Titus (TV)

(2000-2002)
Created by Christopher Titus, Jack Kenny, Brian Hargrove
Starring Christopher Titus, Stacy Keach, Cynthia Watros, Zach Ward, and David Shatraw.
IMDB Entry

In the 1990s, probably due to the influence of Seinfeld, the TV networks started scouring the standup clubs to create vehicles for sitcoms. So you had things like Everyone Loves Raymond, Home Improvement, and King of Queens. These all showed a warts-and-all family life where there were problems and frustrations and wacky quirks. Toward the end of this, though, stand-up comic Christopher Titus had his own sort of show.  The main difference:  the family was psychotic (sometimes literally).

Titus had grown up in a wildly dysfunctional family:  an alcoholic, selfish father, a mentally disturbed mother, and run-ins with drugs and drinking. After nearly killing himself by falling into a bonfire, he managed to turn his life around and turned to comedy.  After the success of a one-man show, Fox gave him a time slot for his autobiographical comedy, Titus.

In it, Titus was dealing with his alcoholic and selfish father, Ken (Stacy Keach), his not very bright brother, Dave (Zach Ward*), his nice guy friend, Tommy (David Shatraw), and his girlfriend Erin (Cynthia Watros), who kept him sane.

The show had its own regular structure.  It would start out with Titus addressing the camera about the theme for the episode (shot in black and white and referred to as the neutral space).  There would be quick cuts to scenes from his past to illustrate his point, then the story for the episode would unfold (usually on a single set), cutting back to to the neutral space from time to time, with more inset scenes.  The show would end in the neutral space, usually ending with the same line that started it.

The Titus family was by far the most dysfunctional one** on TV and the reason was Ken Titus.  He had less compassion than a brick wall and was completely insensitive to the feelings of others -- other than trying to make them as miserable as possible. At the same time, he was very successful as a ladies' man, even if he had trouble dealing with a relationship once it went past dating (as his five marriages attest). Stacy Keach had a field day portraying the nastiest father ever to appear on TV. 

The show had a very dark edge.  The themes were not the usual fodder for comedy -- alcoholism, schizophrenia, heart attacks, AIDS, death, abuse (both emotional and physical***) -- without being gross or tasteless.

Christopher Titus is, of course, great in the role; it was his life, after all. Zach Ward is fun as his doofus, pot-smoking bother, who lives with Ken.  And Cynthia Watros deserves praise for taking the role as the sane one faced with the madness (though she has some baggage of her own).

The show was a critical and ratings success in a limited run in 2001, so was brought back.  But as time went on, there was tension between Titus and Fox about how much he was pushing the envelope. Toward the end, Fox offered some story suggestions that Titus didn't like. When he turned them down, they stopped promoting the show, its ratings dropped, and it was canceled.

Great comedy always surprises, and you couldn't get better surprises than Titus.  It's a shame it went off the air.

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*Who previously had gained film immortality by playing Scut Farkus in A Christmas Story. 

**It was so closely based upon Titus's own family that Fox insisted that he get them all to sign releases promising not to sue. They all did -- but Ken Titus insisted on getting a new truck in return.

***Not by Ken.  For all his failings, he didn't hit his kids unless they challenged him to a fight.

Blind Voices (book)

 by Tom Reamy
(1978)

Tom Reamy could have been one of the great writers in the science fiction genre.  The only thing that stopped him was his heart.

Reamy grew up in Texas, and by the 1950s had become one of the big names in science fiction fandom.  You have to understand that a fan back then didn't just mean you read everything and had favorite books.  It also meant you were involved in writing SF 'zines* and running conventions.  He organized the first SF convention in the state and worked on Worldcon bid committees.

But he also was interested in writing.  He helped set up the Turkey City Writers Workshop,** one of the most successful writing groups in the genre.

Finally, in the early 70s, Reamy decided he was ready to break in as an author.  And did he break in.  One of his first stories, "Twilla," was nominated for a Hugo Award. The next year, his story "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" also got a nomination, and won the Nebula Award.  In 1976, he won the John F. Campbell Award for best new writer. 

Obviously, he looked like he had a great future.  But, on November 4, 1977, Reamy was found dead of a heart attack.  He had been working on a story when he died.

There was one last treat for his fans, though.  Reamy had completed a novel, Blind Voices. It was published the next year.

 Blind Voices is set in Kansas in the 1920s.  Haverstock's Traveling Curiosus and Wondershow comes into town, promising more than just the usual circus performers.  Three young women -- Francine, Rose, and Evelyn -- are attracted to the show and its denizens -- a centaur, and man who's only a foot tall, and Angel, the Boy Who Can Fly.

It is a story of wonders, with a subtext of sexual awakening in a time when sex was still a taboo subject.

The story immediately drew comparisons to Ray Bradbury and and Charles G. Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao for its lyricism and setting.  Critics agreed it showed all the signs of a major talent, even if some things were a bit rough.*** It was nominated for both a Nebula and a Hugo, losing both to Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake.

Of course, despite his success, there would be no more Tom Reamy stories.  His short stories were collected in San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories in 1979.****

With his slim output, Reamy is easy to miss.  But Blind Voices is a book that shouldn't be overlooked.

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*In those days, created on a mimeograph or hectograph and mailed out to others.  Reamy got two Hugo nominations for his fanzine Trumpet.

**Which, years later, created the Turkey City Lexicon, a must for anyone seriously interested in writing SF.

***It seems to me that Reamy's death prevented some minor edits, notably not fixing the fact that one of the character's fates is left unresolved.

****One final story was sold to Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions (before that became a punchline) and is still unpublished.

Eliott Murphy Aquashow (music)

(1973)
Wikipedia Entry
Eliott Murphy Homepage

In the early 1970s, Loudon Wainwright III would joke about belonging to the New Bob Dylan Club -- people who had been anointed with that title. In addition to him, they were Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, and Elliott Murphy.

Springsteen you've probably heard of. Wainwright has had a long career as both a singer/songwriter and actor.*  Prine has had a long, but someone low-key career,** partly because he was too much a country songwriter to gain popularity.  It's possible that the average music fan has heard of all three, given eclectic enough tastes.

As for Elliott Murphy . . . .

Murphy grew up in the New York City area, as part of a family in show business.  His father, Elliott, Sr., made his name at the New York Word's Fair of 1939, where he ran the Aquashow, a water-themed attraction featuring swimmers and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Young Elliott took up the guitar very early and was soon playing in bands in New York and in Europe.  In 1971, he recorded his debut album Aquashow.

The album was a tour de force of good songs and sophisticated lyrics.  Featuring Murphy guitar and harmonica.  It was an immediate critical success.  Rolling Stone reviewed it with Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, calling the two of them "The Best New Dylan since 1968).***

So what happened?  Sales.  Springsteen ended up on the cover of Time, and Wainwright had a minor hit with "Dead Skunk" and Prine had several albums breaking into the top 200.  Aquashow did not. It also got far less FM airplay. In addition, Murphy, though a good singer, did not have the distinctive voice that Wainwright, Prince, and Springsteen had.

Murphy has continued to record regularly, but never had a chart success and, as FM radio died out, there was no outlet for his music.  He was popular in Europe, though, and moved there full time in 1989.

Murphy's songwriting and music is well regarded by musicians, and he does have a strong following.  And really, there was little chance he'd reach the levels of popularity of Dylan and Springsteen. But to those who remember the hype, he seems to be the odd man out.

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*His best-known part was in the TV show Undeclared, though he appeared in and wrote the music for Knocked Up.  He also was supposed to be a regular in the TV version of MASH (he was announced as such, but seems to only have appeared in one or two episodes). Of course, to you younger folk, he's the father of Rufus Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche.

**Including having his song "Illegal Smile" being used for a theme song for a TV series The Texas Wheelers.  Why a song about smoking marijuana was considered for the theme song for a lighthearted family comedy (starring a very young Mark Hamill and Gary Busey) is something that just cannot be explained.

***I think that they mean the best new Dylanesqe album since then, but it really doesn't mater.

Murder at the Baskervilles

(1937)
Directed by Thomas Bentley
Adapted by A. Fowler Mear from the story by Arthur Conan Doyle
Starring Arthur Wontner, Ian Fleming, Lyn Harding, John Turnbull, Lawrence Grossmith.
IMDB Entry
Watch Online
I've always been a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes is more than the greatest of all detectives; he's the embodiment of pure intellect whose ability to solve complicated puzzles had made him one of the best-known names in literature.*  And there have been hundreds of films featuring the character.**
Not many of them are any good.  And, up until the Jeremy Brett BBC series, even fewer were faithful.***
You expect that.  So when I picked up Murder at the Baskervilles in a DVD boxed set, I assumed it was going to play fast and loose with the canon. The Baskervilles only appeared with their hound, so I figured this would be made up out of the whole cloth.
And the start of the time made me think I was right.  It showed Moriarty**** (Lyn Harding) plotting to kills Holmes (Arthur Wontne) and luring him to the Baskerville estate.
Once Holmes and Watson (Ian Fleming*****) reach the estate, I suddenly noticed a change.  The name "Silver Blaze" is mentioned, and the film turned into a very faithful adaptation of one of the best Holmes stories, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze."§
The middle third of the film follows the story almost scene by scene and does it pretty well. Then, in the final section, Moriarty shows up to plot against Holmes.
When the film was made, Arthur Wontner had already made four other films as Holmes and was considered (in England, at least) as the premier actor in the part.  Conan Doyle thought he looked exactly the way he imagined Holmes to be, and he did bear a strong resemblance to the illustrations for the stories. He played Holmes just as the books indicated:  smart, with little patience for social graces, but with the usual sly humor.
A British production, the film took a couple of years to be shown in the US and was retitled to take advantage of the fame of the Basil Rathbone Hound of the Baskervilles (it is technically a sequel). But Rathbone had become the "definitive" Holmes§§ and Wontner was forgotten. The film -- which probably wasn't a big hit -- was forgotten and passed into the public domain.
The good thing is that you can watch it online.  If you're a Holmes buff, I'd recommend it (or, at least the middle section) to see how a story can be brought to life successfully.
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*Harlan Ellison once wrote that there are four literary characters that are know throughout the world, even in countries where English is not spoken:  Holmes, Tarzan, Superman, and Mickey Mouse.
**The IMDB lists 224, including TV shows.
***Not that being unfaithful to the material is necessarily bad.  The recent Robert Downy, Jr., Sherlock Holmes, put faithfulness in a blender and redid things as they saw fit (geography, too, -- they managed to travel from the House of Parliament to Tower Bridge through secret tunnels in about 30 seconds, when the two landmarks are two miles apart).  But it's a very entertaining film.
****Moriarty always shows up in Holmes films, probably one reason they so often leave the canon behind.  Despite being Holmes's archenemy, he only appears in one story, "The Adventure of the Final Problem," mostly because Doyle needed an archenemy who might be a real threat to him.  He's mentioned in "The Adventure of the Empty House" -- a necessity, for Holmes has to explain how he didn't die -- and not again.  It similar to Irene Adler, who only appeared in the first Holmes short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia," but who always shows up as a love interest.
*****No, not the guy who created James Bond.
§ Best known for the exchange:
Gregory (detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
The film was also released in the UK under the title Silver Blaze
§§ For a while.  Now it's more likely to be Jeremy Brett.

Amazing Grace

(2006)
Directed by Michael Apted
Written by Stephen Knight
Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell, Youssou N'Dour.
IMDB Page

Michael Apted is overlooked when discussing top directors, yet anyone who was involved in things like the Seven Up series*, Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorky Park, The World is Not Enough, Gorillas in the Mist, and Enigma.  All were intelligent films noted for good acting and an eye for understated drama.  And in 2006, he decided to spotlight an important but generally unknown historical hero:  William Wilberforce.

The name means nothing to Americans, and probably not much to those in the UK.** But he was important not only in British history, but also in American history.  He worked to ban the slave trade, and Amazing Grace is his story.

The film shows Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), a member of Parliament and friend of the Prime Minister William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch) taking on the issue of the slave trade, angering those who made a great deal of money trafficking in humans.  With the support of his wife Barbara (Romola Garai), and inspired by John Newton (Albert Finney), the writer of the hymn that gives the movie its name, he manages to fight his way to ban the trade though mobilizing public opinion and some clever political wheeling and dealing. 

The story is more than just a history lesson.  It draws you in, mostly because the details of the fight are not well known. Sure, we know that the slave trade is bad now, but it's hard to remember that there were many who were willing to defend it, and who were dead set against any change.

Though the movie deals with a serious subject, it is not solemn about it. There a nice thread of humor throughout and the scene showing how they law was first passed is satisfyingly funny. Overall, it is one of the best and most entertaining film about a historical subject since Glory.

The movie did respectably at the box office, but didn't seem to stick in people's minds and was ignored at Oscar time.  But the subject seems to have struck a chord in religious groups, since Wilberforce's feelings on the issue were formed from the hymn and its author. 

Apted continues to direct (he's finishing up on the third Narnia film right now), but this is one of his best films.

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*A series of films that interviews the same group of people as they go through life every seven years.  So far, it's included Seven Up, Seven Plus Seven (14 Up), 21, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, and 49 Up.

**I suspect he's mentioned somewhere in English History classes, but probably no more than a footnote.

Heywood Hale Broun (TV)

(1918-2001)

You don't expect erudition from a TV sportcaster. Their jobs are to describe the action and add interesting and relevant anecdotes and analysis to the pictures on the screen.  That is, unless the sportscaster was Heywood Hale Broun.

Broun was the son of legendary newspaperman Haywood Broun, who made a reputation as a drama critic and general columnist for various New York newspapers in the 20s and 30s* and was a member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table.  His mother was Ruth Hale, a journalist and early feminist.  Haywood Hale son was educated in private schools and graduated from Swarthmore College, before following in his father's footsteps and getting a job as a sportwriter. His newspapers, PM and The New York Star failed, so he went into acting, appearing in a long series of Broadway flops** and in bit parts on TV, soap operas, and a few movies***.  Finally, in 1965, Broun was hired by CBS to be a sports commentator.

There was probably no one who looked less like a sportscaster.  With his handlebar moustache and penchant for wearing loud multicolor sportcoats, Broun was quite a figure.  CBS used him for local sports commentary, as well as national comments on the World Series. He was best known for his coverage of horse racing.  For years when CBS covered a race, Woody was there.  Here's him as he does the pre-race show for the 1973 Belmont Stakes (won by Secretariat):

 

Any sportscaster who can use the phrase "dearth of winners" is someone who loves the language.

The event I associated with him the most closely was the 1969 World Series.  In the third game, Tommy Agee had one of the greatest single performances in World Series history:  hitting a leadoff home run and making two great catches that saved at least four and possibly five runs.  Since the games were played during the day (and I was in school), I couldn't see it.  But I do remember Broun's commentary that evening, making Agee seem like a sports immortal.

Broun also wrote books.  His Timultuous Merriment was a real favorite of mine.  And sports book that starts out with describing an incident from The Life of Samuel Johnson is not your usual book. Broun saw sports are more than just winning or losing, but a test of character and also a means of fun.

Broun was seen far less at time went on.  Once ABC started broadcasting the Triple Crown races, he lost his biggest stage, though he continued on sports shows, often with footage of him at the original events.  He died in 2001.

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*Interestingly, he started out as a sportswriter.

**Only one show lasted longer than a month; his one off-Broadway credit managed to run 36 performances.

***One of the most notable was in The Odd Couple, where he plays a sportswriter who tells Oscar that he as missed seeing the Mets perform a triple play.

Hollywoodland

(2006)
Directed by Alan Coulter
Screenplay by Paul Bernbaum
Starring Adrian Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Robin Tunney
IMDB Entry

I don't really understand the current dislike toward Ben Affleck. He strikes me as a perfectly good actor who has put together good performances in quite a few films. He came off quite well in Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, and Shakespeare in Love, and he did a credible job with a weak script in Daredevil.  People do complain about his "wooden" acting, but I don't see that.*  It may have had something to do with the "Bennifer" tabloid fodder; I don't recall the vitriol against him before then.  But, for some reason, he's considered something of a lightweight.

That may be one reason he appeared in Hollywoodland.

The movie's title is especially poor, since it doesn't really give a good idea of what the film is about. At best, some film buff might remember that the famous Hollywood sign originally was "Hollywoodland," but that fact is also misleading.  The problem was that any title that made the subject of the movie clear would (and did) run into copyright problems. 

The film is about actor George Reeves, who became a star playing Superman on TV. Reeves had an interesting history.  His first film role was in Gone With the Wind, and he had a successful career (though not as a lead) in the 1940s. When a Superman TV show was in the works, Reeves was cast.  The role was a chore for him.  He didn't like the association, and felt it would keep him from getting good roles.** Superman became a straitjacket (though Reeves did like meeting kids) and when it went off the air, he found it hard to get roles.  He wanted to move on, but couldn't and eventually, he killed himself. 

Or did he?  And that's the speculation that fuels the film. In it, Louis Simo (Adrian Brody), a two-bit private detective, decides to make a name for himself by proving that Reeves (Affleck) had been murdered.  There are plenty of suspects.  Reeves had been having a long-term affair with the wife of the powerful studio head (with mob connections) Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins). He had ended the affair, however, and Mannix's wife (Diane Lane) was furious.  And there are plenty of suggestions that the death was not a suicide.***

The movie is primarily about Simo, who tries to unravel the truth while also keeping his life from unraveling.  But Affleck's portrayal of Reeves is what really stands out. We see (in flashback, of course) the ups and downs of Reeves's career. Affleck plays him as a man ambivalent about his fame -- loving parts of it, but hating much more until he feels it's been a failure.

Brody and Hoskins can always be depended on to give good performances and this is no exception.  Brody brought a lot of depth to his detective, a man who starts out as an opportunist, but who understands the demons that haunted Reeves.  Hoskins brings his usual unpolished style to a role that is meant to be ambiguously threatening.

The film was stymied by trademark problems. Warner Brothers and DC Comics were very protective of their trademarks, so much so that they almost prevented the film from showing the Superman logo on his uniform.  They vetoed the original film title, Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and didn't allow the film to use the opening for the TV show (it was reshot for the film).

The film opened to mixed reviews and did poorly at the box office. Affleck's performance was overlooked, so it did nothing to rehabilitate his reputation. 

The film is a nice combination of film noir and historical fact and speculation.  It's a shame that it the film isn't better known.

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*I was equally perplexed about the same charge against Keanu Reeves, who had plenty of good performances.  The issue with Reeves is understandable.  His best performances were in films like I Love You to Death, Tune in Tomorrow, My Own Private Idaho, and Feeling Minnesota -- movies few people saw.  Reeves, like Affleck, also had some high profile flops. But I am also reminded of an actor who had the very same charge leveled at him throughout his career, but today is considered one of the greatest of Hollywood stars -- John Wayne.

**The most notable role around this time was a small part in From Here to Eternity.  Legend has it that audiences recognized him as Superman and that the film cut his scenes down dramatically, but those involved deny there were any changes. The makes sense, since From Here to Eternity was not a film many kids would be watching, and the adults would probably not pay attention to who was playing Superman on TV. I suspect the legend cropped up during revivals of the film; those who watched Superman as kids recognized Reeves immediately (I did when I saw in in the early 70s).

***This follows modern speculation; some have suggested that Reeves showed no signs of depression and was looking forward to playing Superman again when he died, leading them to look for foul play.  I'm always skeptical about this sort of conspiracy, and I don't find the lack of outward signs of depression particularly telling.  Reeves's friends could only know what he showed them, not what he was actually thinking.

The MAD Adventures of Captain Klutz (book)

( 1967)
Art by Don Martin
Written by Dick DeBartolo, Phil Hahn, Jack Hanrahan, and Don Martin.
Wikipedia

Don Martin was always billed as "Mad's Maddest Artist."  From his first appearance in Mad #29 in 1956, he stood out with his ultra-cartoony style and bizarre sense of humor. He filled his panels with long-nosed people whose feet bent as though they were on hinges and sound effects that had never been used in comics before, but which somehow fit the scene perfectly.*

Recently, Mad reprinted a deluxe two-volume set with every cartoon he did for the magazine, something I had to have (once I saw it for a ridiculously good bargain).**  I did realize, though, that one things was missing:  my favorite Don Martin book, The MAD Adventures of Captain Klutz.

This was a standalone book of original material, and if you're a fan of comics, you'll love this.  The book was co-written by several MAD writers, most notably the great Dick DeBartolo.  DeBartolo was to my mind the best writer in the magazine, best know for his TV and movie parodies.***  Though others are credited, the main stories of the book seem to me to have been mostly DeBartolo's work -- it's the same sort of voice as in his best parodies.

Captain Klutz is Ringo Fonebone, who grew up as an avid comic book fan**** who can't handle life.  When he attempts to commit suicide by jumping off a building (in his long underwear), he ends up landing on a bank robber and stopping him for the police.  The robber calls him a klutz and, when the police ask his name, the dazed hero says, "I'm a klutz, captain," which is immediately garbled into being called Captain Klutz.

The main adventures include the origin story, "Sissyman," "The Case of the Chicken Soup," "Captain Klutz Meets Gorganzola," and "Captain Klutz Meets Mervin the Mad Bomber." They are filled with slapstick and surprises. There are also a couple of short gag strips to fill things out.

The book was obviously a success, and there were even a couple of sequels. But it seems to have gone out of print.  Martin left Mad in 1988 and continued cartooning elsewhere.  He died in 2000.

I'm delighted that there is now a retrospective of his work in Mad (even if it is an expensive one), but I wish it had included the Don Martin books as well as the magazine.  It would have made it all complete.

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*An interesting sidelight is that before Martin established himself with MAD, he did art for science fiction pulp magazines.  I was surprised to see a drawing in an old Galaxy Magazine that showed the trademarked hinged feet and style (for a story titled "Trader's Risk').  The artist was credited as "Martin." A further discussion of this sidelight to Don Martin's career can be found at the Datajunkie blog.

**As I read through it, I realized I realized that I had already seen nearly all of the cartoons. My Mad reading had paralleled Martin's career and those that appeared before I started were reprinted in various Mad books and annuals.

***In his day job, he wrote the questions for the TV game show The Match Game. He was billed as "Mad's Maddest Writer," but, really that honor goes to Larry Gore.

****Not unlike Herbie the Fat Fury, something I'd love to write about except for the fact that I know him solely by reputation.

One Year Affair (Comic)

(1973-1975)
Story by Byron Preiss
Art by Ralph Reese

The influence of The National Lampoon on modern comedy can't be overstated. People know it for Animal House and the Vacation films, but it was much more.  Saturday Night Live, for instance, owes much to the magazine.*  People like John Hughes, P.J. O'Rourke, Chris Rush, Bruce McCall, Chris Miller, Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, and many others.

One of the Lampoon's features was their comic pages, featuring top comic artists and writers doing some of their best work, with plenty of creative freedom.  And, hidden among people like Gahan Wilson, M.K, Brown, Shari Flennikan, Vaughn Bode, and many others, was a small unassuming strip by Byron Preiss and Ralph Reese titled One Year Affair.

The strip started out with an ominous note:

Just 52 weeks from today, the characters introduced here will terminate their relationship . . . This, then, it the ignominious beginning of a . . . ONE YEAR AFFAIR.

The first strip showed a man picking up a box of tampons in a store, saying, "Miss!  You dropped your box of . . . ah . . . "

Her reply:  "Thanks.  Why don't you take one of these as a reward?"

And so the relationship begins. 

The man is Steve, who finds the woman's name is Jill and gets her phone number off some "For a good time, call Jill," graffiti on a men's room wall.

Jill is a terrific character.  She sexy, uninhibited, happily promiscuous**, and shameless.  Steve is a schlub and know that Jill is out of his league.

The strip appeared each month in the Lampoon, usually four panels showing the latest ups and downs of their relationship.  Steve's insecurity and Jill's past were all fodder for humor, as were landmarks like moving in together.  The relationship flourished, fell apart, got together, all with some wild ideas and and plot twists.

And, as promised, the relationship ended. 

The humor and twists still work, even if the dating world portrayed is long gone.  It often verged on soap opera (especially near the end), but managed to remain fresh and funny.

After the run, Preiss and Reese started a strip new strip for the Lampoon called Two Year Affair, which tried to focus on three people, but it only ran a couple of time before being dropped.  Preiss went on to for Byron Preiss Visual Productions, which collected the strips into book form.  BPVP went on to be a successful publisher of graphic books and then of packaged novels.***  He died in 2005.  Ralph Reese continued to work regularly in comic arts.

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* John Belushi and Chevy Chase joined SNL after a stint on the off-Broadway revue National Lampoon's Lemmings.  They also worked on the National Lampoon Radio Show with Gilda Radner and Bill Murray.  Michael O'Donoghue, a Lampoon stalwart, was an early writer and one of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.  Anne Beatts was another NatLamp writer who started writing for SNL.

**Remember, this was after the sexual revolution and before AIDS.

***Preiss would pitch ideas for book series and sell them as a package, hiring authors to then write them.

Beat the Queen/Porko von Popbutton (book)

(December 23, 1968)
by William Pene Du Bois
Story at Sports Illustrated.com
Back in the 1960s, Sports Illustrated was struggling.* The market for a sports only magazine, especially a glossy one with photos, was small.  So it did many different things to try to attract readers:  articles on non-mainstream sports and some odd features.  And once, they even published a children's book.  Beat the Queen was one of their few forays into fiction of any kind,** but it was a great one.
Beat the Queen is the story of Patrick O'Sullivan Pinkerton.  Pat was fat.  Extremely fat (in the first paragraph, his bed falls through the floor of his house).  His parents send him off to the President Coolidge School for Boys, where he is separated from his beloved food. 
The school is a sports-mad institution, and that sport is hockey. His roommate is the irrepressible Jim "One-Point-Two-Five" Finger***, goalie for the team.  Jim dubs Pat "Porko von Popbutton," and takes a liking to him, having him help with practice and teaching him about their archrivalry with Queen Mary School, the reason why there are big signs all over campus saying "BEAT THE QUEEN."
And then Pat discovers an interesting fact:  He's almost the same size as a hockey goal.  So he decides to don the pads and become a goalie.
I think you can probably guess how this ends up.****  But the story is charming.  Pat is perfectly happy with himself; he may be fat, but he likes it that way.  He wants to keep eating, even though everyone wants to stop him, because it's something he truly likes to do. Du Bois makes it clear that all the sympathy is for him, and not for those who are trying to help him.
Jim is also the type of friend that many people would love to have. He may tease Pat, but it's never malicious, and ultimately it's clear that he does like his roommate.
William Pene Du Bois was an author and illustrator, winner of Newberry Medal (Children's literature's highest honor) in 1948 for The 100 Balloons and gaining Caldecott Honors (for being a runner up for top children's illustrators) twice.
The story was published soon afterwards as a book, with the title changed to Porko von Popbutton. If anyone was looking for it due to the Sports Illustrated article, they may have missed it, but Du Bois was well established enough at that time so it probably was successful.
Alas, despite the delights of the tale, it's out of print.  I would guess that, with childhood obesity a serious problem, the subject matter is a bit touchy these days, and children's literature likes to avoid controversial positions.
But if you have a little time, read the story at the Sports Illustrated website. It's something people of all ages can enjoy.
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*It ran at a loss from its founding in 1954 until about 1968
**About a month earlier, they published a tongue-in-cheek article about how the New York Jets would win the Super Bowl. It was meant to be a joke, but, oddly enough, predicted that the Jets beat Oakland (who had to face a division playoff because they were tied for first) and Baltimore.  Those opponents were exactly how things worked out.
***The nickname is his goals against average. 
****The problem with stories about sporting events is that there are only two outcomes at the event.  You can usually assume the underdogs will win, mostly because it's hard to write an ending where they lose that feels satisfying. In any case, Pat does end up tending goal in the big game.
*****One of the highest honors for a children's book author.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

(1992)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Written by Steph Lady and Frank Darabont, based on the novel by Mary Shelley
Starring Kenneth Branagh, Robert DeNiro, Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, Aiden Quinn, Ian Holm, Richard Briers, John Cleese
IMDB Entry

I first heard of Kenneth Branagh when he was nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V.  I was surprised to hear it -- I missed the movie when it came out, and I knew how highly regarded Lawrence Olivier's 1944 version was. I wondered how this first-time director could be compared to what was considered one of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever.

I discovered that Branagh's version was just as good.  And, after Dead Again and Much Ado About Nothing, he became one of my favorite directors.  So I was very interested in his take on Frankenstein.

The movie, alas, has a bad reputation, but I loved it.

Branagh (and writers Steph Lady and Frank Darabont) did something brave:  instead of showing the familiar story, they went to the original book, which is nothing like what moviegoers were used to.  Frankenstein's creation really wasn't a monster,* but was thoughtful and intelligent. And, Branagh made a brave decision:  he filmed the story almost as an opera, with bravura performances that were over the top just a tad, but which worked that way.  He also made important artistic choice in sticking fairly closely to the book.

The melodramatic elements work perfectly.**  Robert DeNiro's performance is clearly a different version of the creation than any other, giving it a gravity and depth rarely seen.  He's more pitiable than monstrous, and DeNiro was still at the height of his acting career.

Branagh's Frankenstein is the scientific genius who ends up regretting his enthusiasm.  He dominates the screen, making his anguish very real.

The film started out with some bad critical buzz, however.  Producer Francis Ford Coppola wanted Branagh to cut the first half hour. Branagh refused and Coppola denounced the film.  And when it came out, people who were not attuned to the bravura felt it was a bit silly.*** It was a box office flop; people who wanted a bloody monster movie were inevitably disappointment and the audience that might have liked it were turned off by both Coppola's comments and the fact that they thought it was a bloody monster movie.

Branagh's career stumbled a bit with this and the obscure In the Bleak Midwinter, but he scored an artistic triumph in his full-length version of Hamlet.  But the film didn't do well, and he's has been turning to acting rather than directing.

The movie is not for all tastes and if you insist on "realistic" portrayals, don't bother with it.  But if you like larger than life characters and emotions -- opera without music -- the film is an unusual take on the legend.

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*Other than the fact he was ugly.

**Most of the time.  The scene of the creature's creation, where he and Frankenstein are slipping in the amniotic fluid that gave it birth, does seem like slapstick.

***It also inspired one of the stupidest critical comments ever, when one reviewer wondered derisively why the movie started out with a scene in the Arctic. This is precisely how the Shelley novel started out, and the move clearly indicated by its title that it was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

They Made Me a Criminal

(1939)
Directed by Busby Berkeley
Screenplay by Sig Herzigm based upon a novel and play by Bertram Millhauser and Beulah Marie Dix
Starring John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, Claude Rains, May Robson, the Dead End Kids (Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Bernard Punsley).
IMDB Page
Watch the Film on Google Videos

 

John Garfield never seemed to get the breaks. Which may be why he always seemed to play characters who never seemed to get the breaks. As a young actor, Clifford Odets wrote the play Golden Boy with him in mind for the lead, but the Broadway production starred Luther Adler.  He left Broadway for Hollywood, and got an Oscar nomination for his first major role in Four Daughters.  So Warner Brothers decided it was time to make him a star, and the result was The Made Me a Criminal.

In it, boxer Johnny Bradford (Garfield) celebrates winning the championship, but in the mayhem, a reporter is killed. Bradford is the prime suspect.  His manager steals his watch, car, and girl while Johnny is passed out drunk, and then dies in a car crash.  Johnny is officially dead and the case closed, except that he can't access any of his money and can't reveal he's alive.  So he bums around the country, ending up at the fig ranch of Goldie West (Ann Sheridan) and her grandmother (May Robson). Goldie also takes care of a group of incorrigible teens (the Dead End Kids), keeping them out of reform school.  Bradford (now known as Jack Dorney) goes to work on the farm and turns over a new leaf.  But a New York detective, Monty Phelan (Claude Rains) knows that Johnny is not dead, and goes after him in order to prove vindicate his own judgment.

Garfield plays a tough guy, as was often the case in his career. But he always had a softer edge than other movie gangsters; you could sense the toughness was only a shell, and he was not so bad underneath.  In the film, he slowly changes, learning that there are more important things in life than being tough, or being thought a "sucker."

The movie also featured the Dead End Kids. You may be familiar with them in a series of comedies where they were billed at "The Bowery Boys."* These comedies were pretty weak programmers, with slapstick and malapropism their mainstays and only brightened by the interplay between Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. 

However, the original Dead End Kids were far from it. None of them had had any acting experience when they were cast in the play Dead End on Broadway, where they were the original rebellious teens.  Dead End was a big hit, and they moved to Hollywood for the film. Warner Brothers knew they had stars, so they featured them in several very successful slice-of-life gangster films before the boys started going elsewhere. They Made Me a Criminal was during the period they were still considered serious actors -- comic relief, of course, but with some depth.

Film buffs may have noted the name of the director.  Busby Berkeley is, of course, one of the major names of film, and one of the five big names of film dance.**  This was a departure for him, though he moves easily into the genre.***

The film should have made Garfield into a major star, but it didn't seem to happen.  He quickly became typecast in similar roles, and often in supporting ones. Garfield also was an independent minded actor with a strong left-wing social conscience, factors that hurt his career, especially in the early 50s when he was blacklisted.**** The stress of the blacklist is also credited to causing the heart attack that killed him in 1952 at age 39.

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*Or "The East Side Kids" or "The Little Tough Guys." The actors moved from one group to another and back again as they were offered better deals.  I remember them best as "The Bowery Boys" due to the fact that those comedies were broadcast every Saturday out of WOR-TV in New York while I was growing up. 

**Along with Fred Astaire/Hermes Pan, Gene Kelly, and Bob Fosse. 

***One nice touch in the film is Huntz Hall's singing "By a Waterfall," one of Berkeley's most famous dance numbers.

****He wasn't a Communist, but spoke out against McCarthyism and refused to name names.

Root Boy Slim (music)

(1978)
Wikipedia Entry
Official Website

For years, I used to subscribe to the National Lampoon. A favorite feature was their "True Facts," which would report the type of news stories that would now be shown on Fark.com. One particular item was discussing how some officials in the Jimmy Carter White House were spending time going to concerts by a group with the bizarre name of "Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band."

Not long afterwards, I actually heard their music.  My opinion of the Carter White House improved immensely.

Root Boy Slim was born with the decidedly un-rockstar name of Foster McKenzie III.  He grew up in North Carolina and, after attending Yale,* moved to the Washington DC area**, where he started the Sex Change Band, which played in bars in the area.  It was a quintessential party band and Root Boy was the life of the party.  The band recorded a couple of demos, one of which, "Christmas at Kmart" caught the ears of executives at Warner Brothers***, who signed him to a contract.

"Christmas as Kmart" was a funny antidote to the more serious songs of the season as Root Boy sings of the "joys" of spending the time in a downscale department store.

Their album was filled with similar songs -- blatantly juvenile humor cheerfully sung in Root Boy's Captain Beefheart-like growl**** "Boogie 'Til You Puke" was a jaundiced look at the disco scene (and also Root Boy's own party heritage), while "Dare to Be Fat" dealt with Root Boy's own weight.

The album created some buzz, but was passed off as a comedy album and didn't sell all that well.  Warner Brothers dropped them, and the group broke up.

Root Boy continued to tour, though with different lineups.*****  He continued to record on various independent labels, but pretty much vanished outside of the DC area.  The band played live gigs though the mid-80s but slowly faded away, dying in 1993.

While Root Boy and the band are certainly not big name rock stars, they are the foremost band in their particular niche of wacky bar bands.

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*As a frat brother of George W. Bush.  Bush later banned the group from campus after a particularly rowdy party.

**And was diagnosed with schizophrenia, something he battled all his life.

***Reportedly brought to them by Donald Fagin of Steely Dan.

****Beefheart was, of course, a greater talent by far, but there were certain similarities in their voices and the fact that both bands had members using bizarre pseudonyms.  But the Captain was an avant garde absurdist, while Root Boy was only out for a good time.

*****He once did a gig here in the Albany, NY, area as "Root Boy Slim and the Black Silk Stockings."

The Wrong Box (novel)

(1889)
By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osborne
Libravox Audio Book
Project Gutenberg e-text

Comedy doesn't travel well, either over time and distance.   At best you can appreciate the humor, but usually it still doesn't make you laugh out loud. That's one reason why The Wrong Box is such a delight.

The book is based upon the financial plan that probably was the basis of more fiction than any other:  the tontine. This was basically a life insurance plan where a group of people put money up in an investment. The last person left alive got all the money.* Mystery writers loved the concept, because it gave a greedy investor a motive to murder the others.**

I admit I was expecting this to be the major point of the book, but discovered it hadn't been structured that way. In it, the Finsbury brothers -- Masterman and Joseph -- are the last two surviving members of a tontine.  Masterman is in seclusion, cared fro his son Michael, a lawyer.  Joseph is still hard at work in his failing leather business, a figurehead for his two sons Morris and John.  Morris needs some extra money, and comes to the conclusion that his uncle has died, and the fact concealed by Michael, keeping Morris from the money that's rightfully his.

When Morris and John take their father out, they are caught in a terrible train collision. They find a man in Joseph's coat, his face horribly mangled, and realize they must keep this a secret or lose any chance at the tontine money.  Ultimately, they put the corpse into a barrel and ship it back to London.  But the barrel goes astray.

Meanwhile Joseph, who you've probably guessed is not dead, is glad to be out from under the control of his sons, sets out for a life of his own. Joseph is hilarious literary character -- a know-it-all bore who lectures anyone within earshot about his own philosophy and life.  Here's a favorite passage of mine:

'I have examined all the theatres in London,' he [Joseph] was saying; 'and pacing the principal entrances, I have ascertained them to be ridiculously disproportionate to the requirements of their audiences. The doors opened the wrong way—I forget at this moment which it is, but have a note of it at home; they were frequently locked during the performance, and when the auditorium was literally thronged with English people. You have probably not had my opportunities of comparing distant lands; but I can assure you this has been long ago recognized as a mark of aristocratic government. Do you suppose, in a country really self-governed, such abuses could exist? Your own intelligence, however uncultivated, tells you they could not. Take Austria, a country even possibly more enslaved than England. I have myself conversed with one of the survivors of the Ring Theatre, and though his colloquial German was not very good, I succeeded in gathering a pretty clear idea of his opinion of the case. But, what will perhaps interest you still more, here is a cutting on the subject from a Vienna newspaper, which I will now read to you, translating as I go. You can see for yourselves; it is printed in the German character.' And he held the cutting out for verification, much as a conjuror passes a trick orange along the front bench.

But all the characters are wonderful.  There's the fretful Morris, trying to scheme and failing miserably; Michael, who sails blithely through life; Gideon Forsythe, the timid schoolmaster whose life is turned into chaos by the box.

The book is usually described as being "black humor," and it certainly has those element (mostly the missing corpse).  But most of the humor is from observing the characters and seeing their personalities clash when being confronted with a situation they've never had to deal with before.  Only Micheal seems to be unbothered by matters, which means, of course, is that he only makes things worse.

Stevenson, of course, is still known today for works like Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His hand at comedy is surprisingly sure for someone best known for more dramatic work.  Osborne was his son-in-law and wrote the first draft, though Stevenson actively revised it. A movie was made in the book, but the casting just doesn't seem right.  Peter Cook, for all his brilliance, is just not Morris, and the plot changes quite a bit from the book. Since the original is available free, you should go to the book if you can.

In addition to recommending the book, I want to recommend the Audiovox recording I've linked to.  The reader, Andy Minter, truly brings the book to life, using different accents and styles for each character and turning it more into a radio play than an audiobook. If you like to listen while you commute, this is the way to go.

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*It looks like in an actual tontine, all living investors got dividends over their lifetimes, the amount increasing as the others died off.  But this is rarely mentioned in the fictional version.

**Though, of course, making it all look like accidents, since the killer would be pretty obvious at the end.

The Bedford Incident

(1965)
Directed by James B. Harris
Written by James Poe, from a novel by Mark Rascovich
Starring Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Eric Portman, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam, Wally Cox.
IMDB Entry

In the early 1960s, Columbia Pictures produced three cold war films that were sometimes referred to the "nuclear disaster trilogy."  Dr. Strangelove is the most famous and is rightly praised as one of the great films of all time.* Fail-Safe was the other side of the coin -- instead of a black comedy, it was a tense thriller.  But the third of these was a more obscure film: The Bedford Incident.

The movie was more realistic than Fail-Safe. It followed the action on the US destroyer Bedford, on patrol near Greenland and led by its captain Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark). On board is a reporter, Ben Munceford (Sidney Poiter), and the NATO observer Wolfgang Schrepke (Eric Portman).  Both Munceford and Schrepke have their reasons for observing Finlander, who doesn't particularly like having them on his ship.

You see, Finlander runs a tight ship. He keeps his sailors hopping, feeling that hard work is the best way to keep things running, and that criticism is what makes you stronger.  He is especially hard on Ensign Ralston (James MacArthur), a young man just out of the academy who can't seem to do anything right.

But when they spot a Soviet sub, Finlander goes into action.  He shadows and harasses the sub, ratcheting up the tension for the crew, and putting things on the edge of disaster.

Finlander is no madman.  He's tightly wound, but doesn't particularly want to start a fight with the Russians.  Nor does he want them to poke there noses in places where they shouldn't be.  But his insistence on what makes a good officer leads to tragedy. Richard Widmark brings his usual intensity to the role; it was a perfect bit of casting

Sidney Poitier is there to give the opinions of a civilian** on the proceedings.  What's also interesting is that race is barely an issue; I suspect he liked for once to be able to play a part where the role has no racial overtones. James MacArthur*** is also good as a man who wants to please his boss, but can't get anything right.

The film did OK, and won no awards and now is far overshadowed by the other films in the trilogy. But it's a great piece of cold war drama, with Widmark especially outstanding.**** Dr. Strangelove went for absurdity, but The Bedford Incident portrays things as the way they most likely would have happened, making it a chilling experience.

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*When I first saw it, I decided it was the best film I'd ever seen. I was only 12 at the time and I'm still amazed that I had formed that opinion when most others my age were more excited by cowboys or Disney.

**And of the audience.

***Now remembered, if at all, as the person being told to "Book 'em, Dano" in Hawaii Five-O.

****He produced the film, so clearly wanted to play the role.  It also was the first film role for Donald Sutherland.

Night of the Generals

(1967)
Directed by Anatole Litvak
Written by Joseph Kessel and Paul Dehn, based on a novel by Hans Helmut Kirst
Starring Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay, Philippe Noiret, Donald Pleasance, Charles Gray
IMDB Entry

The Night of the Generals has a terrific start. A prostitute in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1942 is brutally murdered. There is one witness: a terrified Pole who has only seen one thing:  the killer's pants leg as he walked down stairs.  Not much to go on, except that the let had a red stripe down it: the sign of a German general.

The movie starts out as a mystery, but quickly moves on to something much different. Major Grau (Omar Sharif) believes the story -- because the witness would be a fool to lie about something like that. It turns out that there are three German generals in Warsaw whose whereabouts are unknown at the time of the murder:  General Tanz (Peter O'Toole), General Kahlenberg (Donald Pleasance), and General von Seyditz-Gabler (Charles Gray).

Despite the discouragement of his superiors, Grau looks into the case. The generals, of course, have to be handled delicately, but Grau -- who believes in justice, even for prostitutes -- plays a neat game of cat and mouse to try to find out who might be responsible. 

The identity of the killer is made apparent early on, and I think a look at the cast list would give it away.*  But I'll observe the etiquette of spoilers and not do it here.  But the film shows how the killer is unbalanced and just this side of mad (including his being affected by the famous self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh).  He cannot control his urges, but is clever enough to cover up the results.

The main point of the film is watching Grau closing in on the killer.  He is a man who believes in justice, even when it cuts across the class lines between a prostitute and a German general.  At the same time, he is only a Major and, in the stratified world of the German army, it makes his job all the more difficult. When he begins to get too close to the killer, he is promoted and transferred to Paris -- a dream for most German officers, but a disappointment for Grau.

However, eventually, the other generals are also transferred to Paris, and the investigation continues.  His dedication gains the admiration of Inspector Morand (Philip Noiret) of the French police, who, despite being a member of the underground, still sees that Grau is an honorable man. The plot dovetails nicely with the history of the period and has some very surprising twists to make up for learning the killer early on.

This is one of Sharif's best roles.  His Grau is smart, ironic, and well aware of the difficulties he faces. Peter O'Toole is always excellent and the rest of the actors make the best of their roles.

Director Anatole Litvak had had a long and successful career when he made this films, usually psychological dramas like Sorry, Wrong Number; The Snake Pit, and Anastasia.  He shows this background, as well as his background in early gangster films, to good use. This was Litvak's next to last film, and one of his best.

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*Assuming my comment isn't misconstrued.

A.E. van Vogt (author)

(1912-2000)
Wikipedia entry

Back in the mid-1940s, if science fiction readers were asked to name the top writers in the genre, four names would definitely come up:  Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, E.E. (Doc) Smith, Ph.D., and A. E. van Vogt.

Back in the early 1970s, I took the first-ever science fiction course at Union College. When setting it up, the professor asked various people he knew with an interest in the field to suggest books for the course. One particular list, though, left him unimpressed at the critical judgment of the person who he had asked.  I can still remember the professor saying, "He recommended Van Vogt," the last two words dripping with scorn, as though the recommender was out of his mind.

So what happened?

Alfred Elton van Vogt was born in Manitoba, Canada and grew up writing.  In the 1930s, his work started appearing in American pulp magazines, usually true confession magazines,* until he switched to writing in a genre he loved:  science fiction.  His first story, "Black Destroyer," was the cover story in Astounding and it sometimes considered the starting point for the Golden Age of (pulp) Science Fiction.** He continued selling short stories and published his first novel in 1946.

The book was Slan.  It was an instant classic of the time, the story of the next step in evolution:  superhumans with psychic powers.  The book was considered one of the major works of the field for 20 years. For years, the slogan "Fans are slans" showed up at science fiction conventions.

He went to work on his Null-A series, adventures stories with characters based on non-Aristotelian logic, and the Weapon Shops of Isher series.  His book Empire of the Atom was about the intrigue and plotting among the aristocracy of a galactic empire.  Voyage of the Space Beagle took "Black Destroyer" and several other stories he had written about the same ship and turned it into a "fix-up" novel -- one of the first to use that term.

But, despite his popularity, van Vogt's critical reputation was eroding. The first shot was fired by Damon Knight. Knight was a one of the field's first great critics, someone who started taking science fiction seriously as literature.***  And one of his first important essays was a critique of The World of Null-A in an SF fanzine.  He later rewrote and reprinted the essay with a new title:  "Cosmic Jerrybuilder:  A. E. van Vogt."

Knight ripped into the book, pointing out that it made no sense, that the plotting was all over the map, that the characters got involved in overly convoluted actions when a simple solution was obvious, and much more.  It was, in many ways, unprecedented:  fanzine reviews of the time tended to be people raving about books they loved, not critiquing popular books.

And people started looking at van Vogt differently. 

The review didn't cause immediate harm to his reputation; it came out in 1945, and was rewritten in 1950 after van Vogt rewrote the book to try to answer many of Knight's criticisms.  Van Vogt remained popular during the 50s.

But his reputation started to fade.  It wasn't just the review, it was a change in how people looked at science fiction. Because Knight was right:  van Vogt was a cosmic jerrybuilder, slapping together plots out of whatever pieces that were available.  His science was shaky and often nonsensical.  He often resolved plots by pulling a deus ex machina out of a hat.

When I first came across van Vogt, it was in a collection called Destination: Universe.  I must admit many of the stories left me cold. Then I happened upon a comment from van Vogt to the effect that his stories were dreams, that they followed their own dream logic and not necessarily a realistic step-by-step plot.  And then it all clicked.

Van Vogt's stories are dreams. They aren't meant to make logical sense (the use of Null-A clearly indicates that van Vogt isn't interested in standard logic). They have a sort of internal logic, but questioning them verses reality is like questioning why you dream about taking a test even though you've been out of school for years.

In addition, there is a dollop wish fulfillment in his work -- Slan shows how an ordinary boy is really a superman, for instance. 

On story I liked a lot was something called "A Can of Paint."  Knight took issue with the story, since it starts out with a scientific absurdity that sounds clever but makes no sense (and is forgotten by the end). The story is about an astronaut who pilots his own homemade ship to Venus only to be doused in a can of Venusian paint. He can't remove it, and discovers this is supposed to be an intelligence test:  if he can remove the paint -- which is like liquid mercury and flows over him as he tries to remove it -- humans will be allowed to visit.

Knight ridicules the ending because it comes out of nowhere.  In a sense, he is right -- the reader has no idea what the solution really is, as it introduces something that has barely been mentioned. At the same time, it doesn't matter.  The astronaut works out the solution; it's just that van Vogt chooses something super-scientific sounding instead of more mundane possibilities. But, for me, the story works despite all its flaws because the dream logic behind it all makes sense.

Van Vogt's lack of logic worked against him, and the "Cosmic Jerrybuilder" label stuck. He also was briefly connected to L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics movement, which hurt his credibility (plus he claimed that Hubbard's followers harassed him once he left the movement).

Van Vogt continued to publish into the mid-80s, though he never regained his early stature.  He seemed stuck in his space opera mode, and space opera was passe (though Doc Smith still remained in print). Toward the end, he suffered from Alzheimer's; he published nothing for the last 15 years of his life.

There are signs of some revival of appreciation. No one would ever accuse van Vogt of being a great stylist, and sometimes not even all that original (Empire of the Atom is almost a direct rewrite of Robert Graves's I, Claudius). And I think that the wish fulfillment fantasy of Slan is a bit dated, especially since psychic powers are no longer considered science fiction.  But those with a libertarian bent tend to like the Weapon Shop stories, whose motto is "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free."****

Maybe van Vogt wasn't a great writer, but he doesn't deserve to be a forgotten one.

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*Which, despite their name, never published nonfiction.

**The story -- about a monster terrorizing a spaceship -- was highly influential. Van Vogt got a settlement from the producers of Alien after he sued them for stealing his story (whether they did or not was not determined; they may have just paid to make him go away). The table of contents for the issue is notable for stories by Isaac Asimov and C.L. Moore.

***His In Search of Wonder is still a fascinating volume that I recommend to any aspiring SF writer out there (worth reading if only for the line "'This eloquent novel,' says the jacket of Taylor Caldwell's The Devil's Advocate, making two errors in three words.") And Knight also was a fine fiction writer and something of a father figure to science fiction, since he founded the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. 

****Van Vogt is stacking the deck a bit here.  His weapons are designed so that they only work in self-defense. I think if that were possible, there would be no real call or need for gun control.

Burke's Law (TV)

(1963-66)
Executive Producer: Aaron Spelling
Created by Frank D. Gilroy, Ivan Goff, and Ernest Kinoy
Starring Gene Barry, Gary Conway, Regis Toomey, Leon Lontoc, Eileen O'Neill
IMDB Entry
Television has had a long list of detective and cop shows.  Oddly enough, though, up until recently it has had very few successful mysteries.*  Audiences preferred action to puzzles.  One of the most successful -- and which should have had much more success if they hadn't made a disastrous change to follow the "trend of the month" -- was Burke's Law.
Like a lot of 60s shows, it had a gimmick.  But instead of a genie or a talking car, this was a gimmick of character.  Amos Burke was the chief of detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department.  He also was a millionaire and saw no reason to change his life style.  So he would show up at the crime scene in his chauffeured Rolls Royce and begin to find the key to the murder (it was always a murder).  But it was never grim:  it was played for laughs, with the suspects being outrageous characters whose over-the-top antics contrasted nicely with Burke's cool demeanor.
The character of Burke was  created by Frank D. Gilroy.  Gilroy wrote in all sorts of media, from novels to TV, to plays.** Burke first showed up as a character in The Dick Powell Show.  When Gene Barry decided to return to TV after his successful run with Bat Masterson, producer Aaron Spelling remembered the character of Amos Burke, which  fit in like a glove.
The episodes fit neatly into a formula:  someone was murdered*** and Burke would interview all the many suspects. Burke was smart, ironic, and witty and would often spout out some sort of wry aphorism about the situation, calling it "Burke's Law."   And, at the end, he would find the clue that solved the mystery Barry was just perfect for the role.
The show benefited by clever casting. The suspects were usually pretty recognizable stars, from both TV and older films, who probably enjoyed playing a small role.  They definitely seemed to enjoy what they were doing, overacting just a bit while Burke looked on calmly.  It was as much a comedy as a mystery.
The show also had some top-notch writers involved, including Richard Levinson and Williams Link (creators of Columbo), Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (Batman), John Meredyth Lucas (Star Trek and Mannix), Harlan Ellison (science fiction legend), and many other successful TV series writers. 
One particular line from the show has, in altered form, become something of a catchphrase.  It's usually quoted as an inventor saying "It doesn't do anything.  That's the beauty of it" and it seems to derive from an episode of Burke's Law where Burgess Meredith, when asked what his invention is for, says, "Why nothing, nothing.  That's the beauty of it."
The show was a solid hit for ABC for two years -- until stupidity struck. Not satisfied with a mystery show, someone decided to jump on the bandwagon of a trend, and promptly got run over.  In a case of revamping almost as bad as Bob, the show turned itself into Amos Burke, Secret Agent and had Burke trade in his badge for a spy's cloak and dagger.  The entire cast supporting was jettisoned**** and Burke became a James Bond wannabe.  The change was poorly thought out -- I remember those involved complaining that they had no idea where things were going -- and ratings dropped through the floor.  The show didn't last the season.
Barry went on to star in The Name of the Game and a revised version of Burke's Law that failed to recapture the magic. 
The original show was a first-class entertainment and deserves to be seen.  In a way, it was the Castle of its time -- a witty mystery based upon a cute gimmick that was as much comedy as drama.  It should not be forgotten.
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*The CSI franchise showed at least one type of mystery -- the police procedural -- could make it in prime time. 
**He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Subject Was Roses  during Burke's run.  He also wrote for shows like Have Gun -- Will Travel and Wanted:Dead or Alive.
***They were titled "Who Killed _____________?"
****Not that they were all that important to the show in the first place.  They usually were just there to get Burke and the audience up to speed on details, to feed straight lines for another of Burke's Laws, to make wrong deductions about the crime that Burke only shot down, and to add muscle when gunplay was required.

Oh! What a Lovely War!

(1969)
Directed by Richard Attenborough
Written by Len Deighton from a play by Charles Chillton and Joan Littlewood
Starring Dirk Bogarde, John Gielgud, John Mills, Kenneth More, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Maggie Smith, Ian Holm, and Susannah York.
IMDB Page

World War I was an ugly war, with thousands dying in pointless attacks -- men against machine guns, with the men always losing.  During the silent days, there were movies about the war, but by the 30s, there was a general dislike of it, along with the idea that it was all caused by munition makers trying to increase their profits*.  Once World War II came along, World War I movies were rare.  Fighting Hitler was unambiguous and the deaths in combat were more than justified; fighting for muddy ground in France was less so.  There were surprisingly few movies made about the period, and far less about the western front in France.

Of course, by the mid-60s, war in general got a bad name due to Vietnam.  That's when British stage director Joan Littlewood got an idea that should have been obvious:** World War I was the perfect backdrop for an antiwar play.  And the proper setting for an antiwar play -- especially one laced with satire and vitriol -- was a musical.

Thus, Oh! What a Lovely War! was created.

Littlewood decided to use songs from the era -- cheerful and inspirational ditties about going off to war.  In addition, she set the play on an amusement park wharf, contrasting the cheeriness of the crowd with the realities of mass death.  The play was based upon official records, newspaper stories, opinion pieces, and other writings at the time of the war.

The result was a vicious satire of war, contrasting the optimism with the reality in a way that was both horrifying and funny.  When the play moved to New York, it won a Tony and was nominated for three more (including Best Musical).  And, in 1969, Richard Attenborough made a film version.

Attenborough had been an actor, and this was his first chance at filmmaking.  Len Deighton (at the time a best-selling author of spy thrillers) wrote the script. *** An all-star cast was assembled and the film was made.

It was superb. The amusement pier was a perfect metaphor, with the rides representing the battles.  The cheerfulness was constantly upstaged by the insanity, making the entire film one of the most biting satires ever made.  You would switch from smiling to being appalled as you saw the incompetent leadership, the pointless bravery, and the many ways the war hurt a particular family.

I don't have much information, but I doubt the film did all that well. Since most of the actors were just putting in short appearance, though, I suspect they were paid relatively little, so it wasn't a total flop.

Attenborough went on to make some film classics, with films like A Bridge Too Far, Gandhi, and Chaplin.  But his first film seems to have faded from memory.

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*One Superman comic from 1939 made this point explicitly, a sign of how pervasive the idea had permeated the culture.

**One of the signs of a great artist is to find ideas that no one has thought of, but seem obvious afterwards.

***Deighton, who had bought the rights, took his name off the film, though he later regretted it.

Stanley G. Weinbaum (author)

(1902-1935)
Wikipedia

When I was growing up and reading science fiction magazines and anthologies in the late 1960s, I was delighted to realize that most of the authors I enjoyed were still alive and writing, so I could look forward to reading more of their work.  There were only four whose stories I loved, but who had died -- Henry Kuttner, Cyril Kornbluth, Cordwainer Smith* -- and Stanley G. Weinbaum.

Like Smith, Weinbaum burst on the scene with a single story.  Bur whereas Smith's "Scanners Live In Vain" appeared in an obscure and soon-to-fail magazine, seen only by a small audience, Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" appeared in Wonder Stories, at the time one of the major magazines in the field.  And it was one of the most influential stories in the field.

You see, Stanley G. Weinbaum invented the alien.

Oh, there were aliens in science fiction previously:  Martians, Venerians,** etc.  The problem was that they were just human beings in funny suits***.   This was even true in the case of top writers like H.G. Wells, whose Martians were just British colonial soldiers with better weapons.

"A Martian Odyssey" is the story of Dick Jarvis, a member of the first Earth expedition to Mars, who crashes his exploration rocket 800 miles from the base camp.  He decides to walk back, and meets up with a creature he names Tweel.

Tweel is a memorable, a birdlike creature who Dick rescues from being eaten by a Martian predator.  He leaps long distances, landing on his beak, and is clearly intelligent, even if he only can pick up about a dozen human words and is amused by the idea that two different objects could both be called "rock."  Yet he manages to communicate some very sophisticated concepts. 

But Tweel isn't the only novel alien in the story.  There were the pyramid makers, a very odd form of silicon-based life.  There were predators, and the barrel creatures, who are building tunnels underground.

All these aliens have their own motives and habits, often very different from human ones.  Jarvis's journey is one of the most remarkable ones in science fiction, even today.

Weinbaum was far from a one-story author; he wrote a series of stories set in the same universe as "A Martian Odyssey," and fairly scientifically accurate for their time.  There was also "The Adaptive Ultimate," a story about a woman who after undergoing a medical experiment, is able to adapt herself into becoming whatever she needs to be, and nearly takes over the world.****

But though Weinbaum leapt to the head of the science fiction writers of his day, it didn't last for long.  Eighteen months after the publication of "A Martian Odyssey," he was dead of lung cancer.

Weinbaum's legacy remains throughout printed science fiction.***** The goal throughout the genre is to create memorable aliens who aren't motivated in the same way humans are.  Nearly all writers in the field have read "A Martian Odyssey" (in 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted it the second greatest short story in the field), but many SF fans have never encountered it.  Luckily, it seems to have fallen in the public domain, so it can be found at The Gutenberg Project.

Read it.  It's as amazing today as it was in 1936.

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*Actually, Smith died in 1966, about when I started reading, but had stories in the pipeline for a few more years, so I did get to read new stories by him.

**A much more elegant construction than "Venusians."

***This reached the height of absurdity when you had squid creatures lusting after human women.  While human perversity has no bounds, it's a bit absurd to think they'd think they were the slightest bit attractive.

****I'm sure feminists would have a field day analyzing this one.

*****TV and movies are another thing.  Aliens in media are either evil, godlike, or metaphors. The idea that they might be different and unknowable just doesn't exist.

Dennis Wolfberg (comedy)

(1946-1994)
Wikipedia Entry

If this were a just world, Dennis Wolfberg would have become renowned as one of the greatest standup comedians ever.  Unfortunately, this isn't a just world.

Wolfberg grew up on Long Island* and started out as a teacher in the south Bronx.  That gave him plenty of material, and he soon moved into standup, eventually doing it full time in 1979, with hilarious results.

He achieved great success, appearing on The Tonight Show, Late Night with David Letterman and having his standup act on TV and HBO specials.

Wolfberg had a unique style.  He would speak rapidly, setting up the joke, and then punch it home. The jokes were funny, no doubt, but his delivery of them is what made them really work.  He always knew exactly what word to stress in order to get the most of a line. He also looked funny, with bulging eyes** and a way of holding his mic in two hands as though he were praying.

Here is an example (Wolfberg appears 30 seconds in).

 

But these sort of appearances are just too ephemeral to develop a lasting reputation.  Wolfberg didn't do a comedy album, since no one did comedy albums in the 80s.  He didn't have his own sitcom (though he tried).  The only non-standup TV role of note was the character of Gushie in Quantum Leap, a role that really gave him nothing to do.

Wolfberg kept trying.  He came close with a pilot about a teacher, but nothing came of it. Then, sadly, he was diagnosed with cancer in the early 90s.  Though he continued to work, both on stage and developing TV pilots, he died in 1994.

Wolfberg is highly regarded in the world of comedians, and it's sad that there is so little of his work available.  But all of it is first class.

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*As a native Long Islander myself, two things always irritate me when Long Island is mentioned.  First is the "Lon Guyland" accent, which was not at all how anyone spoke where I grew up. Second is related:  Long Island is a big place -- 80 miles long.  Yet no one differentiates between Nassau County and Suffolk, between Huntington and Valley Stream and Southampton and Southold, all quite different. Saying someone came from Long Island is like saying he came from Connecticut.  Where?

**Not up to Marty Feldman level, but still impressive, partly because he would often shut his eyes, letting them bulge out at the punch line.