With the supposedly dwindling DVD market (I keep hearing this, usually from people who can’t find distributors for their product) and the overwhelming amount of movies that become available year after year, suddenly the studios have become not so keen on digging into their vaults to make money, feeling that the profits from old Cary Grant and Greta Garbo movies aren’t worth their efforts, when a Shrek or Madagascar sequel can prove so much more lucrative.  There was a constant threat that certain titles would never again be made available once they were put out of print or those that were never unearthed would stay buried for eternity. That was until somebody (no doubt someone in a lowly position on the studio roster, as those are customarily the sort of folks who care about nostalgia and preservation) realized that there were movie aficionados (the fancy word for movie geeks, if you wish) out there who would be willing to shell out their hard earned cash for real rarities and oddities; not to mention well-known and worthy titles that aren’t being treated with much respect anymore.

Henceforth the “burn on request” idea became a reality at Warner Bros., a procedure that has recently been adapted by RKO and Universal (also on the TCM site), although they have only been offering a handful of titles so far. This is a great service, if you ask me (and since this is my blog, I’ll pretend you did), and I’m hoping that Paramount and 20th Century Fox and Columbia and everybody else jumps on the band wagon and does the same. (The Warner Bros. archive actually reaches beyond offerings originally distributed by that company, encompassing titles from MGM, RKO, and Allied Artists among others). It’s a great big wonderful world of movies out there, if you really care about the whole scope of what has been created over the years. So, why shouldn’t those of us who do care about this and don’t care about having 47-hours worth of extras on the Saw VI DVD be able to see these works that made up a part of Hollywood’s past history?

Here’s just a small sampling of some of the stuff you’ll find at the Warner Archives: There’s Flap (1970), British director Carol Reed’s attempt to comment on the rights of Native Americans, adapted from a novel called Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian; the movie that put an end to the critics’ love affair with director Lina Wertmuller, The End of the World in Our Usual Bed in a Night Full of Rain (1978); a creaky musical, Chasing Rainbows (1930), that introduced one of the most famous songs of the Great Depression, “Happy Days are Here Again;” a too-cutesy-for-words adaptation of the once-popular comic strip Dondi (1961), which boasts an eclectic cast consisting of Patti Page, Arnold Stang, Gale Gordon, and Walter Winchell; Nancy Reagan listening to God on the radio in The Next Voice You Hear … (1950); and a Sidney Lumet credit that has pretty much slid into oblivion, Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots (1970), adapted from an equally obscure Tennessee Williams play, The Seven Descents of Myrtle.

You can’t find a better place to fill in those missing Jerry Lewis titles on your shelf, since this service offers the comedian-filmmaker’s last starring vehicle, Cracking Up (1983); his straight role in Cookie (1989); a bizarre, barely-released item he made with Johnny Depp called Arizona Dream (1994); and the World War II farce Which Way to the Front? (1970), which was sold with the none-too-subtle (and optimistic) ad line “You VILL laugh!!!!” 

If you’re looking for jaw dropping lapses in taste there are Big Boy (1931), with Al Jolson playing his entire part in black face; Golden Dawn (1930), with Noah Beery doing the same; Alec Guinness as a Japanese businessman with a habit of mispronouncing the letter “L” in A Majority of One (1961); and Marion Davies going undercover as a kerchief-clad, black servant in the Civil War drama Operation 13 (1934). Gee, I wonder why these don’t surface too often. 

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Warners also offers Death of a Centerfold (1981), a TV movie with Jamie Lee Curtis playing the doomed Dorothy Stratten, two years before Mariel Hemingway did the role in Bob Fosse’s Star 80; the only known film to feature Dennis Hopper and Chico Marx, The Story of Mankind (1957); the best of all killer tree-stump movies, From Hell it Came (1959) [see the trailer below]; June Allyson portraying a lesbian in They Only Kill Their Masters (1972); and both The Bobo (1967) and The Boob (1926). And here’s some trivia to ponder: after The Birth of a Nation, what was the highest grossing movie of all time until Gone with the Wind came along? Why The Singing Fool (1928), with Al Jolson, of course. Huh?!!, how’s that?!?!, you might ask; but here it is to savor as an artifact of its day (one often referred to by modern reviewers and scholars as “a chore to sit through” for contemporary audiences).

I suppose if you want to find something negative to consider about this project, there is that uncomfortable feeling of “dismissal,” regarding which titles have been “sentenced” to this site, as if to say they have been deemed from this point on unsalable to most consumers and unworthy of being distributed or made available on a wider basis. This is a shame for such underrated offerings as Hot Millions (1968), Men Don’t Leave (1990), and The Tall Target (1951) to name but a few. And who decreed that even movies that have won Academy Awards are now “second tier” titles, like The Subject Was Roses (1968; which brought Jack Albertson his Oscar); Min and Bill (with Best Actress winner Marie Dressler); and The Search (1948; earning an Oscar nomination for its star, Montgomery Clift, and an award for its writers)?

I guess we should be grateful to this service for being a form of film preservation, for making the gems and the dogs of years-gone-by available for us to pass our own judgments on. There’s little chance, after all, that the few revival theatres left are going to be hauling out prints of The Eddie Cantor Story (1953) or the one-and-only film to feature Merv Griffin as the leading man, So This is Love (1953), for public screenings, so we’ll take what we can get however we can get it. The fact that you can come here and finally get that long-awaited copy of the 1979 TV movie Champions: A Love Story, featuring Jimmy McNichol on skates, should be justification enough for the Warner Archives’ existence.

But it isn’t just a cheeky bunch of presumably heterosexual celebrities getting their jollies by experiencing the “other side.” At the recent Tony Awards, Kristen Chenoweth and Sean Hayes had a passionate tongue-thrashing session in front of a roaring crowd, and, well, their libidos weren’t exactly getting worked up over the act either. Hayes and Chenoweth were making a pointed comment on the stupidity of a recent Newsweek article which argued that it was difficult to accept openly gay actors like Hayes playing heterosexuals (as Hayes does in the current Broadway revival of Promises, Promises). Of course thinking that somebody can’t play a role because they aren’t authentically that role or that character in real life goes against the very concept of acting, but that’s another matter to debate and blog about down the line.

Back to kissing; which in recent years is more prevalent than it was allowed to be in the past, though I don’t exactly see this happening for real at the local mall on a steady basis. Watch-dog groups, censors, network executives, and the usual collection of religious fanatics used to cause a lot of Sturm und Drang over such things and actually carried some sway, causing an uproar when Lynn Redgrave was supposed to kiss Mariette Hartley in the TV movie My Two Loves (1986; the compromise was a peck on the forehead, which is exactly how I picture lesbians expressing their desires for one another, don’t you?); when teenagers Holly Marie Combs and Alexondra Lee experimented on Picket Fences (1991; the shades were drawn to make the room very dark); when Doug Savant was given his first male smooch on Melrose Place (1994; the camera cut away to a surprised Andrew Shue); and, of course, when Roseanne Barr got some physical attention from Mariel Hemingway on Roseanne (1994). Unlike the others, Roseanne, in her customarily feisty manner, fought to keep this moment in, won the battle, and the ratings soared through the roof. (For video of this kiss, check out our "I Want My Gay TV" PaleyCenter.org exclusive.)

I guess contemporary audiences will sleep soundly after witnessing same sex lip locking when they see it on the small screen in the privacy of their own homes, but in most cases there is still a safety factor involved. Most of these kisses are presented as unexpected and therefore funny for that reason. Folks laughing at the act can always credit their guffaws on the surprise, rather than any kind of prejudice towards gay physicality. Hell, it was funny on That ‘70s’ Show, when Topher Grace was so oblivious to what everyone else was aware of, that the new buddy he was hanging out with (played by guest star Joseph Gordon-Levitt), was gay, that when he received a kiss from the boy, it had the effect of a wake up call to all such self-involved people who don’t want to even think that such feelings can exist between persons of the same sex. Similarly, in the movie In & Out, when out and proud newscaster Tom Selleck got tired of Kevin Kline’s wishy-washy, guarded attitude about his own gayness and planted a wet one on him, it was a howl, because it cut through all the crap and denial in a direct manner we wish could happen with all the closeted folks we’ve known along the way.

Certainly the sight of teenager Keir Gilchrist kissing the boy he was attracted to on United States of Tara should not be underestimated, even if that is a Showtime series and therefore meant to reach a smaller audience than network. The prevailing attitude is that Hollywood will slip it in where it can (Brothers and Sisters has done this on several occasions), wants gay America to know that they have their support, and that many performers (who have always been more into risk taking than entertainment executives who make the decisions) think it worth satirizing or defying when conservative factions try to make the act of kissing seem like something immoral or degenerate.

But there is still something frustrating about the ever-present “gay panic” inherent in most of these depictions of same sex kissing and the fact that audiences still insist on reacting in some vocal manner. Be it a “woo-hoo” response of solidarity or an audible expression of disgust, I’m not quite convinced as recent articles have theorized that the entire world, no matter one’s cultural or social upbringing, is open to this on a daily, serious, casual, face-to-face basis, in or out of the arts. The image from last year’s satire Brüno of redneck wrestling fans baring their fangs in hatred at Sacha Baron Cohen and his ex-lover as they made out in an enclosed wrestling ring, still registers with a chilling truth that does not exactly put me at ease.

When will it become so prevalent and matter-of-fact in mainstream entertainment that nobody bats an eye; when can one go to a movie and see same sex kissing that doesn’t provoke the expected, tiresome “eews” or uncomfortable titters in venues outside more sophisticated metropolitan centers? Should we be satisfied that we’ve come this far and make peace with that? Or should we expect more progress to such a degree that creators and viewers will be demanding it be as much a part of everyday viewing as commercial breaks?

Think of the alternative: according to a recent Daily News piece, a Saudi Arabian man was sentenced to four months in prison and 90 lashes because he was seen exchanging a kiss at a mall. And the person he was seen kissing was a woman. Imagine a society where this sort of reaction is the norm and maybe then we’ll just be grateful that Sandra Bullock wasn’t sentenced to a public stoning and will be free to once again dart tongues with the lady of her choice when the next awards season rolls around.

For some reason the concept of “comedy teams” strikes most people as something from the past, as well as something more commonly associated with the movies than television. These include such cinematic groupings as the Marx Brothers (the best of all the three-man teams … sorry, Zeppo); master slapstick practitioners Laurel & Hardy (whose names for many people are synonymous with the phrase “comedy team”); Abbott & Costello (an outstanding case of precision-timed verbal interplay between two performers); and Martin & Lewis (the prime example of a team who, after their split, succeeded individually to such a degree that subsequent generations found it hard to fathom them together). As for the top male-female partnering, Burns & Allen, although they were most at home on radio and television, they too also made a number of motion picture appearances.

Television has, in fact, been a showcase for a long list of comedy match-ups, from its earliest years, right up to the present. The problem is sorting out who counts as an official team, and who simply paired off successfully on a number of occasions but would never consider themselves a deliberate joint act. (The greatest of all these, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, were more effortlessly funny together than most “legit” comedy partners). It is also difficult to chart when a teaming has run its course, as such acts often continue on and off over the years, with members doing solo gigs between team appearances. This is understandable, as being joined at the hip to another person in a business notoriously full of fragile egos and caustic temperaments no doubt can prove as explosive as sharing a dorm room with someone who won’t pick up his dirty socks.

Among those television teams who immediately spring to mind are (Dan) Rowan & (Dick) Martin, because their names were featured in one of the seminal series of the 1960s, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, where their snappy repartee added some of the best moments to the frenetic proceedings; and the Smothers Brothers (Tom & Dick), who had the advantage of a rhyming name and a controversial weekly variety series to keep them in the public consciousness.

If you tuned into The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1960s you’d have encountered (Mitzi) McCall and (Charlie) Brill, who spent years trying to live down laying an egg on national television because they did their act for a horde of screaming teenagers, directly before the Beatles were ready to do their final set on their historical first U.S. appearance; (Jerry) Stiller and (Anne) Meara, who, in more recent years, have chosen to perform or act separately (sometimes opposite son Ben Stiller); and (Marty) Allen & (Steve) Rossi, the latter possessing a rather bland personality, while the former was hard to forget with his Brillo-sponge hairdo, wide-eyes and “hello dere!” catchphrase. Jack Burns had the distinction of having not one but two partners who became better known than himself, George Carlin, who so quickly left this part of his life behind before becoming everybody’s favorite outspoken long-haired comic, that it became a mere footnote, and Avery Schreiber, whose bushy moustache rivaled Marty Allen’s hair as a sight-gag.

There were also parody masters Bob (Elliot) & Ray (Goulding), whose real forte was radio; (Mike) Nichols & (Elaine) May, who, like Martin & Lewis, became more famous for their later solo careers, he as an Oscar-winning director, she as a writer; (Dick) Clair and (Jenna) McMahon, who defied the tradition of many male-female duos being married in real life, the former being gay; and the only mime act to achieve any degree of fame in this area, (Robert) Shields & (Lorene) Yarnell, who even carried their own series in the late 1970s.

But the tradition doesn’t stop back then, as you might have presumed. In more recent years there have been Kid (Christopher Reid) ‘n’ Play (Christopher Martin), who combined comedy with hip-hop; Mark (Thompson) & Brian (Phelps), who came over from radio to do their own short-lived television series; Penn (Gillette) & (Raymond) Teller, who had the novelty of centering their humor around magic tricks; and, currently, Flight of the Conchords, a deadpan New Zealand act consisting of Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, who also go in for the laughs-with-songs angle. Whether any of these people will be considered more famous for their teamings or for their solo gigs, if they are remembered at all, remains for time to tell.
 
- Barry Monush (working solo)

What really got me thinking about this whole “star” labeling thing were two similar articles recently run in the same week, in TV Guide and the NY Post. In both instances Kate Gosselin (I had to check the spelling of that name in order to type it here) was heralded as the “star” power on this season’s Dancing with the Stars, or as Deborah Starr (hmmn … do I detect a pattern here?) Seibel put it “… the star power of someone like Gosselin … comes at you full strength, undiluted by “celebrities” who are anything but household names.” 

Well, first of all, ever since her name began popping up in the media, I’ve frequently had to be reminded who this Kate Gosselin person is, guessing alternately that she was a high priced fashion model, a daytime soap opera actress, or perhaps the sister of Ryan Gosling who happened to spell her name differently. But no, she’s a “reality” television … um, “star” whose face and name have been plastered all over supermarket rags for months on end. So, as far as I’m concerned, Seibel’s assessment was laugh-out loud funny. We’re being told that Gosselin is far superior to the common variety “celebrity” who dares to compare themselves with a genuine star like (pause to guffaw) Kate Gosselin.

Am I missing something here? If Kate Gosselin is a “star” what exactly does that make Jeff Bridges or Sandra Bullock, both of whom took home this year’s lead acting Oscars after substantial careers in which they practiced an actual craft, whether or not you enjoy the end result of their work? And if Kate Gosselin is a “household” name, should I be worried that I too could become spoken of with regularity and familiarity by the family down the street someday because, well, frankly, I haven’t done anything to rate this honor either?

What is Kate Gosselin a “star” for? For having a camera pointed at her while she spews forth banalities on a reality show, the lowest form of television, in my opinion? Does this mean people go up to her at the supermarket asking for her autograph or pester her to have their picture taken with her? And should she comply, and that same fan showed the resultant photo to me, would I even be able to tell who it was? When the first three versions of A Star is Born were made, the women who played the “star” being referred to in the title were, respectively, Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, and Barbra Streisand, all of them very prominent names in the film industry when they won these roles. But now I have to assume were a new remake announced, Kate Gosselin would be first in line for the lead.

Apparently this woman brought in high ratings to Dancing with the Stars, a show whose very name is a joke because it too uses the term “star” with reckless abandon when referring to such heavy hitters as Holly Madison, Ty Murray, Cody Linley, and Josie Maran. Who? What? Huh? Stars?!?!? Is somebody kidding here? I’ll admit, I had to look at a list of past and current DWTS guests to come up with these samples, because I haven’t the faintest idea who any of these people are, or what their “accomplishments” might be to warrant them being asked to appear on a television program, even one as cheesy as Dancing with the Stars. 

Why are viewers so easily excited by people who in many cases have no discernible talent, nor claim to have it in the first place? (And since Gosselin ended up getting eliminated from the competition several weeks into this season, can we assume her absence of talents extends to the field of dance as well?). Have I naively believed all these years that in order for someone “in show business” to attract a following they might have actually done something interesting, that they might have a body of work encompassing various roles and projects dating back a few years to qualify?

I’m reminded of the 1954 Judy Holliday comedy It Should Happen to You,  in which the character she played, Gladys Glover, became an overnight “star” simply because she did nothing more than plaster her name on a enormous billboard over Columbus Circle. It was a smart satire on the tenuous nature of fame and how little it takes to rate attention in a media-hungry society. Of course Holliday herself was and is a star in my opinion; as was a young actor making his debut in that movie, Jack Lemmon. These people had that “little something extra” that James Mason spoke about in … what else?… A Star is Born, which, as I look at it, is a pivotal part of how you get to be a star in the first place.

If you don’t know who Judy Holliday, Jack Lemmon or James Mason were, but consider Kate Gosselin a star, then I can only assume this is simply another, all-too-common case of the here-and-now overriding history and achievement. Most people can only handle knowing names currently in the spotlight and see no point in finding out about performers who are no longer with us, hardly working, or had the bad timing to hit their peak of prominence a week and a half before this current week. If that is the case, then we need to come up with another term for those flash-in-the-pan names who attain their Warholian 15-minutes of fame and then fade away to be remembered by few with the passage of time. If the dictionary definition for “star” is “a self-luminous gaseous celestial body” then how about we dub Kate Gosselin and her ilk “gaseous bodies” and leave the term “stars” to the sort of talents who would never be caught dead in a million years (my apologies to Cloris Leachman!) appearing on Dancing with the Stars? 

But networks aren’t likely to decide years down the line that they need to revisit or give a second chance to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Paper Moon, or Semi-Tough, now are they? Or are they? Presently, television is defying this assumption by doing just that. Unless you’ve been walking around wearing a sleep mask, you’ve no doubt noticed that NBC has just launched a series called Parenthood (the amount of publicity has made last year’s Glee seem like it sneaked into town in comparison) based on the 1989 hit comedy that starred Steve Martin, and it is not the first time this has happened. 

One year after the film debuted, NBC excitedly announced that the 1990-91 fall season would feature a weekly series based on Parenthood, with that film’s writers, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, on board as executive producers, as well as the movie’s director (and story contributor), Ron Howard, and his producing partner, Brian Grazer. It featured two of the same child actors from the theatrical feature (plus one boy who had played a different part in the movie); carried over Randy Newman’s Oscar-nominated song, “I Love to See You Smile” as its theme; and intended to keep the same tone as the movie that deftly combined humor with insight and heart without lapsing into icky territory. It seemed like a sure thing, the movie relying upon a multi-character format, unfolding episodically rather than just focusing on top-billed Steve Martin. In fact, NBC had agreed to do the series before the film even kicked off its moneymaking run in theatres.

Two hour-long episodes were shown in advance, but they suggested the creators were straining a bit to capture the right tone Ron Howard had set in the film. However, once the series officially debuted in the Saturday, 8-8:30pm slot, things seemed to settle into a more comfortable mode and, perhaps thanks to the addition of Joss Whedon on the writing staff, there was a feeling that maybe this was going to work after all. Audiences, however, could care less. Even though two other shows sharing the same time slot, The Young Riders and Totally Hidden Video, were hardly stellar competition, Parenthood came up short in the ratings and was quickly deemed one of the season’s most unfortunate and unexpected failures. By November it was yanked from the schedule, doomed to fade into that same obscurity that had swallowed up the TV versions of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Four Seasons, and Breaking Away. Even the eventual superstardom of one of its cast members, Leonardo DiCaprio (playing the part Joaquin—“Leaf” at the time—Phoenix played in the movie), did nothing to resurrect it on the home video market or draw attention to it.

But Ron Howard and Brian Grazer apparently held to their belief that there was “adaptable” material in the original source because twenty years later a revamped Parenthood is back on the NBC schedule. I say “revamped” because there is only a vague resemblance to the film and first series in set-ups and characterizations; the characters are not even referred to by the same names. The Buchmans of the movie have become the Bravermans. The Steve Martin equivalent is now the ultra-serious Peter Krause, whereas the 1990 series had aimed for someone a little more at home doing comedy by casting Ed Begley Jr. in the part. In fact, this new Parenthood does not emphasize humor above all, but aims for a more somber tone altogether, despite sticking in occasional laughs throughout. It’s hard to tell where this is all going, but the revelation right up front that Krause and Monica Potter’s son has been diagnosed with Asperger’s weighs a bit too heavily on the proceedings.

It’s good to see that the movie plotline about the wastrel son who has illegitimately sired a black offspring has been reinstated (those characters were dropped from the 1990 series altogether). However, Dax Shepard comes off as a tad smarmy rather than affably irresponsible the way Tom Hulce played it, and this time the son is sprung on the character (called “Crosby,” presumably not because of Bing but because of David, in light of the “ex-hippie” manner in which the grandparents are characterized), giving the whole thing a far more soap opera-ish tone.

After initially rejecting the efforts of Lauren Graham (a last minute replacement for Maura Tierney) to fill Dianne Wiest’s shoes as the unhappily single mom who is struggling hardest to please her brood, I started to feel that there might be something of value in her performance and in this storyline. Especially in light of the tenuous nature of the real job market, as the character is shown at rope’s end trying to balance keeping two teens in line with finding steady employment. Alas, you pretty much get the expected surly adolescent bit from her daughter (and from Krause and Potter’s daughter as well—it’s a toss up at this point over which of them is more annoyingly petulant and self-righteous, but, hey, I guess if all teens were cooperative and likeable, there’d be nothing to base a series on), but maybe this can build into something deeper too. Stuck with all-too-familiar character of the job-minded mom who is failing at giving her daughter attention, Erika Christensen manages to make her far less irritating that you’d expect, so that’s a plus.

Trying to be believable and tackle topics parents can relate to, they’ve even done the requisite “how do we talk to our son about masturbation?” episode which makes you suddenly realize that even this once unimaginable plotline has become something of a television cliché. Maybe Ron Howard wanted to cover this subject because he regrets never having enacted such a confrontation on either The Andy Griffith Show (“Now, Ope, I know a feller your age has needs…”) or Happy Days (“Aaay, Richie, it’s got a great beat but can you dance to it?”)

All in all, I’m not looking at this as a direct descendant of the movie, which is probably my favorite of all the ones Ron Howard has directed. In fact, it’s best not to hold any series adaptation of a movie up to such high expectations. After all, they all must go their own way, after initially borrowing the premise and characterizations, don’t they? Come to think of it, there wasn’t a lot about the television M*A*S*H that could be traced back to the movie directed by Robert Altman (who, incidentally, did not like the series) by the time it ended its run.

But the fate of Parenthood 2010 might have already been decided. After a highly unimpressive start in the ratings, it hasn’t done much better in the subsequent weeks it has aired. The Good Wife over on CBS has been beating the pants off it (see upcoming live panel here at the Paley Center), so unless NBC decides it wants to nurture it along and move it elsewhere it might already be a dead duck like its predecessor. By the time this blog runs, we could be saying ‘bye bye Bravermans,” in fact. Then we’ll have to wait another twenty years to see if the third incarnation will finally take off.

 
Oh, and, admittedly, we’ve already got a lot of dim people here (no more than any other state, but trust me, they’re here), so we sure as shootin’ didn’t need a whole bunch more, which is what the cast of Jersey Shore seems to consist of. I mean, the people on this dubious contribution to the already dubious “reality” television genre really appear to be missing a whole mess o’ brain cells. These folks don’t need a shore house to party in; they’re more in need of an evolutionary chart to show them that they are not obliged to function on the same level as their simian ancestors. As Katharine Hepburn memorably told Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

If you think I’m being rough on these hardy partiers, let me give you a sampling of how they themselves extol their “attributes” in the opening episode. Pauly D (never trust a guy who calls himself Pauly, as anyone who has seen The Sopranos knows), who is actually from Rhode Island, proudly announces that “It takes me 25 minutes to do my hair. It comes out perfect every time.” Wow! Now I know for sure I want to spend a night out chatting with this guy. Think of all I could find out about “product” and the great “brush vs. comb” controversy.

And then there is “Snooki” (whom, I assume, was not named after the star of Your Hit Parade, Snooky Lanson). Snooki lets us know that her “ultimate dream is to move to New Jersey” (okay, sensible, so far), but then she adds “… find a hot, tanned, juiced guy and live my life.” Phew! Now I’m certain the future of mankind is safe, thanks to Snooki’s master plan. Not being up on the latest lingo, I didn’t at first equate “juiced” with being pumped up on steroids. Instead, it sounded to me like Snooki wanted a man in a constant state of inebriation which, well, if you had to live with Snooki 24/7 might not be a bad idea.

Then there’s a fellow of high ideals called “The Situation” (as in “Situation Hopeless,” perhaps?) who swoons over his own 6-pack abs which are so cut and indented that I wouldn’t be surprised if you could slip stamped postcards in there.

But my favorite mental defective … um, I mean, character is “Sweetheart” because she’s from the town where I grew up, Hazlet!! Does this mean “Sweetheart” and I received our education at the very same institution of learning? Yikes! Anyway, “Sweetheart” informs you that she is “the sweetest bitch you’ll ever meet,” which is comforting to know, because this is what we always prided ourselves on in Hazlet, not just the amount of bitches produced, but their level of sweetness. She also wants you to know that “If you are not a ‘guido’ you can get the (bleep) out of my face.” Assuming MTV does not need to censor the word “heck,” it sounds to me like “Sweeheart” really means business where her men are concerned.  

But what seems to have brought the show a level of notoriety is not the way in which it gives ABC’s fabled flop Cavemen a run for its money in the number of Neanderthals seen in a single episode, but because of that word, “guido;” a word “Sweetheart” and the others bandy about an alarming number of times just within the complied “highlight” reel from episode one. Frankly, I’m not even sure where this term comes from, because in my cultural knowledge, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the name Guido is the musical Nine (which premiered on Broadway back in 1982 and was just recently made into a movie with Daniel Day-Lewis) or its source material, Federico Fellini’s 1963 Oscar-winning film, 8 ½, where Guido was played by Marcello Mastroianni. It’s only a hunch, but something tells me that the ladies and gentlemen on Jersey Shore are not using these two works about a film director in midlife crisis as their frame of reference. Perhaps I’m just hanging in the wrong social circles, but I think I can safely say I’ve never actually met someone named “Guido,” ever, in my whole life, inside or outside of the New Jersey state lines.

But Jersey Shore doesn’t draw the line at “guidos,” they have a female equivalent, called “guidettes,” which sounds to me like a snack toast or a feminine hygiene product of some sort, but actually refers to … um, “sweet bitches” like “Sweetheart.” Anyway, the preponderance of these words has not sat well with the Italian American community, as they are considered condescending, stereotypical, and flat-out offensive. But then pretty much anything and everything that comes out of the mouths of these pop culture titans has a certain offensive quality to it, so one can hardly expect proper decorum or sensitivity to enter the equation. They don’t speak, after all, so much as bray. When they are not braying they are bragging or getting bleeped. Believe me, if you were to actually encounter any of these people, you would quickly move to the other side of the prison exercise yard.

But I’m sure you’ve already heard enough criticism and condemnations of this series. It is junk after all (I doubt its creators would argue with that assessment) and junk on television is always good for reams of newsprint, discussion, twittering, or even pointless blogs. But, what this all brings to mind, as far as I’m concerned, is how New Jersey’s reputation hasn’t exactly been what you would call “enhanced” by its depictions on television. We gave the world Frank Sinatra, Abbott & Costello, Meryl Streep, Eva Marie Saint, Brian Keith, Nathan Lane, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, John Travolta, Frank Langella, Sandra Dee, Ernie Kovacs, James Gandolfini, Charles Addams, Count Basie, and Robert Sean Leonard (whose own TV series, House, M.D., takes place somewhere in the Princeton-Plainsboro area) among others. Oh, and Jerry Lewis too.

And what does Hollywood give us in return? Not just Jersey Shore but the definitive Scott Baio-Willie Ames collaboration, Charles in Charge, which involved a fictitious Jersey college called Copeland (not to be confused with the Jersey-set Sylvester Stallone drama Cop Land); and the disco classic Makin’ It, which took place in Passaic and gave us David Naughton in tight pants as well as hit song that climbed to Number 5 on the Billboard charts (admit it, you’re singing it now as you read this sentence). Both of these shows, coincidentally, featured Ellen Travolta, the older sister of John and a native of Englewood, NJ, as a cast regular, so at least they were aiming for authenticity.

Other series cashing in on the New Jersey mystique included the animated Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, which took place in a landfill in Newark, and Megas XLR, which had scenes set in a junkyard in Jersey City. We’ve also had such quickies set here as Hudson Street (Hoboken), Hi Honey, I’m Home! (anywhere, NJ), Quintuplets (Nutley), and an earlier tribute to the beach, Down the Shore (Belmar). None of these efforts has exactly contributed to a positive image of our state as the cultural capital of the East Coast (landfills!?… junkyards!? … Willie Aames!?). Even the show we’re most proud of, The Sopranos, probably makes us look worse than any of these other offerings. It does, after all, feature a whole load of bad tempered people who settle arguments with guns. But it does have lovely views of Caldwell, Route 17, Verona, North Arlington, and Paterson, as well as such late lamented attractions as the Pabst Beer water tower and the inimitable Fountains of Wayne. It also happens to be one of the best shows in the history of the medium and as far as I’m concerned the Jersey ambiance had a lot to do with that. But, if I remember correctly, despite the majority of the characters being of Italian descent, there was no use of the word “guidette,” or a character named “Snooki.” So, I suppose Jersey Shore does fill some kind of void. It’s best to quit carping, find somebody “juiced” to jump into the jacuzzi with and surrender to its intellectual charms.

The What’s My Line? format had four well-known people trying to determine the occupation of a contestant, such as “sells eyeglasses for chickens” or “professional pickpocket.” Every show had a famous mystery guest as well, with the blindfolded panelists attempting to guess the celebrity’s identity.

The biggest names of stage, screen, radio, television, politics, and public life appeared as mystery guests. Screen stars like Bob Hope, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, and Bette Davis were on the show, as were theater performers like Ethel Merman, Helen Hayes, and Ethel Barrymore. Music legends included Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and Ella Fitzgerald. Figures in politics, public life, and the arts such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Carl Sandburg, and Salvador Dali dropped in. Some mystery challengers such as Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Muhammad Ali came from the sports world. Radio and television stars who graced the stage included Jack Benny, Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett, and, holding the record for most mystery guest appearances, Lucille Ball, who appeared six times. Three United States presidents appeared on What’s My Line? before they took office: Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter; the latter two on the syndicated version.

The biggest prize a contestant could win was fifty dollars, but no one seemed to care. Viewers tuned in to hear the witty interplay between the panelists and their moderator, News commentator John Daly, and to watch famous people have great fun disguising their voices in an effort to fool the regulars. The show, which was broadcast live from New York, gave viewers the feeling of being among genuinely smart people who were very much in touch with the current social, political, literary, and entertainment scene.

The panel generally consisted of “the delightful star of stage and television” Arlene Francis, publisher Bennett Cerf, and the popular columnist “whose ‘Voice of Broadway’ appears in papers from coast to coast,” Dorothy Kilgallen. In the early years, other male panelists included poet Louis Untermeyer, comedy writer Hal Block, comedian Steve Allen, and radio legend Fred Allen. After Fred Allen’s unexpected death in 1956, the fourth seat was held by a different guest panelist each week. These included Francis’ husband, Martin Gabel, Tony Randall, Ernie Kovacs (see a Kovacs clip below), Robert Q. Lewis, Joey Bishop, and Johnny Carson. After Dorothy Kilgallen died suddenly in 1965, her seat was filled by different female panelists such as actress Phyllis Newman and society columnist Suzy Knickerbocker.

The original What’s My Line? ran for seventeen and a half years, from 1950 to 1967. During its first several months it was seen on Thursdays and then Wednesdays, until moving over to Sunday nights at 10:30pm in October of that year. There it would stay for the remainder of its CBS run, popping in and out of the Nielsen Top 25 over the years, reaching its highest position during the 1962-63 season, when it ranked at Number 13. In addition to keeping audiences highly entertained over the years and fans tuning in out of curiosity to see who the guest celebrities might be, the show brought the medium some of its most notable catchphrases, with Daly’s welcoming “enter and sign in, please” and Steve Allen’s oft-used question, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” 

Out of 876 shows aired in the seventeen year run, Daly only missed four. Although it is hard to believe now, for its first nine years What’s My Line? was done live, every week of the year. (The exception to this was that in the first few months of the series it was broadcast on alternate weeks and the rare preemption that occurred in the seventeen years.) Starting in 1959, it was possible to videotape a show to be used at a later date. However, only 77 episodes were prerecorded in the show’s eight remaining years.

The final show (which aired on September 3, 1967), with a panel composed of Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, Steve Allen, and Martin Gabel, featured the three contestants who appeared on the first episode of the series, and a special mystery guest: John Daly himself.

So beloved was the series, that no sooner did it leave CBS then it was revamped and revived in syndication the following year, continuing its run there until 1975. News Correspondent Wally Bruner was the new host and Arlene Francis returned as a regular, joined this time by comedian Soupy Sales. Bennett Cerf continued to make periodic appearances until his death in 1971. Larry Blyden took over as emcee in 1972. The revival had a less formal approach and frequently included demonstrations of contestants’ skills, which often featured the panelists.

Soon after the syndicated version ceased production, Goodson-Todman Productions decided to produce a special, What’s My Line? at 25, featuring clips of the original series. While putting together a program consisting mostly of already produced material might seem like a snap, the special was, on the contrary, quite complicated to do and experienced its share of snags. For one thing, despite the series being a CBS institution for all those years, the network couldn’t bother to find a spot on its schedule for the special. Instead, ABC was approached and agreed to include it as part of their Wide World of Entertainment series, which meant it would be shown not on primetime but on the late night schedule. It aired on May 28, 1975, on a Wednesday night. 

With the exception of the opening sequence, which featured then-President Gerald Ford as a guest on the syndicated version, all the clips were from the CBS original. John Daly, Arlene Francis, and coproducer Mark Goodson hosted the ninety minute program. The retrospective was extremely difficult to produce due to the amount of clips, small budget, and unsophisticated technology. In order to stay under budget, no more than two minutes of footage could be shown of a celebrity. If more than two minutes were aired, the producers would be required to pay the star the AFTRA minimum, which was a bit more than five hundred dollars at the time. Several celebrities who appeared on the series were unable to be located and a few refused to allow their segment to air on the program at all. This resulted in several last minute changes being made. Joan Crawford only agreed to let her segment be shown after asking what she wore and how she looked on the show. Johnny Carson told the producer he would have liked to be included in the program, but the ABC special would be airing opposite The Tonight Show and he did not think NBC would be pleased. Thanks to some first-rate editing, only Francis, Daly, Goodson, and the estates of Dorothy Kilgallen and Bennett Cerf ended up being compensated for going over the two minute limit. Unfortunately, in the process of making this special, several of the original kinescopes from the series were accidentally damaged or destroyed. The footage in this retrospective is the only thing left from some of these episodes!

Despite this unfortunate and insensitive mistreatment of a piece of television history, available episodes of What’s My Line? were able to be experienced by future generations, first in the Paley Center’s collection and then, further down the line, once the Game Show Network decided to show them, starting in 1994. As a result, the Line cultivated a new generation of devotees, who no doubt marveled at seeing just how relaxed and smart the game show genre once was, and got the same kick out of seeing Rosalind Russell and Noël Coward do funny voices as did TV watchers from days gone by.

—James Sheridan

Wow, I thought, this lady has more persistence than those salmon that fight their way upstream in order to spawn. At the age of 87, when most actors have checked into the Motion Picture Home or have departed long before reaching such advanced years, Betty White is more in-demand than ever. And for some reason, knowing that there will be further appearances by Betty makes me feel that all is right with the world.

White is one of those people you just warm up to and root for because, well, for one thing, assuming you’re in your late fifties or under, she’s always been present in your life. So, going into one of my trivial descents into past history, I started to wonder: when did I first take note of Betty and when did she enter my consciousness and take up permanent residence the way celebrities do. If you never stop and think about such things, well, you’re just far less interesting than you should be, in my humble opinion. Anyway …

During the 1960s, when I was growing up, Betty’s first phase as a television actress/comedian had already come to a close. Since my mom didn’t exactly pile us kids into the car to go see Otto Preminger’s controversial political drama Advise & Consent (in which Betty popped up in a small role as a senator), the only chance I had of seeing White acting during this particular period in time, according to the IMDB, was on a U.S. Steel Hour installment (how dull did that sound to a kid?) or an episode of Petticoat Junction, which I may or may not have watched, depending on who had dibs on the TV set that night.

No, the reason I knew Betty White was because she was on the game show and parade hosting circuits. I never questioned who this lady was or what credentials she had for assessing the merits of the Donald Duck balloon at the Thanksgiving Day Parade or making intense guesses on Password and What’s My Line? As a kid one merely accepted that somebody was famous because they were on television. So, in my house or at school, you could drop Betty’s name and not get vacant stares as you might for Academy Award winner Paul Scofield or silent movie legend Gloria Swanson. And the mere act of being in show business meant you were equipped for acting, even if your claim to fame was hosting parades, so it wasn’t a great surprise when Betty took on a regular role on Mary Tyler Moore in the 1970s. It seemed to make sense.

And despite the fact that White was pretty selfish and catty when playing the role of man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens, I always equated her with friendliness and likeability. Betty White was sweet and perky and made you feel like you were in the presence of someone who wouldn’t cut you off in traffic, or flip you a bird if you did the same to her. Hell, she even campaigned for animal rights, giving her a status akin to Mother Nature, if not Mother Theresa. Therefore, it was quite intriguing to read that her character on The Bold and the Beautiful was supposedly a bit of a beast. Our beloved Betty playing a self-centered monster mom estranged from series regular Stephanie Forester (Susan Flannery)? Never!

Thanks to the modern miracle of YouTube, I checked out segments of this storyline to see The Bad Side of Betty (which naturally brings to mind the tagline for the Bette Davis melodrama Beyond the Forest: “Nobody’s as good as Bette when she’s bad!,” but I digress). Although the segments uploaded for our viewing pleasure contained the expected repetition to be found in the serial world (the same points are stressed over and over, to stretch out the action for the whole week, as well as to keep those not keen to tune in on a daily basis up on the plotline), the writers actually made interesting use of White. The way the character, Ann Douglas, was written, she was the sort who presented a cheerful façade while blindly turning away from the ugly realities of the lives ruined by her late husband’s alcoholism and child abuse. Every time Stephanie (who, as played by Flannery, seems like one fierce lady you don’t want to rankle) tried to make her mother face the truth, White’s character, seemingly without guile, would steer off topic or cunningly turn the problem back on the victim. It was frustrating (as the writers intended, no doubt) watching her refuse to take any blame or be confrontational, just as it was irksome to see her, once all had been seemingly forgiven down the line, turn back into a manipulative control freak who was still intent on making sure she got her way and destroy the happiness of those around her. Having this character be played by an actress so frequently associated with niceness was a brilliant stroke, because it just made “Ann Douglas” that much more infuriating and recognizable.

I’m guessing this won’t represent a late career reassessment of Betty White, turning her into the go-to actress to play manipulative old shrews. Who knows what Betty is really like off-screen—I’m sure she has her bad days too. But to most of us, she’ll always epitomize a certain comfortable kind of show business charm and you can never have too much of that.

But something in that pilot bugged me terribly; for one thing, I didn’t much like anybody I saw on screen, most of them portrayed as snidely self-involved. Only Matthew Morrison, as the glee club’s guiding force, was what I might describe as likable. Also, this program had a real problem with shifts in “tone.” One minute it was snarky, deliberately outrageous and sarcastic as hell, treating everyone on hand with merciless derision, and then suddenly it was sappily sentimental (cue tinkling piano music), wanting you to get deeply involved in the storyline and “ooh” and “aww” over the dilemmas unfolding. I couldn’t get a hold on this thing. What was it? A send-up? A comedy that just wasn’t very funny? A soap opera with sense of the absurd?

I also couldn’t help but react negatively to those very same ubiquitous ads that featured certain of the show’s characters making the letter “L” with their fingers over the heads of the glee club members. This meant that the series’ creators were finding humor in having the nastier characters dismiss those we were supposed to be rooting for as “losers.” Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it felt to me as if the wrong people were being designated “losers.”

Anyway, Glee launched for real in September and I found myself remaining unhappy with the way this program unfolded. There were jokes that were more mean-spirited than funny, inconsistencies in behavior, unremarkable musical numbers that bore an unfortunate resemblance to the dreaded High School Musical franchise, and a three-way tie between which character I found the most grating. There was Jessalyn Gilsig as Morrison’s insipid wife, who thinks it’s very sensible to pretend she’s pregnant when she’s been told she is not; Jayma Mays as the equally vapid, germ-a-phobic guidance counselor on whom Morrison harbors a crush; and Jane Lynch as the caustic gym teacher, presented here as an eyebrow-arching villain. Just when I was about to choose the tiresomely one-note Lynch over the others, Stephen Tobolowsky returned in his role from the pilot as a drama club instructor, who had been dismissed because of charges of inappropriate behavior towards his students (hey, how hilarious is that?). I say “yuck” to all these people; especially the mincing, revolting manner (pink sweater usually draped stylishly over the shoulders) in which Tobolowsky plays this caricature.

Alas, there is no compensation in the manner in which Chris Colfer portrays that gay teen in question, Kurt. He’s a snotty bitch (for lack of a better term) who wears outfits just short of the sort of camp gear Elton John donned in his heyday. We are told his dad realized he was gay because the boy asked for “sensible heels” for his 3rd birthday; Kurt blithely starts to join the females in the club when Morrison asks the boys and girls to stand on opposite sides of the room; and in one episode, he’s conned into allowing an outsider (the talented Kristin Chenoweth, who deserves better than this) into the group when she offers him muscle magazines of the sort that have been used for broadly mocking gays for decades. Oh, brother! One episode has Kurt leading the football team in a dance number in order to execute a successful play on the field. Apparently this is supposed to be a subversive dig at machismo, or a revenge fantasy for all the sensitive boys who were taunted while trying to keep up in gym class. Unfortunately, the manner in which this implausible plotline was developed and presented wasn’t slyly mocking or sublimely ridiculous but merely stupid. 

So, unless this show is planning on making a miraculous recovery soon, my assessment is that once again Hollywood has dropped the ball in its chance to present a multi-faceted portrait of a gay high school male, one whom those gay teens watching at home, not yet comfortable with their sexuality, might be able to look up to because he is sympathetic, interesting, and non-stereotypical. Instead, Kurt is simply around to poke fun at and to behave like a shallow queen, which some might interpret as one of those “boldly original” strokes that the series is being championed for. I say it’s a cheap, easy way of appearing to be progressive, while keeping the homophobes happy in their limited idea of what constitutes a homosexual.

Thinking back on that poster, I’m still waiting for the “brilliant” moments to show up, and so far Glee has been about as “heartfelt” as a David Letterman interview. I think I’ll opt for Modern Family in the meantime, which contains a gay couple who are neither slickly superior nor bitchy, have just as many problems and flaws as everybody else in the program, and to whom I felt I could relate to and warm up to in more ways than I expected. Unlike Glee, this could turn out to be the show worth singing about.

If you were the sort of person who was on the lookout for something fresh and inspired (and British) in your comedy, you actually had a few chances to spot the Pythons, or bits and pieces of the sextet, in various places during that five-year gap between the BBC and PBS broadcasts. For example, if you were a fan of Peter Sellers or Ringo Starr, you might have gone to see the nutty satire The Magic Christian during its brief theatrical run here in the winter of 1970. In the opening credits, following the official screenwriters' names, appear this mention: "Additional Material by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Sellers." This might have prompted a few folks in the audience to remark that it was unusual that the star of the film, Sellers, was receiving writing credit, but it is unlikely that anyone gave much thought to the other two names. Not only did both Pythons contribute sketches to this very fragmented comedy, but each appeared in two of the scenes they wrote, Cleese as a director at Sotheby's auction house, watching in horror as Sellers and Ringo mutilate a priceless painting they'd just purchased; and Chapman as a member of Richard Attenborough's rowing team. Two years later, both men could be spotted in the disastrous comedy The Statue, which involved a giant statue that sported David Niven's head and someone else's penis, which sounds very Pythonesque, though there was no writing credit this time.

My own recollection of getting a taste of something very Python-like in spirit during this period was when ABC showed The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine on Wednesday nights between April and August of 1972. Feldman had written and performed with various Python members back home in the UK, including on his own series, Marty. When he was invited to bring his manic humor to a new audience, his British writers (with the exception of the Python-revered comedian Spike Milligan) were, however, replaced by such folks as Larry Gelbart and Barry Levinson. Apart from the off-the-wall sight gags and sketches, not to mention Feldman's bug-eyed look (this was two years before most Americans became familiar with him in Young Frankenstein), what most stood out to me about this program was the weirdly unclassifiable animation it featured. Back in those days I didn't exactly examine end credits, but once I began watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, I suddenly realized that those cut-outs and quirky illustrations with their surreal sound effects and deliberately mumbled dialogue were, of course, the work of Python's visual master Terry Gilliam.

Nobody paid much mind to this program, nor were audiences lining up, in the summer of 1972, when And Now for Something Completely Different opened on a handful of screens in America. This was the first attempt to actually introduce our citizens to the Flying Circus series, as the film contained skits seen on the program including "Twit of the Year," "Nudge Nudge," and a personal favorite of mine, "Milkman Collecting." I remember seeing a review of the movie on Channel 5 at the time in which Stewart Klein raved about it and then showed a clip of what I later came to know as "Hell's Grannies." As I recall, the film didn't receive much distribution outside of Manhattan, which meant that folks like me in the sticks (read: New Jersey) had little chance of seeing it on its initial run anyway. Had I the opportunity, I could have been way ahead of my schoolmates when Flying Circus fever hit in my high school years. But how exactly do you explain to the unversed why defending yourself from assault by fresh fruit is funny?