Roderick Allmanson leads off.
I hear a lot of show creators talk about writing improv into their scripts - not Curb Your Enthusiasm style, but just leaving spots blank and counting on actors to come up with something funny in the moment. What is the utility of improv vs. scripted reactions and how common is that?
Well, first of all you need expert improvisers. If you had Robin Williams or Fred Willard (pictured above) you could be reasonably assured that the material they came with up would be usable. And there are certainly others who are also incredibly gifted in that area. I love improv. I’m still in a weekly improv workshop. I should be much better at it than I am after all these years.
But I find, for the most part, when you allow improv it results in very uneven scripts. There’s filler, there’s dead spots, there’s repetition. There may be moments of inspired hilarity, but there may also be subpar episodes.
It’s that way in live improv shows, but the audience cuts the performers some slack because they know it’s off the cuff. Not so on a semi-scripted fully produced TV show.
Personally, I prefer the quality control of a terrific writing staff crafting every line for the best comic actors available (some brilliant comic actors can’t improvise), producing a series like FRASIER.
But that’s me. I’m… a seasoned veteran.
Brian asks:
You talked about family sitcoms and that got me wondering what brought about the period of "Rural Sitcoms". I enjoyed and still think "Beverly Hillbillies", was a pretty good show, but I didn't much care for "Green Acres" or "Petticoat Junction”.
BEVERLY HILLBILLIES was a breakout hit. Its creator, Paul Henning took advantage and created other similar shows that also caught on. It was just CBS playing the hot hand the same way they’ve done more recently with Chuck Lorre.
Rural sitcoms ran into trouble when demographics and research began to emerge. Yes, they had large numbers but CBS determines they weren’t the right audience. There was more money to be made with upscale urban comedies, and in a bold move CBS swept them all out replacing them with shows like THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW and ALL IN THE FAMILY.
It was a programming move that paid off handsomely.
And finally, from Kendall Rivers:
Regarding the character of Frank Burns. How did you go about writing for such a let's face it pretty one dimensional character while making him still interesting and funny enough to still get laughs despite being so unlikable?
I only wrote three episodes with Frank Burns, and I have to say it was great fun to write such a cartoonish character. We tried to portray him as being somewhat pathetic to make him more sympathetic. But to be honest, we were basing his likability on laughs. If he was really funny we felt that might take the curse of the character.
Still, when he left we saw it as an opportunity to fill that spot with someone smarter and more formidable. Boy, did we get lucky with David Ogden Stiers.
What’s your Friday Question?
54 comments :
Pat Buttram referred to the Great Rural Purge of 1971 as the year CBS cancelled everything with a tree in it.
The CBS rural purge was unquestionably successful in the short term. Long term however it may not have proven to be the success the company hoped for, as the company began having trouble with its television lineup in the 1980's.
Was the CBS short term success the result of "getting rid of every show with a tree" as Pat Buttram put it, or was it the result of those shows simply running their course (most of the most popular ones had had long runs) and being replaced by quality programs with talented stars, which happened not to be rural?
History says it was a rural to urban switch but I'm not so sure Fred Silverman was right more than in the right place at the right time.
I know Petticoat Junction was not a good show, but it is impressive that two writers Charles Stewart and Dick Conway co-wrote 70 of the 82 Season 5 - 7 episodes together. Of the remaining 12, they wrote 9 either individually or with other partners. All while dealing with frequent absences and eventually death of star Bea Benaderet in Seasons 5 and 6.
Some comic actors not being able to improv...that's the truth! It took me years to stop eagerly anticipating seeing a favourite stand-up comedian on a talk show. Far too many of these professionals are only hilarious with their carefully honed material. Left to banter and chat with the talk show host, they were no funnier (sometimes painfully not funny) than any random member of the studio audience.
I'm the opposite of Brian in regards to the rural sitcoms of the 1960s. I like Green Acres and Petticoat Junction but just can't get into The Beverly Hillbillies.
As a total lover of all 3 Paul Henning shows:
Each of the rural shows were unique in style, but with a theme of simple rural values vs big city greed and extravagance.
(Mr. Drysdale, Homer Bedloe, Lisa Douglas and her beauty aids)
The Beverly Hillbillies was fish out of water, where the best laughs were from Buddy Ebsen (Jed) who played the role straight - not broadly as a naive simpleton.
Green Acres played the intelligent man trying to do the right thing, but inadvertently coming across as nutty to the rural folk,
(And co-writer Jay Sommers’ fate 10 years later was “Script Editor” for season 2 of Hello Larry –
Guess he was either burnt out or overridden by other geniuses in the room)
Petticoat Junction followed the TV Bonanza idea of well off mum and 3 attractive girls each week - but started falling off the rails when it broke that rule.
Youngest daughter marries, moves out and has child.
Attempted romance for middle daughter – no chemistry magic between Jonathan Day and Lori Saunders.
But the kiss of death was the passing of Bea Benaderet.
June Lockhart may be acceptable as Lassie's owner's mom, or as a token adult in Lost In Space.
But she was horribly miscast in Petticoat Junction.
Charles Cavender
Ken, this question may be out of your wheelhouse, but let's give it a go. I've always wondered how certain actors who continually play what I'll call a contrary role to the main characters feel about it. Great example, Gary Crosby on Adam-12. As Officer Wells, he was arrogant, egotistical, always right (in his mind), and generally a jerk. I perceive that playing that character over and over, sometimes on multiple shows, might give the audience the idea that the actor is actually that type of person. Would the actor in a role such as that ever go to the powers that be and ask for some modification? In other words, does it bother them? Thanks for considering this one.
Mo Rocca did a terrific podcast episode about the CBS rural purge. It’s well worth a listen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mobituaries-with-mo-rocca/id1449045549?i=1000458833307
I loved/love Green Acres. Still funny. But could never see binging it.
The Drew Carey Show did a few episodes that relied upon improv, but they had expert doing it. Ryan Stiles is one of the best today. Drew, not so much, but appreciates it and tries to do it. And to raise the bar, I think they did a live improv show. No pressure there.
Robots wouldn't be good at improv.
I'm not a robot
I meant "Jonathan Daly"
Re Michael:
It was Charles Stewart and Dick Conway who kickstarted the daughters' matchmaking,
although real life love changed their original plan to marry off the eldest daughter first.
I love "Green Acres" and never thought it belonged in the same rural comedy category as the others. It had the same setting of Hooterville (couldn't believe they got that name on the air in the '60s), but it was as if "Petticoat Junction" were being written by Pirandello, S.J. Perelman and Salvador Dali. You could really tell the difference if you focused on the one character who was in all three shows, the general store owner, Sam Drucker. On "Petticoat" and his occasional appearances on "Hillbillies," he was just a nice, small town store owner. On "Green Acres," he was borderline insane and sometimes talked in circles like Chico Marx.
As for Major Burns being one-dimensional, I always hear people say he was the most cartoonish and unbelievable character in the show. But I seem to recall once reading an interview in which Larry Linville said when he talked to fans who were war veterans, he would ask which character seemed most familiar to them. He said they always replied, "Frank Burns! I served with that S.O.B.!"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but after THE ODD COUPLE switched to multi-cam with a live audience, isn't this how the writers constructed a lot of the scripts? Like, they would come up with a scenario (i.e. Oscar teaches Felix how to play football), let Jack Klugman and Tony Randall do their own thing with it, then sort of write around the material they ended up coming up with for their characters?
I thought The Beverly Hillbillies was better in the first couple seasons when the humor was the decent, kind hillbillies befuddled the foolish excesses and vanities of their new acquaintances and surroundings. And ahead of its time in that, as I recall (in my best Buddy Ebsen voice) in the last season Jed was going to give all his money away to fund green technology! (a plan to fix the smog in Los Angeles).
Green Acres had some great absurdist humor, Arnold Ziffel, the Monroe brothers, Mr Haney, but I can't imagine myself sitting down to watch it. I also remember when the Hooterville community players staged a production of the TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies (Lisa playing Granny), a show they had cross-over shows with. How's that for some proto-post-modernism.
Petticoat Junction was just... nah.
If you remember the Royal Shakespeare Company's marathon production of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, I read that Trevor Nunn had actors read the book and then improvise scenes from it (nearly everyone played multiple characters), and when it began to coalesce David Edgar used their work as the basis for the script. You can do this if you have a ton of brilliant actors on the payroll and almost unlimited time. (State subsidy doesn't hurt.) Most of Mike Leigh's films were created in the same way.
Somehow it didn't work as well when Woody Allen left space for his cast to improvise, mostly dead patches full of "I mean, you know" and people using too many gestures. Maybe it was the time factor.
The Beverly Hillbillies was brilliant Candide -like satire in the first few seasons with some of the best, most underrated ensemble acting ever on television. The main four characters stand up acting-wise to anyone in any sitcom. Like a lot of good satire, many people didn't get it.
Green Acres was surrealism with Paul Henning providing a cross between the radio ensembles he used to write for and the fourth wall breaking of George Burns. The Beverly Hillbillies skit is the best proto the show ever did but next to that is having Pat Buttram talk about Gene Autry all the time. And Eva Gabor was definitely an under appreciated comic actress
I come across Green Acres on weeknights occasionally on one of those MeTV channels. Always hilarious. It still holds up for it's absurdist humor, fabulous character actors, and let's not forget the wonderful chemistry between Eddie and Eva.
On Green Acres, the patriotic music whenever Oliver would launch into a soliloquy--that was a sign of how absurdist they were trying to be, and they succeeded. The Beverly Hillbillies had some classics, but since I worship at the shrine of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, it's understandable that I feel that way.
Larry Linville was a wonderfully gifted actor, proof of which was that at the time he was cast, he was best known for playing villains--not like Burns, but really nasty, violent people. But David Ogden Stiers's character was an improvement, no question.
Just before the pandemic hit, an LA-based group called Ripley Improv finished a completely improvised television series and were submitting it to festivals. It's long-form improv, which is a completely different beast from Whose Line-style work or Larry David/Christopher Guest scripts+improv; check out The Improvised Generation or Austentatious for a couple more examples if you've never experienced it.
Long-form tends to be genre-based, so there's improv Shakespeare, improv dystopia, improv Twilight Zone, etc. Former Toronto-based group The National Theatre of the World would perform a week's worth of hour-long shows in the style of a different director each night.
If you want to talk about improv on sitcoms, there's no way to ignore THE HONEYMOONERS. Jackie Gleason was notorious for refusing to rehearse the material and often veered from the script on-air as a result. To keep the action moving, he's make gestures like putting both hands on his stomach to cue the other performers that they'd have to follow his lead. (When Jack Benny parodied the show, he included these gestures as part of his imitation). Audrey Meadows cited her previous experience on the Bob and Ray TV show as the best preparation she could have for such a free-form approach.
This practice probably reached its peak in the "Unconventional Behavior" episode when a guest star supposedly turned up drunk on the night of performance and Gleason and Carney wound up winging much of the comedy to fill in for scenes that couldn't be done as planned. The chemistry between the two was so tight by that point that they could pull it off without the audience noticing.
The opposite side of such success comes from spec writers who think they can take the easy route to creation by claiming to be the next Christopher Guest and submitting outlines for feature films to be improvised by guest stars, unaware of the careful preparation such projects actually employ. Honestly, can you imagine impressing anyone with your comedic skills by writing, "Oprah Winfrey tells a funny story about Charlie"?
RE the CBS rural purge: in addition to what Ken stated, the network figured they had filmed enough color episodes of the shows to syndicate them (CBS being part owner). And they covered their bases by giving new shows to Buddy Ebsen, Edgar Buchanan, and (eventually) Eddie Albert. CBS got 8 seasons of Barnaby Jones out of that.
Thank for the response, Ken! Also I agree that David Ogden Stiers was perfect replacement and the character of Charles Emerson Winchester in my humble opinion was a huge reason why MASH still worked and was just a better, richer and once again in my humble opinion was a far funnier character than Frank Burns. MASH struck gold with the replacement actors like Stiers, Farrell and especially Morgan like Cheers did with Kirstie Alley, Kelsey Grammar and Woody Harrelson and Barney Miller did with Steve Landesberg, Ron Carey and James Gregory.
Out of all the "rural" shows, I liked Green Acres the best. Broke the 4th wall, sneakily subversive, sight gags galore with the opening credits [after the theme song] and gave me a chance to use my Pat Buttram impression on radio a lot when doing "bits".
"Anonymous said...
The CBS rural purge was unquestionably successful in the short term. Long term however it may not have proven to be the success the company hoped for, as the company began having trouble with its television lineup in the 1980's."
Gee, you mean it only worked out for them for AN ENTIRE DECADE? That's longer than most TV series run. A programming ploy that works for a decade is a success, an unqualified success. That's longer than most TV programming execs keep their jobs. And it's longer than the reign of those bumpkin sit-coms. No programming ploy works forever.
And by the early 1980s CBS had Dallas, Knot's Landing and Falcon Crest going, hardly bombs.
In any event, I loathed all those bumpkin shows, and never watched them. I've never even seen an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, nor ever had any desire to. But I loved all those MTM sitcoms, and those later night-time soaps.
"Pat Reeder said...
As for Major Burns being one-dimensional, I always hear people say he was the most cartoonish and unbelievable character in the show. But I seem to recall once reading an interview in which Larry Linville said when he talked to fans who were war veterans, he would always replied, 'Frank Burns! I served with that S.O.B.!'"
My dad, who served in the army in WWII, was a huge M*A*S*H fan, and he felt Frank Burns was not only a totally authentic and real character, but was the rule rather than the exception. When Dad read Catch-22, he did not think it was funny. He thought it was 100% accurate, devoid of exaggeration or hyperbole. How can anyone think that character unreal or exaggerated when we basically had Frank Burns as President of the United States from 2017 to 2020?
A bit more on the "Rural Purge":
What's not remembered is in 1971, when most of the CBS cancellations took place, the networks were forced to give a half-hour a night back to the affiliates and O&Os so they could do their own programming instead. The thought was they'd have better, more locally-oriented material. (What we got was Entertainment Tonight and Wheel of Fortune, but whatever.) So CBS had to get rid of 3-1/2 hours of weekly programming right off the top.
Most of the shows CBS got rid of were canned because the ratings had gone down. Green Acres and Lassie had missed the top 30 shows for two straight years. The Beverly Hillbillies had been dropping consistently and finished out of the top 30 that season (and, honestly, was running out of material after nine years). Petticoat Junction had gone off the year before because of ratings.
CBS got rid of a few rural shows that were still in the top 30--Mayberry R.F.D. and Hee Haw were the obvious examples, and they probably would have taken Hee Haw back if they'd known it would keep running for ages in first-run syndication. But they also got rid of "nonrural" shows like Family Affair, Hogan's Heroes, and The Ed Sullivan Show for some similar reasons (old and tired). And while I'm no fan of Fred Silverman, give him credit for seeing something in All in the Family (which also finished outside the top 30 in its first season) that most programmers did not.
"Buttermilk Sky said...
If you remember the Royal Shakespeare Company's marathon production of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, I read that Trevor Nunn had actors read the book and then improvise scenes from it (nearly everyone played multiple characters), and when it began to coalesce David Edgar used their work as the basis for the script."
I have the hardcover published edition of David Edgar's script for The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, as well as the whole show on DVD, and I saw it performed live in person, all in one day, with three intermissions, the second one being an hour long so you could have dinner, and I've read the novel. 90% of the dialogue, and 100% of the spoken narration, comes directly, word-for-word, from the Novel. You don't improvise Dickens, though improv was a tool employed in shaping the play and the staging. (And I speak as the director, 31 years ago, of Fakespeare, an improvised comedy version of MacBeth that was wholly different each performance, yet always told Shakespeare's story with surprising fidelity.) I'll always be grateful to RSC's Nicholas Nickleby, as it got me to read the novel, and that led to me, over 14 months, to reading ALL of Dickens's novels.
(Fakespeare's ad slogans were "At last MacBeth is the wacky slapstick comedy Shakespeare intended," and "The play Shakespeare would have written if only he hadn't been so talented.")
It happens that Ten Items or Less, a semi-improvised sitcom from fifteen years ago on TBS, sort of a The Office set in a supermarket, was entirely shot in the supermarket a block from my home, while the store remained open. (Often the "extras" shopping in the background were real shoppers.) So I hung out a few times watching episodes being shot. (A close friend of mine was a recurring character on it, and I would hang with her when she was shooting there.) They would routinely shoot five or six different versions of every scene, with the actors improvising different lines. The best version was what went into the finished show. Of course, they were using people like my friend, who had been an actress at Second City, where she'd also directed.
At a taping of Will & Grace I attended, the multiple-takes-with-different-lines approach was also taken repeatedly, They'd shoot it as written first, and then do takes with fresh lines from the actors. (Debra Messing did not do improvised takes, only the other three leads. Debra was apparently no good at improv. Sean was the strongest at it.)
I also attended a shoot of Murphy Browne when Tom Poston was the guest star. Several times Tom departed from the script and ad-libbed a line. Each time Candice Bergan literally fell on the floor laughing. They'd stop the take, and reslate the scene, with Tom still doing his improvised line, but with Candy braced to hear it, and every one of Tom's improvised lines made it to the broadcast version. (Tom gave me his script after the shoot, so I have it with his blocking all in pencil in his handwriting.)
I liked Burns.
Always cool when someone on MASH got to go home, even ferret face Frank...
On the subject of David Ogden Stiers, I've been watching Mary Tyler Moore on Pluto, and DOS plays a station manager with a noticeable stutter. Apparently that was a decision on his part, but it's interesting that the audience doesn't know how to react in his first appearances. You can hear a few small laughs on his earliest episodes.
I've considered taking an improv class ever since CW revived Whose Line is it Anyway? I might finally bite the bullet and take a class from the local school. A former roommate took the class and had a blast.
Cowboy Surfer, I liked Burns too somewhat. Of course he could be annoying, but I always felt that if someone really befriended him, and showed him the error of his ways in a kind way, he could have learned to become a better person.
I'd still love to see a new show that revisits his character. Think I've shared this before, but if I had producer bucks I'd look into creating a show called MAJOR BURNS, which would find Frank the general manager of an Indiana hospital in the 1970s, dealing with young new surgeons who remind him a lot of Hawkeye, Trapper and BJ.
In the new show, Burns wouldn't always just be a bumbler; he'd actually learn things, grow as a person, and sometimes even turn out the good guy. IMHO Clark Gregg would be perfect for the role; he even looks a bit like Linville in the 1970s. Ken, think it could work?
Demographics got All in the Family renewed after its first season when shows with better ratings (like Mayberry RFD) got yanked. But from the second season on, AITF was just a high-rated show in the old-fashion sense of the word. EVERYBODY watched it, whether they were in the desired demographic or not.
"The MTM Show" started in the fall of 1970. So, there is that interesting overlap, being that CBS purged the rural shows mainly after the 70/71 season. Plus, "All in the Family" was a mid-70/71 season series, starting in January of 1971. QUITE a difference in styles playing during the same CBS season. ABC's "That Girl" aired its final year through the 70/71 season. Interesting to compare "that" show to the concurrently airing "MTM." The latter vaguely similar, but so much more sophisticated.
71/72 CBS sitcoms included "Here's Lucy," "My Three Sons," "The New DVD Show," "Funny Face/Sandy Duncan Show," and "Me and the Chimp" (short-lived mid-season show, with Ted Bessell having jumped over after "That Girl" ended).
@D. McEwan You've never seen The Andy Griffith Show nor have the desire to? Well, you're missing out on one of the greatest sitcoms ever made, buddy. Also, a lot of those "bumpkin" shows as you so politely described them like Andy Griffith, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies in particular are still pretty funny and wholesome. I'd sincerely hope you get past your prejudice and elitism and give them a real try because these are some pretty good shows. Just a suggestion, though.
David Ogden Stiers was a gifted performer, but he fell far short of matching the comedic genius of Larry Linville. The first three seasons of “MASH” are so funny and smart. The series declined when McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers, weary of playing increasingly smaller parts in Alan Alda’s show, ankled. When Frank Burns departed, the show was wounded and never fully recovered. The loss of the brilliant Larry Gelbart was a significant blow as well.
“MASH” just became a lesser version of its inspired self. I have avoided the reruns after season 3, and on the rare occasions when I do watch an episode, I remember why.
>>Prairie Perspective said: “MASH” just became a lesser version of its inspired self. I have avoided the reruns after season 3, and on the rare occasions when I do watch an episode, I remember why.<<
Do you know where you are?
When TV Land was added to the cable lineup, I used to watch multiple eps of the color "Petticoat Junction" (the ones where Meredith Macrae replaced Gunilla Hutton). I remember being amused by the antics of Uncle Joe and Kate Bradley and perhaps being attracted by the girls especially Lori Saunders. The eps without Bea and with Steve and Betty being married weren't as good and June Lockhart as basically her replacement was perhaps ill-advised but since the show didn't even acknowledge Ms. Benaderet's death was probably the real "jump the shark" moment. By the way, I've also seen some of the black and white eps with Pat Woodell and Janine Reily and those seemed more believable. Those were public domain but the music was changed concerning the opening and closing theme possibly due to copyright issues...
What’s tragic is that Frank Burns is so similar to politicians like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, even Tom Cotton. The Charles Winchesters are getting purged from the GOP.
Paul Henning wanted to acknowledge Bea Benaderet's death by having her PETTICOAT JUNCTION character, Kate Bradley, die on the show. The next season would have picked up after Kate's death. It would have been discussed and dealt with. CBS wouldn't hear of it, though. In those days, characters on sitcoms never died. They just disappeared and were never mentioned again.
Chuck Cunningham on "Happy Days" vanished from the show early on.
I feel a little embarrassed when I enjoy watching the Andy Griffith Show but it really is good and I love Aunt Bea. In her memoir J. D. Salinger's ex said it was his favorite show (also that he liked lamb burgers).
@Spike de Beauvoir
I think the Don Knotts years are a hall of fame sitcom. Just wasn't the same after that.
I'll be different - I liked Frank Burns better than Charles. As a viewer, I liked when they brought some little bit of humanity to Frank that was below the surface. Charles just bored me. I also came to think of Hawkeye, BJ and Trapper as bullies. And in the Me-Too movement, the writers would never have gotten away with offering Radar a bribe to look in the nurse's shower for a favor. Different times, I know.
JS, also agreed. No question that in some episodes, Hawkeye, BJ and Trapper *were* bullies to Frank.
I've always appreciated that the writers always gave Frank at least one funny zinger per episode, if nothing else. Also, one of the best Burns episodes (not sure if Ken had anything to do with it) is the one where Frank thinks he can get away with stealing a rare (ivory-handled?) gun, brought in by an ailing general, but Radar ends up taking the fall. Frank proves he does have a conscience by returning it to the locked storage cabinet, even if he does so in the worst way (sneaking it back and injuring himself in the process).
That to me is the essence of Burns; he had some bad/misguided values and was largely incompetent, but wasn't evil by any stretch of the imagination. He was salvageable as a person, although no one in M*A*S*H ever really made the effort to try, for both good and bad reasons of their own.
"Kendall Rivers said...
@D. McEwan You've never seen The Andy Griffith Show nor have the desire to? Well, you're missing out on one of the greatest sitcoms ever made, buddy. Also, a lot of those "bumpkin" shows as you so politely described them like Andy Griffith, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies in particular are still pretty funny and wholesome. I'd sincerely hope you get past your prejudice and elitism"
Yeah, I've been told that before. Actually, you lose me forever at "Wholesome," an adjective that always serves me as a warning to avoid something. I'll hold onto my standards, what you call "elitism," thank you. And of course, Don Knotts was on it, and I can't stand him. I had him booked on a radio talk show I produced, and our star dumped him off the airhalfway through, ("Well, we know you have to go, but thanks for sparing us some time..." That he had another appointment was news to Don) because he was SO BORING an interview, that the star preferred playing records to trying to elicit words from Knotts of more than a single syllable.
I'll get through life just fine without those shows, thank you. This is like me saying to you, "You never saw Who's Your Daddy? with Jaxton Wheeler? You've missed one of the greatest gay porn films ever!" If you hate the genre, it won't matter how "good" it is.
All I see is TV trying to make the 1960s versions of Trump voters funny, something All in the Family managed. Anytime a supporting character is an actual hog, I'm outta there.
The incredible Don Knotts was hilarious, poignant and vulnerable as Deputy Barney Fife. The fact that some DJ could not get a quality interview from Mr. Knotts — with his long career from Steve Allen to Mayberry and more — says more about the quality of the show and clueless staff than it does about the great sad clown of mid-20th century TV.
“Green Acres” was a sharp satire of TV, rural life and pompous East Coast people. Some people got it back then and understand it now. Others just missed the point — I sense a theme — and didn’t see the jokes sail past them. Humor is a subjective thing, but Alvy Moore, a real-life Marine and pal of Lee Marvin who acted on Broadway with Henry Fonda, was terrific as the perpetually befuddled County Agent Hank Kimball. The show has endured for a reason.
Alvy Moore was great in the Dick Van Dyke Show episode "The Impractical Joke" as the IRS man, William Handlebuck, who tricks Buddy (his punchline is "Scream like a chicken!").
Alvy Moore was the producer of, and also appeared in, the movie adaptation of Harlan Ellison's short story "A Boy and His Dog". Set in 2024 !
Friday Question:
I've been watching The Rockford Files lately, just got through the first season. I really like how true it is to the classic noir detective genre. The writer of many episodes is Juanita Bartlett who perhaps can be credited with the strong female characters on the show. And Noah Beery is so charming as Rocky!
I was reading about James Garner and found this bit from an interview with a producer of the show:
"The series' producer Roy Huggins noted in his Archive of American Television interview that he subsequently cast Garner as the lead in Maverick due to his comedic facial expressions while playing scenes in 'Man from 1997' that were not originally written to be comical (Huggins knew this because he'd written the episode himself)." I'm noticing that Garner is so expressive in small moments and brings a lot of emotion to close shots without ever suggesting mugging or strain.
I'm wondering if there are actors you've worked with where you noticed this same talent and quality in their expressions in your shows.
"Prairie Perspective said...
The incredible Don Knotts was hilarious, poignant and vulnerable as Deputy Barney Fife. The fact that some DJ could not get a quality interview from Mr. Knotts — with his long career from Steve Allen to Mayberry and more — says more about the quality of the show and clueless staff than it does about the great sad clown of mid-20th century TV"
Who is this "incredible Don Knotts" of whom you speak? I only know of the tiresome comic actor on TV and movies.
"Some disc jockey" was "Sweet Dick" Whittington, a Los Angeles radio legend, and ours was the second-highest-rated morning radio show in Los Angeles at that time (1974). Dick, who is still alive at 93, was beloved. He was a regular on LAUGH-IN for a while, and worked for years. Among those who revere his massive talent is a guy named Ken Levine.
And Don Knotts's daughter told me Don HATED doing interviews, and often intentionally tanked them with mono-syllabic answers. Dick had no trouble getting great interviews out of Lucille Ball, Gore Vidal, Jack Lemmon, Ray Milland, Vincent Bugliosi, Dennis Weaver, Harry Chapin, Ben Gazarra, Tony Randall, Vincente Minnelli, Helen Hayes, Peter Benchley, Jean Simmons, Richard Thomas, etc., etc., this list can go on for days. And all booked by me. Among his regular listeners, whom we occasionally heard from after shows they particularly loved, were Lucille Ball, Jean Stapleton and Doris Day.
As for citing Don on The Steve Allen Show, Whittington was a writer on that version of Steve's show. Whit was originally a protege of Lenny Bruce's.
I think Alvy Moore is a fine actor, and he's in lots of other things, so I do not have to watch bumpkin comedies to see and appreciate him.
Does D.McEwan have a blog ? Please don't delete this.
Hey Ken, I've suddenly thought of a guest for your podcast - a former emcee at the Comedy Store
Or is he afraid that his Lewis Black persona may come over more like Edmund Gwenn?
"Baxter Pendleton said...
Does D.McEwan have a blog ? Please don't delete this."
I did one for several years, in-character as "Tallulah Morehead, the heroine of my novels. It was titled "The Morehead, The Merrier."
http://tallulahmorehead.blogspot.com
FQ - Keith Hernandez, announcing a Mets game, recently commented that he tries not to cover Mets/Phillies games because the Phillies' poor fundamentals ("fundies," as Keith says) and defense bother him. Needless to say, this caused quite the kerfluffle in Philadelphia.
Have you ever made an offhand comment while broadcasting that wound up landing you in hot water?
Y’all have me feeling nostalgic. I agree that bringing in Charles strengthened MASH and allowed it to go longer than it would have otherwise. His character was strong and smart enough to be a proper foil for Hawkeye. That said, I’ve lived long enough to meet a few Frank Burnses, and I think Linville played him well.
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