Wednesday, February 01, 2012
It's a Late Night World of Love
By Edward Copeland
The moment when I knew Late Night with David Letterman wasn't like other talk shows might have been the first time Dave did one of his smallest touches and flung either a blue index card or a pencil through the mock window behind his desk and we heard the sound of breaking glass. Before we begin reminiscing about that magical night 30 years ago when a gap-toothed former weatherman from Indianapolis changed the face of late night television. (If he'd stayed a local TV weatherman, perhaps across the country, more hail would be described on TV as
"the size of canned hams.") To commemorate the debut of this standup comic's breakthrough off-the-wall, wacky talk show that took NBC's airwaves hostage following the end of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, I feel that it's only appropriate that we recognize this anniversary with the proper reverence. You might have already played the YouTube clip above, but that's OK. Play the official anthem of Late Night With David Letterman again, only sing along this time, using the lyrics I've provided below. I'd have an animated bouncing ball if I were capable of creating one that was timed with the music but, alas, that falls beyond my capabilities. After you've paid due homage by singing the Late Night anthem, rejoin me after the jump so we can talk in more detail about Dave's impact on the talk show format, the culture and many impressionable viewers of a certain age. If you don't believe me, you should poll them — and we all know how painful that can be.You can feel it across the land.
It's clear blue skies,
It's grandma's eyes,
A place where you can stand.
Late Night is the reason
Our forefathers fought with pride.
It's surfin' fun,
it's dad and son,
A feelin' that's deep inside.
(CHORUS)
It's a Late Night world,
It's a world that we can share.
So turn on your TV
And watch it with me.
It's a Late Night world of love.
(END CHORUS)
There's a whole new generation
who are willing to say yes.
Soups and stews,
A wall of shoes,
A thing called happiness.
So change the channel,
Change your life,
Doesn't cost a thing.
We're talking loud,
standing proud,
now join us as we sing
(REPEAT CHORUS TWICE)
I wanted to make this tribute more thorough, but unfortunately I was hit with a long Internet outage last evening that made finishing this piece a bit of a rush job. In a way, that's more appropriate. Late Night With David Letterman always resembled a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation, that the tribute follow suit just seems right.
Letterman and I are both Aries born in Indianapolis, Ind. I lived there when he was a weatherman, but I was too young to remember him in that role though my parents do. When Letterman were merely a standup comic, I didn't care for his comedy much, so I don't know when or why I started tuning in to Late Night, which premiered in the second half of my seventh-grade year of school. I never saw an installment of his short-lived morning show. I do, however, remember what changed my opinion on him. Letterman had an HBO special, but not a standup special of the type comedians usually had, called Looking for Fun. Its premise had Dave trolling around Los Angeles trying to find fun things to do and displayed the type of absurd humor that would be perfected on Late Night. I couldn't remember the year of the special — my memory spoke to me and said I watched it in the house we lived in through my sixth-grade year, so I was guessing 1980 or 1981. I checked the "not as reliable as you wish it was" Internet Movie Database and it doesn't even list such a special in Letterman's credits. I did a Google search and found a comic's Web site making the same complaint about IMDb and dating it as 1981. He actually at one point had the special on the site in three video clips until Time Warner asserted its rights and forced him to remove it, so there's a lost gem of Letterman comedy out there somewhere. During my junior high years, I turned Late Night on and got hooked. It was a relationship that lasted through high school and college and even a little bit beyond. Somehow it lost part of that go-for-broke edge it had when it was on at a later hour on NBC when it went on earlier on the Tiffany Network. I'm sure people younger than I am probably feel toward Conan the way my age group did toward Dave. I don't know if there's a new generation that's embraced Fallon or Kimmel. One thing is clear across all age groups: Nobody likes Leno.
The montage the folks at Late Night put together to accompany "The Late Night Anthem" (official title) contains so many moments dear to my heart and the hearts of many friends I know who recall seeing those moments live or remember the individuals, some who have shuffle off this mortal coil. Now, it includes plentiful shots of Late Night regulars such as band leader Paul Schaffer, utility player Chris Elliott and "Where'd-they-dig-up=that-guy?" guy Larry "Bud" Melman. (In fact, Chris and Larry "Bud" played such integral roles in what made this talk show unique, I've written separate posts on each on them. Follow the links on their names.) Elsewhere in the video, we see the
great Bill Murray, who was Dave's very first guest on the inaugural show. Sandra Bernhard makes an appearance — her appearances always proved entertaining just by how uncomfortable she could make Dave. Who can forget Stupid Human Tricks or Stupid Pet Tricks? My college roommate and I cracked up for months over that monkey in a dress's expression after she paws at Letterman and then looks shocked. The other band members would get a moment in the sun, such as drummer Anton Zipp or was that Figg? I didn't see the nutty Crispin Glover appearance the night it happened, but I saw the clip plenty of times later — and this took place before YouTube or the Web. After all that fake gunplay, we see the great Penn and Teller. There's Pee-wee Herman taking Dave for a ride in a fake car that in retrospect looks quite similar to when Conan O'Brien drives around in his desk. Comic Jeff Altman gets an appearance (which seems strange in retrospect) followed by the band's guitarist Will Lee and then the great longtime movie star Van Johnson, who just left us in 2008 at the age of 92. Underground comic writer Harvey Pekar (who left us in 2010 and was the subject of the movie American Splendor) made the most of every appearance, usually making NBC's corporate owners extremely uneasy. Then it's a medley of wacky comics: Gilbert Gottfried, Bobcat Goldthwait and the one-of-a-kind stand-up philosopher Brother Theodore, who most of us never would have heard of in the first place if it hadn't been for Late Night With David Letterman. Ironically, it ends with a parting word from guest Jay Leno. How could they know how that would end? What surprised me at the time was the glaring omission from the "Late Night Anthem" montage, Where in the world was Teri Garr? She was one of Letterman's most frequent guests on his NBC shows and the two had such comic chemistry that no one could stop the rumors that the two were secretly married. Hell, Teri even took a shower on the show once. I can't remember the premise, but for some reason they had to do the show out of Dave's office. As a bonus, the clip below includes Dave's Dancing Waters.The incredible magic of Late Night With David Letterman can be found in how its appeal cut across the usual clique and class divides of your typical suburban high school. In my sophomore year, Late Night had achieved such a level of popularity that the student planners of the school talent show lifted the talk show as the framing device for that year's talent show with a student pretending to be Letterman introducing the acts. I'm not ashamed to say that their material was quite lame and the only two jokes that got riotous laughter were written by yours truly: one being a Top 10 list, the other concerning who paid for promotional considerations that referenced a mini-scandal after a school dance. I'd share them but they were so site and date specific that if you didn't attend that school 27 years ago, the humor would be lost. Weren't we lucky that NBC didn't hear we were stealing their "intellectual property?" This was before General Electric purchased NBC. Boy, they welcomed Dave, didn't they?
In addition to all the memorable guests such as Cher who doesn't mince words as to why she avoided his show. Later, when she and Sonny reunited. The countless appearances of Tony Randall. The features: Supermarket Finds, Viewer Mail, Small Town News, Dropping Stuff Off a 5-Story Tower, Crushing Things With Steamrollers or 80-Ton Hydraulic Presses. Thrill-Cams. Monkey Cams. The NBC Bookmobile. Inventing a catchphrase ("They pelted us with rocks and garbage.") One clip I wish I could have found was a bit they used to do about editing mistakes, talking about the rare times they had to edit the show before it aired. They showed a segment where a guest was keeled over in his chair with an arrow in his back and Letter was pointing at the audience and yelling, "You. Yes, you. You know damn well what I'm talking about." Then there were the suits.
I was so tempted to run every clip YouTube had of Brother Theodore just so those unfamiliar with him could see his act. He had to be seen to be believed, but I narrowed it down to one.
They did plenty of special shows: A mock Christmas special that gave Dave a family, the 360 degree rotation show, the reverse image show, the rerun shows, but perhaps my favorite were the Custom-Made Shows and I thought I would end with a clip from one of those because when Jane Pauley finally gets coaxed into speaking, I think she sums up the feelings of Late Night with David Letterman fans everywhere about the show they loved.
Please remember: This tribute has only been an exhibition. It's not a competition. Please. No wagering.
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Labels: 80s, Carson, HBO, Letterman, Murray, Tony Randall, TV Tribute
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Or without Larry "Bud" either
By Edward Copeland
In fact, you could say literally that Late Night With David Letterman wouldn't have started without Larry "Bud" Melman (aka Calvert DeForest) since he literally opened the first episode as seen above. His appearances provided some of the most memorable and funniest moments on Late Night and deserve a separate remembrance — even if you had to wonder if Larry realized his role in the joke.
Even now. very little is known about how David Letterman came upon 60-year-old Calvert DeForest and turned him into Larry "Bud" Melman," let alone decided to take the gigantic risk of letting this odd little man with the giant glasses be the first thing audiences saw when they tuned in to Late Night with David Letterman for the first time on Feb, 1, 1982. Supposedly, for most of his life, DeForest worked for the pharmaceutical company Parke Davis, which Pfizer eventually took over. As awkward as he was in front of the camera DeForest actually worked some as an actor prior to Late Night, supposedly having appeared in five films prior to the talk show, not that any of those were memorable. The first credit was 1972's While the Cat's Away…, a soft-core sex comedy written and directed by an auteur in the genre, Chuck Vincent, who would go on to make late-night Skinemax classics such as Warrior Queen starring Sybil Danning and Donald Pleasence and Young Nurses in Love. In 1976, he was part of the entourage in a comedy called Apple Pie. DeForest is listed as part of the cast of 1979's Blond Poison. a film that IMDb provides no information about except that its cast also allegedly featured James Remar. 1980 found DeForest in the Greek production Savage Hunt. The fifth and final pre-Late Night film that DeForest made comes closet to a title people have heard. They filmed the crude comedy Waitress! in in 1981, though it didn't get released until 1982. Its large cast included in small roles Anthony Dennison (under the name Anthony Sarrero) who would find fame on Crime Story and Chris Noth who would go on to Law & Order and Sex and the City.
While DeForest might have been his real name, while Letterman worked on NBC, he always was Larry "Bud" Melman (unless he was Kenny the Gardener or Johnny Carson). When NBC screwed Dave over for The Chin, Larry followed Dave to CBS but NBC claimed that "Larry 'Bud' Melman" was part of the network's intellectual property, so on Late Show, he had to appear as Calvert DeForest, which he did through 2002 when his health declined too much for him to continue. DeForest died in 2006 at age 85. Thanks to YouTube, I don't need to try to describe some of the best Larry moments. You can see them for yourself. However, it can't be denied what a key role Melman played in the Late Night phenomenon. Carson played characters. Steve Allen "interviewed" them. Letterman mixed the real and the imagined into a potpourri of zaniness. Writer Chris Elliott provided his string of characters. Stage manager Biff Henderson played himself as did announcer Bill Wendell and his assistant Barbara Gaines. The driver of the NBC Bookmobile was really Kathleen Ankers, the show's scenic designer. Another writer, Gerard Mulligan, often became involved as well. The cue-card guy even got in on the action as did the show's director, Mr. Hal Gurtner "THAT'S GURNEE, EDWARD." CBS turned Paul Schaffer's band into an "orchestra." When they were an hour later on NBC, they were "the world's most dangerous band." One of the first memorable Melman moments claimed that he owned the show, starting it with the fortune made from his bus company.
Larry helps a viewer with insomnia,
"Ask Mr. Melman
Larry does a Top 10 list
Larry explains the Census
Kenny the Gardener
From the second Custom-Made Show, they put Larry in a bear suit and send him out in the halls of Rockefeller Center to try to get change for a $10 bill.
Finally, the classic: They sent Melman to the Port Authority Bus Station to greet arrivals with decidedy mixed results which only made it funnier. It comes in three parts.Part I:
PART II
PART III
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In fact, you could say literally that Late Night With David Letterman wouldn't have started without Larry "Bud" Melman (aka Calvert DeForest) since he literally opened the first episode as seen above. His appearances provided some of the most memorable and funniest moments on Late Night and deserve a separate remembrance — even if you had to wonder if Larry realized his role in the joke.
Even now. very little is known about how David Letterman came upon 60-year-old Calvert DeForest and turned him into Larry "Bud" Melman," let alone decided to take the gigantic risk of letting this odd little man with the giant glasses be the first thing audiences saw when they tuned in to Late Night with David Letterman for the first time on Feb, 1, 1982. Supposedly, for most of his life, DeForest worked for the pharmaceutical company Parke Davis, which Pfizer eventually took over. As awkward as he was in front of the camera DeForest actually worked some as an actor prior to Late Night, supposedly having appeared in five films prior to the talk show, not that any of those were memorable. The first credit was 1972's While the Cat's Away…, a soft-core sex comedy written and directed by an auteur in the genre, Chuck Vincent, who would go on to make late-night Skinemax classics such as Warrior Queen starring Sybil Danning and Donald Pleasence and Young Nurses in Love. In 1976, he was part of the entourage in a comedy called Apple Pie. DeForest is listed as part of the cast of 1979's Blond Poison. a film that IMDb provides no information about except that its cast also allegedly featured James Remar. 1980 found DeForest in the Greek production Savage Hunt. The fifth and final pre-Late Night film that DeForest made comes closet to a title people have heard. They filmed the crude comedy Waitress! in in 1981, though it didn't get released until 1982. Its large cast included in small roles Anthony Dennison (under the name Anthony Sarrero) who would find fame on Crime Story and Chris Noth who would go on to Law & Order and Sex and the City.
While DeForest might have been his real name, while Letterman worked on NBC, he always was Larry "Bud" Melman (unless he was Kenny the Gardener or Johnny Carson). When NBC screwed Dave over for The Chin, Larry followed Dave to CBS but NBC claimed that "Larry 'Bud' Melman" was part of the network's intellectual property, so on Late Show, he had to appear as Calvert DeForest, which he did through 2002 when his health declined too much for him to continue. DeForest died in 2006 at age 85. Thanks to YouTube, I don't need to try to describe some of the best Larry moments. You can see them for yourself. However, it can't be denied what a key role Melman played in the Late Night phenomenon. Carson played characters. Steve Allen "interviewed" them. Letterman mixed the real and the imagined into a potpourri of zaniness. Writer Chris Elliott provided his string of characters. Stage manager Biff Henderson played himself as did announcer Bill Wendell and his assistant Barbara Gaines. The driver of the NBC Bookmobile was really Kathleen Ankers, the show's scenic designer. Another writer, Gerard Mulligan, often became involved as well. The cue-card guy even got in on the action as did the show's director, Mr. Hal Gurtner "THAT'S GURNEE, EDWARD." CBS turned Paul Schaffer's band into an "orchestra." When they were an hour later on NBC, they were "the world's most dangerous band." One of the first memorable Melman moments claimed that he owned the show, starting it with the fortune made from his bus company.
From the second Custom-Made Show, they put Larry in a bear suit and send him out in the halls of Rockefeller Center to try to get change for a $10 bill.
Finally, the classic: They sent Melman to the Port Authority Bus Station to greet arrivals with decidedy mixed results which only made it funnier. It comes in three parts.Part I:
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Labels: 80s, Carson, Law and Order, Letterman, Pleasence, TV Tribute
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Monday, October 03, 2011
“Oh, Rob…”
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is our contribution to The Dick Van Dyke Show Blogathon being hosted by Ivan himself over at his home base at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
It’s been observed by many boob tube historians that during the era fondly referred to as The Golden Age of Television “comedy was king”…in 1950, for example, audiences could catch The Colgate Comedy Hour on Sunday nights, with Tuesdays reserved for the wacky shenanigans of “Mr. Television” himself, Milton Berle and his Texaco Star Theater. Sprinkled throughout the week were radio sitcom holdovers such as The Aldrich Family, Beulah and The Goldbergs not to mention the early offerings from veterans Burns and Allen and Jack Benny. It all came to a boil on Saturdays with the 90 minute Your Show of Shows — which also presented music, opera and ballet in addition to the hilarity and made TV icons out of stars Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, the headliners of its earlier incarnation, The Admiral Broadway Revue.
Caesar and Coca’s co-stars on Your Show of Shows included two other funny men, Howard Morris and Carl Reiner, the latter versatile enough to play any sort of role from villainous cad to roving reporter (he usually was Caesar’s straight man in Sid’s “Professor” sketches). Although billed as a performer (Reiner would win two Emmy Awards as outstanding supporting actor on Sid Caesar’s follow-up series, Caesar’s Hour and Sid Caesar Invites You), Carl also was an uncredited writer and it was the atmosphere of “the writer’s room” on Your Show of Shows (described by Reiner as “the most interesting room I’ve ever been in”) that inspired him to create a pilot about a television comedy writer and his experiences both at work and at home. The show would be titled Head of the Family and despite a favorable response from many, it went nowhere quickly. Fate intervened to give the busted pilot a second chance, and when Reiner allowed himself to be talked out of starring in it on the second go-round, he laid the groundwork for a series that premiered on this date 50 years ago that in my opinion is the gold standard by which all situation comedies should be measured: The Dick Van Dyke Show.
In Head of the Family, Carl Reiner played Robert Petrie, the head writer of the popular TV comedy show The Alan Sturdy Show — with Reiner’s pilot focused on Rob’s workplace, staffed with his fellow scribes Buddy Sorrell (Morty Gunty) and Sally Rogers (Sylvia Miles). Previous sitcoms did show their characters working their jobs on occasion, but Family was one of the first to concentrate chiefly in that area. Rob Petrie’s home life wasn’t neglected, however; there was plenty of action on the homefront (the pilot had a subplot in which Rob’s son is a little embarrassed that his dad is but a mere comedy writer) with wife Laura (Barbara Britton) and son Richie (Gary Morgan). What made Family such a unique TV pilot was that Reiner wasn’t content to write just one script while waiting to see if the series would get sold — he pounded out an additional 12 episodes on his typewriter in order to obtain a better feel for the show and its characters. The July 19, 1960 premiere of Head of the Family on CBS’ The Comedy Spot was extremely well-received by potential sponsors and yet Reiner was unable to get any of them to bite — it was a time in the industry when Westerns rode herd over the airwaves and in the end the sponsors decided to, in Carl’s words, “go with horses and guns.”
Reiner’s pilot was considered too good to just die prematurely on the vine, and his agent Harry Kalcheim continued to shop the show around until actor-turned-producer Sheldon Leonard was convinced to look at Family. Leonard, whose partnership with comedian Danny Thomas had not only made Thomas’ own show (Make Room for Daddy, which by that time had been renamed The Danny Thomas Show) a monster hit but also struck gold with The Real McCoys and The Andy Griffith Show, had a consistently high batting average in the business in that he had never produced a pilot that hadn’t sold and that he possessed an amazing knack for being able to salvage the best elements from pilots that didn’t work. After screening Head of the Family, Leonard told Reiner that the show could succeed — provided that Carl recast the lead role with someone other than himself.
As we are well aware, the entire cast of Head of the Family was eventually replaced, but finding the right person to headline the series was Leonard and Reiner’s top priority. The two candidates for the role of Rob Petrie were Johnny Carson and Dick Van Dyke — Carson was better-known at the time, and had he taken the job the course of TV history would have been changed remarkably — but Leonard liked Van Dyke and the fact that his unconventional leading man looks were more in keeping with the show’s main character (he had an aversion to stars such as William Powell and Robert Taylor, who were “too glamorous to be sharing your living room”); he convinced Reiner to see Van Dyke in the current Broadway hit Bye Bye Birdie, and Carl agreed that Sheldon’s instincts were right on the money.
For the part of Sally Rogers, a female comedy writer that Reiner based by combining Your Show of Shows’ Lucille Kallen and Selma Diamond, Leonard hired Rose Marie on the spot — he had been promising her for years that he’d find something for her in one of his series and he was good as his word. The former child star (known in her youth as “Baby Rose Marie”) had previous sitcom experience with roles on The Bob Cummings Show (aka Love That Bob) and My Sister Eileen, and when she learned that Leonard and Reiner hadn’t chosen an actor for the part of Buddy Sorrell, she suggested Morey Amsterdam whom she had first met when she was 12-years-old on radio’s Al Pearce and His Gang. Amsterdam had a reputation in the business as “a human joke machine,” and since the Buddy Sorrell character had been inspired by Reiner’s friendship and association with Mel Brooks (both on the Caesar shows and their popular “The 2000 Year Old Man” sketches) Morey was the next best thing to having Mel himself.
While I'm on the subject of Mels, Reiner tabbed Richard Deacon (who at this point in his career was familiar to TV audiences as Leave it to Beaver's overbearing Fred Rutherford, father of Wally Cleaver’s pal Clarence “Lumpy” Rutherford) for the part of Mel Cooley, the toadying producer of what would be re-named on the new series “The Alan Brady Show” (both Sheldon Leonard and Morey Amsterdam observed that the original “Alan Sturdy” sounded too much like “Alan’s dirty”). The Cooley character was originally called “Cal” (as in “Calvin”) on Head of the Family; the change was suggested by Leonard (who pointed out that the handle was awfully similar to “Calvin Coolidge”) though Deacon later went on record as saying he wished Leonard had stuck with the original. Cast in the role of Richie Petrie was a young child actor named Larry Mazzeo, who also was a victim of a name change, only it was his real-life surname (he became “Larry Matthews”) because as he later admitted “Ethnic wasn’t in at the time.”
The new cast members were chosen with relative ease save for the role of Laura Petrie, Rob’s charming, supportive wife. Leonard and Reiner auditioned close to 60 actresses but just couldn’t seem to find the perfect fit; it was only after the two men had a conversation with Danny Thomas that Danny remembered an actress who had once auditioned on his sitcom for the part of his daughter. The only problem was Thomas couldn’t remember her name, only that she had three of them. So a little detective work was in order and oddly enough, a TV detective show figured in the search for their Laura Petrie in that Leonard remembered the actress to which Thomas was referring had a role as the sexy secretary “Sam” to boob tube shamus Richard Diamond…even though all audiences ever saw of Mary Tyler Moore was her legs (though you did hear her voice). Moore almost didn’t get the part because she seriously considered not showing up for the audition when her agent called and told her Carl Reiner wished to see her, but she was a fan of Reiner’s from the Caesar shows and agreed to go anyway. She barely got out the first line in her audition (“Hello Rob, are you home?”) before Reiner grabbed her and marched her down to Sheldon Leonard’s office. “She says ‘hello’ like a real person!” Reiner shouted enthusiastically, and once Leonard heard Mary read he agreed that the final puzzle piece had fallen into place.
Rather than re-shoot the original Head of the Family script, Reiner decided that one of the other scripts he had written, “The Sick Boy and the Sitter” would work better as a pilot for the new series, which he renamed The Dick Van Dyke Show. Leonard already was producing The Danny Thomas Show and The Andy Griffith Show, so it seemed like a good idea that the new show follow suit even though people would ask him in the beginning “What’s a Dick Van Dyke?” In the premiere, Rob and Laura go out for the evening to attend a party being thrown by Rob’s boss, Alan Brady, despite Laura’s reservations since son Richie’s slightly elevated temperature indicates he might be sick. The choice of “Sick Boy” was considered an excellent one because of several comedy and musical numbers in a party sequence that allowed Van Dyke, Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam to demonstrate their talents and versatility as Rob, Sally and Buddy.
Procter & Gamble loved the pilot and agreed to sponsor the show — and CBS premiered it on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m., sandwiched between half-hour reruns of Gunsmoke (retitled Marshal Dillon) and the hit sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Despite rave reviews from critics praising the quality of the series and tepid competition from NBC (the last half of the Western series Laramie) and ABC (Bachelor Father), the early scheduling of the show did not work in its favor: on the West Coast, The Dick Van Dyke Show aired during the “dinner hour” and the response was extremely disappointing. A move to Wednesday nights at 9:30 p.m. at mid-season proved even more disastrous; the series was killed by its NBC competition, Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall. The Dick Van Dyke Show was cancelled at the end of the 1961-62 season by CBS.
Both Carl Reiner and Sheldon Leonard were stunned by CBS’ decision…though the catalyst for the show’s cancellation actually was the decision by Procter & Gamble to bail on the series, at a time when the sponsor still called the shots. Leonard simply wasn't content to let the show die so with the help of Lee Rich, an executive with ad agency Benton & Bowles, the two men lobbied P&G’s head of television, “Havvy” Halverstadt, into signing on for a second season despite the objections of CBS’ president of programming, James “The Smiling Cobra” Aubrey. Halverstadt would eventually agree to pay the bills for a second year of Dick Van Dyke, but only for half of the sponsorship. (Leonard lucked out in that he was able to crash a board meeting of P. Lorillard & Co. — better known for making Kent cigarettes — and talk Kent into picking up the tab for the second half.)
While Sheldon schmoozed with corporate America, Carl Reiner cajoled CBS into rerunning The Dick Van Dyke Show during their summer schedule — a risky gambit at the time, since it was believed the best possible way to ladle dirt over a show already in its grave was to further remind TV audiences via reruns what a flop it was in the first place, but the show soon garnered a renewed following, and coupled with Reiner’s Emmy Award win for outstanding chievement in comedy writing, The Dick Van Dyke Show vaulted into the Nielsen’s Top 10 the following season. The fact that the most-watched series that same year, The Beverly Hillbillies, was its lead-in also was a tremendous help.
The Dick Van Dyke Show shuttled back-and-forth between two worlds: first, there was the work “bullpen” where writers Rob, Sally and Buddy would craft scripts for their talented but autocratic boss, television comedian Alan Brady. But viewers also got the opportunity to see Rob announce “Honey, I’m home!” in that many of the show’s stories revolved around the domestic bliss shared by Rob and Laura at their home at 448 Bonnie Meadow Road. Rob and Laura’s marriage (and in flashbacks, the circumstances surrounding their courtship) took precedent in most of the stories; audiences only got an occasional glimpse into the personal lives of Rob’s co-workers. Buddy was married to an ex-showgirl named “Pickles” who turned up on the program on only a handful of occasions before the show’s writers realized that Pickles was funnier when just talked about and Sally was a “professional spinster” who, despite her intelligence and sense of humor, always had difficulty keeping a boyfriend. (The closest she got to a regular beau on the show was mama’s boy Herman Glimscher played by Billy Idelson, who finally ended up tying the knot with Sal by the time the reunion special The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited was telecast in 2004. Just between you, me and the lamppost — everybody knew that Buddy and Sally were married to each other, just not in the legal sense.)
The nature of Rob’s job made the antics at his place of business positively delightful; unlike other sitcom characters, you just knew that Rob Petrie enjoyed getting up and going to work in the morning. Rob’s occupation and The Dick Van Dyke Show itself made the notion of writing for television attractive and had a huge influence on a future generation who aspired to write comedy for a living; Saturday Night Live scribe and "It’s Garry Shandling’s Show." co-creator Alan Zweibel acknowledged this to be this case when he had the opportunity to meet Dick Van Dyke one time in a Hollywood elevator (he pointed out the similarities between the two men’s lives and broke down when Van Dyke brought up the painful memory that he had also become an alcoholic). The workplace atmosphere of The Dick Van Dyke Show, with its “second family” setting, would find itself adopted later by Mary Tyler Moore’s self-titled sitcom (the WJM-TV newsroom) not to mention WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi, Cheers and scores of other TV sitcom hits.
But The Dick Van Dyke Show also broke new ground in its portrait of domestic life on television; moving away from the established bland, white-bread, middle-class nature of most families into something that could very well be called a television “Camelot” (referring to
the nickname given to the Kennedy White House). Rob and Laura were an attractive couple, possessing poise and a terrific chemistry; sure, they slept in twin beds but seemed to be, as producer Leonard once remarked, “the first pair (on TV) that may be having some fun in the hay.” Laura Petrie established herself as a wife and mother unlike those seen previously on TV; she was not only incredible sexy (especially decked out in her trademark Capri pants, which raised quite a ruckus when they first introduced on the program) but also demonstrated an independence in that while she was generally supportive of her husband she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind if she had a difference of opinion. (In other words, they had great fights and they undoubtedly had great make-up sex.) Thanks to Rob’s show business connections, she also threw tremendous parties…something I always chuckle about when I consider that the running gag on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was that Mary Richards’ shindigs usually were a bust. The character of Laura also was tempered with an endearing wackiness that had her occasionally venturing in Lucy Ricardo-like territory (such as dying her hair half-blonde and half-brunette or getting her toe stuck in the faucet of a hotel bathroom), which just made her that much more human.Rob Petrie was TV’s first neurotic father, complete with foibles and an uncertainty as to whether he was always pursuing the wisest course of action. He wasn’t ineffectual or bumbling like Chester Riley or Ozzie Nelson, but he’d be the first to admit that he didn’t always have all the answers and often found himself learning about parenting from a hands-on, first-time-out approach. He was engagingly goofy and elastic (like human Silly Putty) yet without being cartoonish, and as played by Van Dyke displayed some of the most hilarious physical comedy in the history of the television sitcom. Crazy things often happened to Rob (he’d find himself mistakenly arrested for assault or he had to solve the problem of what to do when a bird attacked his son without reason) but he’d usually find a solution before the half-hour was out in a fashion that was only slightly exaggerated for comic effect, rarely delving into anything too foolish.
It seems like I haven’t paid much attention to the character of Alan Brady in this essay, and that might be because Carl Reiner’s intention on The Dick Van Dyke Show was to have Alan talked about and occasionally heard from but never seen on the show, because Reiner originally wanted a BIG star for the part. (Though many of the characters on The Dick Van Dyke Show were based on people Reiner knew or was acquainted with, he was always adamant that “Alan Brady” was not modeled after his former “boss,” Sid Caesar…suggesting that Alan was closer in spirit to Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle than anybody else.) In the first season of Dick Van Dyke, only Alan’s voice was heard; he didn’t make an onscreen appearance until “The Sleeping Brother” (in an easy chair with his back to the audience). As the series progressed, Reiner consented to turning up more frequently as the tyrannical Brady (but only sparingly, and only, as Reiner put it, “when we had a great idea for him”) — his best showcase is unquestionably the classic outing “Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth,” in which Laura inadvertently reveals to a nationwide TV audience (she’s a contestant on a game show) that Alan Brady wears a rug. (For the record, this is my very favorite of all Dick Van Dyke Show episodes.) Alan Brady was one of those characters whose personality was so strong it seemed like he was in every episode; he later took on a life of his own, appearing as “himself” on a classic episode of Mad About You and an animated special on TV Land.
Besides, Carl Reiner was much too busy writing and producing the series to squeeze in a weekly appearance as Alan Brady; in the first season alone he wrote 19 of the show’s first 30 episodes, and penned an additional 21 in season two. The addition of Bill Persky and Sam Denoff in the show’s third season — the team wrote the season opener, “That’s My Boy?”, a classic in which Rob relates how he was convinced he and Laura brought home the wrong baby from the hospital (and an episode whose “surprise twist” generated more than its fair share of controversy at the time) — was a godsend for Reiner, who noted “If I hadn’t found Persky and Denoff in the third year, I think I would have had a heart attack!” Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson, long before they adapted The Odd Couple to TV screens, also were prolific contributors to The Dick Van Dyke Show, as were Carl Kleinschmitt and Dale McRaven. “That’s My Boy?” was directed by John Rich, who helmed many of the series’ episodes, but not nearly as many as Jerry Paris, who not only played director behind-the-scenes but also appeared on camera as Rob’s best friend and next-door neighbor, dentist Jerry Helper (with his wife Millie played by Ann Morgan Guilbert).
In its final season on CBS, The Dick Van Dyke Show was still a Top 20 ratings contender, but the decision was made by creator Reiner that the series would not go beyond a fifth season. There have been various explanations for this: many of the cast members wanted to pursue other projects (Dick Van Dyke actively chased a film career before returning with Reiner to TV in 1971 to work on another sitcom titled The New Dick Van Dyke Show); Reiner himself always has been adamant that he was going to close up shop after five years, wanting to leave “while we’re still proud of it.” Fortunately for fans of classic television, there are 158 episodes with which to be pleased — all available on DVD (in five box sets that some have called one of the best example of TV-on-DVD collections ever released) and on many cable outlets, notably (as of this post) weeknights at 8:30 on Me-TV. OK, maybe saying they can be proud of all 158 episodes is a slight exaggeration (“The Twizzle”…call your office)…but the majority of the shows hold up extremely well and don’t embarrass to the degree that other comedy shows do from its era, due to Reiner’s insistence on character-based humor (he also was careful about avoiding any slang that might “date” the episodes).
As a kid, I was such a big fan of Dick Van Dyke that I would practice — in the tradition of the show’s opening, which alternated from week to week between Van Dyke tripping and falling over the ottoman, stumbling on it and sidestepping it completely — falling over the hassock in our living room, as my mother’s eyes rolled helplessly heavenward. I wanted my Dad and Mom to be just like Rob and Laura Petrie (they were more like Herbert and Winifred Gillis, to be honest) and for them to throw cool parties with singing and dancing…and it even got to a point where I schemed to have something tragic befall young Richie (whom I pictured floundering in a well without a Lassie to save him) so I could volunteer to take his place. I watch the shows over and over again and marvel at how they sparkle; how witty the dialogue is and how even when the lines aren’t so funny I laugh because I’m so in tune with the show’s characters. Carl Reiner adopted the first rule of writing — “Write what you know” — in creating The Dick Van Dyke Show, the series I consider without question the greatest situation comedy of all time. I would deem it an honor to raise a glass and toast its 50th anniversary, with the hopes of many more to continue.
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Labels: 60s, Awards, Blog-a-thons, C. Reiner, Carson, Jack Benny, Mel Brooks, Musicals, Shandling, Sid Caesar, Theater, TV Tribute, William Powell
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Saturday, September 10, 2011
I'm almost halfway finished/How do you like it so far?
By Edward Copeland
The 17 episodes of the second season of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." began on Oct. 25, 1987 and ran through March 18, 1988 on Showtime. As it turns out, 1988 proved to be a big year for the show. In March, Fox began airing reruns of the show from the beginning, eventually catching up with Showtime's schedule. More importantly, not just for this show but for all of cable, the TV Academy finally decided to allow cable programs to compete for Emmys and "It's Garry Shandling's Show." earned four of the first nominations ever given to a cable series. I'll mention them as the episodes involved come along. It would be the only nominations the show ever received. They didn't get any for the third season, which I'll also cover here, or the disastrous fourth, which is part of the final post. If you missed reading about season one, click here.
The second season premieres with "Who's Poppa?" and finds Jackie Schumaker with child — but Pete,
computing her menstrual cycle and the days they had sex, suspects he might not be the father. The conception coincides with the time Jackie went to her high school reunion and Pete suspects an old flame. Garry tells Nancy about Pete's fears and she also remembers that the reunion coincided with Jackie's fertile period, making Garry ask if he's the only person unaware of Jackie's cycle. He decides to fly to Chicago to confront Jackie's high school friend and we learn that Garry has his own plane — complete with stewardess. The show also launches the Name the Schumaker Baby Contest.
The second episode belongs in the pantheon of the top two or three episodes ever of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." This episode received two of those four Emmy nominations: outstanding writing in a comedy series for Shandling and Alan Zweibel and outstanding direction in a comedy series for Alan Rafkin. As with the opening monologues of many episodes, Garry tells the audience what the night's show is going to be about, though it seldom turns out that way. In "No Baby, No Show," this has created quite a dilemma for Garry as he has invited Pete and Jackie Schumaker over so she can have the baby during the broadcast but so far there have been no signs of labor and the three just sit around waiting. Eventually, Leonard drops by and joins the waiting party. Garry begins to express his frustration with the Schumakers for not delivering on time and ruining his show when
there is a knock on the door. We meet another resident of Happy Pilgrim Estates we weren't aware lived there — rock star Tom Petty (who for some reason happens to be carrying his guitar). Petty wanted to return Garry's hedge clippers to him. Anxious for anything to fill air time, Garry talks Petty into performing a song for them, which he does, selecting what really would be the only appropriate choice: "The Waiting." Now, don't stop to question why there's a standup microphone at the ready near Garry's bumper pool table or why they were prepared with special lighting for Petty — just go with the flow. When Petty finishes, he takes his place on the couch, with everyone sliding one spot to the right, and Garry places a table in front of his chair and brings out a copy of Petty's latest album to promote. Yes, the living room has been transformed into a talk show. On the commentary track for this episode, Shandling said he got this idea after hosting The Tonight Show for a week. This episode particularly
cracks me up because in my high school years, some of my friends and I would occasionally sit on various porches that had chairs and pretend that we were doing talk shows — and that was before this episode and long before Kramer re-created The Merv Griffin Show set in his apartment on Seinfeld. On a brief sidenote, on the DVD, Shandling also mentions that after the show got to be so overwhelming, he decided he had to give up his gig as one of the permanent guest hosts on The Tonight Show. When he called Johnny Carson and told him that he had to quit for the other show, at first Carson feared Shandling was pulling a Joan Rivers and starting his own talk show against him until he explained that it was the sitcom and it wouldn't air opposite The Tonight Show. Back to the "No Baby, No Show" episode: Nancy comes rushing in because she mistook some of Tom Petty's singing as Jackie going into labor. She takes the first seat
on the couch and everyone slides down again, which keeps getting funnier since they have to keep lifting the very pregnant Jackie to accomplish this. After briefly asking Nancy what's she's been up to, a strangely clothed Grant wanders in. It seems he's debuting that night as Tevye in his school's production of Fiddler on the Roof. Grant takes the guest No. 1 spot and discusses the musical with Garry, who tries to name Tevye's daughters only to be corrected by Tom Petty who names the five. "Tzeitel, Hotel, Chava, Shprintze and Bielke," the rocker lists. Grant then performs a brief excerpt of "If I Were a Rich Man" before leaving to head to the school. Periodically, Garry glances over his left shoulder and makes references to "Doc," as if Carson's bandleader Doc Severinsen is off camera somewhere. So far, though the living room and episode have been transformed into a talk show, all the guests have logical reasons to be there, even Petty, since they
say he lives in Happy Pilgrim Estates, but all pretense disappears with the next guest who walks in the door to take her place on the couch — Susan Anton. Anton doesn't get to say much because Jackie finally goes into labor. As Jackie is moved to the
floor, surrounded by everyone in the living room to help her, Garry calls for Doc to help as well and, sure enough, Severinsen crosses the living room carrying his trumpet. After some pushing on Jackie's part, the camera assumes the baby's point-of-view and the first face Baby Boy Schumaker sees (remember, there's a contest to give the baby a name, so he won't have one for most of the season) is Doc Severinsen. It's one of the very best episodes, and it shows, as Shandling attests to on the DVD, how funny Tom Petty can be, as he will make more appearances before the series' end, and on The Larry Sanders Show as well.
Garry, in the boy's room to feed his fish, reads a poem Grant wrote to a girl he has a crush on, causing the embarrassed adolescent to run off. We also get a Florence Henderson cameo and the introduction of The Garry Shandling Dancers.
Garry asks her to move in. In part two, which earned an Emmy nomination for comedy writing for Tom Gammill, Max Pross and Sam Simon, Angelica tries to get used to life on TV. She accidentally drives Garry's car off the pier. Chuck Woolery eventually drops by to try to help them with their problems, and Angelica admits that one of hers is the audience: "They're always there." At the end of the credits, we see Grant reading Boys Life with a cover story on their breakup.
justify it — Zweibel and Shandling admit this themselves. Thus, the slim story thread of Garry's never-mentioned neighbor Mr. Sparks (the late Dick O'Neill) who gets along with everyone in Happy Pilgrim Estates except Garry. When Grant puts a hole in the wall between Garry and Mr. Sparks' condos while trying to help Garry install a stereo VCR, the neighbor comes over to complain. Later, Grant makes Garry fulfill a promise he owes him, and what Grant wants is a trip to Shandlingland. Yes, Garry has an amusement park based on his life and show. Mr. Sparks, Pete and Nancy decide to tag along. Among the attractions: a parade of the characters with huge heads, Garry's Hall of Allergies, Garry's Haunted Bedroom, a merry-go-round where you sit in what look like beauty parlor hair dryers, and a new addition that Nancy is curious about, Nancy's Dream House.
Nancy thinks the attraction is ridiculous, but it makes both Garry and Mr. Sparks cry, and they resolve their differences and become friends.
to a party at Jeff Goldblum's house. Nancy talks him into going to both, so he ducks out of the Schumakers when they pull out Win, Lose or Draw (his ears literally start burning, so he knows the Schumakers are talking about him) only to arrive at Goldblum's to find that they are playing the game there — with the late Bert Convy actually hosting. Since Garry had told the Schumakers where he was going and Grant had said Goldblum was one of his favorite actors, Garry and Jeff decide to surprise Grant the next day by bringing Goldblum to Grant's birthday party. Unfortunately, Goldblum's cook who was supposed to make treats for a charity event falls ill, so Jeff has to make them himself and he cancels, but Garry goes over to help speed up the process. While there, Garry accidentally traps himself and Goldblum in Jeff's walk-in freezer. The two are rescued when Goldblum's then-wife Geena Davis (though she doesn't appear) opens the freezer looking for microwave pancakes. Goldblum and Garry go to Grant's, wake him up and explain why they missed his party.The final episode of the second season is well known as it marked Gilda Radner's return to television for the first time in several years following her diagnosis with cancer. What isn't remembered as well is that the show's title was "Mr. Smith Goes to Nam" and concerned Leonard's flashbacks to his war experiences, when he meets
Gilda's nurse Blake (comic Blake Clark again), who was a member of his unit in Vietnam that got captured, and who spent nine months in a POW camp while Leonard escaped. The plot really was extraneous, though — Radner's return was the highlight. Alan Zweibel was her writing partner when both worked on Saturday Night Live, and while she was going through treatments, he and Shandling sent her tapes of the show. She said they helped her get through the treatments. When she went into remission, she decided she wanted to return to television and thought of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." As she told Zweibel, referring to the cancer, "My comedy is my only weapon against this fucker." The audience's applause at her appearance — which was a surprise since her visit wasn't announced ahead of time — really inspired her to go back to work. She developed with Zweibel and Shandling and was in talks with HBO for a series where she would be the star of a variety show, but would also show her home life. Unfortunately, the cancer returned before the show could get off the ground and she died in May 1989. Her appearance in this episode did earn her an Emmy nomination as guest actress in a comedy, the series' fourth Emmy nomination.
The third season of the show had many funny things in it but even the episode that I recalled most fondly doesn't play as well now, making it understandable why Zweibel and Shandling believed the show had fallen into a rut. However, their solution — suddenly adding a major new character in the fourth season, Garry's girlfriend-eventually-wife — actually made the situation worse. The best thing to come in the third season was the addition of Ian Buchanan as Nancy's odd Scottish boyfriend Ian, a role he was playing during the same time that he was a daytime heartthrob as Duke Lavery on the soap opera General Hospital. Buchanan would later appear on several soaps, a hysterical first season episode of Larry Sanders as a friend of Larry's filling in for Artie (Rip Torn) and trying to steal his job as producer, and play Dick Tremayne in the second season of Twin Peaks.
That so many shows have done this now (and better) may be part of the problem, but this might have been the first to do it. L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley is in the audience and Garry worries that he only likes musicals, so the episode is done as a musical — a musical about Grant going through puberty. The singing plumbers still are funny though: "And there's hair where there wasn't hair before."
Garry is a Ping-Pong phenom who must save Happy Pilgrim Estates in their match against Trugman Towers.
and sprinkles a few moments here and there worth mentioning. It seems that entrepreneur Alan Trugman (named after the show's costume designer) now owns the lease on the legendary comedy club and is going to tear it down. Garry spearheads a benefit to save the club. It introduces Bruno Kirby as Garry's manager Brad Brillnick (a combination of Brad Grey and Bernie Brillstein). The main goal is to reunite Mr. Peck (Danny Dayton) and Red Buttons, who had a falling out in the 1960s when Peck briefly fell under the spell of Satanists and called Buttons the antichrist. The highlights: Garry gets Buttons to the club by chloroforming him and kidnapping him with the help of Father Guido Sarducci. The best line goes to the late Steve Allen who says on stage, "Here is a little song I wrote while I was playing that last one."
Garry is having a date with a woman named Christine (a young Marcia Cross), Ruth drops by to give a live ad for her pet shop. It inspires Leonard to do the same and he interrupts to plug Leonard Smith Cigarettes. When Garry asks his mom not to do that anymore, Ruth stops talking to him. When he turns on General Hospital one day, he sees she's invaded their set to plug her shop on their show. He rushes to the soap's set with Christine and Nancy to talk with Ruth when the soap's Dr. Tom Hardy (David Wallace) starts hitting on Christine, though she chooses Garry. As Garry, Christine, Nancy and Ruth leave, they pass Duke Lavery (played on the soap by Ian Buchanan) and Anna Devane (Finola Hughes). Garry asks Nancy if that guy was Ian, but she says it didn't look like him. In the hospital, Anna asks Duke if that man was Garry Shandling. "I would hope he looked better than that in real life," Duke replies.
stupider so he employs his brain X-ray to see what things look like, and discovers his brain (Stuart Pankin) is asleep on a hammock. He also meets his voicebox (Dave Coulier).
Garry tracks down his audience who, it turns out, all live together in one apartment in riser-type seating.Tweet
Labels: 80s, Awards, C. Reiner, Carson, Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Larry Sanders, Seinfeld, Shandling, Sid Caesar, TV Tribute
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How did you like the tribute to Garry's show?
By Edward Copeland
What's fascinating about diving into your past via episodes of a television series you remember fondly but have had no contact with in decades is knowing that you've changed, but the show hasn't. The moments of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." that I've treasured the most tend to retain what I liked originally, but watching the entire series in a compressed period of time really exposes its flaws. Hearing so many of the creative people echo my thoughts in commentary tracks that sometimes are brutal in their honesty made me feel that this particular side of a look back at the show required a separate post. If you missed the first part, where I discussed the show's ingenuity and my favorite episodes of season one, click here. For my favorite moments in season two, click here.
Before getting into the creative slide of "It's Garry Shandling's Show.", I thought it would be worthwhile to remember what scripted series on pay cable looked like when this show premiered 25 years ago today. At the time, it was Showtime's second original sitcom following Brothers, which premiered in 1984 and ran through 1989, and starred Robert Walden (Rossi on Lou Grant) as the owner of a bar trying to deal with the fact that his youngest brother (Paul Regina) has come out of the closet. Though HBO would eventually become the pay cable channel most associated with original series, their only sitcom venture to this point was the football comedy 1st & Ten, which also debuted in 1984, and ran for seven seasons with many incarnations and cast changes, including some seasons starring O.J. Simpson. Still, in the beginning, it was little more than an excuse to add nude women to the channel much like its thriller anthology The Hitchhiker, since its debut in 1983, was more about sex scenes than stories. Prior to those shows, both networks tended only to attempt scripted series of the sketch variety such as HBO's Not Necessarily the News and Showtime's Bizarre hosted by John Byner and co-created by Bob Einstein (best known now as the hilarious Marty Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm), which introduced Einstein's Super Dave Osborne character.
Now that I've watched or re-watched all 72 episodes of this series, I'm even more certain than I was in this tribute's first part that, not only has it been decades since I've seen the episodes I recall most fondly, but that many of the episodes, particularly in the mess that is the fourth season (something some of the show's writers openly acknowledge on commentary tracks), I never saw at all, since I was in college by that time, and I bet I'd given up on "It's Garry Shandling's
Show." by then. My memory probably had chosen to block this out and only remember the show's early days of brilliance and innovation, forgetting when the series' nose-dive began. Plus, my memory of the six seasons of greatness that Shandling came up with soon after on The Larry Sanders Show made even the best of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." resemble an amusing trifle by comparison. I have to be honest: When I looked back at my notes on some episodes I watched just within the past few weeks, neither the titles nor my words registered details that reminded me what happened in that show. However, the series' importance can't be ignored even if it didn't maintain its initial level of excellence. That's because in many ways "It's Garry Shandling's Show." serves as a bridge between television's past, present (as in the mid- to late '80s) and future, not only in form but behind-the-scenes personnel as well. Between creators Garry Shandling and Alan Zweibel, Shandling actually had more experience when it came to writing situation comedies since that's how he started before he decided to become a standup comic, penning episodes of Sanford & Son and Welcome Back Kotter. In a way, "It's Garry Shandling's Show." resembled a half-hour sitcom version of an hour-long network series that premiered the year before — Moonlighting, which similarly broke the fourth wall and could change its format from week to week. I've already mentioned its link back to Burns and Allen, but in some respects it foretold the coming of Seinfeld. Two of its writers and later producers, Tom Gammill and Max Pross, who came from writing for Late Night With David Letterman, would go on to be writers and producers on Seinfeld, but even the premise of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." bears some resemblance to the later megahit. Garry Shandling plays a fictionalized version of himself, a standup comic, on a show that truly could be said to be about "nothing" and, as in the early days of Seinfeld, Shandling opened and closed each episode with a monologue, only instead of it being in a comedy club setting, he'd perform it for the audience in the "living room of his condo" in Sherman Oaks, California.Others who worked on the show at one time or another who spanned generations of television comedy included veteran director Alan Rafkin, who directed every episode of the first three seasons of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." except for the last three episodes of the third season, and whose credits included work on The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and many, many more, including an Emmy win for One Day at a Time. The legendary writer Sam Denoff, who died in July, served as a supervising producer in the second season. Actor-comedian-writer Jack Burns, who early in his career was part of a comedy act with George Carlin, and wrote The Muppet Movie, served as executive story supervisor in the first season and wrote its first really great episode, the fourth installment, "Foul Ball." In the final season, Albert Brooks' frequent writing partner Monica Johnson, who died last year, was a creative consultant and wrote two episodes. Merrill Markoe, David Letterman's one-time longtime girlfriend and a writer on both of his NBC shows as well as the attempt to revive Laugh-In in 1977, penned the "It's Garry Shandling's Christmas Show" episode that aired Dec. 17, 1987, which included a gag where Garry had to turn his living room upside down to search for a missing watch that was very reminiscent of Letterman's "360 Degree Rotation Show" from the NBC Late Night show on Dec. 8, 1986, though Markoe had left the Late Night staff by August 1986.
Of the younger crop of writers on the show or those who passed through and went on to bigger success later, in addition to the aforementioned team of Gammill & Pross, the show also welcomed the team of Al Jean & Michael Reiss, who had previously written for the short-lived cult fave Sledge Hammer! In a funny story on a commentary track, they tell how, while they worked on that show but before they were on staff at "It's Garry Shandling's Show.", Shandling was running himself ragged by being one of two regular guest hosts for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show while working long hours on the sitcom. As a result, he often didn't have time to stay fresh on the news, so Jean & Reiss would sneak jokes to him at his real Sherman Oaks condo in the wee hours of the morning, scared to death that their Sledge Hammer! boss Alan Spencer would find out and fire
them. Later they leaned that Spencer was doing the same thing. (One thing I learned that I didn't realize was the set for Shandling's condo was for the most part designed as an exact replica of the real place where he lived in Sherman Oaks at the time.) During the summer hiatus between the third and fourth seasons of "It's Garry Shandling's Show.", Reiss & Jean got work on a new upstart animated series called The Simpsons and they stayed with it through 2001. Gammill & Pross also would work as producers on The Simpsons, though they didn't come on board until 1999. One of Jean & Reiss' bosses at The Simpsons, co-creator and executive producer Sam Simon, passed through "It's Garry Shandling's Show." as a creative consultant and co-writer of three episodes in the second season, though Simon could hardly be called a newcomer since his TV sitcom credits stretched back to Cheers, Taxi and even episodes of Barney Miller and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Another of the main writers, Ed Solomon, came with his main credit being the screenplay for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and he later wrote Men in Black. Many of the writers mocked writer-producer Jeff Franklin (previously a writer-producer on Laverne & Shirley and Bosom Buddies) for choosing to leave early in the second season to head a new family-oriented comedy for ABC, but Full House probably made him richer than all of them except Sam Simon. Of course, many episodes were written by Zweibel and Shandling, who had final call on the scripts no matter who wrote them. One person who didn't write any episodes but appeared as a whacked out character in the fourth season was none other than Paul Feig. On the show, he appears three times as the loony Chester, half-brother of the girlfriend (and later wife), Phoebe (Jessica Harper), that Garry gets that season. Feig still acts, but his writing is really what we treasure. He created the irreplaceable Freaks & Geeks and has directed episodes of many other TV series including Mad Men, Undeclared, The Office and Arrested Development. Earlier this year, he helmed the feature film Bridesmaids. The series was executive produced by Shandling, the late Bernie Brillstein and Brad Grey. Though Shandling and Grey later had legal fights, Grey also produced The Larry Sanders Show and The Sopranos.
In one of the interviews on the DVDs with Zweibel and Shandling, Shandling admits that the wacky tone of the show sort of grew organically. There hadn't been a grand plan to toss in crazy plot devices such as the way they played with time, like having Garry sit on his couch and suddenly be struck by a pile of rolled up newspapers, after which he'd say, "Two weeks have passed." The idea for Garry to have a tiny car came about when Zweibel just said at one point, "What if Garry had a small car that he drove from set to set?" These things added to the hilarity
in the beginning as long as there was an underlying story that worked, but by the fourth season when Garry suddenly had a fly hat that turned him into the size of the insect so he could literally be "a fly on the wall," it just seemed to be an act of desperation because the episode's story wasn't working. In one of the commentary tracks, Ed Solomon admits that many of the writers "were ashamed" when they had to resort to devices and liked it better without the gimmicks. The freedom to do just about anything, Shandling says, meant that each week it felt as if they were re-inventing the wheel. Those out-of-nowhere moments in the first couple of seasons really added to what made the show so much fun. The car always worked and the way they accounted for time lapses were clever in the beginning, but by the time Garry had a "Flying Clock" (get it? "Time flies") to move things along in a fourth season episode, instead of laughing you were more likely to roll your eyes.While the fourth season was more or less a complete loss, the show truly started losing steam in the latter part of the third season after two nearly peerless seasons. There were the inexplicable problems in the two really good years that seem to come with a lot of series, such as airing episodes out of order for no apparent reason. Now, in the case of "It's Garry Shandling's Show.", continuity wasn't really a concern the way it was when a series such as Homicide: Life on the Street did that and characters would be referred to as dead before the episode aired telling the audience they died. However, viewers could still tell as Scott Nemes, who played young
Grant Schumaker, injured himself and had to use crutches, which would appear in some episodes, disappear, then reappear again, much like the year on The Larry Sanders Show when Janeane Garofalo's hair bounced back and forth between blonde and brunette. Zweibel and Shandling agreed during the third season that the show seemed to be in a rut and decided that in the fourth season, Garry needed to get a girlfriend who eventually would become his wife. On one of their commentary tracks, Al Jean and Michael Reiss are quite open about how they and most of the other writers on staff thought it was a bad idea, taking a certain pride that 20 years later (from the end of the series until they taped the commentary), they turned out to be right. I got confused whether it was Jean's voice or Reiss' who says it, but he describes it as looking like "a hack move by a conventional show." That's how the decision was made to add the talented Jessica Harper as interior decorator Phoebe Bass. Again, I can't be sure if it's Jean or Reiss who said this, but he describes Harper as always looking sad and unhappy to be there between takes. It probably didn't help that inside jokes started being sneaked into the show referring to the fact that in real life Harper was married to top Fox executive Tom Rothman. In the most blatant example, they had taken actor Richard Fancy (Mr. Lippman at Pendant Publishing on Seinfeld), who had been the all-purpose boss or bureaucrat (at the DMV or a travel agency), and turned him into the network president Mr. Stravely. In the fourth season episode where Phoebe's half-brother Chester (Paul Feig) talks him into giving him a TV show, Stravely insists that he work in a role for his new wife Edie Adams. (In another Stravely moment from the first episode of the fourth season that coincidentally foresees a Seinfeld storyline, Stravely objects to the idea of Garry getting a girlfriend and suggests that he add a butler character instead.)Jean and Reiss also blame the show's eventual airing on Fox as well as Showtime as part of what ultimately doomed the series. It showed first as reruns in 1988, but eventually to the point that Fox caught up, though the network killed it in March 1990 and Showtime continued to air some new episodes after that. Prior to that, the creative team behind "It's Garry Shandling's Show." didn't worry about ratings or where commercials would go. In that same commentary track, they recall Zweibel coming to the set one day lamenting that in the Nielsen ratings the show ranked 99 out of 100 shows. You could even tell by the way Garry the character
spoke to the camera that he had regrets about the way things had gone, saying things such as "If you've been keeping up with the show and I assume that you haven't," or during another fourth season episode, declaring in a scene, "People are at home switching the channel right now." In fact, in some episodes it could hardly be called Garry Shandling's Show because he seemed to make sure to have as little to do with it as possible, making brief appearances at the beginning and end of two episodes when he was supposed to be opening for Guns 'N' Roses, and in the second-to-last episode appearing at the opening in a hot tub and shutting a TV off, not to reappear until after the final credit had rolled and he switched it back on, realizing he missed the entire episode. (Stravely complains when he goes off with Guns 'N' Roses, saying he has a show to do, and that the network was nice enough to let him off to perform Gypsy but they never bought the maternity leave story.) Zweibel does commentary on the fourth season episode "Family Man," which is the only thing he's ever directed, and the episode that contains that flying clock that allows Garry to speed up time, though it's accidentally set for years instead of minutes. The premise is that Garry wants to speed up the time it takes to get the results of Phoebe's home pregnancy test but instead he goes far into the future where they have teenage children. Zweibel admits that all the tricks they did at this point were no longer a novelty and complains that they didn't really put their own twist on the time travel idea, making it appear like just another sitcom. The funniest part of the commentary is that the storyline has Garry and Phoebe's future son really depressed and thinking his life is worthless, so Garry brings him back to witness the day they found out Phoebe was pregnant with him so he can see how excited they were. Garry goes inside to celebrate with Phoebe and the future son waves from outside (with the flying clock in his hand), and Zweibel on the commentary obsesses about what happened to him, wondering how he get back to his own time. That episode does have one of the funniest fourth season lines, since it was clear by then that it would be the last season, when Garry says the first thing he's going to do when the show ends is put that fourth wall back up.Of the 19 episodes in the fourth season, there were two episodes that almost worked: the 17th episode, "The Last Show," which was intended to be just what its title suggests, and the final episode, "Driving Miss Garry," which simply was a broad spoof of the movie Driving Miss Daisy with Garry taking the Jessica Tandy role. First though, two photos that are worth showing from other fourth season episodes. The first: When Garry mentions private things about Phoebe on a morning talk show, she becomes publicly humiliated and gets asked personal questions by a woman played by Linda Doucett (Shandling's real-life girlfriend then and for several years, including when she played Darlene on The Larry Sanders Show), who says she would "never date a comedian." The second: To try to stop a fight between Phoebe and his mom over wedding plans, Garry reads them a fable about a time when a man named Howard brought peace to Happy Pilgrim Estates, and it's none other than Howard Sprague (Jack Dodson) from The Andy Griffith Show.
Apparently, what messed up "The Last Show" was that the actor originally hired to play the condo complex's new gardener, Lucas Death, turned out to be nothing but trouble and had to be replaced at the last minute by Stuart Pankin, the same actor who in an earlier episode had played Garry's brain. Also, the episode's director,
Shandling's revered acting coach Roy London, had never directed a sitcom before, creating more problems. Otherwise, for such a meta-series, this would have been a great ending. At a meeting of the condo homeowners association, the homeowners vote to change the name of Happy Pilgrim Estates to Nelson Mandela Estates. Leonard then introduces the new gardener who isn't just named Death, he IS Death and he's come to collect Garry since the show is ending. Garry doesn't believe him, wondering if he's there for his mom since she's older, but no, he says it's Garry. Garry phones Bob Newhart, who shows up in split screen from his Newhart set. At first, Newhart does one of his phone routines until Garry reminds him that he's on the other end of the line so he doesn't have to do that, but Newhart confirms that he knows about Lucas Death because Newhart is also ending, and he's
toast as well. Death finally convinces Garry as he shows him his body on the floor. They have his funeral which includes Dabney Coleman and Tony Danza, who breaks down because he kept blowing Garry off about making an appearance on the show. Coleman tries to talk to Garry's manager Brad (a recurring character the late Bruno Kirby had been playing) about taking him on as a client. After the funeral ends, it shows Garry back on the couch telling the audience that he's not really dead but he just thought that would be a good way to end the show, when an angry Mr. Stravely comes in, complaining about him leaving the coffin after they'd arranged for those guest stars. He tells Garry that now he owes the network two more episodes. Garry says he's out of ideas, but Stravely tells him to do a talent show or a movie spoof. He doesn't care. (The next episode, "The Talent Show," might be the absolute worst episode they ever did.)
What ended up being the final episode, "Driving Miss Garry," almost seems to have nothing to do with "It's Garry Shandling's Show." since it doesn't even have that 41 second theme song we've come to know and love. Instead, just a few months after winning the Oscar for best picture, they were able to license Hans Zimmer's actual score for Driving Miss Daisy. The episode begins much like the movie — only Garry drives his little car in reverse when he meant to go forward, destroying his kitchen. Then, in an even more amazing casting coup, mere months after his Oscar nomination for supporting actor, Dan Aykroyd shows up as Boolie, who is supposed to be Garry's brother, and brings with him a driver named Hoke (the late Paul Winfield). (Hoke's best comment as he drives around town: "Don't any of you folks have walls on your houses?") It pretty much follows the Daisy template,
but sadly the regulars get left on the sidelines. The spoof does make some changes, such as having Hoke, once Garry teaches him to read, pick up The Autobiography of Malcolm X and become more assertive. When Boolie visits again, Hoke says he deserves a raise above $80 a week (apparently Billy Crystal's family has made a nice offer) and gets Boolie to give him a salary of $200,000 a year. Boolie tells Hoke not to let anyone know how much he makes. "I only pay Pete fifty thousand a year to be Garry's best friend," Boolie says. They age Hoke and Garry (complete with white wig) and Hoke feeds him. The ending is sad because the regular Garry thanks everyone for watching then rides by all the sets in his car waving at all the cast members. That's how the series ends.What presented the biggest problem to the series in terms of being able to sustain itself over the long haul is something that Shandling, Zweibel and all the writers who contribute commentaries to the DVD set admit, even when discussing the classic episodes. While they had a talented cast of performers from the beginning in Molly Cheek as Nancy, Michael Tucci, Bernadette Birkett and Scott Nemes as the Schumakers, Barbara Cason as Garry's mom Ruth, Paul Willson as Leonard Smith and a good addition in the third season with Ian Buchanan as
Ian, not to mention Shandling himself, with the quirky nature of the show, character development wasn't going to happen so the only character who showed any growth during the four-year run would be Nemes' Grant, and that was thanks to puberty, not writing. It's another reason that the fourth season threw everything so off-kilter. A show with crazy objects, minicars and which had a premise where it was a TV show in which everyone realized they lived in a TV show wasn't built to suddenly transform into a relationship comedy. It also did a disservice to the characters who'd been there since season one. Trying to build Phoebe from girlfriend to wife in a compressed amount of time left the other characters on the sidelines during most of the fourth season. On the infamous commentary track I keep referring to, either Jean or Reiss said that as outlandish as the show could be, most of the ideas were inspired by things that really happened to Shandling, but by the third season, his life was the show, so those stories didn't come as easily. As one of the writing team members said, "No wonder it took 20 years to reach DVD. It just wasn't that good." I wouldn't go that far. Those early episodes mostly hold up. There is one conversation in a fourth season episode, where Garry goes to meet Phoebe's family and talks with her father, Gil (Edward Penn), that I thought was sort of telling.GIL: Tell me about your show.
GARRY: It's about my life.
GIL: You must have an interesting life.
GARRY: I really don't — it's been a stumbling block for the whole series.
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