Friday, June 08, 2012
The Larry Sanders Show Season 3 Ep. 11: Larry Loses a Friend
By Edward Copeland
This episode doesn't belong on the top shelf of episodes of The Larry Sanders Show, but even its weakest installments outshine some of the strongest episodes of what the commercial networks passed off as comedies in the two decades since Sanders debuted. We've passed the midpoint of the 17-episode order the series had for its third season, a more difficult burden than HBO demands of any of its shows now, which merely produce 10-13 installments at most a season. This outing, written by John Riggi (who also played Mike Patterson, one of Sanders staff writers who got canned earlier this season in the "Headwriter" episode), begins with Beverly (Penny Johnson) admiring a large bouquet of flowers on Darlene's desk — flowers that don't seem to please Darlene (Linda Doucett), especially because of the diamond bracelet that came with it. Beverly guesses the jewelry must be worth at least $2,000. The entire package arrived courtesy of one of the guests on Larry's show that night, Jon Lovitz. Darlene wishes Lovitz would stop. He does this every time he's on the show.
Beverly expresses shock when Darlene reveals this, inquiring if Lovitz gives her a new piece of jewelry every time. Darlene shakes her head no and explains that at first, he just sent flowers. The next time, the flowers came with a Dottie West CD. Then accompanying the bouquet were Hummel figurines. The last time he appeared on the show, Darlene received flowers and a pasta maker, Now, Lovitz has upped the ante to a diamond bracelet. As Beverly remains transfixed by the bracelet and Darlene sits looking glum, Hank steps out of his office and reminds Darlene to double-check with Artie that they're still on for the Dodger game that night — then Hank notices the flowers and asks who sent them. Before anyone answers, he reads the card aloud, "Looking forward to seeing you again. As always, Jon." the always self-centered Kingsley smiles. "You see, I think it's courageous for one man to send flowers to another man," Hank tells the women before taking the bouquet and announcing that he's going to put them in a place of prominence in his office — perhaps on the air conditioner. As Hank returns to his office, Beverly cracks up but laughs continue to evade Darlene.
DARLENE: What am I gonna do?
BEVERLY: Oh, about Jon? Well, just ask Paula to book him two more times.
DARLENE: What good will that do?
BEVERLY: None, but by then you'll have flowers and a Miata.
Jon Lovitz sits in the back of a limo in the studio's parking lot. He asks his chauffeur (Mark Roberts) if he should just go up to the show's offices, but the driver tells him that they're sending someone down to escort him up. The driver asks Lovitz how many times he's done Larry's show. "I think like, thirteen. Fourteen if you count when I got bumped for Desert Storm. Fucking Saddam Hussein," Lovitz gripes. "You must like Larry a lot. Is that why you do it so often?" the driver inquires. "Yeah. I mean I like Larry a lot, but, you know, he's got this beautiful…" Lovitz self-censors as the chauffeur turns around. Lovitz questions whether he can use the limo's phone. The driver tells Lovitz he can and asks if he'd prefer that he raise the partition. "Well, let me ask you a question. Did you see City Slickers 2?" "No," the driver admits. "Well, then put it up," Lovitz says, making the motion of the partition rising with his hands.
Beverly shows the bracelet to Paula while the two of them and Darlene hover around the kitchenette. "What's the big deal? It's a bracelet," Paula says, this time with Janeane Garofalo in her season of many hair colors sporting a reddish-brown shade. "You're just mad because all your bracelets are made out of shoe laces," Beverly responds dismissively. "I gave you one," Paula declares with a combination of hurt and anger. Beverly, realizing her etiquette faux pas, tries to repair the damage. "I know and I liked it. I'm sorry," Beverly apologizes as Paula stomps off. "I did. It was different." Beverly returns to worshipping the "gorgeous" bracelet and asks Darlene if she'd care if she wore it for the rest of the day, then gave it back. Darlene tells her to keep it and walks off. Beverly pursues, asking her why she doesn't just stop it by going out with Lovitz — he's funny and nice. Darlene informs Beverly that she refuses to date anyone in the business anymore. "No comics, no actors, no magicians," she proclaims. Hank emerges from his office again. "Darlene — Artie — ballgame," he intones. Before Darlene can answer, the phone rings and she answers, "Hank Kingsley's office. Can you hold one minute?" and then drops the receiver as if it were on fire and runs off. It does set up for our first candidate for Hank Kingsley Line of the Night, delivered by the inimitable Jeffrey Tambor. Hank picks up the phone and awkwardly says, "Hello." Of course, it's Lovitz on the other end. Hank thanks him for sending the flowers, telling Lovitz, "I'm just nutty about irises."
Another aspect of The Larry Sanders Show (aside from Tambor's brilliant creation of Hank Kingsley) is that even the weaker episodes always get juice by pairing any combination of Rip Torn's Artie with Garry Shandling's Larry or Tambor's Hank (or Hank and Larry or a rollicking triple threat of putting all three together in a scene) to spin comic gold no matter the subject matter. In this episode, the first time we see Artie and Larry, they appear in a short, but fun duet, though Torn really owns the scene, as Artie uses a distracted Larry to his advantage to get out of the ballgame with Hank. It begins with the producer and the talk show host seated across from each other in Larry's office where Arthur teases Larry about what he just pulled out of his pocket and is shaking in front of his face while humming.
LARRY: (Stopping what he's doing.) What are those?
ARTIE: These are tickets to the Dodger game tonight. (Artie stands and walks to the other side of the desk next to Larry as
he continues to talk) Hank and I have an evening out together once a year. Just the two of us. Tonight is that night.
LARRY: (continuing to look at things on his desk) Great. That'll be nice.
ARTIE: Yeah. These tickets are right behind the home plate. Nine innings of me listening to Hank whine about his marriage bullshit.
LARRY: (Looking up with a mischievous grin) Oh, you stay for the whole game, huh?
ARTIE: (Dangling the tickets in front of him, practically in Larry's face) Don't you want to go?
LARRY: Huh? Well, I don't even have tickets. I'm not going.
ARTIE: (Sarcastically faking disappointment) Oh, I hate to part with them. Hank will be so disappointed. Why don't you take Jon Lovitz? (Artie gets all those lines out so fast you barely notice he's already sprinted to the office door to escape) Took you a long time to figure out what I was getting at, didn't it? Have a big lunch, today?"
LARRY: Yeah. (Artie leaves, closing door behind him. Artie's intentions finally dawn on Larry.) Oh. He doesn't want to go with Hank.
Darlene confides to Hank about Lovitz's continued gift giving. "I have to admit I found the flowers and gifts cute at first," Kingsley says. "I'm still getting a lot of use out of that pasta machine because there's nothing better than fresh pasta, but you're right. You're right. It's obviously — it's gone too far." Hank promises Darlene he'll take Lovitz aside and talk to him. "Oh, you're so sweet," Darlene tells Hank, giving him a big hug. "I am. I am sweet," Hank concurs.
We do receive the treat of the corollary scene to Artie tricking Larry into taking his Dodger tickets. Now, he must sell the idea that it wasn't his idea to Hank. He enters the makeup room where he encounters one of that night's guests, Jarina Venvenich (Elsa Raven), "the bird lady," who carries two feathered friends on her arm that Artie greets as Scooter and Pepper. "Where's Poncho?" Artie asks. "He's no longer with us," she answers on a heavy accent. Artie inquires as to Poncho's fate, suggesting some possibilities in Jarina's native tongue. "He was eaten by our neighbor's Rottweiler," Jarina informs him before she exits. Hank sits in the makeup chair getting prepped by Bruno. He complains that no one told him that the birds would be on the show or he would have taken his allergy pills. Artie insists he told Darlene early that morning.
HANK: Oh well. I don't care if my face swells up like a pumpkin. We're not going to miss that game tonight. (Notices Artie's expression.) Oh goddammit.
ARTIE: Bad news, buddy. Larry wanted to go to the game. He heard I had tickets —
HANK: You gave him our tickets?
ARTIE: Gave him? He took them. He's the fucking boss. My hands were tied.
HANK: He's a fucking baby.
ARTIE: (coughs to indicate Bruno's presence) Well, all I'll say is he's very complicated.
HANK: One night out and Mr. Big Man thinks he can take anything —
ARTIE: I hear you, but next year is right around the corner, buddy
HANK: It's not about the game. I just wanted to have some special time with you —
ARTIE: (wiping something on Hank's face) What's the matter, sugar? Is the marriage that bad?
HANK: (Shakes head no) It's the fucking birds.
ARTIE: You're telling me. I've been married five times. They were all the fucking birds. (Artie leaves)
HANK: No, that — (to Bruno) You knew what I meant, didn't you?
Larry meets Jon Lovitz after he gets off the elevator on the show's floor, but Lovitz definitely has his mind elsewhere. Larry invites him to see the Dodgers after the show and Lovitz says it sounds great, but doesn't act as if he really heard what Larry offered. Sanders tells Lovitz he'll walk him to his dressing room, but Lovitz declines, saying he wants to say hi to someone first. Larry walks off confused and Lovitz enters the office area of the show, making a beeline for Darlene's desk. He leans over her desk and quietly speaks her name. "Hi," Darlene responds unemotionally while continuing to type. "You look beautiful today — as usual," he tells her in the same quiet voice that, frankly, borders on the creepy. "Thank you," she replies almost as quietly as he's speaking. He asks if she got the flowers he sent her and looks around for them. (Lovitz should realize Hank intercepted them since he thanked him for them on the phone.) He also asks about that "little gift," which Darlene also confirms she received but she runs into trouble when Lovitz wants to see the bracelet. In a phrase you don't hear often around the Larry Sanders office, Darlene is saved by the Hank, who appears and asks her to call makeup, "and tell them to come and remove my tissues." Kingsley rolls his eyes and Lovitz steps back and folds his arms, looking miffed. Darlene offers to handle the
task but Hank won't let her, insisting she get Bruno because, "It's a union thing." Darlene exits and Hank moves in, calling Lovitz "Jonny" and beginning with his trademark "Hey now." "Welcome back Mister (pause) Funny, Mister Movie Star," Hank lays it on. "You forgot Mister Hunk," Lovitz adds. "I was getting to that," Hank says. Then Hank gets serious, asking if they can talk. He tells Lovitz that he's heard that he has a thing for Darlene and wants to know if it's true. Lovitz's expression almost turns ashen, but then he brightens up and admits it, saying how terrific he thinks she is. Hank agrees that Darlene is fabulous. "I think she's really starting to warm up to me," Lovitz declares. "A piece of advice — don't go there," Hank warns. "Just don't waste your time because, frankly, she's not available." Lovitz assures
Kingsley that he checked first and knows she isn't dating anyone currently. Hank looks stuck — obviously his Plan A just went up in flames — so he asks Lovitz to come speak to him in a more private area. "See, I don't even know if this is my place to say," Hank tells Jon as he closes the door to the conference room. "See, the way that you want to go. This lady — she doesn't go that way," Hank lies to a stone-faced Lovitz. Lovitz makes him spell it out. Kingsley stumbles but finally gets out the words, "She prefers women." "Oh that's bullshit!" Lovitz snaps, Hank stands by the lesbian story, but Lovitz doesn't believe him, naturally wondering why she wouldn't have said anything to him after all this time. Hank tries to make the case that a person's sexual preference can be a very private thing, but Lovitz still isn't buying his story. Hank abandons ships and tells Lovitz he has to go, but Lovitz chases him back to his office. "Hank, is she seeing a woman now?" he asks. After some more fumbling, Kingsley finally says, "Yes. Yes, she is" before closing his office door and hiding inside. 
Perhaps saying "Saved by the Hank" might have been premature. The situation can't be improving now that we see Phil (Wallace Langham), once briefly a Darlene dating partner, wandering toward the kitchenette where Darlene prepares a snack. After the standard pleasantries, Phil opens with "So, you're a lesbian." Darlene doesn't know what he's talking about. "It kind of makes sense. A lot of stuff that we went through makes sense now. I only wish you could've told me yourself instead of me having to hear it from Paula," Phil tells a thoroughly confused Darlene. "Paula told you I was a lesbian?" she asks him. "Oh and I think Larry's gonna be really pissed when he finds out you've been seeing Beverly," Phil adds. It didn't take long for that fake story to spread and metastasize. Backstage, Hank stands
sipping a cup of water after taking something off a tray a man holds when Darlene comes barreling down the hall toward him, leading him away. "What? Easy? Spilling! Spilling!" Hank says as Darlene keeps herding Hank to another location. "That's how you get Jon Lovitz to leave me alone — by telling everyone that I'm a lesbian!" she yells at him. "I didn't tell everyone. Jon asked Paula to confirm what I told him. You know how she is with gossip. She's like a terrier after a rat," Hank says in his defense. "Hank, how could you do this?" Darlene demands to know. "Now Darlene, I didn't know you had a thing against gay people. Frankly, I'm a little offended to find this out," Hank responds as only Kingsley could. "Hank, you lied," Darlene tells him. "I didn't — now come on — like you've never been with a woman?" Hank asks, digging that hole for himself deeper and deeper. "Like you've never been with a man?" Darlene fires back. Kingsley seems to get the point and says, "Fucking tabloids."
Lovitz and Larry are joking around in Larry's office while Larry has a snack when Jon brings up the subject of Darlene. Sanders brings up that she posed for Playboy, referring back to the Season 2 episode "Broadcast Nudes." "Did you see it?" Lovitz asks. "No," Larry lies. Jon then brings up that Hank told him that Darlene is a lesbian but that he thinks he's "full of shit" giving Larry his own moment of pause, since he and Darlene also had their brief fling earlier this season in the "Office Romance" episode. "Listen, if she's not, can you do me a favor? Can you force her to go out with me?" Lovitz asks Larry. "Force her to go out with you. You want me to force her to go out with you," Larry repeats, doing well to hide the fact that he can't believe what he's hearing. "It's your show, isn't it? She has to do what you say, right?" Lovitz says. "That would be called sexual harassment," Larry tells him quite rightly. "Oh, come on. 'Blow me' — that's sexual harassment," Lovitz replies. He asks Sanders to be a pal and just do him this one favor. Larry stands and tells Lovitz he can't. "I have to go talk to the bird lady." As he's leaving, Lovitz persists. "What people do with their own time is their own business. I don't meddle," Larry declares as he leaves Lovitz alone in his office. "So she is a lesbian?" Jon yells at the closed door.
The next sequence stands out as being slightly different from the norm for The Larry Sanders Show. There's a quick scene with Lovitz in the makeup chair while Paula does the pre-interview and he begins telling her an anecdote from the making of City Slickers 2. A quick cut takes us to Larry's office where Paula finishes the story, sharing it with Larry who rejects it and says to instruct Lovitz to go with the tuxedo rental story instead. Paula doesn't know what Sanders is referring to, but he swears Jon will know "He tells it every goddamn time we go shopping. It's hilarious," Larry replies in a pissed-off tone. Another quick cut finds Paula in Jon's dressing room listening as Lovitz finishes relaying the tux rental story without an ounce of enthusiasm. "It's not funny," Lovitz says. "It's not funny, but it's cute that you and Larry shop together, I guess," Paula comments, caught in the deterioration of these two men's friendship and still trying to perform her job. "It's adorable. I just love spending hours watching him try on hundreds of pairs of pants," Lovitz complains. He then imitates Larry and asks, "Does my ass look fat in these pants?" Lovitz laughs and seems to return to normal. "He's a nice guy but sometimes he's just wrong." He asks Paula to tell Larry to keep the movie story as well. Paula promises that she will and Lovitz says he'll owe her one.
After Paula leaves, Darlene knocks on the door. Lovitz gets giddy at the sight of her, but she has just come to set him straight about the rumor that she is a lesbian. It isn't true, she tells him. He says he knew and then asks where they'll be going after the show. Darlene asks him to sit down. She tells him that the reason she can't go out with him is because he works in show business and she's been hurt too many times. Lovitz collapses back on the couch. "Fine. I'm so tired of this, you know. Yeah, why would you want to go out with someone who's famous and rich and handsome and can give you the life you always dreamed of and can make you laugh all the time? Yeah, pass," Lovitz whines. Darlene apologizes and leaves as Beverly enters carrying a mug of cocoa that Lovitz requested. He spots the bracelet on her wrist. "Where'd you get that?" he asks. "Darlene gave it to me," Beverly replies, then corrects herself, saying she's just borrowing it until tonight since the two of them are going to a women's meeting together. Lovitz starts moaning as if he's going to puke. "Uh. It's true," Lovitz groans as he rushes out of the dressing room. Beverly runs down the hall shouting Paula's name.
Larry stands bent over in the dressing room with his pants around his knees when Paula bursts in. "Hey, knock, why don't you?" Larry says, pulling up his pants. "Why are you putting your shoes on before you pull your pants up?" she asks. "I always do. Superstitious. Thank God you weren't in here a few minutes ago when I was painting my balls," he tells her. "Lovitz walked," Paula informs the host. He immediately blames her, wanting to know what she said to him. She said she didn't say anything. She just told him that Larry wanted him to do the tux story and Lovitz didn't want to do it, then he bolted. "What a child. He's a fucking child," Larry complains. He also catches a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror. "God, my ass looks fat in these pants!"
Larry, Darlene, Paula and Beverly have assembled in Larry's office, but Artie has resumed control of the ship. "Cut the horseshit, Adam. Your client walked off our show. Now what are you going to do about it, huh? If you can't control your own people, you should be out of the business," Artie shouts into the phone. "Give my regards to the darling Jamie. Bye-bye." Larry wants to know what Adam said. "He said Lovitz will not be back and he's very upset," Artie reports. Larry asks what Lovitz has to be upset about, just because he wouldn't let him tell the City Slickers 2 story. Paula suggests three segments with the bird lady and then Carl Sagan. "Unless Mister Sagan comes out and shits a string of pearls, we have no show," Artie proclaims. Larry's phone rings and it's Jon Lovitz. He apologizes for Paula about the movie story and tells him that "just between us, she has an eating disorder." Larry doesn't hear a response from Jon on the other end. Darlene asks to speak with him. Larry insists that Lovitz got mad about the movie anecdote. Darlene tells him he hurt his feelings by not going out with him. Beverly takes the blame because he saw her wearing the bracelet. Larry still wants it to be his fault. "Are you telling me that you've never been upset when you were romantically spurned?" Artie asks Larry. "Not like this," Larry claims. "Emma Samms," Artie says. Larry says Artie promised he'd never bring that up and it wasn't that big a deal. "You turned on her alarm system," Artie continues. "You did not read the police report," Larry insists. "I'm quoted quite liberally in it," Artie replies. Larry tells Jon that Darlene wants to talk to him. It turns out he's in the limo in the parking lot so Darlene heads down.
Darlene tells him how impressed she was that he walked off the show for her. It proves that he's not like the other industry guys. The camera pans and Larry also sits in the limo. He hands Jon the tickets to the Dodgers game and suggests he take Darlene to it after the show because he has another problem to deal with. "You can guarantee she's not a lesbian," Lovitz asks. Larry does, then Hank speaks up. He's there as well. "Jon, guys and nothing but guys. That's our Darlene in a nutshell," Kingsley swears. "Uh, I can vouch for it too. We went out briefly," Phil tells him, having somehow made it to the limo and sitting between Hank and Artie. "I think she's just swell but we've got a fucking show to do, so let's move it," Artie suggests. Everyone exits the limo except for Artie, Hank and Larry. Hank begins to tell a story about his wife and Artie tells him to shut up and he'll take him to dinner. "This whole thing just doesn't make sense. Can you imagine Darlene with another woman?" Larry asks. The three men all drift off into dreamy thoughts.
While the episode has its moments, it seems undercooked. They drag Beverly into the rumor but you never see her going ballistic on anyone and you expect a payoff with the bird lady that never comes. Torn, Tambor and Shandling turn in great work as always, but it almost seems as if their roles. particularly Torn's, were limited this week. While Sanders certainly can be self-absorbed, it becomes a little hard to swallow that he still thinks that Lovitz got upset over him not wanting him to tell the story about the incident on the City Slickers 2 set when he stormed out on Lovitz when he tried to get him to force Darlene to date him. Thankfully, the season soon will pick up in a big way.
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Labels: 90s, HBO, Larry Sanders, Rip Torn, Shandling, Tambor, TV Recap
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Monday, April 02, 2012
The Larry Sanders Show Season 3 Ep. 10: Like No Business I Know
By Edward Copeland
Forgive my tardiness. So many projects and real-life issues injected themselves in the way that now, nearly a year later, I'm finally getting around to recapping the second half of the third season of The Larry Sanders Show. I've set a deadline for myself, so I WILL finish this and the remaining three seasons before August. It's been such a long time since I recapped a Larry Sanders season, I can't remember if I made this point before: How can anyone who watched this show then go on and on about the pale imitation that's called 30 Rock? Since it has been a long time, you can read Part I of Season 3 by clicking here. Also, I'm shaking things up a bit. Instead of trying to cover an entire season in one post, I may cover a single episode or just a few episodes, as I'm doing with this first one back, the memorable "Like No Business I Know" that plays off the then-recent incident of comedian Bobcat Goldthwait setting the guest chair on fire on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno at the same time that Hank's wife Margaret pushes him to look toward greener pastures when Regis Philbin tries to steal him to be his sidekick on a late night talk show that Philbin has been offered. It's yet another great third season showcase for Jeffrey Tambor with a lot of classic Artie moments for Rip Torn to bite into as well. That way, for the particularly great episodes — which we see with increasing frequency as the show goes on (something rare for most series) — I can go into more detail instead of the paragraph or two summaries I had to make do with in the recaps of Season 1 and Season 2 but which I'd moved away from in the first half of Season 3. It won't take me any longer (as when I do a detailed Boardwalk Empire or Treme recap or what I could have done with Luck recaps if the behind-the-scenes situation wasn't such a chaotic mess that I lacked the necessary support to do them the way I like) and probably will encourage me to conclude them faster.
We open with the TV in Larry's office playing the May 1994 Tonight Show With Jay Leno incident when Bobcat Goldthwait (once Larry's choice to host the talk show that follows him, if you recall) set the guest chair on fire and Leno tries to force him to sit in it. Larry comments with a smile on how pissed off Leno seems to be. (The YouTube clip above covers most of this.) "That Bobcat has serious mental problems," Artie says. "I think he's got incredible balls," Paula adds. "He's got something," Artie replies as he stops the tape and turns to Paula and urges her not to say "balls." "Men find that off-putting," he advises. (YouTube clip ends here.) Larry posits that what happened was that Goldthwait went on Arsenio, ransacked the set and the show received lots of press and that's why Leno booked him. Paula begins as each of the trio refers to the NBC show's staff as "whores" winding up with Artie asking, "Is Bobcat here yet?"
It's that rhythm, timing and straight-faced hypocrisy that continues to make this series my favorite comedy of all time. Certainly some of the specific references might have grown dated, but because the actors develop actual characters, if you don't know the incident in question, it doesn't matter. As Rex Reed tells Larry King on the radio at the opening of Albert Brooks' Lost in America, "If it's really funny, I'll laugh." This episode was co-written by Peter Tolan, executive producer and writer or co-writer of many of the classic episodes, and Mike Martineau, writing only his second teleplay ever, the first being the episode "You're Having My Baby" from earlier in the season. The show's most frequent director, Todd Holland, handled the helming duties.
Continuing the conversation, Paula informs Artie that Goldthwait has arrived as well as the night's other guests — Michael Bolton and Regis Philbin. Artie sternly wants to make sure that Paula emphasizes to Bobcat to behave himself and she tells him the comic promised he'll be zany and wacky but the sets will remain intact. "Well, I like pranky stunts — you know that — but if I wanted to see furniture destroyed or our set ablaze, I'd go over to Jimmy Caan's place," Artie declares, prompting a quizzical look from Larry.
What would an episode of Larry Sanders be without at least one classic Hank Kingsley line delivered by the masterful Jeffrey Tambor. Hank has enlisted some of the crew to inspect the couch on the set because, according to Kingsley, last night during the middle of the Helen Hunt segment a spring "went straight up my ass." Hank finds it and asks the men to fix it for him before the night's show. "Thank you. My ass is my fortune," he tells them. Hank then goes to complain about the microphone he uses to
warm up the audience before the show starts, claiming there's a lot of treble, but no bass. Before he can go off on the sound guy, Regis Philbin wanders onto the stage to greet him. Regis asks if he can speak with Hank somewhere privately. Once the two get behind the seats, Philbin inquires as to how things have been going for Hank on the show. "Well, I'm the luckiest man in show business. Everyone says so and I have to agree," Hank responds. Regis informs Hank that he's been offered his own late-night talk show because his demographics rank better than any of these "young punks" such as Leno and Letterman and it would be a network show covering 85% of the country in three weeks. Hank congratulates him, but Philbin hasn't finished — he wants Hank to be his sidekick. Hank reluctantly declines, telling him that he's honored even when Philbin tells him that he can top whatever he makes with Larry. Hank gets nervous and tells Regis that he's running late for lunch with his better half. "Larry?" Regis assumes. Hank corrects that he meant his wife, Margaret, who gets mad, which he quickly amends to disappointed. Philbin asks him to keep thinking about his offer.
Larry and Artie take turns coming in to kiss Bobcat's ass in his dressing room. Sanders wants to know all the gritty details about The Tonight Show incident and Goldthwait shares them, including some slight burns he got on his ass. "I don't want to toot my own horn, but I was pretty proud that I could get some jokes off while all this was going on," Goldthwait admits. Larry asks if he'll want to talk about The Tonight Show incident on the show and Bobcat tells him that his lawyers have advised him that he shouldn't say anymore about it. Larry claims that he understands and doesn't get what the big deal was anyway, though he can't help but ask how pissed Leno got. "He fuckin' snapped," Goldthwait tells him. Rip Torn does his best twirling Artie, buttering the comic up one minute about how he loved his movie about the clown. "I'm just a sucker for drunk clowns" before switching emotional gears and threatening him because the fabric on the guest chairs isn't manufactured any longer, those giant letters that spell out LARRY cost more than you'd think and "Don't get near my fuckin' plants. They're my babies." Then, in a split-second, glad-handing Artie returns to exit the room with a cherry, "See you on television," leaving the comic on the couch stunned and muttering, "Jesus Christ."
Hank, of course, dances his way to his office thinking he could be king of the world and we get another great appearance by the late longtime character actor Phil Leeds (78 when this episode aired) as Hank's agent Sid Bessell. Hank sings his way to his agent and kisses him. "Hank, please, I'm your agent, not your mother," Sid protests. "You're my mother," Hank responds. "OK, I'm your mother," Sid relents. Hank asks why Sid has made an appearance and the agent tells him that Kingsley's wife Margaret called and said
that he wanted to see him. Hank pauses before unconvincingly claiming that he asked her to do that. He then fills Sid in on Regis' job offer, but Hank isn't considering taking that. He suggests to Sid that if Regis leaves his morning show maybe it could become Live With Hank and Kathie Lee. Sid tells him that wouldn't be a smart move since The Larry Sanders Show is his base. "Where did you come up with such a farkuckt idea?" Sid asks. Hank tells Sid he came up with it over lunch and Sid guesses correctly that Hank's wife was present. "The last time I had lunch with my wife we ended up redoing the living room in a pattern that I'm not allowed to sit down on," Sid tells him. Hank insists that the decision comes from him when his phone beeps and Darlene announces that Margaret is on the line. Hank tries to whisper to her, but then asks Sid for privacy. "You realize I'll have to get up," the old man complains, but Hank makes Sid go and the agent slowly treks to the office door.
Artie briefs Larry before the show with some classic Artie lines. "If he touches my plants, he dies. I will move swiftly. He will be dead," Artie tells Larry. "Good. So you gave him just the normal welcoming speech," Larry says. Artie then lets Larry know that he has Hank news to share. "What's wrong with him?" Larry asks. "Not enough oxygen to the brain as a fetus. That's my first guess," Artie replies before telling him the real story about Regis trying to steal him away because of Margaret's meddling. Larry, always content to stay out of the loop, tells Artie just to handle it. "You don't want to know how I handle it?" Artie asks the host. "No — just handle it," Larry replies as he steps into the makeup chair, having finished one of the show's almost-patented
(for TV at least at that time) tracking shots. Larry wonders aloud what happened to Margaret — he thought she was quiet and sweet. "She was," Artie agrees. "What changed?" Larry asks. "He married her," the producer answers. Artie then calls Hank into Larry's office (without Larry) and demonstrates his amazing ability to know everything that's going on with Hank, much to Hank's amazement. Kingsley keeps trying to leave, but Artie continues to order him to sit back down. Anytime you get one-on-one scenes between Torn and Tambor, the viewer knows that hilarity, often painful hilarity, awaits. I imagine writers on the show felt blessed anytime they could put these two actors in a room together alone. "If I was pussy-whipped, you'd be talking to me the way I'm talking to you
now," Artie tells Hank, setting Kingsley off. Artie doesn't relent, admitting he never liked Margaret. "She looks at you like you she has X-ray vision. Gives me the creeps," he tells Hank. Hank defends Margaret, saying she loves him very much and thinks he deserves more than he's getting and he thinks she's right. "And that thing with her eyes — that is a severe astigmatism, OK?" Hank proclaims. "I'm sorry. Don't get me wrong. She's a lovely girl — but I can't allow her to lift her skirt for every other show that comes along!" Artie shouts. Hank quits. He says he'll do that night's show because he's a pro but then he's gone. "And let me tell you another thing. You do not apply the term pussy-whipped to Hank Kingsley. He has never been nor never will be whipped by anything — let alone a pussy," Hank declares just as Beverly hands Kingsley a note from Margaret that she says is urgent. Artie grins widely. Hank crumples the note and throws it on the floor. "See that? I'm really pussy whipped," Hank says to Artie before quietly asking Beverly if Margaret called from home or the car then saying loudly, "Like I give a shit."
Of course, the funniest recurring gag of the episode turns out to be making Bobcat Goldthwait appear to be the most normal person in the Larry Sanders studio and offices. As Hank storms back to his office, Phil and Bobcat walk in and Goldthwait innocently asks Hank how it's going and how his wife is. Hank stops. "You're the one who plays a real kooky guy, right? In your act? Now, you wanna see something really kooky? Ask me about my lady again," Kingsley snarls at him and stares for a moment before walking off. Bobcat whispers to Phil, "Guy's a fuckin' wingnut." In his office, Sid gives Hank the bad news that he phoned Kathie Lee and she doesn't think their pairing would work because she hates Hank and she made reference to a 1979 auto show in Buffalo where Kingsley locked her in the trunk of a Camaro "for laughs." Hank melts down because he thought that was Cathy Lee Crosby. Hank tells Sid he already quit, so his agent suggests that he go to Regis and take the sidekick job. "Can you live with that? More importantly, can your wife live with that?" Sid asks his client.
Backstage, preparing for the show, Bobcat entertains Beverly and Darlene informing them that he may face community service such as visiting children in a burn ward to warn them about the dangers of fire. Wouldn't I be the last person you'd want to see coming down the hall if you are in a burn ward, the comic suggests when Larry drops in on the gathering, sending the female staffers scattering. Goldthwait notices that Regis also will be a guest and mentions that he really wants to do his show. Larry asks why. First, Bobcat claims it's because he's a morning person. "No. Actually I want to do the show because I have this idea. What I want to do is I'm gonna have a big meal — a big Denny's Grand Slam — eat as much as I can. Eat some pork and everything 'cause I'm a vegetarian. And then the idea is I'm gonna have some ipecac in a coffee mug — that's the stuff that induces vomiting, So the first time, you know, I hear 'Cody,' I'm just gonna take a big fuckin' swig off it and boom! I'm gonna projectile-vomit all over Kathie Lee," he explains to Larry. "Hilarious," Larry says nervously. Aside from the basic thrill it would be to see that happen, Garry Shandling actually rules this scene by his reactions which begin as polite listening then slowly turn to a horror that he tries to mask behind his smile. Shandling's wordless acting makes me laugh almost as much as Bobcat's proposed prank. Goldthwait adds that he wants to hit Regis as well so he isn't perceived as sexist and Larry suggests trying to get Gelman while he's at it. "No, I don't have that kind of range," Bobcat admits.
Sanders wanders over to the other Sid, his cue card guy, to go over the monologue and again touches base with Artie on how things seem to be going. "Michael Bolton has a slight head cold. He's going to sing anyway," Arthur informs him. You really had to endure the awfulness of Bolton's songs to get the subtlety of that joke. Imagine if American Idol had existed when Bolton tried to leap from songwriting to performer. How fast do you think his ass would have been kicked out? William Hung would have lasted longer. Larry asks about the Hank situation and Artie cryptically tells him the situation has been resolved. "He offered a solution. I accepted," Artie says. Larry inquires about anything else and Artie informs him that his fly is open. Larry thanks him as he zips up. "Don't mention it. Part of my job," Artie declares. "Looking at my crotch?" Larry responds. "I consider it a perk," Artie replies before disappearing behind the curtain. Hank comes skipping by and lets Larry know that what has transpired has nothing to do with the two of them and he will go out there and give it his all. Larry, clueless as to what's really going on, tells Hank that he knows that there was a problem but a solution was found and he couldn't be happier with the outcome. "You are cold, baby," Hank declares before heading through the curtains.
Larry finishes his segment with Regis and makes a beeline to Artie at his monitor. He tells his producer that Philbin made him really uncomfortable and he doesn't want to have him on anymore if he's going to come and try to steal Hank. Artie seems more concerned that Bobcat is up next and could be "a loose cannon." He seeks permission to "get my baby elephant palm off the set. I raised it from a mere nut." On the couch, Hank tells Regis he's been thinking about it and he's in. Regis is thrilled. Hank asks when he's signing the contract and Regis says next week as Artie appears behind them half-listening, half-arriving to secure his plant. Once Artie exits again, Hank says he's ready to start as soon as Philbin wants him. "That's great. We're going to start in fall of '97," Regis informs him as Hank gets a stricken look on his face (this was taking place in 1994). Hank asks when he's leaving the morning show and Regis answers when his contract expires — in the fall of '97. Regis wouldn't leave now — that's his base. Hank, looking sicker and sicker, inquires if Regis' wife ever gives him advice and Philbin replies, "No, never. Why?" Hank wanders off the set looking as if he's about to vomit — which he does — right in Artie's precious elephant palm.
They return from commercial and Bobcat has taken his place in the guest chair. Of course, despite what they agreed upon earlier, the first thing Larry brings up is The Tonight Show. "Well, to be honest, I'm facing a year in jail and I didn't really think you were going to bring it up," Goldthwait responds. "Well, we don't have to if you don't want to," Larry says. "No — I distinctly said I didn't want to," Bobcat declares, sounding angrier — or is it an act? Larry smiles and suggests they talk about something else then but still adds, "I was just curious why you did that thing on The Tonight Show." Goldthwait starts rolling his eyes. "Well, it worked.…That's why you have me here now," he says. Larry swears that's not true and that they are big fans of his. "Oh, that's bullBLEEP," Bobcat replies. You gotta love it. The show's language has no boundaries but since this takes place during the mock talk show part, they do censor the shit. Goldthwait starts knocking a plate off Sanders' desk. "See that's why you had me on. Here go crazy. Go nuts," he yells as he overturns Larry's desk. "Dance for us, monkey boy, dance!" he sings as he bounces around sending Larry to the edge of the set and getting Regis to his feet. Bobcat then throws Larry's chair through the set's backdrop, but when he grabs one of the plants, Artie appears like a lightning bolt and tackles the comic to the couch. "This is usually when they go to a commercial," Goldthwait declares as Artie glares down at him. "We'll be right back with Michael Bolton. Right after this break, Michael Bolton," Larry announces.
Backstage, Larry lectures Bobcat, telling him that Leno was right. He thought he would stick to the questions. Someone could have been hurt. Goldthwait apologizes, saying he thought it would be funny. "Here's the man you should be apologizing to," Artie tells Bobcat as Hank brings Sid up in a wheelchair. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were there," Goldthwait admits to Sid. "One minute I'm standing behind the curtain eating a mint. The next thing I know I've got a cardboard mountain up my ass. You young people don't know what funny is. Eddie Cantor was funny. If I didn't have arthritis, I'd knock you right on your ass," Hank's agent declares, pointing a judgmental finger at Bobcat. Artie decides to escort Bobcat to his dressing room "in case you get the urge to push a Coke machine over on Michael Bolton." Goldthwait, still shy and regretful, admits, "I wouldn't do it if it wasn't televised." After they leave, Sid tells Larry that Hank has something to say. He tries to get words out about being a mess and about his marriage but Larry tells him everything is fine and he'll see him tomorrow night, still completely in the dark as to what has transpired. Hank asks Larry to tell Artie for him.
When Larry gets to his office, Artie awaits. "So you know Hank is staying. Does that mean something to you?" Larry asks. "I'll bet he is. He found out Regis' show doesn't go for three years. What did you do — hire him back?" Artie inquires. Larry stops for clarification and Artie
explains that Hank quit earlier that morning. Larry complains that he didn't know that. Artie reminds him that he didn't want to know about things like that, though Larry amends that to people quitting. When Artie starts to give the pussy-whipped play-by-play, Larry doesn't want to know anymore as long as Artie handled it. Regis pops his head in and comes in to tell the two what a great time he had on the show. "Hey, that Bobcat is wild. You know what I did? I asked him to come on our show in New York next week," Regis shares. "Oh good. You're gonna have fun," Larry says with a devilish grin. Philbin adds that he can't do the same kind of stuff since they are a morning show, but he's promised to be a good boy. "Well, if he promised you, I don't think you have anything to worry about, but I'd tell Kathie Lee to stay about 10 feet back," Larry suggests. As Regis leaves, Paula comes in swearing that Goldthwait promised he wouldn't do anything, but Artie tells her that they'll talk about it in the morning. Larry shuts the door. "This is going to be all over the press in the morning. How is that going to make us look?" Larry asks. Pause. Artie grins and laughs and the producer and the host shake hands over the success of a job well done. Another keeper from the third season.
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Labels: 90s, Albert Brooks, Boardwalk Empire, Caan, HBO, Larry Sanders, Letterman, Luck, Rip Torn, Shandling, Tambor, Treme, TV Recap
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Friday, January 27, 2012
Ian Abercrombie (1934-2012)
Why is this man eating a Snickers bar with a knife and fork? You'll have to ask Tom Gammill & Max Pross who wrote the 1994 episode of Seinfeld "The Pledge Drive" that had Elaine's mercurial boss Mr Pitt do such a thing. Mr. Pitt was just one of a multitude of TV and movie roles played by the British character actor Ian Abercrombie, who died Thursday at the age of 77.
Most of Abercrombie's early work was on the British stage. He made his American stage debut in a production of Stalag 17 with Jason Robards. He made his television debut on an episode of Burke's Law in 1965 and his uncredited film debut the same year in Von Ryan's Express. In fact, all his early film work went uncredited — including some big movies such as Star, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The Molly Maguires and Young Frankenstein. His first credited film role didn't come until 1978's Sextette, Mae West's final film co-starring Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Regis Philbin and Keith Moon, among many others.
During those 13 years of uncredited film work, Abercrombie did get credit (most of the time) for his many television series on shows such as Dragnet, Get Smart, Columbo, Barnaby Jones, Cannon and The Six Million Dollar Man.
While Abercrombie did do film work, television became his focus. Of his post-1978 feature films, the most notable ones include The Prisoner of Zenda with Peter Sellers, The Ice Pirates, The Public Eye with Joe Pesci, Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness, Addams Family Values, Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park II, David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE and the voice of Ambrose in last year's Rango.
When it came to TV, you could see or hear Abercrombie almost anywhere. Highlights of his post-1978 work (not counting Mr. Pitt) included: The original Battlestar Galactica, Quincy, M.E., Knots Landing, Happy Days, Fantasy Island, Three's Company, the soap Santa Barbara, L.A. Law, Moonlighting, playing himself on the "Fate" episode of "It's Garry Shandling's Show.", Murder, She Wrote, Dynasty, Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Nip/Tuck, Desperate Housewives and How I Met Your Mother.
Abercrombie still was working on his final two roles at the time of his death: Playing Professor Crumbs on Wizards of Waverly Place and providing the voice for Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious on the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
RIP Mr. Abercrombie.
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Labels: Animation, Lynch, Obituary, Pesci, Raimi, Robards, Seinfeld, Shandling, Spielberg, Star Wars, Theater, Tony Curtis, Twin Peaks
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Saturday, January 14, 2012
“That’s S-A-N…F-O-R-D…period.”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
In 1968, despite never having watched an episode, television producer Norman Lear purchased the rights to Till Death Us Do Part, a landmark U.K. sitcom that featured an unapologetic bigot as its main character. Lear was convinced that such a show could catch hold on the American side of the pond, and after two pilots were turned down by all three major networks he succeeded with All in the Family, which premiered on CBS in January 1971. The program would come to revolutionize television comedy in the U.S., eventually (after a slow start) leaping to the No. 1 position in the Nielsen ratings.
Lear and his partner Bud Yorkin, who produced All in the Family through their company Tandem Productions, decided to follow up Family’s success by adapting another sitcom that had a British pedigree; Steptoe and Son, a series about a father-and-son team of “rag and bone” (junk) merchants, had been a favorite of U.K. audiences since 1962 and both men were certain that the show could accommodate the viewing habits of U.S. viewers. Yorkin, with the help of veteran TV scribe Aaron Ruben, put together two separate pilots in mid-1971; one that starred Lee Tracy and Aldo Ray as the American versions of the Steptoes, the other with Barnard Hughes and Paul Sorvino as père et fils. It was only after seeing stand-up comedian Redd Foxx in his scene-stealing role as a junk dealer in Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) that Yorkin and Ruben realized changing the ethnicity of the main characters to African-American was the way to go with their adaptation…and with that, the stage was set for the premiere of Sanford and Son 40 years ago on this date.
Redd Foxx’s birth name was John Elroy Sanford — and that surname was soon adopted as the same handle of the television character that would make the actor-comedian famous (the “Fred” was a tribute to Foxx’s older brother). Not that Redd Foxx was an unknown in show business; it’s just that he was more popular among black audiences as a familiar fixture in the 1940s and 1950s on the “Chitlin’
Circuit” (a nickname given to some famed black nightclubs of that era) in addition to recording a series of ribald (rated XXX for the times) “party” albums in the 1960s. At age 48, Foxx would be playing a 65-year-old widowed junk dealer but could no doubt be convincing due to his years of hard living (booze, cigarettes and drugs). Yorkin observed of the Man Who Would Be Sanford: “He was gray, and the way he walked on the show was pretty much the way he walked in real life. He had beaten himself up too much.” The role of Redd’s 30-year-old television son — to be dubbed Lamont Sanford — went to 24-year-old Demond Wilson, a young actor whose résumé included both Broadway and off-Broadway productions and who had made a favorable impression on Lear when Wilson guest-starred on an episode of All in the Family as one of two burglars (the other played by Cleavon Little, who had been approached originally by Yorkin to appear on the series but wound up recommending Foxx instead) ransacking the Bunker house. With the cast in place, Yorkin worked on a third pilot with Foxx and Wilson and after CBS President Fred Silverman passed on the show (a situation he once said was “one of the stupidest things I did at CBS”), it was snapped up by NBC executives Herb Schlosser and Mort Werner, who scheduled Sanford and Son as a mid-season replacement for The D.A. in January 1972.
At 9114 S. Central Ave., in the Watts section of Los Angeles, Fred G. Sanford and his son Lamont operate a combination junk/salvage/second-hand antiques store, and often struggle to make ends meet. Though both men ostensibly are partners in the business, Lamont did most of the work — driving the company’s pickup and doing the heavy lifting while father Fred functions as the “coordinator” of their inventory. Fred is, in many ways, the more childlike of the duo, often shirking his duties (like many adolescents) in favor of watching TV (his preferences lean to soap operas, game shows and Godzilla movies), playing cards and/or checkers and just generally goofing off. When called on his goldbricking by Lamont, Fred would complain about his “arthur-itis” (holding one hand up in a claw-like motion) and when that failed, would fake a heart attack at the drop of a hat, clutching his chest and hollering out “You hear that, Elizabeth? I’m comin’ to join you, honey!” (Elizabeth was Fred’s late wife.) Fred also possessed an irascible nature that often threatened to cleave the strong family ties between he and his son. He refers to Lamont as “you big dummy” and would raise his fist frequently to ask threateningly: “How would you like one ‘cross your lips?”
The stormy relationship between Fred and Lamont in the early years of Sanford and Son parallels that of its British counterpart (not surprisingly, since many of its scripts were retooled versions of the U.K. originals). Despite their incessant bickering, both father and son demonstrate real affection for one another and both could be out-and-out schemers when it came to the junk business. This gradually was phased out in later seasons, as Fred became more of a Ralph Kramden-like plotter determined to find ways to make a quick and easy buck, and Lamont morphed into a more level-headed individual patiently trying to get his dad to be more open-minded and accepting of people’s cultural differences. For Fred Sanford also was, in the tradition of his white All in the Family counterpart Archie Bunker, an unrepentant bigot, whose contempt for other races, sexes and creeds — whites, Latinos, Asians, women and even gays — knew no bounds and, as such, his prejudicial views frequently caused son Lamont endless headaches.
However, there was a subtly subversive characteristic in Fred Sanford’s detrimental make-up: Sanford and Son, like All in the Family, may have satirized prejudice by lampooning its bigoted main character and emphasized its absurdity by making certain those individuals suffered the consequences of their backward thinking, but it often seemed as if Fred got off a little easier than Archie. Bunker would be challenged by other characters on his offensive remarks but with Sanford, not so much. The “lessons” that Family placed special emphasis on weekly weren’t always in full force on Sanford. It seemed to eschew topicality in favor of what author Paul Mavis calls “guilt-free racial humor.” Re-visiting episodes of Sanford and Son reveals that much of the show’s insult-based comedy is most assuredly un-P.C., and if anyone attempted to offer up a series cultivating such a freedom of expression to a network today, they would most definitely be on the receiving end of a media backlash, despite the groundbreaking nature of the show’s portrayal of an integrated neighborhood in the 1970s. Fred and Lamont may have resided in lower-income environs but they shared the same square-foot yardage with Jews, Latinos (Gregory Sierra’s Julio Fuentes) and Asians (Pat Morita’s Ah Chew).
To emphasize how pioneering Sanford and Son was in its five years on the air, film critic Gene Siskel once wrote, “What All in the Family did for the Caucasian race in our nation with television, Sanford and Son did for African Americans. It is one of the two most noted and significant African-American sitcoms since the invention of television.” I don’t know which other sitcom Siskel references, but even though Sanford was awarded recognition by many scholars for its innovations, a second look at the series reveals that it was in many
ways an updated Amos ‘n’ Andy for the 1970s. The lead character of Fred Sanford, with his endless conniving and scheming, wasn’t too far removed from George “Kingfish” Stevens, and Fred’s nemesis on the show, sister-in-law “Aunt Esther” Anderson (LaWanda Page), was a direct descendant of Kingfish’s shrewish spouse Sapphire. Many of Fred’s pals on the show — Melvin (Slappy White), Bubba (Don Bexley), Leroy (Leroy Daniels), “Skillet” (Ernest Mayhand), etc. — could all be members-in-good-standing “of that great fraternity, the Mystic Knights of the Sea.” Fred’s best buddy, the eternally befuddled Grady Wilson (Whitman Mayo), was interchangeable as both the show’s resident Andrew H. Brown and the Mystic Knights’ slow-witted janitor, Lightnin’. The minstrelsy of Sanford could be attributed to the fact that the series, like the earlier A&A, was written mostly by white comedy scribes, including a young Garry Shandling before he turned to standup comedy, (a sore point with star Redd Foxx, who fiercely lobbied for more black writers and directors on the show) but when you also take into consideration that Foxx was an Amos ‘n’ Andy fan (he often waved away that series’ controversial nature by simply arguing that “funny is funny”) the comparison isn’t perhaps all that coincidental.
Sanford and Son’s premiere in 1972 gave NBC a solid hit on its Friday night schedule (long considered by industry wags to be a “death sentence”); it finished as the sixth-rated TV series in the Nielsen ratings in its first short season and for three seasons after that, was second only to All in the Family in viewership. Foxx’s instant celebrity from the sitcom eventually led to his dissatisfaction with what he was being paid for his role (he started out at $7,500 an episode, the same salary that Carroll O’Connor started out with on Family) and midway during the 1973-74 season, he walked off the show in protest. To explain Foxx's departure, the show introduced a storyline where Fred was away in his native St. Louis attending a cousin’s funeral and Grady had been put in charge of the business (and Lamont) in his absence. When Sanford’s ratings remained consistent despite its missing star, however, Foxx returned to the fold. While the show continued its ratings dominance for a time afterward, the seams already were starting to show; the plots got a bit sillier (Sanford fell back on the same gambit that was prevalent on The Lucy Show, making each outing a “guest star of the week”) and more outlandish. Foxx’s longtime cocaine addiction didn’t do him any favors, and co-star Wilson also developed a substance abuse problem (as well as numerous disagreements with the show’s production staff). Occasionally, the sitcom indulged in a bit of self-reflexive almost meta-humor as in an episode when Fred enters a Redd
Foxx look-a-like contest and plays both parts. The best example was the fifth season episode "Steinberg and Son" when Fred and Lamont discover a new TV sitcom appears to be based on their life, except all the characters are Jewish. They file suit, but then Fred sees it as his chance for stardom and gives tips to the actor play the Jewish Fred Sanford (Lou Jacobi) on how to react to the Aunt Esther equivalent. John Larroquette plays the Jewish Lamont. Robert Guillaume appears as Fred and Lamont's lawyer. The final inside joke comes when it turns out the show was written by a cousin of Rollo's and they asks the young African-American man why he didn't make the characters black, but he says no one would buy that. It's one of the more clever later episodes. In its final season, Sanford and Son was ranked No. 27 in the ratings, still respectable for a renewal, but by that time Foxx had been lured away to ABC for more money and a comedy-variety hour bearing his name. Demond Wilson couldn’t come to terms with Sanford’s producers so he called it quits as well. The result was a spin-off series (the show’s second; its first was a program starring the Whitman Mayo character, Grady, in 1975-76) entitled The Sanford Arms that starred Teddy Wilson as Phil Wheeler, who buys the rooming house next door that Fred and Lamont rented out to boarders for supplemental income. Sanford returnees who made appearances included Mayo, and Bexley. (Eight episodes were filmed, but the series was canceled after four.)Foxx’s ABC effort may have lasted longer (four months) than Sanford Arms but since the comedian remained out of work, he returned to NBC in March 1980 to try and halt the network’s slide into third place with a revival of his hit '70s series re-titled Sanford (no “and Son” because Demond Wilson wasn’t interested; the Lamont character was sent up north to work on the Alaskan Pipeline). Fred Sanford was just as cranky as ever but he had a new partner in the junk business (the go-to thespian for rednecks, Dennis Burkley) and a new girlfriend (Marguerite Ray) whose wealthy family detested him. (The whereabouts of Fred’s old girlfriend on Son, Donna “The Barracuda” Harris — played by actress Lynn Hamilton — went unexplained.) Lamont’s best friend from the previous series, Rollo Larson (Nathaniel Taylor), was now a regular on the show and the characters of Aunt Esther, Grady and Officers “Smitty” (Hal Williams) & “Hoppy” (Howard Platt) turned up from time to time as well but without Demond Wilson’s participation, the series fizzled after two attempts (both of its seasons were as mid-season replacements). Foxx would go on to two other attempts to re-create the sitcom magic of Sanford and Son, notably with The Royal Family in 1991. Midway through this Eddie Murphy-produced sitcom (which paired Foxx with co-star Della Reese), Redd suffered a heart attack while filming an episode. Sadly, the cast and crew mistakenly thought he was gagging it up with his old Sanford “Comin’-to-join-ya-Elizabeth” routine. (When they figured out it was no joke, it came too late to save the comedian’s life.)
One of the longest-lasting legacies of Sanford and Son takes less than a minute. Composed by Quincy Jones, the series' theme (its official title is "The Streetbeater") has such an infectious beat that even people who have never seen an episode of the sitcom can likely make a good attempt at humming it. In fact, on Scrubs, J.D. did exactly that once to try to get Turk into a good mood. Thanks to YouTube, here is the series' opening with Jones' track.
The stars of Steptoe and Son, Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett, might have made small screen magic during their long TV partnership but according to several sources, their relationship off-screen was quite acrimonious. The same charge has been leveled at Sanford and Son’s Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson — but in re-visiting the series, one can’t help but marvel at the chemistry between the two actors in their roles. Lamont, despite suffering from the indignities and difficulties generated by his cantankerous father, really does love and respect Fred and you can see it in how actor Wilson will sometimes grin at Foxx when Redd does a bit of business that tickles him. A character like Fred G. Sanford probably would be intolerable in real life, but Foxx exhibits a pixie-ish temperament (his apologetic wave at a person he’s gone too far insulting or his petulant pout at being scolded like a mischievous kid) that makes him endearing despite his shortcomings. A genuine artifact of the 1970s; Sanford and Son’s uncompromising humor still resonates with audiences today both on DVD and in endless reruns; furthermore, it laid the groundwork for future hits from the Norman Lear stable, including Good Times and The Jeffersons. And in the words of the immortal Redd Foxx: funny is funny. That’s all you need to know, you big dummy.
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Labels: 70s, Eddie Murphy, N. Lear, Shandling, Theater, 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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