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Someone took leave of their senses at Channel 4 back in the day, and I’d love to know who it was.
Sonny Eliot owned Detroit weather TV in the 1960s and ’70s. He was the first of the goofy weathermen—the kind who just as soon tell a corn pone joke as they would give you the day’s temp and humidity.
Eliot wove his groaners and homespun wit into his weathercasts seamlessly. His delivery was like a silver ball in a pinball machine on warp drive, bouncing and ricocheting off each town’s current condition frenetically. Every couple of minutes Sonny would come up for air and tell us a joke.
“It’s 42 degrees today in Manchester, where a man made a killing in the stock market—he murdered his broker.”
Sonny also combined the day’s weather into one nonsensical word.
“Today it was cloudy and breezy—cleezy kind of weather,” Eliot would say as he wrote the new word vertically down the map of Michigan—in chalk. Sonny was still a chalk guy when the other blow-drieds in town began opting for fancy-shmancy electronic gizmos.
But one day, someone in the upper management of Channel 4 decided it would further Sonny’s shtick if he did the weather outside, on the roof of the station’s headquarters downtown.
Naturally, this decision occurred in the wintertime.
So there was Sonny, in a topcoat, jamming his chalk hand into his coat pocket to keep it warm between writing down the temps on the Michigan map. His nose was red and you could see his breath.
Why we had to see Sonny Eliot perform outside is a mystery that I’m afraid will never be solved.
It was needless and added nothing to the weather segments. If anything, it took away.
Reminds me of what someone once said about France.
“Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion.”
The Sonny Outside Experiment didn’t last long, thankfully. They put the poor guy indoors before long.
Eliot doing his thing; note the word “clilly” on the map
In his heyday on Detroit’s airwaves, Sonny Eliot did the TV weather on channel 2—and then channel 4—at 6 and 11 Mondays thru Fridays, hosted “At the Zoo with Sonny Eliot” on Saturdays, and did weather updates on WWJ radio during the weekdays. He continued the WWJ segments twice a day for years after retiring from TV.
Not bad for a former fighter pilot during WWII.
But the Eliot/outside thing unfortunately portended the future.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING—short of a presidential assassination attempt, heaven forbid—gets TV news teams more excited than stormy weather.
They love the tornadoes and blizzards and lightning and high winds. They even love just the threat of all that stuff. Mention that there might be some rough weather coming our way and the TV news management people’s eyes light up and their salivary glands start working overtime.
Cue the poor slob doing his stand-up report amid 50 mph winds and sleet. Break out the satellite maps. Start conducting man-on-the-street pieces, asking painfully stupid questions.
Look, weather is important. I don’t mean to suggest that it isn’t. Anything that literally affects every human being, one way or another, is relevant.
But TV news people treat daunting weather as if they, well, enjoy daunting weather. Let’s just say that when a severe thunderstorm is on its way, it’s not only the winds that get stiff.
I’m an adult and I’m smart enough to know when the weather is getting bad. I don’t need to see a news correspondent standing in the thick of it, his or her eyes barely able to stay open for all the snow, dust and debris in them, to get the picture.
At least the folks at channel 4 had the sense to bring Sonny Eliot back inside before the weather got too inclement.
“It was the easiest and best job any actor could have,” John Forsythe once said.
No kidding.
Forsythe, who died last week at age 92, was talking about being the voice of the never-seen Charlie, in TV’s “Charlie’s Angels.”
“Hello, Angels!”, Forsythe would greet his stable of female detectives in his distinctively smooth, cool-as-a-cucumber fashion through a tiny speaker.
Those two words, plus the Forsythe-narrated opening to the show, put an indelible mark on the legacy of “Charlie’s Angels,” which launched Farrah Fawcett into the stratosphere.
Forsythe was also seen in addition to being heard on “Dynasty,” playing the role of oil magnate Blake Carrington in the 1980s, for which he won a couple of Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor.
You can have all that, plus a myriad of other Forsythe roles, but I’ll match it with a solitary one of his.
John Forsythe: 1918-2010
Rent “…and Justice for All,” starring Al Pacino, and prepare to wash the slime off your body when you’re done watching it.
This is because in it, Forsythe plays Judge Henry T. Fleming, whose cocky smirk you’d just like to smack off his face with all the force you could muster.
Judge Fleming is accused of sexually molesting a young woman, and is eventually brought to trial. Pacino’s character is charged with defending the judge, who quickly is revealed to be not only a judge who hands down unusually cruel and unfair sentences, he’s also a cad, and a sexual predator. Yet Pacino defends him in good faith anyway.
But Fleming, so full of himself, can’t help but admit to Pacino that not only did he, indeed, rape the plaintiff, but he enjoyed it and would like to do it again.
The film’s climactic scene, in which Pacino famously turns on Forsythe, is one of my favorite in cinematic history. Visit YouTube and you can find it after some minimal searching.
Watching Forsythe in “…and Justice for All,” and his audacity to make suggestive comments about the alleged victim to Pacino even in the courtroom, is particularly jarring when you consider this was the same man who played the lead in the whimsical 1957-62 TV series “Bachelor Father.”
When Pacino turns on Forsythe’s Judge Fleming, and when the realization of what’s happening materializes on the judge’s face, is one of those “YES!!!” moments in movie watching.
That scene contains the famous “YOU’RE out of order!! YOU’RE out of order!! This whole TRIAL is out of order!!” rant from Pacino, after which Jack Warden’s Judge Rayford fires a gun into the ceiling to bring true order to his courtroom.
I’m telling you, it’s 10 of the most stirring minutes ever laid onto celluloid.
So John Forsythe is gone, succumbing to pneumonia in Santa Ynez, California after a year-long battle with cancer.
“Thankfully, he died as he lived his life—with dignity and grace,” his publicist said.
60 Minutes was chatting up The Great One—and I don’t mean Wayne Gretzky—and they had a simple yet probing question.
This was Jackie Gleason, of course—the original Great One, and the question came as he relaxed with the ubiquitous drink nearby.
“Why do you suppose,” the query began, “The Honeymooners is still so popular, after all these years?”
Gleason smirked beneath that pencil-thin mustache of his.
“Why? Because it’s FUNNY.”
Well said.
Gleason is another of those entertainers that no mother has been able to spawn since he was a part-owner of the television airwaves back in the 1950s. And he’s right; The Honeymooners has stood the test of time because it was, as Gleason said, funny. As hell.
And to think that most of the action took place on a sound stage so small that the camera barely had to pan left or right during any given episode.
Gleason and Audrey Meadows and Art Carney performed in a phone booth, pretty much, and they made raucous fun. To this day, I get a certain thrill when I see The Honeymooners pop up on the tube.
Gleason as beleaguered—and funny—Ralph Kramden
Legend has it that Gleason, when he did his self-named TV show in New York, would leave the studio during the credits—the show was done live—and walk across the street to a bar for a nightcap. The story goes that sometimes a patron at the bar might look up at the TV above the bar, see the credits rolling, and look to his right and see The Great One, well into his first Scotch.
Gleason might have been the only entertainer to own his own train.Years after closing the door on his television career, Gleason settled in Miami. And he bought a train and traveled around the country—clearly not in a hurry to get wherever he was going.
“60 Minutes” wanted to know about the train, too. And again they asked a silly question, as it turned out.
“Was there a bar on the train?” they wanted to know.
Gleason was incredulous.
“Was there a BAR on the train? The whole TRAIN was a bar!”
Why bring up Gleason? We finally broke out a Christmas present the other night—an entire season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on DVD—the fifth season, specifically.
Moore’s show still appeals now largely because of Jackie Gleason’s logic: Because it’s funny.
They’re all still with us—with the exception of Ted Knight—and that’s nice to know, too. Even Betty White, over 80 years old, is still doing it. She was marvelous in Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal last year.
From Mary Richards always calling her boss “Mr. Grant” to Knight’s brilliant portrayal of dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks anchorman Ted Baxter, to the razor-edged tongue of Murray Slaughter, The MTM Show is just as funny now as it was in the early-to-mid-1970s.
I don’t remember what episode in the series it was, but one of the funniest moments was when Mary was so angry at “Mr. Grant” that she said, “You don’t even deserve to be called ‘Mr. Grant.’ You’re….LOU!!”
I bet Jackie Gleason would drink to that. He did to everything else.
So Conan O’Brien is concerned about being party to the demise of “The Tonight Show.” Admirable, but much ado about nothing.
Look how hard NBC tried to kill “Saturday Night Live” and THAT’S still standing.
Besides, if what Jack Paar did failed to hurt “Tonight,” then nothing will.
O’Brien is the guy who’s now the odd man out, with Jay Leno apparently returning to 11:35 p.m., shoving “Tonight”—the show Conan waited years to host—back to 12:05 a.m.
O’Brien is having none of it. He says that “Tonight” at 12:05 just isn’t “Tonight.” He’s right, technically; it’s “Tomorrow” if it starts past midnight. And NBC killed that off over 20 years ago (remember Tom Snyder?).
I give Conan props, though, for taking a stand. He was promised “Tonight” and everything, he presumed, that came with it—not the least of which was its starting time, right after the local news, as it’s been for decades. A 30-minute wait, with Leno essentially acting as O’Brien’s warm-up act, wasn’t exactly what Conan had in mind. Don’t blame him.
But I think it’s a little dramatic to say that “Tonight” at 12:05 is doomed for failure. Maybe doomed for poorer ratings, but not its total destruction.
“SNL” debuted in 1975—yes, that would be over 34 years ago, kiddies—and if it can survive the wretched product that it pumped out for most of the 1980s, then it can survive just about anything.
O’Brien (top) and Paar: 50 years apart, controversy about “Tonight” swirls around them
Paar quit “Tonight” for about a month in 1960, angry over NBC’s decision to censor a joke of his, without telling him first. But Jack not only quit—he did it on the air. It was February 11, 1960.
“I’ve made a decision about what I’m going to do. I’m leaving The Tonight Show,” Paar said that night. “There must be a better way to make a living than this, a way of entertaining people without being constantly involved in some form of controversy. I love NBC [...] But they let me down.”
And off Paar walked, leaving flabbergasted announcer Hugh Downs to finish the show.
When Paar returned on March 7, he opened with the now famous, “As I was saying before I was interrupted…” The first four words became the title of Paar’s autobiography.
Paar admitted on his first night back that his quitting “Tonight”, on the air no less, was less than mature.
“Leaving the show was a childish and perhaps emotional thing. I have been guilty of such action in the past and will perhaps be again. I’m totally unable to hide what I feel. It is not an asset in show business, but I shall do the best I can to amuse and entertain you and let other people speak freely, as I have in the past.”
Almost 50 years later, controversy has returned to “Tonight.” Again, the network is to blame.
But they can’t kill “Tonight.” They might just maim it, however.
For someone who professes to hate goodbyes, Oprah Winfrey sure is hosting quite a long one.
Oprah’s TV show will vanish sometime in 2011, she says. I only wish we had this kind of warning BEFORE she arrived on the scene.
Oh, stop frowning and looking at me sideways. Oprah’s OK. She annoys me a little bit but she’s probably done more good than bad for folks in this cartoon of a country that we inhabit. I’m sure she’s a very nice woman, truth be told.
Time for a quick check of the iconic TV people over the years.
Johnny Carson: none of us did what Johnny told us to do, because that wasn’t his gig. He didn’t pontificate, he entertained. He mugged. He could crack us up with an arched eyebrow and a crooked mouth. But Carson was a ghost outside of his TV show. He was almost Howard Hughes-like in guarding his privacy. He championed no causes, endorsed no products, imparted no life lessons. No way of knowing if he was a Republican, a Democrat, or a Marxist. Johnny was just there to make us laugh every night at 11:30. That was it.
David Letterman: Letterman is perhaps the closest thing to Carson as there ever was, or ever will be: private, close to the vest, apolitical. No endorsements, no causes, either. Just glad to be a sounding board and a straight man to whoever happens to be sitting to his right every night.
Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and the rest: Men we would trust with our liquor cabinet while on vacation. Personalities ranging from uncle-like (Cronkite) to wooden (Jennings) but in all instances, guys that were OK in our book—as long as they stuck to reading the news and giving us election results. Outside of that it could get clunky and awkward—and did on occasion.
Jay Leno: More of a person than Letterman and Carson. Jay let us know that he’s into cars, for one. He put on some free shows for the unemployed in Michigan, as a way to show support for the car industry. Even appeared in a movie, although in the worst way. Funny in a Bob Hope kind of way; you wonder if he’d be a cut up sans cue cards and pre-written material.
Oprah—she’s one of those who ascended to the one-word name, like Madonna or Johnny or Magic—changed the way TV personalities interacted with their public; I must grant her that. She doesn’t have fans, she has cultists. Oprah won’t just have someone on to promote a book—she’ll practically insist that her viewers read it. Like, right now. Immediately.
And she did all this without the benefit of prime time or late night. She’s one of the few TV personalities who carved out her niche while the sun was still out—soap opera stars notwithstanding.
But I still don’t like that she feels compelled to put herself on the cover of every issue of a magazine that bears her name.
Oprah helped to build a school in Africa for girls, though that wasn’t without some controversy, when it came to how those students were being treated by the faculty when no one was looking. But at least she didn’t take her sweet time responding to the reports of maltreatment.
Oprah’s OK. I’m a little put off by the way her fans follow her like wide-eyed puppy dogs but if that’s the worst thing, then maybe it’s not so bad after all.
And, she’s giving them plenty of time to say goodbye to her TV show.
Or is it vice-versa?
Reminds me of the last line of pitcher Jim Bouton’s famous tell-all book about baseball, “Ball Four.”
“You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball,” Bouton wrote, “and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
You see, Oprah Winfrey had her faithful in the palms of her hands for over two decades, but maybe it was the other way around all the time.
He was Milton Supman by birth, and like so many stars of that era, his stage name was a cocktail of nicknames and nods to others.
Soupy Sales is gone, passed away at 83 and it would be nice if you had lunch today in his honor. Then, maybe tonight, take a pie in the face to top off the day.
Comedian Sales took, by his unofficial count, about 9,000 pies in the kisser over the years, beginning in the 1950s when he burst onto the scene in Detroit, hosting “Lunch with Soupy.”
The pie-in-the-face routine wasn’t invented by Sales, but no one made it more famous than he. It got so big that stars the likes of Frank Sinatra, no less, would line up to take a pie from Soupy, who wasn’t always the recipient—he could play perpetrator, too.
Soupy Sales was minding his own business as Milton Supman, child of a Jewish dry goods merchant who had emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary in 1894, when his older brothers attained the nicknames Ham Bone and Chicken Bone.
They started calling Milton “Soup Bone,” which eventually got shortened to “Soupy.” Then, while working in radio as a DJ, Milton Supman went by the stage name Soupy Hines. Though spelled differently, Hines sounded just like the famous ketchup and pickle company, so the last name was changed to Sales, after old-time comedian Chic Sale.
Got it?
I’m too young to have grown up having “Lunch with Soupy,” the show he hosted from the studios of WXYZ-TV in Detroit from 1953-59. By 1960, the show had gone national, and Soupy moved to Los Angeles.
“I didn’t want to be an old man, wondering if I could have made it in another market,” Soupy once said.
The show was live, at lunchtime, and though it was targeted at children, lots of those kids’ parents sat and watched, too. The success of the lunchtime show spawned an 11 p.m. version for the adults, which was a variety show with some sketch comedy.
But maybe the thing that truly brought Soupy Sales to the national fore was a stunt he pulled on New Year’s Day in 1965.
Irked that he was working on a holiday, Sales urged his young viewers to go into their still-sleeping parents’ bedrooms and “take all the green pieces of paper with presidents’ pictures on them” and mail them to him.
“Then I’ll send you a post card from Puerto Rico!,” Soupy said on the air.
He never imagined the joke would be taken seriously.
But it did. Within days, money started being received in New York, where Soupy was doing his show at the time, from WNEW-TV. An embarrassingly large amount of money rolled in.
The cash was donated to charity, but WNEW management suspended Soupy. There was an uproar—protests and even picketing—and Sales was reinstated. And much more famous than ever before.
Soupy wasn’t just Soupy, which was entertaining enough. He developed a bunch of characters and penned some novelty songs, like “The Mouse,” which I was caught on 8mm film depicting in one of those silent home movies my parents shot of me in the mid-1960s. Sales even performed “The Mouse” on Ed Sullivan’s show.
Soupy Sales doing “The Mouse,” circa the mid-1960s
There was a brief feud in the 1980s with fellow WNBC radio personality Howard Stern, who shared a studio with Sales and who would complain about the condition in which Soupy left things by the time Stern went on the air. Stern, in 1985, pretended to cut the strings in Soupy’s studio piano, but it was just to “torture” Sales; Stern never harmed the instrument.
Stern, years later, regretted his little tiff with Sales because Soupy was one of Stern’s childhood heroes.
The 1970s and ’80s saw Soupy Sales become a big game show guy, appearing on many of them—usually What’s My Line, Match Game, and Pyramid. Those and other pseudo-reality shows like Almost Anything Goes were good places to find Soupy.
Sales also participated in a TV ad campaign for Big Boys Restaurants and their homemade pies. Guess how those commercials ended?
Sales died in a hospice, afflicted with what was called “numerous” ailments.
Maybe Big Boys can offer up a special in his memory: a bowl of soup and a slice of pie.
The cemetery which contains the souls of our child actors is littered with victims of stress, mismanagement, mental abuse, and weakness of will.
Patty Duke’s grave marker in that mythical cemetery would contain all of the above on its stone.
Duke was the eponymous star of “The Patty Duke Show,” in which she played two characters who were, improbably, identical cousins—Patty and Cathy. The show ran for three seasons, beginning in 1963.
The first season is now out on DVD.
Duke told CNN that she’s excited her five granddaughters will finally be able to see what “Nana did when she was a teenager.”
“I am tickled, just tickled,” she said.
But Duke, who was just shy of 17 when the series debuted, was troubled. She says the show was a relief during what were difficult times for her. She wrote about her tormented childhood in her autobiography, “Call Me Anna,” discussing her struggles with mental abuse at the hands of her managers, which she says led to alcohol and drug addiction. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and she now helps others who have the disease.
“I believe that show [gave me] the tools that helped me survive through my youth until I got my diagnosis,” Duke said. “I think ‘tormenting’ is one of the most perfect words for what you feel [with bipolar disorder], because you have no control over it. I did occasionally, very occasionally, hear voices, but mostly my instincts were messed up: If it was dangerous, then I should do it.”
It got so that Duke much preferred the scenes in “The Patty Duke Show” that involved the quieter Cathy, who “was dignified and gentle and rational. When it was time to be Patty, I would have to deal with my embarrassment of her stupidity.”
Patty Duke today
Patty Duke wasn’t chopped liver as an actress. At age 16 she was an Oscar winner for her work as Helen Keller in 1962’s “The Miracle Worker,” co-starring with Anne Bancroft, who played Anne Sullivan.
But Duke’s struggles had little to do with her craft and much more to do with her bipolar disorder, plus the maltreatment from those in her professional inner circle.
She was another whose childhood was anything but ordinary, having begun acting in commercials while still in elementary school. In fact, she was so NOT a normal teen that she had to be shown how to dance by other teenagers in the course of filming scenes for “The Patty Duke Show.”
One in her circle on who she was able to count was William Schallert, who played Patty’s father Martin Lane.
“He has always been able to make me laugh until I had to spit up,” Duke said of the now 87-year-old actor. “He was also a solid, solid figure to me and still is. To this day, the relationship has grown, and he is always there for me.”
She remains close to the other surviving members of the cast, including Paul O’Keefe, who played her brother. Jean Byron, who played mother Natalie Lane, died three years ago.
The years after that show are pretty public; Duke married actor John Astin and stayed with him for about 13 years. She continued to be tormented, though, by the the bipolar disorder. But her acting achievements continued to roll in; all told, Duke has won one Academy Award, three Emmys and two Golden Globes.
The actor Sean Astin is Patty’s son, but she fathered him with a man named Michael Tell, to which she was married briefly in 1970. But John Astin legally adopted Sean when the child was three.
Today, Duke is acting onstage in the musical “Wicked” in San Francisco, California. She plays the witch Madame Morrible.
“To me, it is almost a religious experience, the exchange between those strangers out there in the dark and us,” she said of the theater. “To me, that’s communication at its best, and that’s really what I enjoy.”
Patty Duke is also proof of an age-old adage.
“Without a sense of humor,” she said, “I would have been gone a long time ago.”
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Read the entire CNN.com story about Patty Duke and her interesting life and career HERE.
I wonder if anyone ended up knocking that battery off of Bob Conrad’s shoulder.
Remember Conrad, the ruggedly handsome, much-too-macho actor who made his name in a wonderful TV series called “The Wild, Wild West”?
“West” was a creative show based on a clever premise: Conrad, as James West, and Ross Martin, as Artemus Gordon, were members of President Ulysses Grant’s Secret Service detail in the 19th century. But the cleverness came in the notion of using artistic license to blend together two eras: the 1870s, when the series took place, and modern times, complete with technological gadgets.
The result was Conrad, as West, using space age technology to fight crime in a time before electricity.
Ross Martin’s “Artie” Gordon was a master of disguise—kind of like the dudes in “Mission: Impossible.”
Together James West and Artemus Gordon matched wits with similarly-outfitted bad guys. One of the recurring ones was a midget named Dr. Loveless, who was played by Detroit’s own Michael Dunn.
But back to Conrad.
Bobby Conrad was a guy who took himself far too seriously, and who reveled in macho roles—along with maintaining that persona in real life.
This was evident in two memorable ways: his battery commercials, and an incident that occurred on a trash TV show called “Battle of the Network Stars.”
The battery commercials were iconic. Conrad came on at the beginning, daring the viewer to knock an Eveready battery off his shoulder, where it had been placed. Then the meat of the commercial would play, and it all would end with Conrad once again.
“Go ahead,” he’d say of knocking the battery off his shoulder. “I dare ya.”
It was one of those lines, like Clara Peller’s “Where’s the beef?,” that was on everyone’s lips for a time in the 1970s.
“Go ahead—I dare ya!”
In “Stars,” Conrad once appeared as a member of one of the network teams of celebrities competing in athletic events like running races, swimming, and other physical feats.
In one hotly contested “battle,” Conrad’s team lost the competition by a hair.
Well, Bobby didn’t like that and pitched a macho bitch—totally serious and not for show. He made a spectacle of himself, embarrassing the other celebs.
Finally, to placate Conrad, a solution was suggested: Conrad would run in a dash against Gabe Kaplan of ABC’s “Welcome Back, Kotter.” The winner’s team would win that week’s competition.
It was so agreed, by Conrad and Kaplan.
The two actors got on their marks, got set, and….
Kaplan blew Conrad—he of his supposedly supreme physical condition—totally away.
Conrad later ended up in shows like “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” always playing the macho tough guy.
But it was as a much slimmer, more suave James West in “Wild, Wild West” where Bob Conrad made his mark, before he turned into a caricature.
Come to think of it, I’d have loved to knock that battery off Conrad’s shoulder. Because if he chased me, apparently I could outrun him.
***************************************
Here’s a look at Bob Conrad in action, hawking Eveready batteries:
So David Letterman is instigator, victim, and satirist—all rolled into one, and all about the same thing. Himself.
Letterman, who went public last week with a bizarre scheme that made him victim of a blackmail attempt due to some sexual hanky-panky he committed years ago with a CBS staffer, last night went public again—this time with an apology to his wife, Regina Lasko.
As usual with Dave, it wasn’t totally maudlin; it was laced with self-deprecating humor and observational comedy—which has been conveniently presented to him by virtue of his actions. This is material he doesn’t even have to write.
“I mean, I’ll be honest with you folks,” the 62-year-old TV host told his “Late Show” audience. “Right now, I would give anything to be hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I got in the car this morning—and the navigation lady wasn’t speaking to me.”
Ba-dum-BUM!
Letterman added it was fall in the city and that he spent the weekend “raking my hate mail.”
Another rimshot.
“And it’s cold, too,” he said. “I mean chilly outside my house, chilly inside my house.”
Cymbal crash!
But there were also some serious, sincere words.
“Either you’re going to make some progress and get it fixed, or you’re going to fall short and perhaps not get it fixed, so let me tell you folks, I got my work cut out for me,” Letterman said.
At issue, of course, is news that Letterman had sex with more than one CBS employee who worked for him, several years ago. One of the women appeared in some “Late Show” sketches, along with being the girl who presented dinner certificates and other prizes to audience members during Dave’s foray into the crowd during occasional bits like “Stump the Band.”
But it wasn’t just the news of Letterman’s escapades that made this a big story. It’s the prosecution of a man who tried to blackmail Letterman by threatening to reveal the dalliances.
That’s what prompted Letterman to go public on “The Late Show” last week with an admission that was so riddled with jokes that the audience didn’t appear to know whether it was all true or just part of a comic bit.
It’s infinitely easier for someone like the wise-cracking, sarcastic, smart-ass Letterman to deal with something of this untoward nature than the pathetically stiff politicians and religious dudes who are blindsided by being outed.
Get caught sleeping with an employee? Crack some jokes and keep it light; it’s in character, after all.
Can you imagine if Joe Senator tried that tack on the steps of the Capitol? He’d be accused of being a cad and not taking the issue seriously.
But Letterman, thanks to his occupation and pulpit, can pull it off almost seamlessly.
A new slogan: Pulling off the unseemly, seamlessly.
Maybe Dave can hire me as a writer. As long as he keeps his hands to himself.
I’m not sure what it says on McLean Stevenson’s tombstone, but if I were commissioned to write it, I’d keep it simple, stupid.
“I should never have left M*A*S*H”
I tend to think of actors like Stevenson around this time of year, when the new fall shows debut.
I’m thinking now of those opposite of Stevenson, like the wonderful Patty Heaton, who played Ray Romano’s beleaguered wife in “Everybody Loves Raymond” for that show’s entire nine-season run.
Heaton—give her credit—didn’t give up on the TV sitcom format, even though it would have been easy to say, “I’ll never have anything like ‘Raymond’ ever again,” and not even try another show.
She hooked up with another TV comedic veteran, Kelsey Grammer, in the pun-titled “Back to You,” a cute premise involving TV news co-anchors who also just happen to be ex-husband and wife. That show hit the airwaves in fall, 2007, but only lasted about a year.
Heaton’s “Raymond” co-star Brad Garrett (Ray’s brother, Robert) teamed with the adorable Joely Fisher in “Til Death,” about a longtime married couple who must deal with a bubbly newlywed couple who moves in next door. That series ran from 2006-08.
Now Heaton is back, in a new ABC comedy called “The Middle,” in which she plays, well, a beleaguered wife—again.
But that’s OK. How many different roles are there for women in sitcoms, anyway?
Now, back to Stevenson.
McLean was a funny guy who found himself in the role of a lifetime—that of Colonel Henry Blake in “M*A*S*H,” the new TV version of the acclaimed film.
But Stevenson only stayed for four seasons, leaving the wildly popular show to “pursue other interests.”
Sigh.
Stevenson (top) and Heaton: A tale of two different career paths
From then on, it was a career filled with bad movies, bad TV shows, and frequent game show appearances. Nothing wrong with the game show thing, but Stevenson could have had so much more, if only he’d stayed with “M*A*S*H.”
But at least he had a sense of humor about himself; Stevenson used to have a license plate that read, “13 WKS,” in reference to the standard 13-week commitment all new network shows would get.
McLean Stevenson was canceled more times than Sports Illustrated subscriptions after their annual swimsuit issue.
His vehicles post-”M*A*S*H” were a distinct case of quantity over quality.
“The McLean Stevenson Show” (1976-77); “In the Beginning” (1978); “Hello, Larry” (1979-80); “Condo” (1983)—if you aren’t familiar with these bombs, you’re very excused.
Incidentally, “M*A*S*H” ran from 1972-83—or until Stevenson was done bombing on various networks.
Yet as successful as Patty Heaton was by virtue of staying with Ray Romano’s crew, I still feel for her, in a way.
How can you even come close to recapturing the camaraderie, success, and fun of working on a show like “Raymond” for nine years?
But she’s an actor, and I guess that’s what actors do—they work.
Besides, who knows? Maybe “The Middle” will find a toehold, where “Back to You” wasn’t able.
If Heaton does the “quantity over quality” thing, it won’t be because she left a prized show too soon.
She won’t be one who’ll be kicking herself, all the way to the final destination.
McLean no doubt had hoof marks on his rear end by the time he passed away in 1996, at age 68.
