That Was Cinerama

Little Dougie dragged me out last week to the Arclight Cinerama Dome where we saw the 60th Anniversary revival of This is Cinerama, actually projected with the three projectors. (The Cinerama Dome, prior to about 10 years ago, had never run a true Cinerama film, It opened just as it became obsolete. For the 50th Anniversary Cinerama festival 10 years ago, the theater had to be retrofitted to be actually able to project true, three-panel Cinerama.)

I never got this logo. Wouldn't a better logo have been more like this:

This at least gives an idea of the screen.

Cinerama was basically three strips of film, three projectors, three images linking up as well as they can, which isn't very, projected on a HUGE screen with a deep, 146 degree curved screen. It is not, and never was, intended to be seen "flat".

Note that the individual images are basically vertical images, unlike normal 35mm photography.

Put together, it looks like this:

Please remain seated until this movie comes to a complete halt, which it will once the black & white choir comes on.

So that, allegedly, you get an effect like this:


Or you could just go to an amusement park and ride a roller coaster.

The process is explained by this handy diagram:

It made for killer travelogues, but that was about it. In This is Cinerama, they show portions of a performance of Aida at La Scala shot by a static camera that just sits there while the opera sequence, devoid of context, bores you. Simple videos of opera stage performances are more interesting visually. Even worse is when it just sits and watches a choir at a distance sing a cut-down version of The Hallelujah Chorus. Talk about boring! Watching a bullfight, even at a distance and only for only 2 and a half minutes is still revolting. "Hey, let's torture and murder a bull for 'entertainment'!" In another scene, the camera sits and watches the Vienna Boy's Choir sing The Blue Danube Waltz. Who knew it had lyrics? The boys look sweet and sing like angels (and the youngest of them still surviving is over 70) but Stanley Kubrick put The Blue Danube on a Cinerama screen with more impact in 1968, and only needed one strip of film to manage it. Also be warned, one of the segments in the first half depicts a "Gathering of the Klans" in Edinburgh (Where Little Dougie's Family originated) which features a LOT of bagpipe "music," - in stereo yet. As the late, great Wally Boag used to say: "The Irish invented the bagpipes and gave them to the Scots, who still haven't gotten the joke yet."

Here's how it looked at the end of the run if you were color blind.

The second act was a considerable improvement. We see a spectacular aquacade which seems to be impossible to see from any other vantage point but the camera. The live Florida audience seems to be MILES away.

Where would an audience be to see this - and HOW?

WHERE would the live audience be?

I'm serious. Just where the HELL would the live audience be?

The film's finale is the one part that remains well worth seeing, a 30 minute aerial travelogue of America, shot from a B-52 piloted by a daredevil master-flier named Paul Mantz, and produced by Merian C. Cooper, the man behind King Kong and my own 1935 film, HER! The man was very right-wing, but his patriotism found a near-perfect, non-jingoistic expression in this spectacular view of how America looked in 1952.




A lake in 1952.



Lower Manhattan in New York still looks pretty much like this, though it looked quite different for a while.

Lowell Thomas kept repeating that we were "Seeing America as no one ever saw it before!" Well this is Midwestern farmland, and I can assure you that the ONLY way I've ever seen it is like this, from a plane flying over it. They call it "Flyoverland" for very good reasons.

It's hard to say what was odder about this demo film of cutting-edge film technology of 1952. Was it the way they billed The Mormon Tabernacle Choir as "The Salt Lake City Tabernacle Choir," as though they (Cooper and Thomas) were afraid that using the word "Mormon" would keep audiences away? Little Dougie's grandmother was in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and not ONCE did she ever tell anyone: "I was in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle Choir." (This is Cinerama was the highest-grossing movie of 1952 AND 1953. Do you really think the word "Mormon" would have made it a failure?)

Mormons singing.
They sing nicely. It's voting where they have their heads up their asses.

Was it Lowell Thomas introducing a Catholic choir and Catholic alter boys as: "something with which you are all familiar," as though everyone that will ever see this movie is a Catholic (Catholics who all loathe Mormons, like being Catholic was somehow better than being Mormon)? Was it the lingering "scenic" shot of the biggest strip mine on earth, a disgusting copper mine in Utah, as Thomas tells us this horror is beautiful, magnificent, and awesome instead of obscene and revolting?

No, I think the weirdest moment was Lowell Thomas informing us in no uncertain terms that we were beholding the majesty which is Bridal Veil Falls while we were clearly looking at Yosemite Falls. It's not like MILLIONS of people don't know the difference between these two great natural wonders which are, certainly, less than a mile apart. And they've only had 60 years to fix that GLARING error.

NOT "Bridal Veil Falls"!

NOT "Yosemite Falls"!
(Both pictures taken by Little Dougie.)

The film opens with Lowell Thomas, a smarmy newsman of the day who seems to find himself clever. Here's an example of his "wit" from the first scene in the movie, when, in normal 35mm and black & white, he lectures us on the history of trying to record movement in pictures. He shows a cave painting from 20,000 years ago that depicts a boar: "He wanted the animal to be in motion, so he added eight legs. [Pause, smarmy smirk from Thomas, then with backhanded thumb-pointing adds:] "Eight legs." You know, Lowell, if you are utterly unable to come up with an amusing observation, try hiring writers. He runs most of The Great Train Robbery with snarky non-comments: "Violence! Action! More violence!" He runs bits of The Sheik with more smug commentary. About the time it gets so irritating that you're ready to walk out they switch on the Cinerama effect and you're off on that Coney Island Rollercoaster, but you've waited a full 16 minutes for the gasbag to shut up and show us Cinerama.

Lowell Thomas in Cinerama talks fatuously. To the right of Michaelangelo's painting of God giving Life to Adam (In the close-up of this painting in the film, Adam's genitalia is just below the camera frame. What a coincidence!) you can see the boar with 8 legs. Here Lowell is NOT singing "Mammy".

Mike Todd produced most of the first half of the film. (which may explain why someone thought we wanted to see 10 minutes of an opera shot by a static camera sitting there watching folks march past in "colorful" outfits) Todd was eventually let go (He had a unique talent for pissing off anyone who got near him) and was replaced with Merian C. Cooper, who was a true film maker whatever his politics. Todd went on to co-create Todd-AO, a frankly-better one-panel huge screen format closer to today's Imax. For his first Todd-AO movie he shot Around the World in 80 Days, which won the Oscar for Best Picture for 1956. Around the World gets bad-mouthed a lot today as an undeserving Best Picture Oscar winner, as though it were as lousy as DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, when in fact, it's a perfectly lovely comedy-adventure that follows the book fairly well, and certainly shows you the world. That film also begins with a lecture, this time on travel and the shrinking world, delivered by Edward R. Morrow, a somewhat more respectable newsman than Thomas, in color but still in a standard 35mm frame, so Todd can again pull the stunt of having the screen grow when the process actually begins, never mind that the first ten minutes of the film could be wholly cut and lose nothing.

When the Intermission ends (The Intermission is announced by a graphic showing two floating cigarettes with their smoke trails spelling out the word "Intermission," thus cutely encouraging you to go smoke yourself up some cancer. Ah, the 1950s. Man, "The Greatest Generation" was stupid), you hear Lowell Thomas yelling at you "QUIET! QUIET! QUIET!" As I said to the person seated next to me whom I was trying to answer a question for: "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. The movie is being very rude." Mind you, the house lights are still up, the curtains are still closed, the projectors are not turned on, but Lowell Thomas is screaming "QUIET!" at us. And he's doing this to introduce another Cinerama innovation, which he calls "Stereophonic Sound." Write that term down. You'll hear about Stereophonic Sound again someday, I'm sure. (Lowell and Cinerama would have you believe that this is the first-ever movie in stereo, as though Fantasia and "Fantasound" never happened.)

Don't take my word for it. Check out the DVD. He screams at us on it as well.

Now, at long last, you can see This is Cinerama the way it was intended to be seen: on your iPad while you're riding a bus!

The DVD uses a process called "Smilebox" to approximate the effect of the deeply-curved screen, and does a good job of it.

For ten years they made Cinerama films, and each did quite well indeed, but then a team of men at Cinerama, one of them Little Dougie's Uncle Mack Lunt, developed Ultra-Panavision, which allowed the entire size and curve of the Cinerama screen to be filled up with only a single panel. With the release, by and "in" Cinerama of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Cinerama became obsolete overnight.

The thing is, how many travelogues can you make? After ten years, there wasn't much left. They tried making fictional story films in the process, but it was ill-suited for acting and drama. Here's a close-up of Debbie Reynolds and Thelma Ritter in How the West Was Won, the last-ever movie shot in 3-panel Cinerama:

Who really wanted to see Thelma Ritter that big?

Look at that: they barely take up one-third of the image. Let's say you did a Super close-up of Debbie Reynolds, one where her face spread across all 3 panels; you'd get the "seams" down her eyes. It would look awful, not to mention the sharp points it would give her head, since there are three focal points instead of just one. And if you placed an actor in panel 1 talking to an actor in panel 3, they had to look past each other in order to appear to be looking at each other. It was highly confusing to act, to direct, to shoot.

And of course, if you weren't seated in the center of the theater, you ran the risk of Jimmy Stewart looking like this:

Jimmy Stewart, like practically everyone who worked on this movie, leaned heavily to the right.

The first attempt to do a fiction movie in Cinerama was George Pal's The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, not George's best work.



Actually, it's The Deadly Dull World of the Brothers Grimm, with lovely fairy tales.

 Although the three fairy tales full of special effects are charming and delightful like most of George's best work, the main storyline, an endless tale of the Brothers risking their jobs and romances to write fairy tales, is just terminally boring. It was a movie with something to bore the whole family. Soon George was putting his great talent to use on a worthier project, his wonderful 7 Faces of Dr. Lao.

The second and final Cinerama fiction film was How The West Was Won. Although no one's nominee for "Great Screenplay," the sprawling epic saga of the Prescott and Rawlings families over about 40 years is entertaining and dramatizes major developments in America's 19th Century history in a series of spectacular set pieces. The Civil War, the central American event of the 19th Century, gets short shrift, but then, Gone With the Wind had already been made, but the river rapids scene, the much-greater train robbery, and especially the amazing, jaw-dropping sequence when the Iroquois stampede a herd of bison across the train building site are incredible, make fantastic use of Cinerama, and more than make-up for the plodding plots, for trying to pass off Gregory Peck as a charming gambler-rogue, trying to pass off John Wayne as a human being (A specific one: General Sherman), and for Russ Tamblyn's pretty embarrassing performance.

Russ Tamblyn holds a unique position in Cinerama history: he's the only actor in both of the Cinerama 3-panel fiction movies, playing a prince with Harry Potter's invisibility cloak in Brothers Grimm quite charmingly, and playing a demented Confederate deserter who tries to assassinate General Grant. (Oh, the suspense: Will Russ Tamblyn kill General Grant years before he became president? Well, no, he doesn't.)

Buddy Hackett, Jim Backus, and Terry Thomas all appeared in Brothers Grimm and then went on to appear in the first non-Cinerama Cinerama film, the aforementioned Mad World.

But the form was out-of-date and dead in 1963. When How the West Was Won ended, so did Cinerama. Never mind that, these days, every third release is in Imax, a vastly superior system. These days even My Dinner With André would be in Imax and 3-D. ("Now you can actually TASTE the food André eats!")

And how Cinerama was lost.

But at least the name lives on to do further service at one of its former theaters.

That's entertainment!
("Ladies, bring your husbands!" Yeah, do that.)

Cheers darlings.

The He Generation, By Him.

Darlings, Little Dougie suggested I review the new book by Our Mutual Friend (a lovely Charles Dickens novel I also heartily recommend to those of you desperate enough to read books. How well I remember Charlie reading it to me by candlelight, installment by installment, as he wrote it, after long sessions of Barnaby Rudging my brains out! That man was Oliver Twisted. He had Great Sexpectations. In fact... What? I haven't even used Hard Times yet. Oh, all right!), Ken Levine, as he has been so kind about our books. I had two small problems with this plan:

1. It's about life in Los Angeles for a teenager in the 1960s. I was - ah - past my teen years by the 1960s, and spent those years in Europe and Los Angeles starring in high-class movies like Edgar Allen Poe's The Premature Climax, Torah, Torah Torah (It's the story of Moses with divine Steve Reeves as My Deliverer), It Sounds Like Music, and Fiddler on a Hot Tin Roof. The number of proms and sock-hops I attended in the '60s is in the low single-digits. (Though NOT "Zero".)

2. It would require me to read an entire book, and I'm lucky to read an entire sentence. Focusing my eyes enough to read more than one, easily-recognized word at a time, like, say "Vodka" or "Gin" for completely random examples, is more than I can manage most days. Little Dougie types up these blog entries for me from my semi-live (the jury is still out on my latest autopsy - I have them regularly, like check-ups, which will save time then the times comes) dictation.

Now Little Dougie is a mere three and a half months younger than Little Kenny - Face it, they're both VERY old, old men - and also grew up in Southern California, and Dougie reads books all the time, for reasons that utterly elude me, so I suggested he read Ken's pamphlet and review it here himself. So Here's Little Dougie, taking over this column, for today ONLY!

Here are the opinions of other people about Ken's book, from the back cover. Even though Bob Costas likes it, it's still a good book anyway.
Having trouble reading darling Howard Kaylan's (I adore Little Howard) remarks, particularly when the light-blue font is spread across a light-blue background? Thank whomever the book cover designer was who forgot that Blurbs need to be EASILY readable in order to SELL BOOKS, not simply to "look cool".

Hi. "Little Dougie" here. I did read Ken Levine's new memoir, The Me Generation... By Me: Growing Up in the '60s, which makes me a luckier person than those of you who have not read it, except for those of you whom will eventually read it, as you are the luckiest of all, since you still have the treat of its first-read ahead. Sadly, you can never read anything for the first time twice.

Last year, like all literate Americans, I read Ken's book of travel pieces, Where the Hell Am I?, which is also the title of chapter 42 of my book, Tallulah's first memoir, My Lush Life, thus demonstrating that great minds think alike even when severely disoriented. It was a collection of very funny, snarky, irreverent, jokey observations made during trips to various locales, running between two and six pages each, essentially blog pieces assembled, albeit, very funny and entertaining blog pieces.

Having read many of the chapters of The Me Generation in advance in Ken's popular blog, By Ken Levine, I expected his new book again to be a series of thematically-unified separate essays on various events, aspects, and stuff related to being an LA Tennybopper in the 1960s. However, Ken's new book is much more than that. This time out the individual essays are pieces of a greater whole. Much as Ray Bradbury's linked short stories when assembled makes a novel of The Martian Chronicles, so do Ken's essays add up to a narrative of coming of age, though not one likely to be confused with Catcher in the Rye. It's much, much funnier for one thing. And as for Bradbury, well, Ken's Woodland Hills in the 1960s is even more believably alien than Bradbury's Mars.

I eargerly await the sequel: "Trips I Have Not Survived!

(And not-coincidentally, Where the Hell Am I? is still available, and is still highly entertaining. At 2 to 6 pages each, the essays are perfect bathroom-break reading, and I keep my copy in the "Bathroom Literature" stack outside the bathroom door for grabbing-on-the-way-in. Ken's book is so much fun, you'll pray for constipation.)

After 130 pages, you'll get permanent agoraphobia and never leave your house again or your money back!

(Offer not valid in Georgia or Alaska.)  

Ken's new book has two basic audiences: People who also grew up in those days revisiting their youths, for whom it is The Me Generation... By Me, and people who weren't around then, for whom it is a guided tour of an alien culture on an alien planet in a parallel universe: "The Past," people for whom it is The Them Generation, By Another One A Them! (In his brilliant play I Hate Hamlet, Paul Rudnick has a TV producer say: "Wow, people who aren't me. What a concept!") Since I belong solidly in the first category, I must remark on it from that perspective. For how good it is as a guide to those who never knew those days, you must look elsewhere. But from either perspective, the jokes are friggin' funny.

Ken covers his own life from the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963 (Or, if you're a hardcore TV sci-fi geek who isn't all that into "history and stuff," The Day Doctor Who Debuted, November 23, 1963), until Midnight, December 31, 1969, which Ken pinpoints as his "End of the Sixties," though, as we were all pedantically informed and informed back on January 31, 1999, "The decades don't change until 2001!" "Yeah, yeah. Eat me, Pythagoras!"

Ken is 13 as the book begins and 19 at its close, so it is truly a chronicle of puberty and sexual coming-of-age, with jokes, lots of jokes, funny jokes. The youthful protagonist is laughing away blue-balls for 300 pages.

Which brings me to my own point-of-view as a reader: learning what it was like to grow up when I did near where I did, only straight.

Man. I thought we had it bad, what with homophobia and being offically culturally invisible and all, but after reading Ken's hilarious account of growing up breeder, I would not trade.

For instance: I don't recall ever having blue balls, or wet dreams either. I'm not saying I never came home from a date hornier than when I left, but not often, and not for long. Gay guys got laid. Right off. At puberty. With each other. When you don't have to play The Relationship Game to get laid, you get laid much, much more easily, and often. (I maintain that the REAL root cause of homophobia in straight men is unconscious jealousy of the ease with which gay guys can get laid.)

Also, I was in the Drama Department in high school. Guys, you straight guys out there, I'm talking to YOU! You wanna get laid in high school? Get into the Drama Department. Appear in the plays or work on the crews. Trust me. Never mind your dopey jock sports. Come to the Drama Department if you're serious about wanting sex. 50% to 80% of the "actresses" in high school are "Free Spirits" who believe in having sex without waiting for a diamond ring, or the Lunch Bell.

AND THE GUYS ARE ALL GAY!

You have NO competition for the girls! (And the gay guys will blow you secretly, backstage, when there are no girls available. Tell no one. By which I mean, tell everyone.)

The book is a guided tour of that bygone era from a very specific point-of-view, so you get a lot more on The Lloyd Thaxton Show than on war strategy or sociology or heavy drama, not that those weighty topics are wholly missing, not by a long shot. But you know, speaking as someone who was 13 in 1963 and 19 in 1969 also, The Lloyd Thaxton Show was a daily part of our lives, as much as The Mickey Mouse Club and The Soupy Sales Show had been before it, and chronicles of The Lloyd Thaxton Show are rare.

I admit to being brought up short when Ken criticized Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In as "the unfunniest sketch comedy show ever." Back in my day, sonny boy, that was heresy. But you know, I've got a few Laugh-Ins sitting round on DVD. Let's take a look.

That's my boss, mentor, friend, and ticket-of-entree to the Laugh-In set, Dick Whittington, at the top of the ladder in 1968.  Glad to say, he's still alive. I was present in the room when this picture was taken.

The one, the only Gary Owens, Ken's friend, boss, mentor and ticket-of-entree to the Laugh-In set. Gary is also known to friends and fans as "Garish." There is NO ONE else like Garish! Glad to say he's still alive also.

There is no way to explain Tiny Tim to anyone not around in 1968. Children saw this - ah - man on TV. I stood in line to get his autograph on his record album after paying perfectly good money to see him "in concert" at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

What were we thinking? (Not the peak of Goldie's career, but Ken, those memories!)

Okay, the musical numbers weren't exactly Sondheim, but they were by the great Billy Barnes (who only just passed away last month), and were peppy and amusing. This one was about clowns. No really. Clowns. (But it was not Send in the Clowns, more like Lose the Clowns!)

"Was that a chicken joke?"

(No, it wasn't. No one ever dared tell a chicken joke around her for some reason. Look, I love JoAnne, who has been exceedingly nice to me my whole life, but she can be a tad over-powering. Just saying.)

"Say 'Goodnight, Dick'."
"That reminds me of a dick my aunt once sucked."
Schlatter: "And we're off the air!"

Oops.

Ah, this is a hell of a fun party with lots of funny folks who are enjoyable to spend time with and all but... these comedy sketches are lousy: obvious, ancient, overly-inoffensive, and broader than The Mouth of the Amazon River. There's more cutting-edge political satire and hilarious wit stuffed into a single Pat Paulson editorial on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in that era than on the whole of Laugh-In's run put together. (Mind you, a trip through the Smothers Brothers' DVDs reveals that their big, guest-star-driven comedy sketches are pretty grizzly affairs also, sub-Carol Burnett Show work. It is the Pat Paulson solo pieces that not only still hold up, but still hit it out of the park.)

With Laugh-In, Ken and I share a weird coincidental similarity (one of several), we were both allowed at ages 18 and 19 to hang on the Laugh-In set, over on Stage 4 at NBC in Burbank in 1968 and '69, Ken via his radio mentor, Gary Owens, me via my radio mentor, "Sweet Dick" Whittington. We must have been in some of the same rooms at the same time, but never met. Well, when Jack Benny or Ethel Merman or Nancy Sinatra or Lena Horn or Sonny & Cher or Kate Smith or Sammy Davis Jr or Douglas Fairbanks Jr, or even just JoAnne Worley may appear at any moment, and Alan Sues won't leave, who's going to notice that other 19 year old, also soaking it all in? Not me. Not Ken. However, I was not present when Ken's "Greatest Goldie Hawn Story Ever" event happened. I won't spoil it here, but the tale lives up to its title. I can't top that one.

I was hugely amused by Ken's tale of being intimidated when his high school team had to play at Manuel Arts High School, and when, having scored an unlikely win over these black athletic giants, the team's coach advised the players to skip changing or showering, just get on the bus and get away now, fast! MOVE! My dad, as wimpy a skinny, white science-nerd guy as ever lived, graduated from Manuel Arts High School. His tales of it were less exciting. (Of course, he went there a generation earlier, and my dad's tales of ANYTHING were less exciting. My dad made World War II sound dull. My dad thought mathematics was fun! As a raconteur my dad was beaten out by tapioca pudding that has gone off.)

Ken takes us back to so much: the Beatlemania of the Beatles' first visit to America in 1964. (Ken's "inside information" sends him on a hilarious wild goose chase); the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which, we now know, civilization and humanity really did tremble on the brink of extinction, subject to a madman's whim; KFWB vs KHJ for the rock 'n' Roll teenage listeners. Ken was a KHJ-er, I was a dye hard KFWB-er, thanks largely to Lohman & Barkley, with KRLA as my backup solely because of the geniuses that were The Credibility Gap. (Harry Shearer, Richard L. Bebe, David L. Landers and Michael McKean, so no one that ever went anywhere or did anything or is any kind of comic genius ner nothin'.)

Ken tells of a miserable two weeks he spent staying with his grandparents in Hemet, the most-boring place on earth. Argh! Two weeks? You pussy, Levine! I lived in Hemet for 8 YEARS! I do not fear death; I've already done my time in Purgatory.

In praising the professionalism of long-time KTTV 1950s and '60s stalwart Bill Welsh, Ken asks "How do you ask Gypsy Boots what his next project is with a straight face?" As it happens I worked a number of times with the garrulous, friendly, sweet, hot-in-his-day (LONG ago!), truly insane Gypsy Boots. Here's how you asked Gypsy Boots what his next project was with a straight face. You put the camera on Gypsy alone. Then it didn't matter if you had a straight face or not. (Gypsy wouldn't have cared. As long as you were pointing a microphone and/or a camera at him, you were His Best Friend.) You'd say: "Tell us about your next project, Gypsy." Then you could go to lunch or take a nap or read a book or start a new country or say "Uh-huh" occasionally or tour Lichtenstein or marry, have children, grow old and die peacefully surrounded by your scores of apple-cheeked grandchildren or do anything you liked. Gypsy, without any further prompting from you whatsoever, would then speak at five times the rate at which humans can hear until you one day pried the microphone from his cold dead hands. And it didn't matter if he had no "next project," or even a current one, one would pour out of his mouth like water over Niagara Falls. Slooooowly he turns...

This may be a first in a '60s memoir, but Ken claims "not" to have been at Woodstock. Yeah, sure. I wasn't there either, Ken. [Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink] Kids, by which I mean everyone under 55, when a Baby Boomer tells you he or she was not at Woodstock, they're bullshitting you. It's a scientifically-established fact that everyone born between 1945 and 1955 was at Woodstock. Some of us were even there more than once. (Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey stuff. Don't ask.)

I'm working at a small disadvantage here in trying to convince you that Ken's narrative of searching for sex and a professional direction through girlfriend after girlfriend and teenage job after teenage job is a highly entertaining, consistently make-laughing-noises-with-your-voice funny, once in a while even moving story. (He assures us he has changed a few names. I'm assuming one of the changed names is for the high school girl he repeatedly tells us had had sex with her own brother.) It's known that Ken has gone on record a few times in praise of my own meager efforts. Oh Look; here's what I mean.

How did the back cover of my own soon-(Honest! Really soon now!)-to-be-published book Tallyho, Tallulah! get in here? Oh please, boys, all that praise! You're making me blush. Stop! Stop now or I'm leaving! Oh, ya got me, you scamps.

As you can see, Ken has been free with his praise, and I could be perceived as merely returning praise-for-praise rather than honestly assessing Ken's funny book. So, though it pains me as it does, I must, to restore my critical credibility, level some gratuitous negative remarks at this book. Brace yourselves. I shall be brutal, BRUTAL!

Ah... Hmm... Uh... Oh, yes, the proof-reading! Yes, it really needed another pass under a good solid proof-reader. Here and there were italicized words where the accompanying punctuation mark wasn't italicized. "The musical Annie!" as opposed to "The Musical Annie!" There were occasional italicized words that were missing the spaces before or after them: "What theHell are you talking about?" or "Go fuckyourself, Miss Grundy!"

And then, on page 279 we find this excuse for a sentence: "Like most kids of my generation, the Three Stooges were gods." Now, unless Ken means to tell us that most Baby Boomers were gods, which frankly, I doubt on every level, that sentence is missing two words, and should say: "Like most kids of my generation, I thought the Three Stooges were gods." How DARE they try to sell such half-assed proof-reading to the American book-reading public for money? I demand a public investigation, indictments, arrests, free booze.

There! See? I was mean and hyper-critical just like I would be with anyone's work. As it happens, I was a professional proof-reader at The Hollywood Reporter about three decades ago. It gets in your blood. Also, I spent about half the summer straining my eyes to try and rid the published edition of Tallyho, Tallulah! of all such similar typos and oversights. They become hard to miss once you are not looking for them. (As long as you are looking for them, they are God-damned elusive.) I'm sorry.

As regards The Three Stooges. Ken brings them up in the context of driving Moe Howard to a radio interview in his own (Ken's, that is) car. OK, when I was 9 years old, I loved The Three Stooges. We got them on TV in Los Angeles in those days on a one-hour show nightly (running 4 shorts each broadcast, or was it 2?), hosted by Don Lamond, a mildly smarmy announcer personality who had the bonifides to host The Three Stooges because he was Larry Fine's son-in-law. Yup, pretty cool. His children had Stoogeblood.

But my admiration for The Three Stooges did not survive puberty. Really. I have not watched one of their shorts in 40 years. My love for Laurel & Hardy is as great today as it was when I was 5. My adoration of Abbott & Costello, though reduced from what it was as a boy, nonetheless remains embedded in me. My worship of The Marx Brothers (who are the ones who replaced the Stooges in my heart), WC Fields and Buster Keaton only grow greater with the passing of years. The Stooges have bored me since Puberty.

Also, around the time puberty hit, I saw the Three Stooges perform live onstage - without sound effects! In the early 1960s, without sound effects, The Three Stooges were just three old, old men hitting each other pointlessly. It was not remotely funny. My love of them really was not up to the strain of surviving that.

On the other hand, if in 1969 I had driven Moe Howard in my own car, and he had sat in the front seat and called me "Boychick", I most certainly would have been jazzed out of my head. In 1974, Adela Rogers St. John rode in the front seat of my car as I drove her to a radio interview. She was witty, erudite, friendly, and had known everyone of importance in the 20th Century, from Louis B. Mayer to Richard Nixon, personally. ("The morning Watergate broke, I got on the phone to Nixon. I said to him, 'Dick, you have to get in front of this. Tell the whole truth now!") She didn't call me "boychick," but she did invite me to eat lunch with her afterwards in her home, cooked and served by her cook. ("You're sitting in Clark Gable's favorite chair. That's where he sat whenever he was here.")

But, cool as she was, Adela was no Moe Howard. Not once had she ever poked Betty Davis in the eyes, nor had she ever even smacked Eleanor Roosevelt over the head with a sledge hammer that makes a "Boing!" sound effect. (The Secret Service really frowns rather strictly on throwing slapstick gags at the First Family anyway. Those spoil sports have no sense of humor at all.)

I did drive John Cassevettes in my car to a radio interview once, but he sat in the back, and barely spoke to me. And frankly, the less conversation there was, the less likely I was to say "I saw your film Husbands last week. That was the most pretentious, boring, self-indulgent piece of narcissistic crap I have ever sat through. Might you refund my money, please?" which he might have taken offense to. (About five years ago, my brother introduced me to Larry Hagman. I mentioned to him that I had seen the comedy Son of Blob, aka Beware The Blob, which he had directed. Larry immediately said: "Do you want your money back? 'Cause I'll write ya a check right now." I turned Larry down. It's a funny movie. I liked it. But if Cassevettes had offered me my money back on Husbands, I'd have taken it.)

You, however, will not want your money back from "He" for buying The Me Generation... By Me. Unless you're a humorless lout yourself, in which case, that's on you.

The beat goes on. Oh yes, the beat goes on...
[You can purchase The ME Generation... By ME here.]

Ken Levine and Tallulah Morehead at a literary conference.

“Re-Imagining” The Tony Awards, 2012

The Tonys are always lovely. We get to see musical numbers, mostly not about Mormons, and scenes from far away shows, yet it always languishes in the ratings. The problem is, obviously, that America hasn’t seen these shows. In most of the country, they generate about as much enthusiasm as would an awards banquet for a high school theater department from another state. The Oscars struggle in the ratings, and America has seen the movies. The Tonys never have a chance.


But I'll keep watching them, if only to see what Angela Lansbury will be wearing, and to see what the Ahmanson and Pantages Theaters in my home town, Los Angeles, will be presenting with different casts and scaled-down sets in two years. (The Pantages has The Addams Family playing right now. Does it star Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth? No. Douglas Sills and Sara Gettelfinger. Oooh. There’s the sort of excitement to coax $60 out of one’s pocket.)


I know that the musical The Book of Mormon is a satirical show from the creators of South Park. I know that many people whose opinions I value and respect praise it to the skies as brilliant. I really do know this. But still, the title and the “Hello, My name is Elder Price” stuff make my skin crawl. (Nothing like seeing a brainless 20 year old calling himself an “elder” for sheer creepiness.) If the show were what I need it to be for me to like it, Mormons would be picketing it, and attacking it in the press as a “libel” on Mormonism, and I’ve seen none of that.


Still, watching a parade of Broadway stars slam their doors in the faces of these creepy Mormon missionaries made me smile. I’ve slammed a few doors into a few Mormon missionaries’ faces myself, though if possible, I’d douse them with a pitcher of ice water first. Setting them on fire is still sadly illegal, even though it is legal for them to campaign against the civil rights of gay people. (My father’s family was Mormon. My dad was born in Salt Lake City and I’m directly descended from HIGHLY prominent early Mormon polygamists. I’ve been putting up with my smug, evil Mormon relatives all my life. I’ve earned the right to douse them with ice water.)


So I just couldn’t fully enjoy the Tony’s opening musical number. I want to like the musical The Book of Mormon, but it’s like trying to like a musical titled The Satanic Bible. If only they’d set a couple of them on fire, saying: “This is for Proposition 8” as they struck the match.


Then out came openly-gay Neil Patrick Harris, dressed like one of these skin-crawly kids who are a big part of making his marriage illegal in California and where ever else their money and evil influence pollutes America. Why didn’t he say: “Get out of here, you mother-F*@king @$$holes”? I know they’re just actors, but what they represent is evil, and spends millions annually to fight NPH’s civil rights. I just don’t find it funny. The audience was applauding (though not, I noticed, Phillip Seymour Hoffman), I was booing at home.


I really don’t get all the love for NPH as a Tony host. He isn’t bad. He’s personable and pleasant. But I would vastly prefer Nathan Lane or a naked Hugh Jackman. (Please don’t confuse them. A naked Nathan Lane would not be appreciated, nor a dressed Hugh Jackman.)

Hugh cleanses his big one.

Jon Voight was there? How did they get him? Did someone tell him it was a Teabagger rally?


My, hasn’t Patti Lupone packed on a few pounds? Glad I wasn’t one of the dancers who had to heft her up into the air, or did they reuse Mary Poppins’s cables?

"Don't [Grunt] Crush me, [Gasp! Pant!], Argentina!"
(Thank Heavens NPH is light in his loafers.)

Neil’s musical number wasn’t particularly clever or well-written, but it was amusingly danced, and Neil only needed a couple more rehearsals to stop tripping over lyrics and jumping cues.


Paul Rudd: "What does that mean: ‘Featured Actress in a Play’?” Oh no. They aren’t going to waste time explaining to us what everyone there and everyone watching already knows are they?


Yes, they are.


Paul darling, you’re adorable, but if you’re going to waste my time explaining the bleeding obvious in tired awards-show banter, please, do it naked or get off the stage.

Paul Rudd wants to show you his Best Featured Performer in a Supporting Role.

Linda Emond was nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play, Pageant or Piano Recital for playing Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman? That’s a leading role, not a “featured” one.


Judith Light, who won that category, said she felt like she was “the luckiest girl in New York City.” Was this because she no longer has to act with Tony Danza? (“Girl?” Judith is 63!) She then went on to use CBS prime network time to thank the box office personnel and the understudies. She’s had 6 decades to edit this speech down.


Newsies is a new concept for finding a musical; instead of making a stage musical out of a beloved hit movie, this one was based on a forgotten bomb of a movie. Can a stage production of Bugsy Malone be far behind?


We got a really good idea of just whom CBS thinks watches the Tonys when we got the commercial in which respected character actor Ronald Guttman slipped on a rubber glove and asked: “Embarrassed by a prostate exam? Imagine how your doctor feels.” Hey, that doctor CHOSE to be a proctologist. He must have had a reason, though I'd rather not know what it was. I’m sure this was meaningful to every woman in the viewership. Little Dougie tells me his doctor is only embarrassed by how much Dougie enjoys the exam. He keeps telling Dougie: “You don’t need one EVERY time you come to the office.” (And how appropriate to have an actor named “Guttman” doing an ad for prostate exams. Was Dame Edna busy?)


Neil Patrick Harris: “So every year, I like to come out.” Once was enough, Neil. We all got it. You’re gay.


Danny Burstein’s performance of Buddy’s Blues from Follies was terrific. I’d love to see that. When does it close in L.A.? Yesterday? Never mind.


So there’s a musical on Broadway based on Ghost, and it includes the ancient Unchained Melody in its score? Does it contain any original content at all?


Mike Nichols looked awful. I hope he’s okay. The man is a genius. He made me roar with laughter two years ago with Spamalot. (It took it awhile to hit the Ahmanson.) This time he was winning for directing Death of a Salesman, about as far away from Spamalot as you can get. If only he’d never broken up his act with Elaine May, he might have amounted to something.

I still have this album in vinyl, though 40 minutes is hardly "an evening," however brilliantly funny it is. (I love that the album cover says "Original Cast". Was there a road company of An Evening With Mike Nichols and Eliane May, starring Orson Bean and Jayne Meadows?)

They actually had the nerve to play off Mike Nichols? Nothing like seeing a giant drowned out by Lilliputians.


Ok, NPH’s Spider-Man line made me laugh. And there’s something appealingly tone-deaf-to-taste in doing a joke about your “junk” as you introduce 300 year old Angela Lansbury.

"Ya gotta be well-liked, Spidey!"

The guy from Smash! beat out Spider-Man for a Tony? I guess the Broadway community is very forgiving. So he plays Captain Hook disguised as Groucho Marx? I’m confused.


And was Andrew Garfield nominated for Death of a Spider-Man?

Andrew Garfield makes for one buff Biff! But I'm supposed to believe that Phillip Seymour Hoffman fathered this guy? Willy Loman was on the road a good deal with just a shoeshine and a smile (Which would get you arrested in most cites. Also we know he traveled well-stocked with nylons), and the play makes it clear that he cheated on Linda while he was gone. This photo makes me wonder if Linda didn't have a hunky mailman or milkman making "special deliveries" while Willy was out working his willy on the road.

George Gershwin had TWO new musicals on Broadway this year? Not bad for a guy who’s been dead for 75 years. So many long-dead people get so LAZY! My dead grandfathers haven’t lifted a finger in decades, and I’m still waiting for Charles Dickens to get off his ass and finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood. (I have five bucks on the butler having done it.) Just doing the occasional guest spot on Doctor Who doesn’t cut it, Charlie! (Okay, technically Porgy and Bess is not a “new” musical, but “Porgy and Bess Gutted for the Attention-Span-Deprived” is.)


Formerly-cute Matthew Broderick is packing on the pounds also. In fact, he appears to be morphing into Patti Lupone. So much for the myth that singing and dancing in a strenuous musical on Broadway 8 shows a week will keep you in shape. I’m now tossing out my Sarah Jessica Parker voodoo doll. Sarah, he's all yours.


Once does Newsies one better. While Newsies is based on a forgotten turkey of decades back that few saw, Once is based on a movie nobody saw at all. (Yes, I know it won an Oscar, but for “Best Song”. That's the same award they gave to It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp. Very highly-respected category. No one saw the movie; the Music Branch of the Academy just listened to the CD.)


Why was James Marsten presenting? He’s never appeared on Broadway. They had to use a movie credit to introduce him. Has he any stage credits anywhere? High school?


Did Ellen Barkin do her hair in a wind tunnel?


Okay, Peter and the Starcatcher is a “prequel” to Peter Pan, like Psycho IV: The Beginning. (Did no one learn the lessons of Hook?) In that case, why does Peter Pan, who went to Neverland according to James M. Barrie, who should know, as a tiny child, look 30? Shouldn’t he be, oh I don’t know, an INFANT? Oh wait. I see. They "re-imagined" it. Yes, Peter Pan was always so insufficiently imagined.


Hold your horses of a different color! In End of the Rainbow, Judy Garland is played by a WOMAN? That’s awfully outre casting. Traditionally,  Francis Gumm is a cross-dressing role like Edna in Hairspray, reserved solely for drag queens and John Travolta. And then she didn’t win, even though the Tonys were being handed out on Judy’s 90th birthday? (Actually, just from the small bit of it we saw, I wouldn’t have given it to her either. Judy was a lot better than that.)


“Craig Owens,” aka James Corden, is acting on Broadway (apparently playing two roles at once)? Then who is protecting Colchester from the Cybermen, and raising Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All?

James Corden, aka, "Craig Owen," thwarts the Cybermen's evil plans to conquer Colchester.

Is winning the Best Original Score Tony still an honor when it’s presented by Sheryl Crow?


So slashing up Porgy and Bess like Norman Bates slimming down Janet Leigh in the shower, is really “re-imagining” it? Like imagining it as half as long? Why not just call it “Porgy an”? I bet the Gershwins would call it something else, something far-less broadcastable, even on cable. I can hear George and Ira somewhere saying: “If we’d wanted it gutted, and then rewritten by hacks, we would have gutted it ourselves, and then hired hacks to rewrite it.” I’ve seen several different productions of it, and not once have I found myself thinking: “This would be so much better if they just hacked it to pieces.” BTW, the “excerpt” they performed from it on the Tony Show is now the whole thing.


Audra McDonald is so magnificent, she really should consider appearing in Porgy and Bess sometime.

I noticed on a commercial break that Paul Tazewell lost the Costume Design Tony for the revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. (Which has also been somewhat “re-imagined”.) I know why. It was for putting Blair Underwear in tank-tops when he should have been shirtless - and pantsless. (Though I can see the visual pun of putting Stanley No-Longer-Kowalski-Because-It’s-“Re-Imagined” in a "wife-beater", but I’d rather see his pecs, thank you.)

Blair Underwood as he should be costumed.
(Sweet bleeding Williams, he's beautiful! Not that that's news.)

Why was Tyler Perry presenting? The show was running on CBS, not TBS.


How did Death of a Salesman win Best Revival? Sure it’s one of the three greatest plays ever written by an American, but they forgot to “re-imagine” it. It almost seems as though they thought that Arthur Miller had already imagined it sufficiently the first time out. The least they could have done would have been to cut it’s running time by 50% and make it about a travelling pimp.


After listening to the Once musical number I decided that sometimes Once is more than enough. Who knew they had Irish marching bands? It was like a halftime show at a rugby match in Dublin.


Why did I bet so heavily on Spider-Man: Turn Off That God-Damn Dark sweeping the Tonys?


Donyale Werle (there’s a name you don’t see everyday. Well, she does), in her acceptance speech for Best Scenic Design of a Play, said: “This is a show that doesn’t need any scenery at all.” Was she bragging about pulling a fast one on the producers and the Tony voters? What’s next for her? Our Town?

How does Jim Parsons, who is starring in Harvey, do a Broadway show in New York and a sitcom in Los Angeles at the same time? Does he have a grueling daily commute, or is he playing Harvey’s title role? (I've always wanted to see Lembeck: a play about a sweet middle-aged drinker who thinks his best friend is an invisible Harvey Lembeck.)

Get a shave, hippie!

You know, if the Che Guevara had looked anywhere near as hot as Ricky Martin does, I’d have had those 1960s Che posters all over the place. If Che looked exactly like Ricky, I’d have been riding with he and Fidel. Well, with Che. Fidel, not so much. How fortunate Che wasn’t actually hot at all. (And was it just me, or was Ricky looking a bit like Jean Dujardin?)

You don't Che!

Corbin Bleu, who stars in Godspell, is adorable. If only he were starring in a musical I could stand. I want more "spell", much less "god".

Corbin Bleu in black and white with all his hair on his head, and in color with some hair moved from his scalp to his cleavage and crab ladder. I prefer his hairier look. He could cast a spell on me that could make me see God!

Have I ever mentioned how deeply I can not stand Mandy Patinkin? He was on for 30 seconds, and I was irritated enough to change channels, except I was writing this for YOU, my loyal readers whom I know weren't watching this, as no one was. Oh, the grueling sacrifices I make for you dears.


Porgy An won Best Revival of a Musical? Shouldn’t it have won Best Partial Revival of What Once Was an Opera? All through the producer’s acceptance speech, I wanted to slap him. This time I supported playing him off. He doesn’t want the Gershwins to run on too long, but he’s okay with doing it himself, dispensing bullshit about “bringing it into the 21st Century.” Yes, the Gershwins so need your "help".


They took up time to show us bits of a CRUISE SHIP production of Hairspray? Why not a community theater production? Or a production staged by Spanky MacFarland and starring Alfalfa Schweitzer and Darla Hood? How about a cruise ship production of Titanic? The cruise ship excerpt was “live.” How I wish that when we’d cut to the show they would have been trying to perform in the midst of hurricane, with the stage violently rocking, and filling with seawater. And then Somalian pirates could run in and rob and rape the passengers! The Poseidon Hairspray. Oh, and the guy playing Corny Collins was pretty bad. That ship is as close to performing on Broadway as he’ll ever get.


Finally a meaningful, deserved award, namely a special award to Hugh Jackman for being Hugh Jackman. Works for me, except it was presented by that woman who claims to be his wife, or as I think of her, that slut who came between us. Sure, Hugh CLAIMS he loves her, but that's only because he’s afraid of her. Stalkers can be very scary. I know. It said so on that injunction she made Hugh take out against me a few years back, and renew every six months ever since. Hugh, I forgive you, and I have a “Special Award” for you right here, but you have to accept it in person - without HER! (And how great does his now-finished-shooting film of Les Miserables look? I love that show. I relate to it. I myself have often been called by my many lovers "Lay Miserable". And if Hugh was all that attached to the annoying woman, why didn’t he take her along to the shoot? Someone wanted a six month break from her. If only I’d known, I’d have come running, also while walking and even while standing still and/or reclining.)




Hugh Jackman damp. That's Entertainment!

 Candice Bergan looked pretty good, especially since I think she’s only about three hours younger than Angela Lansbury.


Holy Crap! James Cordon beat John Lithgow, Frank Langella (whose new book, Dropped Names, is a fascinating, fun read, highly recommended by moi), Darth Vader, and even Phillip Seymour Hoffman in one of the best-written roles of all time! Wow! I mean I like James and all. He is, after all, a personal friend of Doctor Who, but that, my friends, is what you call an upset! Hell, I thought Blair Underwood had a stronger chance of winning, and he wasn’t even nominated. Is this really for his acting, or is it for saving Colchester from the Cybermen?

James and The Doctor. The Doctor had to hide from James the fact that he was going to win a Tony. He knew, of course. He's a time traveller. Here he's "re-imagining" The Daleks.

Back home, Stormageddon: Dark Lord of All is so proud.


Did you see Darth Vader’s face when they said “James Corden”? It looked like he was asking his lady companion: “Who?” If you lip-read his companion, she’s saying: “He’s the fat English guy.”


On the other hand, James said of his girlfriend who gave birth to their kid some months back: “She’s my baby mama and I can’t wait to marry her.” Well, apparently he could.


How nice. The sublime Audra McDonald won a Tony for playing bits of Bess. Think how good she’d be if she played the entire role.


However, Audra was a bit guilty of over-sharing: “To be in love with Norm Lewis every night, to get raped by Phillip Boykin every night, and to snort drugs with David Alan Grier every night.” Hello? With all that going on backstage, how do they ever manage to perform even what little is left of the show? She then mentioned “the man I’m going to marry.” Is she still sure? He may have just changed his mind about 30 seconds before. Then she spoke to her 11 year-old daughter in the audience. Excuse me? Are these the sorts of confessions you make before your pre-pubescent daughter? (Frankly, even taken as jokes, it’s pretty gamy stuff to say in front of your 11 year-old daughter. “Mommy thinks getting raped and snorting narcotics is funny. Watch me make Mommy laugh.” Child Protection Services, clean up on Aisle 2.")


So, with the show already running over time, NPH once again felt the need to do a gratuitous finale number about having no time to do a gratuitous finale number. Neil, all anyone wants at 6 minutes after 11 is to get to the bar. Shut up. Stop showing off and leave the stage. The show has been over ever since they gave Best Musical to that Irish thing you couldn't pay me to sit through, and I'm half-Irish. (The thirsty half.)


Cheers, darlings.

"Let's see Matt Smith get one of these!"

And keep an eye out for Tallyho, Tallulah!, Tallulah's new memoir, coming out later this summer. Watch this space for purchasing information as soon as it becomes available.