin' mamas
Are really yama-yamas,
They can shake and they can shimmy
Till they charm wild cobras,
Also, fellas, they wear no bras.
Aloha, lo-a, lo-a,
Let's-a go-a, go-a go-away soon,
We will throw a, throw a, throw a,
We will throw a, throw a big, big harpoon.
We'll hunt and fish-a the whole day long,
Whatever you wish-a, just sound the gong
By a goona, goona-goona,
By a goona, goona-goona lagoon.

Arise, Earl of Cloves!

Thad has an animation analysis of the Chuck Jones classic "Rabbit Hood."

It's based on another one of Greg Duffell's great animation analysis posts, which can be found here.

Also at Thad's site is your chance to see the 1941 Columbia cartoon "The Fox and the Grapes." Featuring WB animation talent -- director Frank Tashlin and voice artist Mel Blanc -- the cartoon's use of blackout gags (with the fox trying one unsuccessful gambit after another to get those grapes) heavily influenced all the try/fail blackout-gag cartoons that would pour out of other studios in subsequent years, especially Chuck Jones's Road Runner series.

Opera Recordings That Almost Never Were

I just placed an order at Amazon for a recording of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg", conducted by Rafael Kubelik, which is probably the all-time best studio recording of Wagner's only comic opera (Wagner being Wagner, it's a four-and-a-half hour comic opera with German nationalist overtones). What I find interesting about the recording, mostly because I'm the only one who cares about wheeling and dealing in the classical recording business, is that this recording -- an expensive studio production -- was financed by a major record company and then never released. It was recorded in 1967 and never got a commercial release until the '90s; the version at Amazon, from the original master tapes, came out in 2003.

What happened was that Deutsche Grammophon (Germany's biggest classical recording company) put up the money for Kubelik to record Meistersinger. But once the recording was completed and edited, the company then decided not to release it. There were two stories at the time as to why it wasn't released:

1. The most powerful musician recording for Deutsche Grammophon was the conductor Herbert Von Karajan, who at that time was recording Wagner's "Ring" for the company. There was a rumour at the time that Karajan was upset that the "Meistersinger" recording had been given to Kubelik -- who had sort of B-level status in terms of fame and status (though probably Karajan's superior as a conductor). There was speculation that the DG executives, wanting to keep Karajan happy, suppressed Kubelik's recording in case Karajan might want to record "Meistersinger" for them (he eventually recorded it for another company).

2. The golden boy at the classical recording companies at this time was the lieder singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He was everywhere in the '60s, recording hundreds of songs (one critic wrote "This record by Mr. Fischer-Dieskau is not among his hundred best") and branching out into opera, recording many roles he rarely if ever sang on stage. From the vantage point of today, it's hard to figure out exactly why the recording companies were so determined to cast him in Verdi and Puccini and Wagner and other composers that weren't really right for his lightish baritone voice (to be fair, his recording of Verdi's "Rigoletto" is actually quite terrific), but there we are; and the leading record producers felt that in order to record "Meistersinger," they would need to have Fischer-Dieskau in the lead role, Hans Sachs. Problem: Fischer-Dieskau had never sung the part and wasn't even interested in learning it, claiming that it was wrong for his voice. John Culshaw of Decca offered him a recording of "Meistersinger" and he said no; other producers offered him the same, and he still said no. But by the late '60s there was some talk that Fischer-Dieskau might give in and record the part of Sachs, and the rumour was that Deutsche Grammophon deep-sixed the Kubelik recording of "Meistersinger" so that they could record a Fischer-Dieskau version and cash in on what they apparently thought to be the baritone's superstar status. They did, in fact, finally record a "Meistersinger" with Fischer-Dieskau -- ten years later. As Sachs, he's quite a bit inferior to the baritone who takes the part for Kubelik, Thomas Stewart.

So that's that. Again, these kind of inside-baseball classical-music recording anecdotes aren't of much interest, I realize, but I still like digging them up, if only as a reminder that classical music used to be a bustling, profitable part of the recording industry -- with all the things that come with a bustling, profitable recording business, like behind-the-scenes machinations, bizarre decisions to suppress recordings, and kowtowing to powerful superstars.

The New Archie Bunker?

One thing that used to strike me about modern TV is that it hadn't really produced an Archie Bunker figure -- a TV character who was both a flawed-but-sympathetic character and a symbol of broader cultural conflicts. Archie was like that, and so in a different way was Alex Keaton on "Family Ties": they were a symbol of cultural trends that their creators didn't like, but at the same time they were three-dimensional characters, and basically sympathetic people. There aren't a lot of characters like that today; if a creator wants to use a character to make a statement about trends he doesn't like, he'll usually pick a villain or at least an antagonist -- he won't put that character front-and-center and he certainly won't confuse the issue by showing that that character is basically a good person underneath.

You could sort of make an argument that Stephen Colbert is the closest thing we have now to a successor to those characters. The character Colbert plays on his show -- the blowhard, self-absorbed talk-show host who believes in "truthiness" and is suspicious of actual facts -- is obviously a satire (though, as with Archie and Alex, there's a sort of sub-trend of viewers who don't get that the character is supposed to be a satire). But if you watch enough episodes, the Colbert character starts to become oddly sympathetic: he's a guy trying to seem like he knows everything when he knows nothing, and the strain of trying to look infallible seems to be wearing him down. As with Archie Bunker, he's really not a bad person, just a guy who doesn't really understand the changes in the world, and deliberately closes his mind to anything that might make him nervous.

Incidentally, here's what Colbert (sort of in-character) told a clearly hostile Washington Press Corps last night, a reminder that the primary satirical target of shows like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" is not politicians, but the media:

Over the last five years you people were so good. Over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times... as far as we knew.

But listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: The President makes the decisions - he's the decider. The Press Secretary announces those decisions, and you people, the press, type those decisions down. Make, announce, check. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you've got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!

A Lost Starlet at 65

Bill Crider reminds me that yesterday was the 65th birthday of Ann-Margret. (She shares a birthday with Saddam Hussein and Jay Leno.) A-M made my list of "Lost Starlets of the '60s," actresses who should have been superstars but had the misfortune to come along in the '60s, a time when American movies had basically run out of good parts for women. (To some extent they've never fully recovered, but the '60s hit a particularly bad patch in this respect.) In A-M's case, she had everything it took to be a big star in movie musicals, except that the movie musical was pretty much dead by the time she hit the screen.

The closest thing she ever had to a true star vehicle was 1966's The Swinger, a genuinely insane movie -- it has what is basically the plot of a pornographic film (A-M sets out to prove to Tony Franciosa that she can be a sexy swinger and spends most of the movie stripping and gyrating in front of him) except it's told in a family-friendly way; the key scene has A-M rolling around in paint, yet the scene is presented with a strange kind of innocence, and A-M plays it as though she's still in Pocketful of Miracles. It's the apotheosis of the '60s habit of presenting semi-obscene material as though it's sweet and wholesome.

The director of The Swinger was the crazy, semi-brilliant George Sidney, who had brought A-M to prominence in Bye Bye Birdie and Viva Las Vegas; he summed up her appeal by saying something like: "You don't know whether to offer her a lollipop or a diamond bracelet."

Thanks For Losing Your Mind

It's Always Fair Weather makes for a good DVD, with a good transfer and a making-of featurette that is more honest than these things usually are. The assembled talking heads actually talk about the problems with the production -- especially the friction between co-directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, who ended their professional relationship after this film. (Kelly's career probably suffered more from the breakup; Donen did some great work on his own -- Charade, Two For the Road -- but Kelly never starred in or directed another first-rate movie again.) They also talk about the mistakes that keep the film from being one of the all-time great musicals, especially Kelly's bizarre decision to cut the only number where he and Cyd Charisse danced together, as well as the only solo number for the great Michael Kidd. (Both these cut numbers are included as outtakes on the DVD; their soundtracks aren't complete so they can't be re-integrated into the film.) The mistake they don't mention was the decision to let André Previn write the music. Previn is a wonderful musician, but as a melodist, he is a total dud; the big love song, "I Like Myself," is a poor man's version of Bernstein's "Lucky to Be Me" from the stage version of On the Town, and all the other songs basically sound like good ideas for tunes, as opposed to actual good tunes.

But still, overall It's Always Fair Weather is one of the better Arthur Freed musicals (certainly better than the movie it's following up, On the Town, which is also hobbled by weak songs by an MGM contract musician). The dark, mature tone of the movie, the suggestion that the carefree world of the traditional movie musical has been swallowed up by the anxieties and pressures of '50s life, is certainly memorable and unique. Donen and Kelly were also unmatched when it came to filming a musical number; other directors, like Vincente Minnelli, had trouble figuring out how to stage musical numbers for the wide CinemaScope screen, but Donen came up with all kinds of ways to make CinemaScope work for, not against, a musical number (dividing the screen into three; blacking out parts of the screen and zooming in on a face), and the fluid camerawork, with the camera practically flying down a studio backlot street, is beautiful to behold.

The best numbers are fairly well-known: the trash-can dance for Kelly, Kidd and Dan Dailey; Charisse's "Baby, You Knock Me Out," and Kelly's roller-skating routine to "I Like Myself," which, while not a great song, may be even better than "Singin' in the Rain" as a piece of dancing and camerawork. And, finally, there's Dolores Gray's "Thanks A Lot But No Thanks," the campiest number in the history of the Freed Unit. Wom! Wam! has screencaps of the number as well as an analysis: "The '50s offers quite a few song & dance numbers dramatizing the sexual dynamic between men & Women with outrageously built Glamazons packed into outlandish costumes..."

In Defence of the World "Sucks"

Lee Siegel's "Culture" blog at The New Republic is kind of a train wreck. (That publication's pop-culture coverage has sunk a long way since the days of Manny Farber.) It seems like Siegel mostly spends his time writing incomprehensible rants about how terrible pop culture is these days and how nobody is producing the kind of challenging, wonderful culture he wants and how the only person who really knows how bad things are is Lee Siegel. I picture him as a guy who keeps a gun by his bed in case the marauding hordes arrive to steal his Dwight MacDonald books.

However, his new post, "Against 'Sucks,'" reaches a new height of unintentional hilarity; it's a jeremiad against those vulgar, vulgar Internet people that may even be dumber than that Wall Street Journal one I linked to the other day. (And when you're dumber than the Wall Street Journal editorial page, that's really saying something.) Siegel is angry, really really angry, that every time he reads a big bad blog he encounters some punk kid using the word "sucks." Now, who invented that word? Could it be... Satan?

I see it used in online magazines with rising frequency. It's all over the Internet. It's the pejorative verb of the age. Let's be blunt about the word's origins: It's short for "sucks cock." (Forgive me. The situation requires it, and the context allows it.) So when some case of stunted development writes in to his favorite blog in order to register a thoughtful dissent from another visitor--e.g. "Thucydides862 sucks!"--what he's really saying is that Thucydides862 "sucks cock." Considering how many times "sucks" is used in print, in conversation, and online now, the entire country is evoking the act of fellatio on a continuous basis.

And he wants you to know that the use of the word "sucks" is a deep manifestation of contempt for that person, because, when it comes to oral sex, the suck-er is (so Siegel seems to have heard) distinctly inferior to the suck-ee. Few have summed up the oral sex caste system as well as our Lee, and he will tell us What It All Means:

So saying someone or something "sucks" is not just an expression of contempt. It's a verdict on that person or thing as being, literally, beneath contempt. It's a wish not so much to rise above others as to subordinate them, an angry anti-democratic retort to the nettleseome tides of democratization. After all, when someone "sucks," they can't talk back. Isn't that the bully's and the tyrant's timeless dream, to move among people who can't talk back? It's certainly the dream of a child's fragile ego. It could be that we are surrounded by adults who have the fragile egos of children. And I know exactly what those unwitting people would say about that situation.

It takes a special talent to find a threat to democracy in the fact that my generation grew up watching too much "Beavis and Butt-head."

I think a post like that speaks to a failure to understand how the widespread use of a term can develop it beyond its original meaning. Yes, "sucks" means what Siegel says it means. But it's taken on a whole host of other connotations, to the point that when you say something "sucks," it means something different from just saying it's "bad." The advantage of "sucks" is precisely that it seems to have a slightly obscene edge to it -- so that when you apply the term to a work of popular culture, you're not merely criticizing it but insulting it and dismissing it as a waste of your time. "Boy, that movie was really bad!" is a critical judgement; "Boy, that movie sucked!" is a statement that it wasn't even worth the effort of finding specific terms to criticize it with. And of course, there's just the sonic quality of it; the "k" sound is just funny, as any comedian will tell you. Plus you can play around with the way you use the term; somebody -- I think it was Joe Queenan -- came up with the noun "suckitude" to describe the degree to which something does or does not suck.

I'll leave the final word to Louann Van Houten from "The Simpsons":

"Well, Marge, the other day Milhouse told me my Meatloaf 'sucks!' He must have gotten that from your little boy, because they certainly don't say that on TV."

Et Tu, Harley?

"The Batman," aka "The Show That Is Not 'Batman the Animated Series,'" aka "Batmanime," will be adding Harley Quinn to its roster of re-designed villains. The good news is that the episode is written by Harley's co-creator, Paul Dini; the bad news is that he doesn't know if Arleen Sorkin will be doing her voice.

The thing about "The Batman" or, really, any animated Batman show is that because the '90s series was so good, and because it became so much a part of the way my generation thought about Batman, it's almost made the character less adaptable for television. There was no problem doing a Batman series with a different style and approach than the old Filmation version, but after "Batman: the Animated Series" it just seems like Kevin Conroy is the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne as much as Daws Butler is the voice of Huckleberry Hound. It's not surprising that Warner Brothers would want to make a new Batman series in the style that kids expect now (fake anime; lots of jumping and kicking); but it somehow seems almost sacrilegious. Some comic-book characters can be adapted and re-adapted for television every so often; Batman may be a prisoner of WB's mid-'90s success.

On the other hand, "The Batman" seems to be a relatively successful series, and it won an Emmy, so what do I know?

Averyana

Here are some rare Tex Avery MGM cartoons that are currently YouTubeified:

Avery's first cartoon at MGM, "Blitz Wolf" (1942) re-tells the story of the Three Little Pigs with the wolf as Hitler. (The wolf, by the way, is voiced by the great Bill Thompson -- voice of Droopy, Wallace Wimple on "Fibber McGee and Molly" and Jock in Lady and the Tramp.) No one had ever done a mainstream theatrical cartoon this grown-up before, not even Avery; it combines Disney-bashing (always a favourite Avery theme) with current events, fourth-wall breaking, a relentless pace and even an eerie anticipation of the events of three years later (a scene shows Japan being literally blown up). My favourite gag is the one where Avery freeze-frames over what would otherwise be a naughty line in the song "You're in the army now," but the bit that got the biggest laugh when I screened it for a an audience was the gag where a drooping gun is revived with a bunch of pills -- sort of a Viagra gag before there was Viagra.



"Uncle Tom's Cabana" (1947) is a cartoon you won't be seeing on television any time soon, though the racial stereotyping isn't on a "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" level. Contains the funniest erection joke in cartoon history (involving the villain, Simon Legree, and a cash register).



And, finally, no controversy involved, that all-time Avery favourite "Bad Luck Blackie":

Spooky

By the way, in doing research for all those posts on "Bewitched" (and possibly a sample chapter for a book on '60s sitcoms, if I can ever get up the necessary nerve to write such a thing), I came across a 1965 article that contains one of the spookiest, unintentionally prescient quotes ever:

(Various participants in the show are being interviewed about why Dick York wasn't getting any credit for the show's success.)

Then [York] sighs. "Maybe it's me. I don't think so, but the only way to tell if it's me or not is to kill me off in one show, give the witch another husband and see if I'm missed."

Yipe.

Still No DVD In Sight For WKRP

TV Guide talks to Loni Anderson and finds that "WKRP In Cincinnati" still has no DVD coming. She also has some other things to say about the show, mostly who's still in touch with whom:

TVGuide.com: Is WKRP not on DVD yet because of music-rights issues?
Anderson: Exactly. Even in the reruns, they had to change the music, and it takes away from the show to just have canned, nondescript music when it was about a radio station with Top 40 hits and rock and roll. I think that has been the big stumbling block.

TVGuide.com: Has there been any talk of a reunion?
Anderson: That would be wonderful, and I think it all is up to [creator] Hugh [Wilson]. He was our creative genius, so he really is the leader. And, of course, now we've lost Gordon Jump. Gosh, it's been two years now.

TVGuide.com: You know, he has one of my favorite lines in the entire series. I'm sure you know what one that is....
Anderson: "As god is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." [A classic WKRP episode featured a Thanksgiving publicity stunt in which the station dropped live turkeys from a helicopter.]

TVGuide.com: Exactly!
Anderson: He was magnificent, wasn't he? Just magnificent.

TVGuide.com: Who are you most in touch with from the WKRP cast?
Anderson: I'm probably most in touch with Howard [Hesseman] and Gary [Sandy], and was in touch with Gordon, too, when he was living. Tim [Reid] lives on the East Coast and Richard Sanders lives in the Northwest, so it's hard for everybody to get together. I talk to Jan [Smithers] on the phone all the time. We also get together with our directors and a lot of the crew. It was a really buddy-buddy show. None of us were well known before it, so it's kids who came up together.

TVGuide.com: If the DVD were to finally get released, would you want to take part in the extras, like DVD commentary?
Anderson: Oh, absolutely. I know a lot of people try to get away from what they were identified with, [but] I love it. I would be there in an instant. As a matter of fact, I just did [a pilot] for TV Land called Back to the Grind, and it's taking people from their old series and making them do their real job. So I worked at a radio station for a day, and it was so much fun.

TVGuide.com: What were some of the highlights of that day?
Anderson: Well, I started out as the receptionist, and manning the phones was the hardest thing I did all day.

Loni Anderson became such a pop-culture punchline -- for that brief shining moment when she filled the role of "designated blonde sexpot who dominates the tabloid coverage until you're sick of it all" -- that people forget how funny she was on "WKRP." She had terrific comedy timing, not only when it came to line delivery, but perfectly-timed gestures. There's a scene in an episode from the first season where she's sitting at a table with Herb (Frank Bonner) and his wife Lucille (Edie McClurg), and the dialogue goes:

LUCILLE: Herb, I think there's something you should know.
HERB: What?
LUCILLE: I've been unfaithful to you.
JENNIFER: Check!

What makes that bit the funniest moment in the episode is not only the fact that Anderson times the line just right, but the way she instantly comes out of a sort of crouch and sticks her arm up in the air, calling for the check. The gesture is funny and the way she changes posture in a split second is also funny. Too bad her post-WKRP career didn't give her many opportunities to use her comedy skills.

Great Lyrics: "Thinking" By Stephen Sondheim

One of my oddball favourite musical-theatre songs is "Thinking" from that oddball favourite of musical-theatre buffs, Do I Hear a Waltz? -- music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

The song is sort of a takeoff on "Twin Soliloquies" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, except instead of soliloquizing, the two leads actually sing their thoughts directly to each other -- uneasily trying to find some common ground between their different worldviews: she's a fake-cynical American who's afraid to give an inch emotionally; he's a Latin Lover who wants her to kick back and have fun with him. The lyrics are a beautiful distillation of character, with the differences between the characters perfectly summed up while also hinting that they're drawing closer together. (One device used to hint at this involves having them sing the same lines, but in a different order: "I am thinking, this is very awkward"; "This is very awkward, I am thinking.") And like many good musical theatre songs, it's not static: the characters are in a different situation when the song ends than they were when it began.

The music uses an interesting device, which obviously I can't really reproduce here, of inserting long pauses between various sections: every time Leona responds to something Di Rossi says, or vice versa, there's a long, awkward pause before someone tries to start up the conversation again.

Refrain 1

DI ROSSI
I was thinking,
All of that Puccini
Going to waste.

LEONA
I was thinking,
Coffee and Puccini
Isn't my taste.

DI ROSSI
I keep thinking,
Such a fine beginning,
Such a lovely evening we could spend.

LEONA
Such a fine beginning,
I keep thinking
More about the end.

I was thinking,
Wonder what he's thinking?
Not what he should.

DI ROSSI
I was thinking,
All this heavy thinking,
This is not good.

But think of coffee cups clinking
To a duet,
We could sit drinking,
See the sun set.
What are you thinking?

LEONA
I was just thinking,
What you are thinking, forget!

Refrain 2

LEONA
I was thinking,
Tête-à-têtes for two
So often fall flat.

DI ROSSI
I was thinking,
Tête-à-têtes for one
Are flatter than that.

I am thinking,
This is very awkward,
Frankly, you prefer that I should go?

LEONA
This is very awkward,
I am thinking,
Very frankly, no!

I was thinking,
Why is it I I get
So easily hurt?

DI ROSSI
I was thinking,
Has she noticed yet
The spot on my shirt?

But think of two of us linking
Arms in the square,
Sit as stars, winking,
Fill the night air.
What are you thinking?

LEONA
I was just thinking,
What am I going to wear?

Coda

DI ROSSI
And as the sun begins sinking,
Night starts to fall.

LEONA
Stars appear blinking,
Gondoliers call.

BOTH
What am I thinking?
I should be thinking
Not what I'm thinking at all!

"Cigarette?" "Yes, it is."

Davis DVD reports that the series "Police Squad!" is finally being prepared for DVD release. David Zucker says he (and presumably Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams) will be recording audio commentary.

While "Police Squad!" only lasted six episodes, I think you could make a case that it should have had an even shorter run than that. The pilot, written and directed by Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, did a great job of demolishing every '60s and '70s cop-show cliché, helped by Leslie Nielsen's most awesomely deadpan performance ever. (Unlike in the Naked Gun movies, the TV version of Frank Drebin never actually did anything remotely funny; he was, as far as he and everyone else was concerned, a serious, solemn, super-competent cop -- and that's what made it funny: Frank had no clue that he wasn't on a serious cop show.) But the following five episodes were all basically remakes of the pilot, following the same formula, with many of the same jokes repeated (like the Johnny the shoeshine boy routine). That's the problem with doing a continuing series where actual character development, or any real interest in the story, is not possible; unlike Maxwell Smart and 99, you couldn't actually care what happened to Frank Drebin. But it's worth getting for the pilot and some of the better-known jokes from the subsequent episodes, several of which were repeated in The Naked Gun. (Stripper: "Is this some kind of bust?" Drebin: "Yes, it's very impressive, but we need to ask you some questions.")

Tex Arcana?

A comment from Jerry Beck at the Golden Age Cartoons Forums:

At this time, there are no plans to release any MGM cartoons as collections on DVD - except for the TEX AVERY cartoons, which will hopefully be restored in time for release NEXT year (no promises however)...


Unlike the Tom & Jerry sets, George Feltenstein is personally overseeing this one.

Let's hope this happens; a complete Tex Avery box set is one of the ten most glaring omissions in the DVD catalogue.

Shorter Daniel Henninger: Why the fuck are these fucking bloggers always saying "fuck" and shit like that? Do you fucking hear me saying fuck all the time? Fuck that shit.

Seriously: can anyone explain to me the obsession some writers have with the use of four-letter words on blogs? Every newspaper and magazine article discussing the so-called blogosphere seems to point to "profanity" as a clear and important reason why some bloggers shouldn't be taken seriously. (Many of them, like Henninger, even search through the reader comments sections -- which the blogger has little or no control over, beyond removing genuinely offensive comments -- to find some of that sweet, sweet profanity.) I don't swear much myself, it not being very appropriate for what I write about -- after all, much of the time I'm dealing with entertainments that wouldn't even have been allowed to use such words -- but I fully appreciate that sometimes a four-letter word is the right word, particularly when the blogger is going for comic effect. If print journalists faint at the mere use of the word "fuck," please don't take them to see Goodfellas and cancel their HBO subscription right now.

See also "The Emperor's New Clothes and the Fucking Blogger."

Underrated Archie, Take 3

When it comes to underrated "Archie" Comics artists, I've already said my say about Bob Bolling and, so some extent, Samm Schwartz; now I've found a good example of the work of the third really first-rate Archie artist, Harry Lucey.

This story, "Actions Speak Louder Than Words" -- to go to the next page, click on the current one -- is done entirely without dialogue, and allows Lucey to show off his skill at creating good, expressive poses that are true to the character and the situation. Oh, and Archie winds up dating Reggie in this one. Freaky.

Steven Wintle has a bit more on Lucey.

Maybe Blog Triumphalism Is Justified

I've never been impressed by claims about the power of blogs or the "new media" or whatever you want to call it, but this story is pretty impressive: Glenn Greenwald is a lawyer who started his blog late last year. Within weeks, his blog had become one of the most-read on the net; one of his posts was quoted in newspaper articles, and another of his posts was quoted on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Then he was tapped by a small publisher to write a book based on his arguments, "How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok." The book, which comes out in May, was ranked # 50,000 on Amazon yesterday morning. Then several leading blogs plugged the book -- and within 24 hours, the book's Amazon ranking had shot from #50,000 to #1.

I still have my doubts about how much power the blogosphere possesses, but that story is a pretty impressive display of the power it does possess -- and in a good cause, because Greenwald is an excellent writer who deserves the exposure that blogging has brought him.

Happy Not Beethoven's Birthday

If you're interested in getting some classical music on DVD, I can confidently recommend this cycle of the complete symphonies of Beethoven, with the SWR Baden-Baden Symphony conducted by Michael Gielen.

I've written before about Gielen, who is one of the best living conductors and who has quietly made a huge number of recordings with this fine German orchestra. (Most of his audio recordings are available on CD on Haenssler classics, and include the best modern cycle of Mahler symphonies.) He brings a modernist sensibility to everything he conducts; he doesn't like sentimentality -- even his conducting gestures are restrained and matter-of-fact -- but that doesn't mean he shies away from letting the orchestra make exciting noises; he just tries to bring out the "advanced," forward-looking qualities of any music he handles. With Beethoven, he tends to follow the composer's metronome markings, though he's not rigid about it the way a lot of conductors are, and he always makes his tempi work: the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony is about as fast as I've ever heard it, but what it does is to take a movement that sometimes sounds trivial and cozy and make it sound downright exciting.

Gielen uses divided violins, a plus in this music; the sound is pretty good, though not as good as some of his studio CD recordings with the same orchestra; the visuals are pretty basic -- a lot of cutting from section to section -- but at least they don't distract from the music. At the lowish price, a good investment both as an audio-visual Beethoven cycle and an introduction to a superb conductor.

The '80s Will Come Back If I Have To Drag Them Back

We have the cover art and press release for "The Best of She-Ra: Princess of Power." The box art tells us that it "Includes the Feature Film, The Secret of the Sword." Because, I mean, how could it not?

And this sampler set, with such classic episodes as "The Stone In the Sword" and "Horde Prime Takes a Holiday," is just a prelude to a release of all 90+ episodes of the complete series. So fear not, fans of "The Laughing Dragon" and "Loo-Kee Lends a Hand": your turn will come.

It's Muller Time

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review has a good article on author Eddie Muller and his prolific work as an audio commentator for film noir DVD releases. (On the recent Fox release of Fallen Angel, for example, he does a commentary with Dana Andrews' daughter.) The sidebar mentions some upcoming releases for which he's recorded commentary, including Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night, which will be part of WB's Film Noir Set vol. 4 next year. Muller's website is here.

I'm the Vip Girl.

I've said in earlier posts that Lover Come Back is a movie that reads better than it plays. The movie itself is a typical Universal production from the early '60s: drab sets, hideous hats, terrible back-projection and over-broad acting -- a slightly more expensive version of a TV sitcom, but not a particularly good TV sitcom. However, the script is one of the funniest comedy scripts of the era. It was the first movie script written by radio and TV veteran Paul Henning -- sharing credit with Stanley Shapiro -- and in many ways Lover Come Back is like a feature-length version of Henning's "The Bob Cummings Show." While of course there's no actual sex, most of the jokes are built around sex and suggestiveness. (Typical joke: Day and Hudson are competing to see who can sell a potential client, played by Jack Oakie, on a design for a can of wax. Day says that the winner will be "the one who shows [Oakie] the most attractive can," followed by a smash cut to Oakie, treated to a night on the town by Hudson, ogling the rear ends of various showgirls. In case you didn't get it, Oakie's first line in the scene is "Most attractive!") There are many jokes about scantily-clad, voluptuous babes, particularly Edie Adams as a dimbulb Southern belle. And the movie even has a role for "Bob Cummings Show" mainstay Ann B. Davis.

Though it's basically a follow-up to the first Rock Hudson and Doris Day movie, Pillow Talk (which Shapiro had co-written), Lover Come Back soft-pedals the professional-virgin jokes and emphasizes Henning's obsessions: the brash, sex-obsessed, consumerist urban culture of the '50s and '60s. Advertising is the main target here. Hudson plays an advertising man who uses sex to sell everything; he gets clients to sign up with him by treating them to parties with lots of sexy women, and he creates commericals revolving entirely around the lure of sex ("Give me a stacked dame in a bathing suit and I can sell anything"). To prevent Rebel (Edie Adams) from blabbing to the advertising ethics watchdog about some of his tactics, he puts her in commercials for a product that doesn't actually exist and is never actually defined in the commercials. Unfortunately, ethical rival Carol Templeton (Doris Day) hears about this campaign, and even more unfortunately, the head of the company, hapless rich scion Pete (Tony Randall) releases the commercials to the public. The advertising campaign creates huge buzz, and Hudson has to come up with a product to go with the successful commercials.

The second half of the script isn't as effective as the first -- it's heavier on Pillow Talk-y mistaken identity complications -- but the first half of the script, and some parts of the second, are pure Henning and pure fun. Here are some of the better quotes:

J. PAXTON MILLER (hung over): I'm flyin' back to Richmond.
CAROL: When?
J. PAXTON MILLER: Now, honey, now! We just passin' over Pittsburgh!

BRACKETT (Howard St. John): We've learned to live with Jerry Webster. He's like the common cold: You know you'll get it once or twice a year. There are two ways to handle a cold: You can fight it, or give in and go to bed with it.

CAROL: Let me put it this way, I don't use sex to land an account.
JERRY: When do you use it?

REBEL: Do you think they'll like me on TV?
JERRY: Honey, single-handed, you may bring in the forty-inch screen.

CAROL Jerry Webster's trying to land this account, but we're gonna beat him to it.
MILLIE (Ann B. Davis): Are you sure? He fights rough.
CAROL Then we'll fight rough! This is war, Millie!
MILLIE: That means liquor, wild parties and girls, right?
CAROL: Right.
MILLIE: I'd like to volunteer for frontline duty.

JERRY: What is that?
PETE: The mating call of the moose. This call is absolutely irresistible. Your bull moose will run miles to get to the source of this call.
JERRY: And then what happens?
PETE: I take his picture.
JERRY: Pete, he's not running miles to get photographed.

CAROL: You kissed me and I was thrilled.
JERRY: A kiss. What does that prove? If you can light a stove, it still doesn't make you a cook.

JERRY: Plenty of girls would like to be Mrs. Jerry Webster.
CAROL: I'm sure they have a right.
JERRY: Okay, so I've sown a few wild oats.
CAROL: A few? You could qualify for a farm loan!

And, of course, probably the most-quoted line in the movie and the essence of all that is Tony Randall:

PETE: I'm king of the elevator!

"Ice Cold Katie"

I said I was looking for an audio file of "Ice Cold Katie" from Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Ivan at "Thrilling Days of Yesteryear" has very kindly posted it here.

You will hum this tune.

More Crowtherisms

I wrote before that New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther was "the epitome of the critic who had no idea what was going on in American movie-making at any point in time," especially when it came to the film noir cycle, which he just couldn't wrap his mind around. I already quoted from his review of Double Indemnity, but here are some quotes from some other Crowther reviews of movies that are now considered seminal:

Crowther on Out of the Past:

But after this private detective has re-encountered an old girl friend (who originally double-crossed him after luring him to double-cross his boss, whom she had shot) and the two get elaborately criss-crossed in a plot to triple-cross our boy again, the involutions of the story become much too complex for us. The style is still sharp and realistic, the dialogue still crackles with verbal sparks and the action is still crisp and muscular, not to mention slightly wanton in spots. But the pattern and purpose of it is beyond our pedestrian ken. People get killed, the tough guys browbeat, the hero hurries—but we can't tell you why.

Crowther on The Asphalt Jungle:

One finds it hard to tag the item of repulsive exhibition in itself. Yet that is our inevitable judgment of this film, now on the Capitol's screen.

For the plain truth is that this picture—sobering though it may be in its ultimate demonstration that a life of crime does not pay—enjoins the hypnotized audience to hobnob with a bunch of crooks, participate with them in their plunderings and actually sympathize with their personal griefs. The vilest creature in the picture, indeed, is a double-crossing cop. And the rest of the police, while decent, are definitely antagonists.

Crowther on Breathless:

This should be enough, right now, to warn you that this is not a movie for the kids or for that easily shockable individual who used to be known as the old lady from Dubuque. It is emphatically, unrestrainedly vicious, completely devoid of moral tone, concerned mainly with eroticism and the restless drives of a cruel young punk to get along. Although it does not appear intended deliberately to shock, the very vigor of its reportorial candor compels that it must do so.

Crowther on The Searchers, apparently under the impression that Ethan Edwards is a really cool role model for us all:

The Searchers, for all the suspicions aroused by excessive language in its ads, is really a ripsnorting Western, as brashly entertaining as they come... John Wayne is uncommonly commanding as the Texan whose passion for revenge is magnificently uncontaminated by caution or sentiment.

Crowther on To Be Or Not To Be:

Too bad a little more taste and a little more unity of mood were not put in this film. As it is, one has the strange feeling that Mr. Lubitsch is a Nero, fiddling while Rome burns.

Crowther on Bonnie and Clyde:

It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie. And it puts forth Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the leading roles, and Michael J. Pollard as their sidekick, a simpering, nose-picking rube, as though they were striving mightily to be the Beverly Hillbillies of next year.

More Lyrics From "Thank Your Lucky Stars"

One of the reasons Thank Your Lucky Stars works better than most of the WWII all-star musicals is that Arthur Schwartz (music) and Frank Loesser (lyrics) specifically tied many of their songs to the details of life on the homefront during wartime. So instead of just a collection of random songs, there's actually sort of an underlying theme to a lot of the score: we can have fun and make music even in unpleasant times. Here are three examples of how Loesser handles this.

First, the specialty song for Eddie Cantor, "We're Staying Home Tonight," is a deliberate pastiche of the songs Cantor sang in his '20s and '30s prime: a bouncy song about all the happy fun two people can have together. But the lyrics (which, like some of the other songs in the movie, have some unusually suggestive lines for a Production Code-era movie) are outfitted with a public-service message: avoid "nonessential spending" and stay home instead.

"We're Staying Home Tonight"

Verse

Thank you for your cordial invitation, Mrs. Jones,
But with nightclub life we're through.
Non-essential spending brings inflation, Mrs. Jones,
So here's what we're planning to do:

Refrain 1

We're staying home tonight,
My baby and me,
Doing the patriotic thing.
I've got my income-tax returns to hurdle,
And she'll be saving mileage on her girdle.
Don't want to roam tonight,
We're snug as can be,
Hoping the phone will never ring.
The landlord never told us, when we moved in this flat,
That you can use the fireside for more than a chat.
We're staying home tonight,
My baby and me,
Doing the patriotic thing.

Refrain 2

We're staying home tonight,
My baby and me,
Having a patriotic time.
It's not that Mommy doesn't trust her Poppy,
It's just that we don't trust our old jalopy.
Don't want to roam tonight,
We're snug as can be,
Being alone is so sublime.
While I sit in my slippers, and munch a piece of fruit,
She'll iron out the wrinkles in my victory suit.
We're staying home tonight,
My baby and me,
Having a patriotic time.

We'll play a game of rummy, it's cheaper than the Ritz,
The winner gets a kiss, and just in case of a Blitz,
We're staying home tonight,
My baby and me,
Having a patriotic time.

Her coffee could be sweeter, but I'm not in the dumps,
'Cause ev'ry time she hugs me, it's like two extra lumps.
We're staying home tonight,
My baby and me,
Having a patriotic time.

The song for Errol Flynn, "That's What You Jolly Well Get," parodies (as I said before) Flynn's own non-service by casting him as a braggart who tells tall tales of battles he never actually served in. But it's also, again, an updated version of an old-fashioned type of song, an Edwardian-era song with WWII references:

"That's What You Jolly Well Get"

ERROL
I can see the questions in your eyes.
I can see the twitchin' of your ears.
Now, it's not to be repeated,
But, gentlemen, be seated,
And I'll tell you where I've been for all these years.

MEN
If he's very nicely treated,
And we keep his toddy heated,
He'll tell us where he's been for all these years.

ERROL
I was out on the blue Pacific with a Cruiser of the Fleet,
Hoppin' over the side for me Saturday dip.
When I noticed a Jap torpedo whizzin' by beneath my feet,
Comin' lickety-split and headed for our ship.
So I stopped 'er with me left, and I turned 'er with me right,
And I aimed 'er very careful and I shoved with all me might.
And I sank the sub what sent 'er, and I roared with righteous wrath:
"That's what you jolly well get,
That's what you jolly well get,
Disturbin' me Saturday evening bath."

MEN
Hooray!
He's won the war!
He's won the war!

ERROL
But I'm modest to the core.

MEN
Hooray!
He's won the war!
And though he's rather shy,
He's terribly, terribly shy,
He will admit he's won the war.

ERROL
I was captured around Bengazi by a Nazi regiment
After polishin' off 'alf a thousand or more.
And it took 'em two pairs of tanks to drag me into the General's tent,
Where they started to search the uniform I wore.
When they took away my gun, I was pleasant as could be,
But then they took a letter what my sweetheart wrote to me.
So I bashed their bloomin' brains in and I l lived to tell the tale.
That's what they jolly well get,
That's what they jolly well get
For readin' a gentleman's private mail.

MEN
Hooray!
He's won the war!
He's won the war!

ERROL
And I won the one before.

MEN
Hooray!
He's won the war!
He hates to tell the tale,
But give him a barrel of ale,
And he'll admit he's won the war.

ERROL
I was 'avin' me leave in London back in nineteen-forty-one,
'Avin' breakfast in bed at a fancy address.
When a Jerry come by and drop a bomb that must've weighed a ton
It was difficult to collect myself, I guess.
So to Croydon Field I ran, and I hopped a plane from there.
Now, I couldn't tell who done it -- there was thousands in the air.
So I shot down all the blighters and I told 'em all: "You see?
That's what you jolly well get,
That's what you jolly well get,
For splashin' a gentleman's cup of tea."

MEN
Hooray!
He's saved the day!
He's saved the day!

ERROL
In my own quiet way.

MEN
Hooray!
He's saved the day!
He always zips his lips,
But treat him with fish and chips,
And he'll admit he's saved the day.

Hooray!
He's won the war!
He's won the war!
This mighty conqueror!
Hooray!
He's won the war!
So to this most heroic gent
We ought to erect a monument
And put it in Trafalgar Square
Where he can enjoy the open air!

(They throw Errol out the window.)

Hooray!

Finally, "Ice Cold Katie," a number for Hattie McDaniel and an all-black cast, is about hasty marriages by people heading off to war (which Preston Sturges would make the subject of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek around the same time). As in many of these movies, the black performers are reserved for one number only, so that they could be cut by Southern theatres; but Warner Brothers, here and in "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs," was one of the few studios to acknowledge the contribution of black troops in the war. Schwartz's tune, which Carl Stalling sometimes used in WB cartoon scores, is one of the catchiest tunes ever; I wish I could find it and post it, but the lyric will have to do.

"Ice Cold Katie"

Verse

HATTIE & COMPANY
Private Jones is campin' on the doorstep of Miss Katie Brown.
She must be the very, very coldest creature in this town.
He's been there for seven days and nights, and now he's leavin' too,
And still she won't, still she won't, still she won't say "I do."

Refrain

Ice Cold Katie, won't you marry the soldier?
Ice Cold Katie, won't you do it today?
Ice Cold Katie, whyn't you marry that soldier?
Soon he'll march away.
Ice Cold Katie, he's just dyin' to hold yer,
Keep that date he went a-hirin' for.
Ice Cold Katie, won't you marry the soldier?
Soon he's off to war.
Here he is outside, ringin', ringin' ringin' on your bell,
Ringin' so long, he's gonna be A-W-O-L.
Ice Cold Katie, won't you do what I told yer?
Ice Cold Katie, you's the talk of the town.
Ice Cold Katie, won't you marry the soldier?
Melt, melt, melt on down,
Ice Cold Katie Brown.

Interlude

PREACHER
I was here at seven,
I was here at ten,
I was here at eleven,
And I positively won't be back again.
Is the ring all ready?
Did the bride get sense?
Is the groom feelin' steady
After all the matrimonial suspense?
Is the cake just dandy?
Is the choir in tune?
Is the beer handy?
The private might be leavin' pretty soon.

CHORUS
Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Katie,
Won't you step outside?
Ev'rything is ready but the bride!

Refrain

Ice Cold Katie, won't you marry the soldier?
Ice Cold Katie, won't you do it today?
Ice Cold Katie, whyn't you marry that soldier?
Soon he'll march away.
Ice Cold Katie, he's just dyin' to hold yer,
Ice Cold Katie, how he grumbles and groans!
Ice Cold Katie, won't you marry the soldier?

SOLDIERS
Hey, hey, Private Jones!
Don't you know we ain't got no, got no, got no time to spare?
Don't you know we're all sailin', sailin', sailin' over there?

ALL
Ice Cold Katie, won't you do what I told yer?
Ice Cold Katie, ain't got nothin' to lose!
Ice Cold Katie, won't you marry the soldier?
Looks like rice and shoes!
Spread, spread, spread the news!

Interlude

PREACHER
Do you take this woman?
Do you take this man?
Well, young man and young woman,
Better get a little lovin' while you can.
I now pronounce you
Man and wife.
I never had such trouble in my life!

Coda

ALL
Don't you know they ain't got no, got no, got no time to spare?
Don't you know they are sailin', sailin', sailin' over there?
Ice Cold Katie went and married the soldier,
Ice Cold Katie with the shivery frown.
Ice Cold Katie went and married the soldier,
Ice Cold Katie Brown!

Is Gurinder Chadha More Evil Than Nora Ephron?

Gurinder Chadha, the director who taunted us all with Bride and Prejudice, has ramped up the evil a notch by announcing that she's doing not one, but two movies based on Larry Hagman TV shows:


British director Gurinder Chadha announced Friday that she would direct John Travolta and Jennifer Lopez in a big-screen version of 80s TV show "Dallas." The "Bend it Like Beckham" director said she had signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to direct the film, which will star Travolta as villainous oil magnate J.R. Ewing and Lopez as his wife Sue Ellen...

Chadha, who gave Jane Austen a Bollywood twist in last year's "Bride and Prejudice," is also involved with adapting another TV hit, 60s sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie." She said that film "is still in the pipeline, but there is still some way to go on the script."

Larry, please, intervene and save your legacy. And maybe Linda Gray should lodge a formal anti-J-Lo protest while we're at it.

Tiny Trek Adventures?

I'm sure you've heard some inkling of the news that J.J. Abrams will be making a Star Trek movie. In the most blatant borrowing yet from the whole "Batman Begins" concept, Paramount is trying to revive the life-supported Trek franchise by making a movie about the young Kirk and Spock. As the article describes it:

Project... will center on the early days of seminal "Trek" characters James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and first outer space mission.

I don't want to be a downer here, but seeing Kirk before he became the Captain of the Enterprise doesn't have that much appeal to me, at least instinctively. It's not like Bruce Wayne, who has all kinds of familiar comic-book mythology associated with his youth, and who becomes Batman as soon as he puts on the costume. "Captain of the Enterprise" is Kirk's identity every bit as much as "Batman" is Bruce Wayne's identity; if he doesn't take on that identity in the movie, what's the point of saying it's Kirk?

Oh, well; it could still be good, I suppose, though I pity the poor guys who have to pretend to be Kirk and Spock when all of us will know they're not. What I'd really like to see, actually, is a revival of the original Trek with new actors in the original roles, but taking advantage of the modern TV series' ability to do real character growth and development. The original series, being done like an anthology show with continuing characters -- the default format for a drama series at the time -- could never really develop the characters; anything Kirk and Spock learned about each other in one episode could never be carried over to the next episode, because every hour was completely self-contained. Trying to really flesh out these characters, even with different actors, might be more worthwhile than trying to do Kirk and Spock: Their Early Days.

Insert "Where There's a Will" Joke

Fox is going to release "The Will Rogers Collection." A bit puzzlingly, this collects together Rogers' last four movies; unless they're planning on a volume 2, I would have thought they'd want to pick his very best or best-known movies, and a collection that leaves out Judge Priest or State Fair doesn't really qualify. But it does include one of Rogers' films with John Ford, Steamboat 'Round the Bend -- a 1935 film that, as Andrew Sarris pointed out, probably holds up better than Ford's Oscar winner of that same year, The Informer.

Another '60s-Com

Sitcoms Online has a review of the first season of "That Girl." Looks like a good package, what with Marlo Thomas and co-creator Bill Persky (formerly head writer for "The Dick Van Dyke Show") participating in the extras. I haven't seen the first season in a while, but I don't recall it being the best of the run; like I said earlier, "That Girl" improved mid-run when it brought in some new writers and producers -- including that '60s and '70s mainstay, Danny Arnold, who had this to say about working with Thomas:

I like Marlo. Her biggest problem is that she's much brighter than most of the people she has to work with.... And I'd have to say she's not at all difficult to work with... unless she has no respect for you.

Persky has also participated in the DVD extras for another show he created, "Kate and Allie." Still, I think most people will always remember him and his writing partner Sam Denoff for writing the "Dick Van Dyke Show" episode "Coast to Coast Big Mouth."

OT: Why The Media Isn't Liberal, Exhibit B

Digby's Hullabaloo has these excerpts of a particularly hackish conservative Republican interviewing Joe Klein, who is considered Time Magazine's only left-of-centre columnist. (More analysis here.)

The interview is utterly fascinating. The host says all sorts of things about liberals and Democrats that are either untrue or slanderous or both -- and Klein agrees with every one of them. He adds some calumnies of his own, directed at what is supposed to be his own side; proudly talks of being nicknamed "Mr. Faith Based" by the President; boasts of his friendship with a man who advocates throwing reporters in prison. And this guy, remember, is the most liberal columnist at one of the most widely-read magazines.

I'm sure Klein thinks of himself as a liberal. But, like many nominally liberal journalists, he doesn't want to seem "partisan," and therefore goes out of his way to agree with the other side on almost everything while constantly bashing what is supposed to be his own side. And that's why the media isn't liberal -- because it's divided into openly partisan conservatives, and liberals trying to act more conservative for "balance."

Addendum: I should note that there's nothing wrong with being a partisan conservative. That's just the point: in journalism, for some reason, conservatives are comfortable being conservatives, while liberals seem somehow abashed and feel a need to pummel their own side constantly. As Ezra Klein points out, "you never see Charles Krauthammer on the Rhandi Rhodes show prostrating himself for her approval and slamming his party."

Happiness is a Warm Uzi

More YouTubian goodness: "Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown," the CalArts student film of Jim Reardon (later to become a top director of "The Simpsons," whose Itchy and Scratchy cartoons seem quite mild by comparison):



And while we're on the subject of semi-legendary CalArts student films, here's Wes Archer's "Jac Mac and Rad Boy Go!," which was a major influence on "Beavis and Butt-Head" and many other projects:

Steven Springblush?

In honour of the previously-hyped-on-this-blog, upcoming Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain DVDs, some more Youtube'd clips:

One of the most popular Animaniacs "filler" segments, "Good Idea/Bad Idea," narrated by Tom Bodett and starring a character who originated on "Tiny Toons," Mr. Skullhead:



This one won't turn up on DVD until Animaniacs vol. 3, but it's something of a minor classic: the Pinky and the Brain cartoon "Yes, Always," where Brain acts out the infamous Orson Welles outtake tape that voice actor Maurice LaMarche loved to quote from. It may be the most obscure, elaborate in-joke cartoon ever to turn up on "kids" TV.



The "revised" opening title from the episode "Pinky and the Brain and Larry," an episode produced to mock the WB network's suggestion that a third character should be added to the show (the network eventually got the last laugh when they forced the addition of the "Tiny Toons" character Elmyra to the show):



And from a Spielberg/Warner cartoon that isn't scheduled for DVD yet, "Freakazoid!", a clip featuring characters from Freakazoid, Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain:

"Amazing Stories" Episodes That Do Not Suck

With "Amazing Stories," the Complete First Season finally scheduled for release, you too can have the fun of trying to decide which are the good episodes and which ones stink.

Everyone agrees that this expensive anthology series -- created and produced by Steven Spielberg, who also came up with the stories for several episodes -- was uneven; you expect an anthology show to be somewhat uneven, but this show was not "Twilight Zone" uneven, where the bad episodes are at least bad in a familiar way; the bad episodes of "Amazing Stories" were so bad that you wondered who was in charge. And considering that producers Joshua Brand and John Falsey ("St. Elsewhere") quit the show after only a few episodes, it may well be that no one was in charge, except Spielberg, and anyone who's seen Hook or Always knows that his taste in scripts isn't always the best.

Anyway, from the first season, I can think of some episodes that most people agree upon as "good ones." There's "The Doll," a charming fantasy/love story written by Richard Matheson and starring John Lithgow in a performance that won him an Emmy; that's the definite highlight of the season. There's also the one-hour "The Mission," starring Kevin Costner and directed by Spielberg; "Secret Cinema," writer-director Paul Bartel's adaptation of a short film he'd done years earlier (and which was more or less plundered by the makers of The Truman Show); "Mirror Mirror," Martin Scorsese's horror story about an obnoxious Stephen King-ish writer (Sam Waterston) who keeps seeing his monstrous doppelganger in the mirror; and "The Main Attraction," a very silly but funny story about a jock who literally becomes magnetic after a meteor hits him -- co-written by Brad Bird, who also makes a cameo appearance as a scientist.

The bad episodes include "Remote Control Man," about a guy who gets a TV and -- get ready for this, you'll never guess what happens -- the people in the TV come to life; "Boo!" a surprisingly lackluster comedy ghost story from Joe Dante; and some weird allegorical thing with Dom DeLuise as "Guilt" and Loni Anderson as "Love" (directed by Burt Reynolds, for all you fans of his behind-the-camera efforts). I'm sure I'll be reminded of some of the other clunkers when the DVD comes out.

Most of the really terrible episodes are in the second season, but the second season also includes the most famous and memorable episode of the series, Brad Bird's animated "The Family Dog." So I'll have to get season 2 for that episode alone.

Lyrics: "Love Isn't Born, It's Made" by Frank Loesser

Thank Your Lucky Stars was the most entertaining of the all-star musical revues the movie studios turned out during WWII; Warner Brothers' decision to have its stars play against type -- Bette Davis trying to sing, Errol Flynn as a Cockney bragging about wars he never actually fought in (parodying the fact that Flynn made war movies but didn't go to war), Humphrey Bogart playing himself as a wimp and Eddie Cantor playing himself as a vain egomaniac -- makes for kind of a post-modern musical showcase. It also has some terrific songs by an unusual composer-lyricist team: composer Arthur Schwartz (best known for his songs with Howard Dietz, like "Dancing in the Dark" and "I Love Louisa") and lyricist Frank Loesser, who was just on the verge of making the switch to writing his own music.

As Loesser's career went on, his lyrics would get simpler and more pared-down, with relatively few rhymes and a lot of repetition. It may be heresy, but I think some of his later scores, like The Most Happy Fella and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, have lyrics that are rather dull: efficient, well-crafted, but not all that memorable. In the '40s, though, working as a lyricist only, his work had a lot of verve to it, colloquial and sophisticated at the same time. My favourite song from the score (apart from the big hit "They're Either Too Young Or Too Old," the definitive "homefront" song), is "Love Isn't Born, It's Made, sung by Ann Sheridan -- who had a good singing voice and should have gotten to do more musicals at Warners -- in what appears to be some kind of girls' dormitory setting.

"Love Isn't Born, It's Made"

Verse

GIRLS
Here is a book enormous
On how to conduct our lives.
Everything will come to one who waits.
But how long must a lady wait for dates?
Somebody please inform us
Exactly how love arrives?

ANN
You've got to join in the chase yourself.
Now, here's my story, so brace yourself:

Refrain

Love isn't born
On a beautiful April morn,
Love isn't born,
It's made.
And that's why ev'ry window has a window-shade.
Love can't do much
For a couple who don't quite touch;
Love needs a chance
To advance.
And that's why folks who never care for dancing, dance.
So, my precious young dove,
If you're waiting for love,
Better make the most of your charms,
'Cause the feeling won't start
In the gentleman's heart
Till you're in the gentleman's arms.
Love isn't born,
That's a fable to treat with scorn,
Let's call a spade
A spade.
When he says, "Dear, come up and see my antique jade,"
Remember, love isn't born, it's made.

Interlude

GIRLS
How true, how true, how very, very true,
It's all a game.
How wise, how wise, how very, very wise
To fan the flame.
That old "Prince Charming" story was a fake;
The Sleeping Beauty must have been awake.
You've got us all believing in you.
Continue, please, continue!

Refrain 2

ANN
Love has to climb,
It's can't suddenly ring that chime;
Time, sister, time
Is short.
You'll find there's no partition in a davenport.
Love doesn't act
Till the cards are extremely stacked;
Here is a fact
To face:
A man won't take a taxi just to get no place.
So, my precious young dove,
If you're dreaming of love,
Better lead him into the trap,
For you'll never remain
On the gentleman's brain
Till you're on the gentleman's lap.
Love won't exist
If you constantly slap that wrist;
Right off his list
You'll fade.
So don't go crying wolf at ev'ry gay young blade,
And when you walk alone and forlorn
And then you hear a Cadillac horn,
Remember, love isn't born,
It's made.

Eight Little Letters That Simply Mean "I Love You"

The DVD Savant has a nice review of Three Little Words,, one of the little overlooked gems among the MGM musicals, and one of the few musical bio-pics that actually works.

The film is a nice example of the special virtues of producer Jack Cummings, who didn't have the lavish budgets or the cachet of MGM's star producer, Arthur Freed. Cummings, best known as L.B. Mayer's nephew, didn't do the big Oscar-winning musicals; he produced modest-sized musicals for modestly-famous stars like Red Skelton and Eleanor Powell. But his musicals, from his first (Born to Dance), to his last (Viva Las Vegas) are always amusing and likable, and never pretensious the way Freed's could be; he created a framework that allowed performers to do what they did best, and provided opportunities for fun performers who Freed didn't tend to use, like Gloria DeHaven and Buddy Ebsen. Cummings also seemed to have better taste in original songs than Freed did; compare the great score Cummings commissioned for Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954) to the weak score Freed used in his big production of the following year, It's Always Fair Weather.

Three Little Words blows away all Freed's overstuffed, overblown attempts at biographies of songwriters, and this despite -- or perhaps because of -- the fact that it's about relatively obscure songwriters. Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, a team best known for their work for the Marx Brothers (they were, in Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup, basically the only team that could write a good in-character song for Groucho; even Arlen and Harburg's "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" seems generic by comparison with their material), wrote rather simple, even simplistic songs, hardly the great catalogue that was available to Freed when he made his bio-pics of Kern or Rodgers and Hart. But Cummings, writer George Wells and director Richard Thorpe turn this to their advantage by making the musical numbers as light, simple and pleasant as the songs themselves; instead of huge sets and big gimmicks, it's just some great performers -- mostly Fred Astaire and Vera-Ellen -- doing their stuff on a stage. The script doesn't try to attach any huge significance to these people's lives and careers; it's just a series of funny scenes about how a songwriting team gets together, briefly breaks up, and then gets together again in the end. Add in a relatively restrained Red Skelton, the superhumanly beautiful Arlene Dahl, and reliable supporting performers like Keenan Wynn and the young Debbie Reynolds (dubbed by Helen Kane doing her "boop-boop-ee-doop" routine in "I Wanna Be Loved By You"), and you have one of the most entertaining "little" musicals ever made, one that Astaire reportedly preferred above many of his bigger-budgeted films.